"Thirty seconds until enemy forces reach the battlefield!"
Liu Haoming was walking Darius out of the brush toward the top lane tower when Vayne spoke up in chat:
"This is my promo game, boys! Play safe and let me carry!"
Something clicked in Liu Haoming's mind. He typed: "You sure you can carry?"
"Trust me, I got this!" Vayne was brimming with confidence.
"Looks like we've got ourselves a booster." Liu Haoming chuckled, then switched to All Chat:
"Hey enemy jungler — I'm your daddy..."
Allied Yasuo: "Since when do they let any old stray play jungle?"
Liu Haoming's finger hovered over the Enter key. He fell into deep thought.
Enemy Rengar: "I ******"
Allied Yasuo: "Can't even type a full sentence and you want to jungle? Lol."
Enemy Rengar: "Just you wait. I'll camp you till you ragequit!"
"Jungler, don't worry about me. Just gank bot." Yasuo was the very picture of noble sacrifice.
Vayne: "Thanks, bro!"
Nidalee: "Bro, you're a legend!"
Liu Haoming laughed. This Yasuo — a prodigy since the day he was born.
Half an hour later, Vayne led them to victory. Looking at Yasuo's 0/16 scoreline, Liu Haoming felt a kinship — here was a man destined for greatness, same as himself.
"One more win and I hit Silver." Liu Haoming was fired up. He stood, walked past a dozen-odd computers sitting dark and empty, and made himself a cup of instant noodles.
During the agonizing three-minute wait, Liu Haoming kept glancing at the door, hoping to catch a customer walking in. He was always going to be disappointed — thick fog blanketed everything outside. Forget customers; he couldn't see a damn thing out there.
"Not a single customer since they tore down that school!" He surveyed the 108 machines sitting in black-screened silence and sighed.
There used to be a middle school nearby, and the student traffic had kept the cafe booming. Every time Liu Haoming swung by to bum money off his dad, the place was packed to the rafters, hazy with cigarette smoke. But good times don't last. When the school relocated to another district, business fell off a cliff.
Seven days ago, Liu Haoming's father announced out of nowhere that he had to take a long trip, and asked his son to watch the cafe for a while. Liu Haoming spent his days at home gaming anyway — one spot was as good as another — so he agreed without a second thought. He knew business wasn't what it used to be, but he never imagined it'd be this bad. Seven full days without a single customer!
"No wonder Dad bolted. Sit on this dump long enough and it'll bury you," he thought.
Not that he was particularly worried. For a fully certified shut-in, he was actually quite comfortably off. His old man had made a bit of money back in the day — the family had several million sitting in the bank, and the cafe property was his to boot. Monthly overhead was just utilities. No rent pressure whatsoever.
Worst case, they could sell the property. That would be another few million right there. What was there to worry about?
Slurp! Slurp!
He demolished the cup of noodles in a few bites, grabbed his mouse, and dove back into Summoner's Rift.
Top of the mountain, king of the land — give me a keyboard and heaven's in my hands!
***
Li Xi sprinted through the crumbling ruins, terror etched across her pretty face. A dozen rats, each bigger than a dog, chased her in a frenzy, screeching as they ran.
"Am I going to die here?"
It wasn't death that scared her most — it was the thought of watching herself get gnawed apart by Catastrophe Rats, piece by piece. Just picturing it made her skin crawl. She'd sooner choke to death on a block of tofu.
Ever since the Age of Catastrophe, the animals of Blue Star had been mutating, some more drastically than others, into monsters that would once have been unthinkable. Humanity, once the apex of the food chain, had gradually sunk to the bottom. People only dared live within fortress strongholds, relying on heavy military firepower to fend off monster attacks. The word "outside" had become synonymous with death.
Today, disaster struck Jianglin Fortress without warning. A Beast Tide — a horde of countless monsters — launched a frenzied assault. After half a day of brutal fighting, some of them broke through the defensive perimeter and poured inside. Wherever they passed, the air filled with gunfire and the agonized screams of the dying.
During her escape, Li Xi first got separated from her family, then had the rotten luck to draw the attention of a dozen Catastrophe Rats. Perhaps the rats took one look at her pretty face and figured she must taste just as good.
"Can anyone save me?!"
Li Xi prayed in terror. She'd only just started college. She wasn't a trained combatant, hadn't undergone genetic modification, and had absolutely no way of dealing with Catastrophe Rats. If they caught her, she was dead.
Whoosh.
A gentle breeze swept past.
A dense white fog came rushing in from the distance, halting five meters from where she stood.
"Skreee!"
The Catastrophe Rats shrieked and immediately stopped their pursuit, staring at the vast white fog with unmistakable dread — as if something terrifying lurked within.
It wasn't just the rats. Even Li Xi could tell the fog was anything but natural. As she hesitated over whether to enter, the dense fog suddenly parted down the middle, forming a clear corridor — as though inviting her in.
"Skreee!"
Li Xi glanced back at the Catastrophe Rats eyeing her hungrily. She had no choice. Gritting her teeth, she steeled herself and stepped into the corridor.
Apart from the path in front of her, fog closed in on every side. Li Xi couldn't see through it, and she didn't dare stray. So she followed where the fog led, nerves wound tight to the breaking point, wondering what fate waited at the end.
Swallowed by the fog, Li Xi lost all sense of time. She had no idea how long she walked before she finally reached the end.
Before her lay a dark alley. Every storefront had its shutters pulled down, leaving the street desolate and abandoned. Only one shop still had its doors open, a faint glow spilling out.
Li Xi glanced behind her. The corridor she'd come through had already filled back in with fog. There was no going back.
Gulp!
The girl swallowed hard, worked up her courage, and approached the one open storefront.
Standing at the entrance, she looked up at the sign. Endless wisps of fog coalesced across its surface, forming a name in an ancient, elegant script:
Origin Internet Cafe.
Li Xi's almond eyes went wide. As a college student, she was well-read enough to know what an internet cafe was. Supposedly, before the Age of Catastrophe, internet cafes had been wildly popular — nearly every town had one. But when the Age of Catastrophe came, every nonessential entertainment venue shut its doors. Internet cafes were no exception.