[Habitat · Roaming Zone]

The medical report was brief, just a few lines. Dr. Wu, who’d been poring over it, noticed Ji Qiyuan’s hand lingering on the chart. Knowing his junior colleague also studied genetics, he remarked, “Pretty unique, right? We’ve seen cases like this before, but compared to that F-level case where stimulation triggered recovery, his situation is the opposite.”

The Elite Training Camp project linked numerous brain neurons, carrying the risk of overstimulation, though issues had never surfaced—until Zhou Sui’s sudden illness three years ago. Its root cause traced back to genetics. Experts debated, pinpointing potential brain overstimulation as the culprit, which ultimately forced the long-running camp to shut down.

“You were in secluded research back then, weren’t you?” Dr. Wu said, pulling more files from a cabinet. “No surprise you didn’t know about his case.”

Ji Qiyuan didn’t respond. He scanned the details again, his brow furrowing slightly as his finger paused on the entry for hypersomnia ^[1]Hypersomnia, also known as hypersomnolence, is a neurological disorder characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness and oversleeping. It can manifest as difficulty staying awake or alert during the … Continue reading.

“He’s doing much better now, though. His condition’s mostly stabilized,” Dr. Wu said, reviewing Zhou Sui’s latest test results while chatting casually. “S-level physique, hyperactive tendencies—he can’t overexert himself anymore, so I suggested he try hologames. I had another patient before…”

At the mention of hologames, Ji Qiyuan’s brow twitched. “Hologames?”

Dr. Wu opened his thermos. “Started playing recently, I think. Oh, right, that big one—Divine Tree, I believe.”

“Add another test,” Ji Qiyuan said abruptly, closing the report. “Include a brain scan.”

Dr. Wu nearly choked on his water. “Huh?”

—-

Inside the medical station, Zhou Sui was queuing for tests when Dr. Wu sent over a stack of additional orders, saying it was better to be thorough.

“Even routine checkups don’t involve this much,” Zhou Sui muttered.

The cat chimed in, “Just do what the doctor orders—it’s not like it costs you anything!”

What started as three small tests ballooned into seven. Grumbling under the cat’s nagging, Zhou Sui completed them all. Dr. Wu eventually confirmed it was just hunger and overstimulation causing his sleep issues, stressed the importance of a normal routine, and let him leave the station.

By the time Zhou Sui left the hospital, most of the day had passed. He returned with a pile of meds, their purposes unclear to him, but the cat sorted them out and nagged him all day.

“What if you fall asleep like that again?” the mechanical cat fretted.

Zhou Sui knew he was in the wrong—passing out like that had happened once before. Thankfully, with meds taken, avoiding the training room and loader, and keeping a normal sleep cycle (despite still waking up groggy), the cat finally eased up.

He hadn’t expected skipping a meal and running a dungeon would knock him out for so long. The foggy state wasn’t pleasant, so for the next few days, he caught up on sleep and downed two nutrient tubes before logging back into the game.

When Zhou Sui touched the loader again, over three days had passed. Logging in, the scene before him was unrecognizable. If his last session had been a mere wilderness temple, now it felt like a horror set from a StarNet film.

Fallen trees, a rotting stench in the forest, filthy water pooling everywhere—the Tiandi Temple’s entrance was deserted, save for eerie rustling sounds.

The abrupt change put Zhou Sui on high alert. Checking his status, he saw his health bar ticking down. A glance at his debuffs revealed a glaring icon:  

[You are in a Chaos Zone. Leave immediately!]

Chaos Zone? Zhou Sui didn’t recall anything like that in the game. Remembering the main storyline update about habitat gameplay from a few days ago, he quickly opened his map. What he saw was a completely transformed game world.

The Divine Tree’s continental map had once been clearly divided, with villages and towns neatly outlined. Now, nearly everything had changed. Except for the five starting villages, the rest—towns, villages, even landscapes—had undergone drastic shifts.

Rivers and mountains twisted in new directions, some towns vanished entirely, replaced by an unfamiliar map. Most striking were the patches of flickering red across the map. The wilderness forest around the Tiandi Temple fell within one such red zone, marked as a Chaos Zone.

Even without full context, Zhou Sui knew the game had undergone a major overhaul. Without hesitation, he located the nearest safe town and headed that way. As he moved, the Chaos debuff stacked rapidly, progressing from health loss to other negative effects, signaling that lingering in the zone would harm his character’s stats.

The negative status was strikingly similar to what Zhou Sui had experienced in the Tiandi Temple not long ago, he suddenly realized.

[You are about to enter the Chaos Roaming Zone. Please take caution!]

Along with the prompt, a dark mist appeared. In the dim forest, it was hard to spot, drifting toward Zhou Sui like mountain fog, moving far faster than a person could. In the blink of an eye, it engulfed him.

[You are entering. Countdown: 10, 9, 8…]

As the mist surrounded him, a flurry of alerts sounded in his ears. When he opened his eyes, the scene before him had changed. The debuffs on his character vanished, and his surroundings became clearer, as if the mist had transported him to a new map.

At this moment, a notification pinged from his in-game mail.

[Little Bunny 123: Where are you?]  

[Little Bunny 123: Did you go in?]

Zhou Sui only glanced at the messages before focusing on his surroundings. In the top-left corner of his interface, a small task-like window appeared, seemingly tied to this so-called Chaos Roaming Zone he’d inexplicably entered.

[Chaos Roaming Zone (Resource Competition), Current Players: 1124/1124, Newbie Server Count: 75/3200, Divine Fragments: 0/222]

[World] Money Matters Most: What’s going on? Someone from our server entered the Roaming Zone again!  

[World] Pancake Peddler: ??? Who’s the unlucky one this time?  

[World] Long Love: RIP, let’s send off this lone wolf player.

[Slack Bro: Bro, your coordinates??]  

[Mortal World’s Noble Grass: Brother Zhou, you entered the Wilderness Roaming Zone? …You’re not a lone wolf, are you?]

Zhou Sui was puzzled. Why are so many people saying he went in right after he logged in?

As he wondered, the clear sound of footsteps reached his ears—hurried steps mixed with the rustle of something cutting through the air. Zhou Sui’s reflexes kicked in, and he dodged back instantly. His eyes flicked to the minimap in his field of view, where six or seven red dots appeared in mere seconds.

In Divine Tree, red dots on the map meant attackable targets. He swiftly leaped onto a tree, and as he did, several players emerged from the jungle below, each with a number floating above their heads.

An AI voice chimed in: “Player, you have entered the Roaming Zone gameplay. Detected as your first entry. Would you like a tutorial for Wilderness gameplay?”

Wilderness gameplay—a unified feature across novice servers. Players enveloped by the same Roaming Zone were thrown into a shared battlefield to compete for resources. In simpler terms, the map he’d been pulled into was a common Wilderness mode in the game world, except his opponents hailed from all 3,200 novice servers of Divine Tree.

[Your Server: 3145]  

[Your Teammates: 0]

In this so-called resource competition battlefield, he was the only player from Server 3145.  

He was starting to understand what “lone wolf” meant.

The forest wasn’t quiet. As Zhou Sui climbed the tree, red dots closed in from all directions. The nearest group, all marked with the same number above their heads, didn’t attack each other. Instead, they searched the area carefully.

“Where’d they go?”  

“I swear I saw a red dot here… Up in the tree!”

As the shout rang out, Zhou Sui noticed several red dots pause. The next moment, attacks shot upward toward him. Without hesitation, he burned a skill to retreat swiftly. He’d overlooked one thing: if he could see their red dots, they could see his too.

Jumping down from the tree, Zhou Sui had no time to check the flood of messages in his mail. Barely dodging an attack using the tree for cover, a player with blistering speed closed in on him. The opponent raised a hand, slashing a blade down. Zhou Sui narrowly evaded.

The warrior hadn’t expected his slash to miss. He shouted, “Didn’t lock him down! Hurry over!”

A warrior player from Sui Xing City—his blade was meant to pin Zhou Sui. His teammates were still some distance away!

Zhou Sui flicked to the needle weapon in his gear case, seizing the gap to instantly lock the warrior’s skills. The moment the skills were sealed, he switched to Serpent Venom Water, stacking several layers of poison on the warrior. The venom relied on combo hits to ramp up damage. Caught off-guard by the skill lock, the warrior was hit with multiple stacks in seconds, losing a massive chunk of health!

“What the hell kinda skill is that!?” What kind of burst damage was this!? The warrior clearly saw Zhou Sui was from Qi Ling Village—how was his burst stronger than an assassin’s?

Zhou Sui wouldn’t give him time to react. Once the seal ended, he followed up with a stun, and his weapon transformed into a round-headed pestle.

The warrior, still reeling from the needle barrage, took a heavy blow from the mace, followed by another seal. A triple control combo left the warrior completely helpless—his cleanse skill couldn’t even break the seal debuff. Before he could reposition, his health silently evaporated!

The warrior collapsed. By the time his teammates arrived, they only saw a figure slipping away.

“How’d you get one-shot like that!?”

The warrior, now kicked out of the Roaming Zone, was baffled himself. He’d locked onto a support—who could’ve predicted he’d play like an assassin!

After distancing himself from the red dots, Zhou Sui finally checked the gameplay details he hadn’t had time to read.

This Wilderness mode threw players from different servers into the Roaming Zone. Same-server players became teammates; everyone else was an enemy (red dots, red names). Scattered across the zone were so-called Divine Fragments. Players could collect them or kill others to steal their fragments. The mode wouldn’t end until all fragments were claimed.

Zhou Sui glanced at his panel: Divine Fragments in the zone (45/222). Then he checked his combat log.

[You defeated a player from Server 147, obtaining 3 Divine Fragments from them!]  

It dawned on him—the guy he’d taken down was loaded.

Before Zhou Sui could dig into the fragment details, more red dots appeared on the map, closing in fast. He quickly closed the interface and ducked behind a tree.

But his red dot was plain as day on the minimap. The group of players headed straight for him, clearly spotting him as a lone target.

Zhou Sui’s eyes flickered, and he immediately moved back.

In the distance, six or seven players moved as a group. Spotting the red dot shift, they shouted, “Chase him down!”

No way they’d let a lone player escape. The two fastest among them activated speed boosts and pursued, planning to lock him down first. They didn’t notice that in their high-speed chase, they were pulling further from their slower main group. Led into a complex forest terrain, the figure darting ahead suddenly looped back.

In that split-second return, a control skill landed squarely on the fastest assassin. The weapon master’s triple-control combo, paired with a Serpent Venom Water burst, turned the tables—the assassin, aiming to control, was controlled instead. They burned their cleanse, but Zhou Sui, reading their intent, chained another control, followed by a precise attack combo that one-shot them.

The teammate rushing to help arrived too late. Zhou Sui pivoted, chasing them down. Another flurry of combos landed, dropping the second player to half-health. By then, the rest of the group caught up—a Daoist and beastmaster locking onto Zhou Sui. Hit by their controls, Zhou Sui retreated, frowning slightly as he scanned the crowd.

Too many people, too many controls. He circled back, noting the absence of a healer in their group. Feinting a retreat, he baited the low-health player chasing for a kill, then swapped to a needle for a mid-range control, pinning them in place.

With that maneuver, Zhou Sui’s combo cooldowns reset. He finished off the low-health player in the crowd, and as the others’ attacks locked onto him, he’d already taken down two. The remaining players grew cautious, grouping tighter.

Zhou Sui didn’t linger. He cleanly turned and fled.

“Damn, he’s gone!”  

“After him!”

Without their speedsters, the squad couldn’t catch Zhou Sui, who vanished swiftly.

Two kills added 4 more Divine Fragments to his inventory.

Zhou Sui realized these players were carrying decent hauls, but as he scouted for new targets, he saw others moving in groups of four or five from the same server—no lone stragglers or small pairs.

Unwinnable. He shifted to hunting Divine Fragments instead.

Luck wasn’t on his side, though. He ran into more players than fragments. By the time he’d roughly mapped out the Roaming Zone, the fragment collection progress on the map read (200/222).

That fast?

It hadn’t even been half an hour since he’d entered, and he’d only nabbed 2 fragments himself.

When the fragments hit max, a notification popped up: the Roaming Zone was closed. The map shifted again, spitting him out near the Tiandi Temple entrance.

Zhou Sui had logged in dazed, barely grasped the mode, and now the zone shut down before he could explore further. He frowned slightly, his mind rapidly piecing together what he’d learned.

The moment he left the zone, a team invite popped up. Zhou Sui accepted reflexively, only realizing after joining that it was Little Bunny 123.

“You’re out?” Little Bunny 123 asked.

Zhou Sui was about to reply when he noticed his Divine Fragments had vanished, replaced by a small treasure chest now sitting alongside another unopened chest from earlier.

[Player Cycle of Eternity contributed 9 Stability Points to Server 3145]

The message flashed, echoed by a team notification. Zhou Sui still wasn’t sure what it meant.

Before Zhou Sui could process it, another voice chimed in.

“The Roaming Zone ended fast. Divine Fragments turn into Stability Points for the server and convert into your rewards,” Little Bunny 123 explained concisely. “For safety, head to the safe zone first.”

By the time Zhou Sui reached the safe zone, his health bar was nearly half gone. Little Bunny 123 was already waiting at the town entrance, casually topping off his health as he approached.

Before he even got close, his debuffs were already cleared.

Little Bunny 123 wore the same gear from the Tiandi Temple run. At a glance, he seemed no different from that day. Only when Zhou Sui got closer did he notice Little Bunny 123 was taller than him. Before he could ask anything, Little Bunny 123 sent a gameplay detail in their team chat—Habitat Gameplay.

How did he know he wants to learn about this?

Logging in to a transformed map, getting yanked into a Roaming Zone, and now dealing with Stability Points—the game had changed drastically, leaving Zhou Sui a bit dazed.

Opening Little Bunny 123’s gameplay details, Zhou Sui realized it was a condensed version of an announcement. After they’d cleared the Tiandi Temple and logged off, the game had rolled out a major update centered on [Finding a Habitat]. When the Divine Tree collapsed, chaotic forces seeped into the continent, disrupting the environment Talents relied on, giving rise to the Habitat Gameplay.

[Habitat · Roaming Zone Gameplay: In the Chaos Roaming Zone, players can collect resources from Divine Tree remnants, aiding habitat expansion and [REDACTED]. Each entry pits all players in the zone as competitors. Once all resources have been collected, the player who has obtained the most resources is determined to be the winner. Claiming resources can earn Stability Points for the corresponding server and also yield substantial rewards!]

So that’s what the Divine Tree’s collapse meant—the entire map turned into hazardous zones, spurring player competition. Simply put, before the collapse, novice server players roamed freely, with fixed resource spawns. Post-collapse, wild resource availability depended entirely on a server’s stability.

Zhou Sui reexamined the game map. Previously, safe zones covered half the map; now, after the collapse, only one-sixth remained safe. The rest had become wild danger zones, marked by dozens of debuffs like health loss or disorientation. Some high-risk areas were outright flagged red.

Even the outskirts of popular dungeon entrances had turned into low-risk chaos zones.

The higher a server’s Stability Points, the weaker the wild chaos zones’ debuffs became, expanding safe areas and boosting resource spawns. Each week, the mainframe adjusted resource tiers for novice servers based on Stability Points. Players could also convert Divine Fragments into Stability Points for rewards.

The Roaming Zone he’d just entered was one way to earn those points, with rewards dropping as small treasure chests in his inventory.

Not bad for half an hour’s work.

Zhou Sui studied the gameplay intently, oblivious to the person nearby.

Little Bunny 123 stood a few steps away, hand resting on his gear box, eyes fixed on the weapon master reading the guide. He lowered his gaze thoughtfully, fingers tapping lightly on the unique gear box at his waist, quietly waiting for Zhou Sui to finish.

Then, a notification pinged.

The apothecary snapped to attention, noticing a team join request light up in their party interface. His hand paused on the gear box.

“Someone’s requesting to join.”

Zhou Sui came back to reality, realizing Little Bunny 123 was addressing him. When he didn’t respond, Little Bunny 123 looked at him and asked, “Should I let them in?”

He was asking for Zhou Sui’s opinion.

“Bro, why aren’t you guys letting us in!?” Slack Bro’s mail popped up.

Zhou Sui paused briefly when he saw the mail, realizing the join request was from Slack Bro.

Noticing Zhou Sui checking his mail, Little Bunny 123 seemed to pick up on something and hit accept. “Probably your friend.”

[Players Slack Bro and Mortal World’s Noble Grass have joined the team]

“Applied for ages, and you finally let me in! Brother Bunny, you’re here too?” Slack Bro’s voice came through before he fully loaded in. “Brother Zhou, you didn’t die, right? Roaming Zone’s brutal on XP—don’t just wander in. The whole map’s changed.”

“Head to the safe zone first. We’re at Tong Shi Town,” Little Bunny 123 said, glancing at their teammates’ locations.

The two were indeed out in the wild and hurried over upon hearing the location.

Zhou Sui’s peripheral vision caught Little Bunny 123 standing nearby, still keeping a two-step distance. He seemed mild-mannered, blending in with passing players, yet somehow knew everything.

A strange person.

Little Bunny 123, catching his look, gestured to the team interface.

Zhou Sui: “?”

Little Bunny 123 tapped Cycle of Eternity’s panel in the team menu, making a blue coordinate dot appear. “Long-press a teammate’s icon to see their current movement position,” they explained. “Look, I’m with you.”

Cycle of Eternity’s coordinate overlapped perfectly with his.