Chapter 71: Survivors

A Mysterious Domain needed more than just a world structure. It also required many complicated elements such as trigger points, main tasks, side tasks, paths of survival, destiny choices, task rewards, and more.

People who were forced into a Mysterious Domain by its creator were collectively called Survivors by the domain. If those pulled into the domain also possessed media related to the Mysterious Domain, like an Eerie Computer, or even held titles such as Mystic Scholar or above, the domain called them special Survivors.

Special Survivors would also die in the Mysterious Domain if they could not complete the tasks. But if they successfully finished the tasks within the time limit, the Mysterious Domain had to give them the corresponding task rewards. The Eerie Points, Eerie Stones, and other resources required for the rewards were paid by the creator to the special Survivors who completed the tasks.

The amount of the reward was not decided by the creator. Instead, the Mysterious Domain set it based on the difficulty of the tasks or the Path of Survival created by the creator and forcibly deducted it from the creator’s account. If the creator’s account did not have enough resources to pay the full reward, the creation of the Mysterious Domain would also fail.

If ordinary Survivors completed the tasks, the Mysterious Domain did not need to give any rewards. The corresponding resources would return to the creator’s account after the domain ended.

For a Mysterious Domain with a main task, as long as the Survivors pulled into the domain completed the main task, they could end that instance of the domain. This was like the Mysterious Domain of Qingyuan Residential Area that Lü Yang experienced for the first time. But this way of ending the domain only worked for task-based Mysterious Domains.

There were other types of Mysterious Domains, such as Path of Survival types, which sometimes had no tasks issued. One had to find the Path of Survival to end the domain. The second Mysterious Domain Lü Yang experienced was similar to a Path of Survival type. Because Lü Yang found the Path of Survival, he finally woke up in the real world and saved his own life and the lives of Yi Qiuhong and Sun Yujiao in time.

This method of trading death for survival was extreme and dangerous. This was also why Lü Yang did not try it easily after discovering this path. From his first experience in a Mysterious Domain, he learned that dying in the domain meant being erased in reality. This time, it was the opposite. It had to be said that the second Mysterious Domain he experienced was far too dangerous for him at that time.

The danger also lay in the fact that the second Mysterious Domain was not issued by the Eerie Computer. Instead, it was accidentally formed by the car crash and pulled Lü Yang into it. If Lü Yang had not obtained the Eerie Computer earlier and had no experience with Mysterious Domains, he would likely have been lost like the others in a near-death state, unable to wake up, and burned to death in the minibus as it caught fire after the collision with the large truck.

In this sense, the Eerie Computer actually saved Lü Yang’s life.

Besides main task types and Path of Survival types, there were many other types of Mysterious Domains, such as destiny types and trap types. This Eerie Card only mentioned four types so far. No matter what type of Mysterious Domain it was, none allowed Survivors to pass through safely.

For example, in a destiny-type Mysterious Domain, one faced many choices. When making a choice, it was like a gamble. The bet was one’s own life, and losing the bet could easily cost one’s life.

A trap-type Mysterious Domain meant the entire domain was a huge trap. Survivors had to discover the trap in time and solve it to end the domain. Of course, stumbling into the trap also meant paying with one’s life.

Mysterious Domains came in all sorts of strange types. Some Eerie Cards could only create certain types of domains. But the Eerie Card that Lü Yang obtained allowed him to choose from three types to create: main task type, Path of Survival type, and trap type. It could even combine the three types into one extremely complex domain. This should be considered a pretty good Mysterious Domain Creation Card.

After a Mysterious Domain was created, the creator could selectively force people within a certain range around them in the real world into the domain to become Survivors, making them struggle for survival inside.

But once a Mysterious Domain was created, the creator themselves could never stay out of it from start to finish. They would definitely be pulled into the domain. However, before the domain they created started, the creator could choose their own role: whether to be an Observer or a Survivor. Once the domain started, this role could not be changed.

An Observer could only watch what happened in the entire domain. They could go anywhere in the domain instantly as they wished, but they could not appear in person, could not release any information, and could not interfere with anything that happened in the domain. After a certain time limit, whether the domain ended or not, the Observer would automatically return to the real world without any danger to their life.

But if the creator chose the role of Survivor, they would become one of the Survivors just like the others pulled into the domain. They would have no special privileges and had to work with the others to end the domain they created in order to leave alive.

Moreover, after the creator chose the Survivor role, the process of creating the domain and all related memories would be completely erased. If the creator could not discover the main task or trap they had set earlier and trigger or solve it in time, the creator would also die in the Mysterious Domain they created.

Additionally, a Mysterious Domain created by a Creation Card could not be unsolvable. The domain had a reasonability correction system that automatically fixed unreasonable parts. For example, all mechanisms could not be unsolvable. If the creator designed a lock, they had to leave a key to open that lock within the area the Survivors could reach. If the creator placed five Dark Predators in an area, they had to provide enough weapons and ammunition to kill five Dark Predators.

If one hundred Dark Predators were placed in that area, there had to be enough weapons and ammunition to kill one hundred Dark Predators, and these weapons and ammunition had to be obtainable by the Survivors through effort.

In other words, when creating a Mysterious Domain, the creator was not all-powerful and had to follow certain rules. If the rules were broken, the domain would start the automatic correction system.

Reading this, Lü Yang finally understood what the chef and gas station employees shrouded in Black Mist that he saw at Xingyue Gas Station were. They were collectively called Dark Predators by the Mysterious Domain. However, this Creation Card only mentioned the name Dark Predators and did not introduce them at all.

Finally, a Mysterious Domain artificially created by a Creation Card was only a very basic type of domain. There was a big difference between it and the domains issued by the Eerie Computer. The domains issued by the Eerie Computer were relatively more bizarre and unpredictable. But whether artificially created domains or those issued by the Eerie Computer, none could match the difficulty of naturally occurring Mysterious Domains, such as the near-death Mysterious Domain at Xingyue Gas Station that Lü Yang experienced tonight.

If he had not unexpectedly obtained this special attribute Creation Card, Lü Yang would not have been able to learn this information about creating Mysterious Domains while only holding the title of Junior Paranormal Master. Unless he later advanced to Senior Eerie Practitioner and chose engineering as his main focus.