"Hey Garen, your whole family doing alright?"
Three Hands — the Viktor player who'd lost two full waves of minions — had finally snapped and sent his sincere regards.
The moment he saw the message, Liu Haoming was shaking with rage. I went out of my way to gank for you, and you have the nerve to flame ME? He fired straight back:
Liu Haoming: "Viktor, I'm your daddy!"
Three Hands: "I*******"
That only made Liu Haoming angrier. As far as he could tell, he'd run into a classic keyboard warrior — nothing unusual there. Plenty of people were meek little lambs in real life but threw haymakers behind a screen. In more than a year as a shut-in, Liu Haoming had met his fair share of flamers, and he felt nothing but deep pity for their kind.
And so—
Liu Haoming: "Viktor, you ** in bed ***** yourself!"
Three Hands: "Is running your mouth fun? Got the balls to call my number? 157150126..."
Liu Haoming: "I'll call your **** phone!"
Three Hands: "Drop your real address if you've got the guts. See if I don't end you."
Liu Haoming: "You got the guts to drop yours?"
Three Hands: "I live at Min City, Fandou Street, Fandou Garden, Building 2, Unit 1001. My name is Hu Tutu. My dad is Hu Yingjun, my mom is Zhang Xiaoli. Come find me!"
Liu Haoming sank into thought. Good grief! This flamer was different. He didn't just throw haymakers online — he was ready to throw them in real life too!
Liu Haoming blocked him without a second thought. Once real life got involved, engaging any further meant taking the L.
Even with the guy blocked, he was still seething. Liu Haoming reached for a cigarette on instinct, then glanced up at Li Xi, who sat in front of him absorbed in her game, and quietly lowered the cigarette already at his lips.
***
Jianglin Fortress.
Bang!
Li Xi pulled the trigger. A pillar of silvery-white flame erupted from the barrel of her Type 97 sniper rifle.
The soldier beside her rubbed his eyes, convinced he was hallucinating.
What did I just see?
A pillar of silvery-white flame?!
The next moment, something even more fantastical unfolded.
The Cryo Round struck a monster below the wall, and the fearsome cold compressed inside it to the extreme burst outward. Everything within a sixty-meter radius froze in an instant — even the air solidified. Every monster in the zone was frozen through to the core and turned into an ice sculpture. They didn't even have time to scream before they were stone dead.
【Killed 53 monsters. Acquired 160 gold coins. Acquired 15,900 EXP.】
【Player leveled up to Lv. 11. Acquired 1 skill point.】
"Cryo Rounds are insanely powerful!"
Li Xi was ecstatic. One shot had frozen fifty-three monsters to death, and killing that efficiently gave her an enormous sense of satisfaction as a gamer.
Best of all, even after paying 100 gold coins for the round, she still came out 60 gold coins ahead on the shot.
"If only this were real..."
The girl sighed wistfully again.
Glancing aside, she caught the soldier next to her staring at her in utter shock. Once again Li Xi marveled at how realistic this virtual world was — even the bystanders' reactions were simulated to look exactly like real people's.
"Hey, don't just stand there! The hope of repelling the Beast Tide rests on our shoulders!" Li Xi encouraged him.
The soldier nodded dumbly. "Y-Yeah... yeah."
In reality, I'm a useless nobody running for my life. But in this virtual world, let me be unstoppable and slaughter everything in my path!
For the first time, it struck Li Xi that VR could be used for entertainment like this. She pulled the trigger again, and another devastating Cryo Round blasted from the barrel.
***
Supreme Commander Chen Lei stared down at the hundreds of monsters frozen into ice sculptures below the wall, lost in thought.
As far as I remember, Jianglin Fortress doesn't have any large-scale freezing weapons!
And even if we did, who would dare deploy one without my direct order?!
Who the hell is behind this?
Uneasy and suspicious, Chen Lei swept his gaze quickly across the tens of thousands of soldiers atop the wall until it came to rest on a petite female soldier.
If he wasn't mistaken, the weapon in her hands was a Type 97 sniper rifle — chambered for 5.56mm rounds.
So why was her muzzle spitting out silver flames?
Chen Lei couldn't work it out, so he started toward the suspicious female soldier.
In the blink of an eye, all eight Cryo Rounds were gone. Li Xi checked her gold coin balance — 1,320. Not bad. She was over 500 gold coins up.
She opened the shop. This time Li Xi didn't hesitate: she spent 1,000 gold coins on the 【Blue-Fire Gatling】. The more gold coins you invested, the faster you killed, and the faster the coins came back. That much she'd already learned from experience.
"Excuse me, comrade..."
The instant Li Xi bought the 【Blue-Fire Gatling】, Chen Lei reached out and tapped her on the shoulder.
And then the Supreme Commander of Jianglin Fortress witnessed a scene he would never forget for the rest of his life.
BRRRRRT!
A dense, terrifying torrent of bullets poured from the barrel of the Type 97 sniper rifle like water from a burst dam. Dazzling blue flames erupted a full meter past the muzzle.
Under this horrifying barrage, the thousands upon thousands of bronze-skinned, iron-boned monsters below the wall were instantly torn to shreds, howling in agony as chunks of flesh flew in every direction.
"What's wrong, mister?"
Li Xi asked, glancing back at Chen Lei while her sniper rifle kept mowing down monsters indiscriminately.
Clang!
The submachine gun slipped from the soldier's hands and clattered to the ground. He stood there gaping, the very picture of a man questioning his entire existence.
Lady. Your sniper rifle firing massive explosions with every shot? Fine. I accepted that.
Each shot flash-freezing an entire zone? Sure. I accepted that too.
But now the sniper rifle's turned into a f***ing machine gun — AND IT'S SHOOTING F***ING BLUE FIRE! I could go f*** a dog and I STILL couldn't accept this!
Chen Lei was just as stupefied, his eyes big as saucers, like a man who'd seen a ghost.
He'd meant to tap Li Xi on the shoulder and ask: Excuse me, comrade — what the goddamn hell kind of gun are you using?
Now his mouth opened and closed, and not a single syllable came out.
"Hey, pick your gun back up and keep shooting! We can't give the monsters a chance to catch their breath," Li Xi told the soldier who'd dropped his weapon, dead serious.
The soldier turned, looking at Chen Lei in a daze. "Commander..."
"Don't stop. Keep shooting."
Chen Lei cut him off. He knew what the soldier meant to say — even a blind man could see something was seriously wrong with this female soldier. But the situation was dire, and there was no time to look into her now. Any questions could wait until the Beast Tide receded.
"You don't stop either. Keep shooting."
Chen Lei's words to Li Xi were heavy with meaning. He had already decided to investigate this unremarkable-looking female soldier from top to bottom once the battle was over — assuming they managed to repel the Beast Tide, that is.
Chen Lei's reaction struck Li Xi as strangely off, in a way she couldn't quite put her finger on. She didn't dwell on it; he was computer-generated, which probably explained it. Simulated people were never quite as natural as real ones, after all.
Of all the soldiers here, she alone was real, a living, breathing person. Everyone else, soldiers and monsters alike, was nothing more than a virtual entity generated by a computer.