Fang Qi’s second life was supposed to be simpler than his first, or at least less disappointing.
Instead, by the age most cultivators in Jiuhua City were entering famous academies or being recruited by powerful sects, he found himself stuck managing a tiny rundown shop that barely earned enough to stay open. The location was terrible, customers were rare, and the inheritance left behind by his late father was disappearing little by little just to keep daily life functioning.
In a city overflowing with martial geniuses and cultivators capable of splitting stone with their bare hands, Fang Qi was painfully ordinary.
That probably would have been the rest of his life if the strange system in his mind had offered him something remotely normal.
A legendary cultivation art would have made sense.
A divine treasure, maybe.
Even some ancient alchemy inheritance wouldn’t have surprised him much.
What he received instead was a fully functional virtual reality internet café.
Not metaphorically.
Actual computers, VR equipment, modern games, snacks, movies, and technology that absolutely should not exist in a cultivation world where people still traveled by flying swords and spirit beasts. Worse, the system expected him to run this café seriously, complete with bizarre rules, expensive prices, and customers who looked at the equipment like it belonged to a demonic cult.
Most people genuinely thought Fang Qi had lost his mind.
To cultivators used to chasing power through meditation and bloodshed, sitting in front of a glowing screen sounded ridiculous enough already. Paying absurd amounts of spirit crystals to experience some “game” made it even worse. For a while, the café survived mostly through curiosity and confused first-time customers trying to figure out whether the place was a scam.
Then someone entered Resident Evil.
That was when things started getting strange.
The people leaving Fang Qi’s café didn’t behave like ordinary customers anymore. Proud cultivators returned looking unsettled, excited, sometimes even slightly addicted. Warriors who once mocked the place started arguing over queue times. Influential sect disciples quietly began visiting in secret, pretending they were only there out of curiosity while spending entire nights inside virtual worlds they barely understood.
And somehow, beneath all the chaos and comedy, the café’s influence kept spreading.
Because the games offered something unfamiliar to this world, not just entertainment, but experiences. Fear. Pressure. Cooperation. The feeling of struggling against impossible odds without relying purely on cultivation talent.
The unsettling part is that some things inside those virtual worlds feel a little too real at times.
Even Fang Qi slowly starts suspecting the system gave him far more than a random business opportunity, and whatever created these “games” may have motives of its own.
