Ch 58: My Multiverse Supermarket

Instance: Dawn Village

An Yixiao had ordered the guild elites to keep an eye on a small supermarket, but even after clearing several dungeons, they still hadn’t found any trace of it.

Even when they did encounter the supermarket, it was only inside a dungeon.

“There are too many dungeons. Even if we clear them efficiently, it’s still hard to find that supermarket quickly. We might as well mobilize more people to search for it,” said one of An Yixiao’s trusted aides.

“No, that’ll leak the information,” another elite objected.

Although the members of the Blue Owl Guild were top-tier players, not all of them were absolutely loyal.
Everyone had their own ambitions. If someone couldn’t resist temptation and leaked the secret to a powerful rival guild like Carefree Guild, what then?

An Yixiao seemed to ponder for a long while before finally making a decision.
“I’ll be entering the dungeon ‘Dawn Village’ soon. It’s dangerous—anything could happen. So, I’ll authorize posting this mission to the entire guild.”

“Guild leader, you’re so strong, you’ll definitely clear it,” her aide said quickly.

An Yixiao didn’t reply.

‘Dawn Village’ was a rule-based dungeon. Its difficulty didn’t just lie in the high-level aberrations inside but also in the deceptive nature of its rules—one could easily violate them and become cursed by the game’s power.

The curses were random: they could render items useless, or even cause one’s body to mutate into an aberration.

Rule-based dungeons ranked A or below still maintained some balance between aberrations and players.
But an S-rank dungeon was entirely the aberrations’ paradise and the players’ hell—a perfect display of the Game’s malice toward humanity.

In other words, “it doesn’t even pretend anymore.”

An Yixiao wasn’t confident she could clear it.

But she had been stuck at S-rank for too long. To find a way to end the Game, she had no choice but to move forward—
even if what awaited her was death.

*

Dark clouds loomed over the village, the air thick with eerie, ominous energy.

Zhou Li wrapped herself in a small blanket and asked the system, “You didn’t drop me into Silent Hill, did you?”

The system replied, “It’s also a village entrance. Don’t you feel like you’ve come home?”

“Cut it out. My village isn’t this rundown. We’ve got two big highways crossing through, cars everywhere during the day. You can’t even find a single ghost there.”

As soon as she finished speaking, a face suddenly appeared on the glass door.

Pressed up against it, every feature was visible—a pale face with bulging veins and pitch-black eyes without any whites.

“Ahhhh… that’s hideous!” Zhou Li screamed, clutching her blanket tighter.

The face outside: …

He stepped back slightly, then pushed open the supermarket door.

The next second, a young man walked in.

He stared fixedly at Zhou Li.

Zhou Li, however, wasn’t as scared anymore.

—If he could enter the supermarket, then at least he wasn’t an aberration.

She cleared her throat. “Welcome to Good Life Supermarket. What can I get you?” Her tone showed no trace of her earlier panic.

The young man didn’t move, but his eyeballs darted around erratically—like magnets caught in a chaotic magnetic field.

Zhou Li: …

Was this even human?

If he was, then seriously—

Zhou Li pushed the thought aside. “Ahem. We don’t take game coins here. You have to exchange valuable items for supermarket membership points before you can shop.”

The young man’s eyes abruptly swiveled back toward her, both locking onto her at once.

After a long moment, his left eyeball suddenly fell out. He caught it neatly and placed it on the counter.

Zhou Li closed her eyes, praying this was an illusion.

Then she silently asked the system, “Doesn’t this count as attacking me? Psychological terror—mental assault!”

The system replied, “That kind of attack is indeed rare. Not everyone’s psyche is that fragile, so we didn’t include mental attacks in your protection protocols.”

Zhou Li recited the twenty-four-character mantra several times before reopening her eyes.

Expressionless, she told the system, “List it on the auction house.”

System: …

Oh, so she wanted it to share her psychological pain, huh?

[Strange False Eye (Left)]
Year: Unknown
Date of Origin: Unknown
Owner: S-rank Aberration Wang Hui
Starting bid: (Not recommended)
Buyout price: (Not recommended)
Note: This is an S-rank item, originally a pair. The left eye can see through worldly illusions and pierce the soul; the right eye can ignore all rules and see through anything.

The system said, “The auction house won’t take this.”

Zhou Li didn’t understand. The auction house had accepted an E-rank item like the ‘Hair-Growth Patch,’ so why not this S-rank one?

Then it hit her.

Maybe this item had mental attack properties that ordinary people couldn’t handle. To prevent catastrophic consequences in lower planes, the auction house simply forbade its trade.

Zhou Li asked, “But wait, aren’t there only aberrations in this dungeon? Why are there also… anomalies?”

The system said, “Anomalies are a type of aberration.”

Zhou Li didn’t ask further.

She turned to Wang Hui and said, “I’m not accepting this.”

Wang Hui’s face suddenly split with countless scars, his features shifting out of place.

Zhou Li: …

Against her better judgment, she said, “Getting angry won’t help. I said I’m not accepting it. You have to follow my store’s rules.”

Wang Hui’s face seemed to understand her words. It paused—then quickly returned to normal.

He put the eye back in.

Then he looked at Zhou Li with a pitiful, almost resentful expression… and began digging his fingers down his throat.

Zhou Li said, “If you throw up in my store, you’re cleaning it yourself.”

His hands froze for a second. Then he continued—
and pulled out half a cigarette.

【True Fragrance】

Year: Unknown
Date of Origin: Unknown
Owner: Unknown
Starting Bid: 5500 (recommended)
Buyout Price: 6000 (recommended)
Note: C-rank item. A half-smoked cigarette that will never be finished.

As Zhou Li listed it on the auction house, she muttered to herself, “Who on earth would want something like this?”

The next second, it was instantly bought out.

Zhou Li: ?

Someone actually wanted it?

She asked the system, “So… do I need to make it a membership card too?”

The system replied, “Why not?”

Zhou Li thought about it—indeed, there wasn’t any rule saying the supermarket only traded with humans.

To her, it didn’t matter if the customer was human or aberration. As long as the goods sold, her mission was complete.

She handed Wang Hui a membership card.

Wang Hui stared at it for a long time, as if surprised she really made one for him.

He took it, then grabbed a bottle of cola.

Just as he was checking out, three other young men entered the supermarket.

Zhou Li noticed Wang Hui’s eyes instantly returned to how a normal human’s should look.

The three boys were delighted when they saw him. “So you really were here!”

Wang Hui smiled at them. “You guys came too?”

A short boy grinned. “Heard there’s a new supermarket at the village entrance—of course we had to check it out!”

Wang Hui said, “I just got a membership card… You need one to buy things here. What do you guys want? My treat.”

Zhou Li watched him chatting like an ordinary person, his expression lively and full of life.

If she hadn’t just experienced his mental attack, she would’ve thought this was a normal village, with perfectly normal people.

The three boys laughed. “Then we won’t hold back. We’ll let you copy our homework later!”

Each of them picked up a bag of chips and a bottle of cola.

Wang Hui paid, then left with them, arms draped around their shoulders.

Zhou Li couldn’t quite make sense of it. Wang Hui was an aberration—so what about the other three?

She couldn’t figure it out, so she decided not to overthink it.

…

Over the next two days, villagers gradually began visiting Zhou Li’s supermarket.

Upon learning they needed a membership to shop, some hesitated but eventually used ownerless items to get one; others cursed under their breath and left for the old convenience store already in the village.

Because of the new supermarket’s arrival, the old store’s business declined, and its owner even came by once.

But after pacing around at the entrance for a while, he seemed unable to come inside and left in frustration.

Zhou Li sighed. “This village really existed once, didn’t it? Everyone here feels so real.”

If not for the bizarre ways they produced their “items,” she would never have thought they were aberrations.

“With an S-rank anomaly appearing here, this dungeon’s level must be pretty high,” Zhou Li guessed.

She also noticed they seemed highly sensitive to rules.

Could this be a rule-deduction-type dungeon?

Pondering that, Zhou Li went downstairs to open up for the day.

As soon as she unlocked the door, she saw Wang Hui squatting outside.

Today he was wearing a school uniform, looking like he had just come back from class.

“Why don’t you open during the day?” Wang Hui asked.

“I was resting,” Zhou Li replied.

Daytime in the dungeon was when she slept—it was nighttime to her biological clock.

Wang Hui muttered to himself, seemingly confused as to why a supermarket owner would sleep in broad daylight.

He wandered to the condiment aisle and picked up a bottle of soy sauce.

Zhou Li pointed toward the vending machine outside. “There’s actually an automatic one out there. If the store’s closed, you can buy from that.”

Wang Hui said, “It scans your face.”

Zhou Li: …

So this anomaly was worried the machine wouldn’t recognize his face after disfigurement?

She said, “You can use your card too.”

Wang Hui looked at her and said slowly, “It still scans the face.”

Zhou Li suddenly understood—the system must’ve registered his “appearance” as an aberration when issuing his card.

If he went to the vending machine, the system would verify the ID… and the result wouldn’t match.

Zhou Li said, “Well, if you hadn’t scared me back then, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Wang Hui looked embarrassed and silently paid.

Then, all of a sudden, he set the soy sauce down, his movements turning stiff and mechanical.

Like a puppet, he walked out of the supermarket.

Zhou Li called after him, “You’re leaving your soy sauce?”

Without turning back, Wang Hui disappeared into the thick fog.

Only then did Zhou Li notice that outside the supermarket was now engulfed in blood-red mist.

And that red glow—it was the color of sunset.

She watched as the fog stopped right at the supermarket’s protective boundary. Inside the mist, countless bloody hands seemed to be striking the invisible barrier.

Zhou Li asked the system, “Is the dungeon activating now?”

After thinking it through, she realized that was the only explanation for Wang Hui’s and the village’s strange behavior.

The system confirmed her suspicion.

Zhou Li quietly sat back down behind the counter, unable to describe the feeling in her chest.

☢️☢️☢️