Chapter 25: Demon Arena (23)
Now, they finally had a direction to escape the arena—but the problem was, how could they prove their theory? And even if they did, how would they report the NPCs’ cheating?
“I don’t know how to prove it yet,” Yan Wuzhen said, “but as for how to report it—you can do that.”
Tang Mobai blinked in confusion. “…Me?”
“Yeah. We demons who entered the Revival Tournament had our explorer privileges revoked. So the report function and the demon shop in our watches are both locked. But you—” Yan Wuzhen pointed at him, “you can contact whoever’s backing you. Get your organization to mass-report it. If enough reports are filed, Lost Paradise will notice. With evidence, we could succeed.”
Yan Wuzhen frowned deeply. “Reporting isn’t the problem. The problem is getting evidence.”
Tang Mobai nearly cried. No, reporting was a problem! The others might not know, but he did—his country might be powerful, but in Lost Paradise it only had one account!
Wait—worse, the owner of that account hadn’t even passed the beginner trial. They didn’t even have access to the Demon Shop, let alone the report feature!
“Reporting requires numbers?” Tang Mobai asked. “Why can’t we report it ourselves?”
“Of course it needs numbers! Otherwise you’ll be waiting in the queue until we’re all dust before Lost Paradise reviews it. And with how you appear on stream—do you think the public would help us, or trample us instead?” Yan Wuzhen sighed. “We’ve already lost our explorer rights forever. We’re slaves now. Don’t overthink it.”
He ignored Tang Mobai’s pained look and continued to think aloud. “You suspected that the alchemy embedded in the tower had something to do with this cheating, right?”
“Yeah,” Tang Mobai forced himself to swallow his frustration about reporting. “Things like reviving the dead, recreating bodies or souls, tricking the system… the audience said alchemy is connected to ‘Revival.’ If they said that, something must’ve really happened here. Otherwise, how could anyone in Lost Paradise know?”
“You mean when this world was on the brink of destruction?” Yan Wuzhen frowned. “That was too long ago. I hadn’t even entered Lost Paradise then. I’ve got no intel on that.”
“Can’t we just ask the audience?”
“You think they’ll be that kind?” Yan Wuzhen scoffed—but after a glance at Tang Mobai, his expression shifted. “…Though, maybe it’s not impossible.”
Tang Mobai: “?”
*
The next morning, as soon as the audience logged in, they were stunned.
[Wait—why are so many live rooms blacked out?!]
[Did I see that right? Did the devils break the game again? Is Lost Paradise bugged??]
[WTF! All my bets are gone?? What about the Demon Casino’s running matches—will they refund?]
[Refund? You’re dreaming. When has the Demon Casino ever refunded anything?]
[So what did happen last night?]
[Hey, look! A few Revival Tournament streams are still live!]
Within minutes, Tang Mobai’s stream numbers skyrocketed. The chat was filled with messages.
[Streamer! What happened last night??]
[Why did so many die? Were the ghost shadows that strong??]
[No one said the tournament rules changed!]
[Yeah, what’s going on? All the other streamers won’t talk—it’s killing us!]
Tang Mobai sat huddled in the corner, hugging his knees. His face was pale, streaked with dried blood, eyes bloodshot and hollow. He looked terrified and exhausted, like he hadn’t slept at all. Combined with the bloodstains around him, the room looked like a crime scene.
Half-closing his eyes, he began his performance. “L-last night…”
He only said two words before his fingers began to tremble. He buried his head between his knees, visibly shaking—classic PTSD.
The expert team watching from reality froze. Had something horrible really happened last night? How could he have changed this much overnight?
Only Gong Wen—Tang Mobai’s acting coach—realized the truth and signaled the others to stay calm.
The chat’s curiosity was instantly hooked. And since the other surviving gladiators barely acknowledged their viewers, Tang Mobai’s stream became the only window into what happened. The chat flooded with messages:
[Tell us, streamer! What happened last night?!]
[We promise we won’t mock you!]
[Yeah! Tell us! Maybe we can even help!]
Of course, none of them actually wanted to help—they just wanted the drama. Since Tang Mobai looked close to breaking, even the trolls quieted down, pretending to comfort him.
“Last night…” Tang Mobai took a deep breath, bit his lip, and forced himself to look pitiful. “It—it was Qiong. She colluded with the staff. She cheated.”
The chat exploded.
[WHAT?! Cheating?! Explain!]
[Qiong again? Not surprised—but what do you mean cheated? Did she kill everyone??]
[Say it clearly, streamer!]
“If—if you help me report it, I’ll tell you everything,” Tang Mobai said, voice trembling. He looked truly frightened. As the wide-eyed rookie sweetheart with a 90% survival rate in the arena, his performance fit perfectly. If it had been Yan Wuzhen, the audience wouldn’t have bought it.
But of course, the audience wouldn’t report anything. If the accusation was false, Lost Paradise would punish false reports; if it was true, they’d never help anyway. They just wanted to know the story.
[Just tell us first. What really happened?]
“Qiong… she put out all the lamps. Then the ghost shadows came. So many people died…” Tang Mobai’s words came out in fragments, but given the blood around him, everyone could imagine the scene. “She couldn’t have done it alone—someone from the staff helped her! The NPCs must’ve colluded! 009 and the others too! They did it on purpose! Report them!”
The chat went silent for a few seconds.
The boy’s eyes glistened with leftover tears. His bitten lips had gone pale. The slight baby fat on his face had lost all color. Curled up, trembling, his bright amber eyes—once full of optimism—were now dim.
Even though his acting was still a bit stiff despite Yan Wuzhen’s overnight coaching, he had one advantage Yan Wuzhen didn’t—his established image. To the audience, he was already the naive rookie protected by some mysterious backer.
And among his viewers, some weren’t fans at all—they watched out of malice. They were waiting for him to fall, to be abandoned, to break down and rot like the rest of them.
After all, why should he alone get to stay pure in this hell?
Now, seeing him trembling, fragile, desperate—like a bird stripped of its nest—made them want to…
Push him.
[Too bad. That’s impossible.]
The malicious comments began to flood in.
[You think reporting will get you out? Hah. Maybe Qiong did cheat, but she didn’t do it with the NPCs. NPCs would never go easy on us.]
[To them, we’re the demons who destroyed their home.]
Tang Mobai widened his eyes in fake shock. “W-what do you mean?”
[Let’s see… it started with a meteor impact. Radiation spread. That’s when the ‘Ghost Disease’ began—bodies turned pale, like corpses. The infected could only move at night and had to feed on others. They lost all sense of kinship. In later stages, they gained ghostlike powers—phasing through walls, creating illusions.]
[The natives—yeah, 009’s people—tried to cure it. And they actually made progress. Using alchemy, they could temporarily control the infected. Society barely held together. They even created a ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ that cured one mild case.]
[But you can guess what happened next.]
Tang Mobai swallowed hard.
Then came the devils of Lost Paradise. They seized the alchemy legacy—destroying the locals’ last hope and cutting off all future access to alchemy. Their civilization collapsed.
That was why 009 and the others hated Lost Paradise so deeply.
The audience waited for him to crumble—but instead, the boy exhaled slowly and smiled faintly. “I see… thanks.”
[???]
[…?]
[Shit! He played us!]
Yan Wuzhen opened the door, followed by Seth and Deville. The chat erupted.
[Aaaaah!! I told you people talk too much!!]
[How was I supposed to know he was acting?!]
[Damn it! If you’d stayed live last night, we wouldn’t have been in the dark!!]
[Eh, whatever. Even if they know, they still can’t escape.]
Then Tang Mobai spoke again: “Oh, by the way—is anyone from the Watchtower Guild in chat? A man named John left you a message.”
He paused.
“‘Sorry. We failed. We’re not coming back.’”
A few minutes later, a message from user [HighTower] flashed across the screen:
[We know. Thank you. If you ever make it out, the doors of the Watchtower Guild will always be open to you.]
[Whoa—the real guild leader just showed up!]
[Group photo +1]
[But the High Watchtower Guild Master—come on, that’s impossible. Even Qiong failed.]
[Sigh, this has to be the hardest Revival Tournament in history. No one’s ever cleared it for so many years. The Demon Casino’s betting pool for this match has been open for ages without an end. The highest bounty has even reached a hundred thousand points now.]
[Whoever clears it first will make a fortune, but sadly, no one’s ever claimed it.]
“If there’s a chance, I’ll drop by and chat,” Tang Mobai said with a gentle smile. “Thanks to Qiong’s attempt, we’ve already found a clue. We’ll break through the Revival Tournament within a few days.”
[???]
[Bro, this guy’s skull must be made of iron.]
Tang Mobai ignored the mocking comments. First, he used encrypted language to contact the real world, relaying everything he’d gathered and speculated the night before to the expert team watching from the other side of the screen.
“So that’s it—the audience, huh,” one of the experts murmured. In the real-world conference room, everyone was holding the decoded information, surrounded by thick stacks of alchemical reference books.
Ever since learning that this Revival Tournament was connected to alchemy, the expert group had urgently brought in domestic and international scholars specializing in the subject. They cross-referenced every symbol seen in the livestream with known alchemical markings from Earth’s own history—and found surprising overlaps in meaning.
This raised a fascinating question: had a true alchemical civilization almost emerged on Earth as well?
Alchemy had once symbolized the progress of science in the Middle Ages before being exiled by religion. Today, its ideas are seen as superstition, filed under “occult studies.”
Science, ever contradictory—lawful yet flawed, advanced yet primitive, visionary yet absurd.
And now, Tang Mobai’s theory suggested that the NPCs were using alchemy to blur the concept of “the living,” deceiving Lost Paradise itself.
Was that possible? No one knew. But at this point, even the scientists were forcing themselves to think openly. Magic already existed—so why not alchemy and resurrection too?
“If their guess is right,” one expert said slowly, “then it’s worth trying. But if they fail…”
The room fell silent. They all knew what had happened to Qiong the night before.
Wang Yuanzhi took a deep breath and picked up a pile of alchemical notes, “Then all the more reason we have to support them properly, isn’t it?”
After all—this kid was already placing so much faith in them.
*
After declaring in the stream that they would soon break through the Revival Tournament, Tang Mobai reunited with Yan Wuzhen and the others during the day.
It was probably the quietest the Demon Arena had ever been. After so many deaths the night before, even the arena had fallen eerily silent. Yet, the livestream audience hadn’t dispersed; instead, they were buzzing with discussion about Qiong’s daring act and the next round of betting. It was clear that after today, a new wave of players would flood in.
But none of that mattered to Tang Mobai’s group. Their priority today was to thoroughly investigate the entire Demon Arena.
Based on the chatroom’s collective intel, their hypothesis seemed correct: alchemy was indeed linked to the NPCs’ cheating method. Now only one question remained—among all the alchemical symbols carved throughout the tower, which ones were related to “Revival” or “ghost control”?
The problem was, none of them actually understood alchemy. NPC 009 could easily argue that the symbols were meant to “maintain the tower’s stability.”
Yan Wuzhen had no solution. Alchemy was the native race’s specialty, and the Jade Society had cut off knowledge sharing long ago. Their only hope was the mysterious “big shot” behind Tang Mobai—who had once demonstrated the ability to interpret alchemical marks. Maybe he could identify them?
Tang Mobai wasn’t confident either. This wasn’t a matter of science—it was luck. He could only hope that Earth and this world were somehow compatible.
The tower had twelve floors, so the three divided the work—four floors each (Deville excluded).
Speaking of Deville, his routine was fixed—he went to the arena every day. But now, only eight gladiators were still alive, and aside from Tang Mobai’s group, the remaining four were traumatized from the night before, refusing to leave their rooms.
There were no rules saying they had to fight daily, and those who survived had plenty of coins to last a few days. But as a result, the Demon Casino started cursing nonstop. After all, gladiatorial combat was one of their most profitable operations in the lower hells.
Still, none of that concerned Tang Mobai’s group. After finalizing their plan last night, the three began their investigation. Tang Mobai took the top floors, carefully walking through every corner and recording everything through his livestream camera.
[What’s he doing?]
[Trying to escape? No way, right? Does this guy seriously think leaving the building means leaving the tournament?]
Tang Mobai ignored the ridicule. After combing through all four floors, he found no trace of any alchemical circle or large ritual setup. When he finally looked up, he realized he’d reached the top floor.
As he stepped onto the last stair, the view opened up—
A barren wasteland.
Tang Mobai approached the edge of the tower. He had never seen soil so devoid of life. From above, the gray-white land stretched endlessly with no plants, no animals.
A strange barrier seemed to enclose the entire area. The blood-red moon hung directly at its center, while beyond it, the sky was sealed under thick black clouds—no stars, no light.
So this was the destroyed world.
At that moment, both Tang Mobai and the expert team outside the screen fell silent.
After a long pause, Tang Mobai exhaled slowly, shaking off the unsettling feeling of shared doom, and continued to explore. But there was little to see—the top floor was completely exposed, with no structures at all.
He threw a rock toward the barrier. It instantly turned to ash. Escaping the tower was impossible.
[Told you, that won’t work.]
[Even if you did escape, where would you go? The planet’s dead. No human could survive here.]
Tang Mobai glanced at the comments thoughtfully, then circled the tower’s edge. Nothing but gray earth in every direction.
In the real-world conference room, assistants were continuously recording and taking notes. Suddenly, one expert murmured, “If there’s nothing out there—then where does the tower’s supplies come from?”
“Didn’t Lost Paradise have an in-game store? The Revival Tournament’s items should come directly from there,” another replied.
“Then why not just use points? Why invent an extra currency—the soul coins?” he pressed. “If all supplies are bought from the Demon Shop, then where does this currency come from?”
The room fell silent.
The middle-aged man who spoke earlier stood up. “Can we ask Tang Mobai to move the camera slightly?”
“Yes,” the secretary replied quickly. “He still has communication privileges today.”
[Please pan the camera to show the main body of the tower.]
Tang Mobai followed the instruction, pointing the camera downward at the massive structure beneath his feet.
The tower was cylindrical. From above, it formed a perfect circle—mirroring the blood moon in the sky.
In the real world, the pen slipped from the middle-aged expert’s hand. Something clicked in his mind. He grabbed a pile of sketches—each sheet recorded partial alchemical symbols Tang Mobai had seen embedded in the tower walls. Fragmented, disjointed, seemingly random.
But if there was one thing the expert team had plenty of, it was patience. They had reviewed every frame of footage, cataloging every inch of terrain and every mark.
Now, the man began layering the transparent sheets together—one for each floor of the tower.
When he finished, his eyes widened. The others leaned in. Then came a chorus of low, astonished murmurs—
“So that’s it.”
“It’s been right here all along.”
The Tower was cylindrical. Each floor had different layouts and fragmented symbols. Viewed separately, they seemed incomplete—but when stacked together, the twelve layers formed a single, complete alchemical ritual.
Their theory was correct.
The entire Tower was a massive alchemical array.
*
When Tang Mobai returned, he found Yan Wuzhen and the others already back, their expressions grim.
“What’s wrong? Didn’t find anything?”
“No, we did,” Seth said, handing him a marked map. “We recorded the strange symbols like you said. Are you sure someone can interpret these?”
“Uh… not me,” Tang Mobai admitted.
Yan Wuzhen frowned. “Aside from that, remember how I said we couldn’t find any NPCs at night? I checked again. The only floor that serves no purpose—is the bottom one.”
“You think that’s where they go?” Tang Mobai asked.
“Yes. And there’s something else. When I tried to investigate the lowest floor, they stopped me,” Yan Wuzhen said. “They clearly don’t want us near it. Every time I approached, an NPC would patrol there. If they’ve really set up a large alchemical ritual… wouldn’t it be down there?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense. If they didn’t want us there, they could just use the collars to forbid it. Why station guards? There’s only one reason I can think of.”
“The subconscious commands embedded in the collars only maintain the stability of the tournament—they can’t guard the lower floor. So they have to station NPCs there manually. In short—they definitely don’t want us going down.”
“The bottom floor, huh…” Tang Mobai murmured, glancing at the time. For now, he decided not to reveal the expert team’s discovery. “Then we should definitely check it out.”
The experts’ reconstructed alchemical diagram was still incomplete, and the only unexplored area left was the bottom floor. That’s where the missing piece almost certainly was.
[You’re still holding on to that hope?]
[Even if there’s a motive, do you really think NPC cheating is possible?]
[Not sure, I’ve never heard of anything like that.]
[Haha, don’t blame the road for being rough if you can’t walk it yourself. Maybe he lost hope in passing through the official channels and decided to overthink it instead. “It’s not that I can’t do it, the rules must be wrong!” — that kind of thing, lol.]
No one present paid any attention to the livestream chat — its purpose, gathering intel earlier, was already done.
“If there really is a problem, what should we do next?” Seth asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Tang Mobai replied casually. “We blow it up.”
…Blow it up?
Yan Wuzhen and Seth both froze.
“You mean… just blow it up directly?”
“Yeah.” Tang Mobai’s lips curved up — for the first time in days, his smile carried the reckless, unrestrained air of youth. “Don’t you guys want to blow up this damn gladiator arena?”
Thank you for reading 🙂 I hope you all liked my translations. If you enjoyed my work, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi 😉
