My Avatar Is Becoming the Final Boss-Chapter 3: Rules

The countdown vanished.
A breeze swept in, carrying the warmth of twilight. It burned away the darkness like dry grass set alight, and the lines of red-and-black text scattered like dying embers.
[Notice: Perspective of Game Character #1 — “Gu Wenyu” successfully loaded. (After a short buffering period, the character’s background memory will be uploaded to your brain. Please prepare yourself for a potential surge of incoming memory.)]
Bathed in sunlight, Ji Minghuan slowly opened his eyes.
What he saw first were piles of books stacked on the desk in front of him.
An obnoxiously loud bell rang through the air. There were youthful, careless voices chattering and laughing, the screech of chair legs scraping the floor—noises from all directions merged into one chaotic force, dragging him headlong into this unfamiliar world.
He blinked, a little dazed, then slowly lifted his head to look around.
It looked like… a classroom.
Students in blue-and-white school uniforms brushed past him, their footsteps nonstop.
Judging from the light, school had just ended.
Some kids stayed behind to clean, while the rest were grabbing their bags and streaming out the door in waves.
Looking out toward the hallway, he saw pairs and groups of students drifting by, their laughter filling the corridor as the setting sun gilded their profiles with golden light.
Meanwhile, Ji Minghuan was the only one still slumped on his desk—arms folded beneath his chin, resting on two textbooks.
He glanced down and noticed he, too, was wearing the same blue-and-white uniform.
He’d never set foot in a real school in his life, let alone attended one. This environment felt foreign. His gaze drifted to the bookshelf and bulletin board at the back of the classroom and paused there before slowly pulling away.
“…No way.”
Still lying on his desk, he tilted his head and looked out the window again.
Outside, the sun was sinking, spilling its final light across the city skyline.
That last golden ray before dusk felt like a mischievous kid on a sled, sliding down a crimson mountain called “sky,” disappearing into a jungle of glass, steel, and neon—darting between buildings and alleyways, tinting the glass walls a fiery red.
It finally filtered through the classroom window and fell across Ji Minghuan’s body, washing away the pale gloom a month in confinement had painted over him.
Bathed in orange light, the boy stared absentmindedly at the sunset over the city’s edge.
His eyes still struggled with the brightness, but he couldn’t look away. He hadn’t seen sunlight in over a month.
By the time he came back to his senses, most of the class had already cleared out. The scraping of chairs against the floor faded, replaced by a voice calling from behind:
“Gu Wenyu! Wanna come over later?”
Ji Minghuan turned halfway in his seat.
The one calling him was a student in uniform. Handsome, tall and lean, with shoulder-length black hair tied into a short ponytail. He probably got love letters stuffed in his locker on the daily.
Ji Minghuan studied him curiously, thinking about how to respond.
“I—”
Just as he opened his mouth, a neutral, raspy voice echoed in his ears:
[Character memory successfully loaded.]
The words had barely faded before a tidal wave of broken, chaotic memories crashed into his brain.
His head buzzed as if someone had pried his skull open with tongs and poured in boiling water.
Within the burning pain, scenes not his own flickered past like a film reel playing on fast-forward. Even he couldn’t help but flinch.
Two seconds. That’s all it took to absorb a whole other life.
These memories clearly weren’t Ji Minghuan’s. They belonged to his newly generated game character—Gu Wenyu.
According to the memories, this school was called Lijing No. 5 High School.
And the classmate in front of him, who looked all easy-going and carefree, was apparently his best friend—Li Qingping, a textbook “rich kid.”
While the rest of them were poor high schoolers scraping by, Li Qingping had a monthly allowance of ten to twenty thousand yuan. He was generous and sociable, and pretty popular because of it.
People often wondered why the two of them were even friends.
“You okay? School’s out for summer—why the long face?”
Seeing him spacing out, Li Qingping leaned in and bumped his shoulder with a grin.
“Just woke up. Still groggy,” Ji Minghuan replied, pulling his bag from the drawer and slinging it over his shoulder.
“I’ve got something to do today. I’ll come over another time—we’ve got the whole summer, right?”
With that, he stood and walked out of the classroom without looking back.
After a few steps down the stairs, he stopped at an empty corner of the hallway.
Leaning against the railing, he looked out over the city bathed in golden dusk.
It was unmistakably Lijing—the city he’d grown up staring at from the attic window of his orphanage.
He’d never taken a single step outside.
He never imagined that one day, that childhood dream would come true in such a bizarre way—by controlling another body.
“So this means… I really came back to Lijing using my own ability?”
Turning his head, Ji Minghuan glanced toward the direction of the orphanage from the top of the school building.
In the twilight, he could vaguely make out the tall library and the attic perched on its roof.
Like spotting an old friend after years apart, his eyes lit up.
Looking down at his hands, he thought,
“Now the question is… did I take over someone else’s body? Or… did I create this person from scratch with my ability—complete with a full life history?”
“Why hasn’t anyone found me suspicious?”
At that thought, Ji Minghuan casually dropped his bag, leaned back against the railing, and draped his arms over it, his fingers tapping gently.
“Isn’t this basically forcing a nonexistent person into history? Like I just rewrote the script and nobody noticed.”
“From another angle… did I just create a parallel world?”
“Isn’t that butterfly effect thing about how one flap of wings in a different timeline can cause a storm? And here I am, inserting a whole new person into reality. That’s gotta cause a tsunami.”
“In theory, even if this character was completely unremarkable—even if he died in bed on his second day alive—he could still change the course of the future.”
Ji Minghuan inhaled deeply, his head lowered, his eyes hidden beneath his bangs.
“No wonder…” he murmured, thinking back to that hellish month in the lab. A quiet laugh escaped him, lips curled with a hint of mockery.
“No wonder they took me so seriously. And that’s with an ability suppressant in me the whole time.”
“If the Instructor found out about this… he’d lose his damn mind. Guess that means my real body’s never getting out of that place.”
Lost in scattered thoughts, he was suddenly interrupted by a few students passing by, giving him a weird look.
It was the last day of school, the official start of summer break—basically better than Chinese New Year for most kids. No one lingered on campus.
A glance around showed the hallways had emptied. Ji Minghuan didn’t stay long either—he soon went downstairs and left the building.
With both hands in his uniform pockets, he strolled toward the school gate, wondering,
“If my power is a game… then where are the quests? Like, do I get a mission to snap my fingers and wipe out half the population? Or maybe flunk an arts exam and start World War III?”
Just then, he noticed something strange in the bottom-right of his vision—a tiny gear icon.
No matter how he shifted his gaze, the icon remained locked in place, stuck to his field of vision like a parasite.
Frowning, Ji Minghuan rubbed his eyes, but it didn’t help. He quickly realized the icon had nothing to do with his actual eyesight.
With no choice, he ducked into an empty corner behind the school building and reached out to touch it.
The moment his fingertip hit the gear, the icon jumped to the center of his vision, growing more than tenfold in size. It expanded into a square text-based interface with a vertical list of options—any gamer would instantly recognize it.
The settings menu.
Ji Minghuan didn’t dig too deep. He gave it a quick skim, and already saw several options:
[Attributes Panel], [Quest Log], [Character Development System], [Skill Tree System]...