“Is this fucking gameplay footage? Hollywood VFX artists want to hang themselves after seeing this!”
“Hardcore Physics Engine Teaches You a Lesson: How to Assemble a Suicide Vehicle Out of Trash with Only Three Wheels Touching the Ground”
“Are You Out of Your Mind?! This Game Even Simulates Metal Fatigue?!”
On the Blue Star internet, major gaming forums had completely exploded.
A compilation video titled “The First Mount Buzhou Wasteland Rally” swept across the web like wildfire.
In the video, “Palu No. 1″—forcibly welded together from Zergling chitin shells and rusty I-beams—showcased a breathtakingly wild industrial aesthetic in glorious 4K resolution.
Especially at the 3:20 mark, a motorcycle strapped with homemade explosives disintegrated mid-air during a jump due to a broken suspension.
The scattering parts, the driver’s contorting limbs, and the chain of explosions that followed challenged the audience’s limits of cognition with every single frame.
No clipping, no invisible walls.
Even every grain of sand kicked up by the blast wave was so incredibly detailed it made viewers’ scalps tingle.
Bullet comments densely blanketed the screen, leaving not a single gap:
“These lights and shadows? These particle effects? I think I can smell my newly bought 5090 burning!”
“To the guy above, I work in fluid dynamics. That explosion smoke diffusion model perfectly conforms to the Navier-Stokes equations… This shit is real!”
“Begging for an activation key! My roommate wants to play this once before he dies!”
“Say no more. Even my dog knows how to mine. Let me in to be a laborer! I’ll bring my own rations!”
…
On the edge of the galaxy, inside the Ember Space Station.
Yao Qian leaned back comfortably in his command chair, the holographic screen reflecting the exponentially surging backend data of the forums.
His inbox was completely stuffed; countless messages begging for beta access piled up like snowflakes, and the servers were on the verge of collapsing under the sheer weight of these fanatical backseat gamers.
“The chives… no, the brave warriors are certainly enthusiastic.”
He glanced at the energy reserves.
Thanks to the previous clearing of the Zergling nest and the players’ frantic grinding, his account balance had bounced back to over two thousand points.
Though it wasn’t much, the crashed bio-warship wreckage on the ground was like a massive piece of juicy meat.
If he didn’t digest it quickly, and if some other interstellar predators were lured in, his current meager savings wouldn’t be nearly enough to fend them off.
Although those fifty veteran players were all Grind Lords, they ultimately couldn’t be in two places at once.
If they wanted to completely salvage and dismantle that several-hundred-meter-long warship, relying on just these few dozen people would take until the cows came home.
Labor.
No matter the era, abundant and cheap labor was always the cornerstone of industrialization.
“System, publish an announcement.” Yao Qian lightly tapped.
“Version 1.1 patch addition: opening the ‘Third Closed Beta (No Data Wipes)’ with one thousand slots. Also, issue a special quest to Li Lei and the others—’Recruit Instructor’. Each new recruit they guide grants 5 contribution points.”
Since the veteran players already had armed vehicles and combat power, even if this crowd of rookies with nothing but pickaxes wanted to raise hell, they’d have to see if the dark muzzles of the veterans’ guns agreed first.
…
Buzhou Outpost, Resurrection Hall.
A low hum broke the silence of the Resurrection Hall.
The cryo-pods lit up with eerie blue lights all at once, and the hissing sound of draining nutrient fluid rose and fell like the heavy breathing of a giant beast.
Valves popped open, and white mist drifted out.
“Cough, cough, cough—!”
“Holy crap, this water is a bit salty… *pui pui pui*!”
“This modeling? This tactile feedback? Oh my god, I can even feel the dirt between my toes!”
“Brothers, I’m in! I actually made it in during my lifetime!”
The hall instantly boiled over.
A thousand newly awakened players squeezed together like piglets just released from a pen.
Even though they were completely naked, it couldn’t dampen their sheer, wide-eyed excitement, like country bumpkins entering a grand palace.
Some rubbed themselves frantically against the walls, some slapped each other’s faces to test the pain settings, and one guy even tried to pry off the guiding AI light orb to take home as a souvenir.
However, this frenzy did not last long.
When they pushed open the gates and stepped out onto the surface plaza against the biting cold wind, seeing their starting loadout, the air suddenly went dead silent.
There was no newbie gift pack, and no instantly gifted dragon-slaying sabers. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Only a simple, ruthless line of text popped up on everyone’s retinas:
[Starting Equipment: Rusted Pneumatic Industrial Pickaxe (Common) × 1]
[Main Quest: Resource Gathering (0/10000)]
The cold wind blew past, leaving a thousand shirtless men shivering in the breeze.
“What the hell? Where’s my power armor? Where’s my lightsaber?”
“Didn’t the promotional video show people driving armored vehicles and shooting up everything? How come we start with just underpants, and our gear has to be mined?”
“Scam! Refund! I came here to be an interstellar commander, not a miner in some cyber coal mine!”
“This isn’t *Stars Online*, this is fucking Cyber-Northern-Myanmar!”
A commotion broke out in the crowd.
The massive psychological gap caused these players, who had come with a power-fantasy mindset, to lose their minds.
Some angrily threw their pickaxes to the ground, while even more began crowding around the quest board, shouting, and the scene quickly grew out of control.
Boom—!!!
The ground suddenly shook violently.
A tooth-gritting engine roar rolled in from the distance like a clap of thunder, instantly drowning out all the noise.
Amidst the billowing yellow sand, a steel convoy charged into view like wild beasts unleashed from their cages.
Leading the pack was a heavily modified heavy truck, its front fitted with a menacing spiked ram, and a dual-barrel heavy machine gun turret welded to its roof.
The exterior of the cabin was draped with ghastly white alien bones that rattled with every vibration of the chassis.
On either side of this steel behemoth followed over a dozen armed off-road vehicles of various shapes and sizes.
The black smoke they belched traced murky trails in the air, oozing the violence and savagery of a wasteland.
Screeech—!
A piercing sound of brakes rang out.
The convoy drifted arrogantly, skidding to a halt right in front of the thousand newbies, kicking up a wave of dust that blasted everyone right in the face.
The noisy crowd of new players fell instantly silent, like ducks suddenly choked by their necks.
Before those multi-meter-high steel tires and the murderous aura of the veteran players, the tiny pickaxes in their hands looked utterly laughable and helpless.
“Are those… the veterans?” someone swallowed hard, eyes filled with awe.
The door opened, and Li Lei jumped down.
He wore a suit of dark red battle armor cobbled together from Zergling chitin shells, carried his heavily modded rifle on his back, and had windproof goggles over his eyes.
This mismatched style might make him look like a scavenger in the real world, but here, it was the ultimate symbol of a max-level account, radiating a suffocating pressure.
A head poked out of the driver’s cabin—it was none other than “Construction Site Palu”.
He was playing with a massive alien femur, his face practically glowing with the superiority of a rich first-generation heir.
“What’s all the shouting about?”
Li Lei took off his goggles, his gaze sweeping across the crowd like a blade.
His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried a fierce weight: “Complaining about bad gear? Complaining about tiring quests?”
No one dared to answer.
Only the wind howled.
Li Lei sneered.
He turned and patted the violent, aesthetic vehicle behind him, the metal letting out a dull ring.
“This thing, three days ago, was just a pile of scrap metal and a few bug corpses.”
“In this game, no one is a born protagonist. Every screw and every armor plate you see here was dug out inch by inch from the ground with our pickaxes, and snatched from the mouths of aliens at the cost of our lives!”
He paused, then suddenly raised his volume, his tone taking on a fanatical, demagogic edge:
“You think this is just mining? Wrong! This is mining your ticket to the sea of stars! The ore in your hands today will be the shells fired at the aliens tomorrow, and the composite armor plates on your own rides the day after!”
“Do you want this vehicle? Do you want to trample the aliens who view you as food under your feet?”
Li Lei pointed to the vast Gobi desert behind him and swept his arm, like a general commanding his troops:
“Go mine! As long as you swing your pickaxe well enough, there’s no wall you can’t tear down! As long as you aren’t grinding to death, grind like your life depends on it! In this world, truth only lies in the amount of labor you put in! Your sweat is your currency!”
The new players’ eyes turned red.
They were red from the pie-in-the-sky promises they had been fed, and even redder from the sheer temptation of that combat vehicle.
Who cared about Cyber-Northern-Myanmar?
Who cared about hard labor?
In the face of pure, absolute badassery, all of that was trivial!
What was a man’s romance?
Wasn’t it driving a vehicle he built himself, tearing across an alien wasteland?
“I want to buy a car!”
“Don’t anyone stop me! I’m mining this ore for sure! Even Jesus couldn’t stop me, I said it!”
“Bro, carry me! I might not have skills, but I’ve got strength! My specialty is eating little and working hard!”
“Very well.” Li Lei nodded in satisfaction, opening his quest-sharing panel.
“Groups of ten, follow the veterans’ convoy! Target—Mining Area Latitude 32 Degrees North. Move out!”
The one thousand players who were just passionately shouting and demanding refunds were now howling as they scooped up their pickaxes, scrambling to climb into the truck beds of the veterans, or simply sprinting behind the vehicles.
Like a swarm of locusts spotting crops, they surged into the wilderness in a grand, sweeping wave.
…
At the same time.
On the dark side of the planet, somewhere deep underground.
*Crack.*
A crisp sound rang out.
A fleshy spore sac buried deep in the ground burst through the soil.
Green mucus flowed as a fully grown Zergan tore through the membrane.
The first batch of Zergan spores had fully matured.
As a commander, he had been ejected the moment the mothership crashed.
Now that his injuries were healed, he was ready to begin his primary duty—transforming the planet into a Zergan colonial garden.
“Prepare to receive the baptism of a higher civilization.”
Thaar let out a low growl, attempting to connect to the mothership’s main hivemind network.
However.
There was no response.
Only the cold wind howling overhead.
“Huh?”
Confused, he crawled out of the spore sac, shook off the mucus on his body, and stood up straight.
According to Zergan technology, in seven days, that self-repairing bio-warship should have already taken root in the earth and transformed into a towering hatchery.
However.
When he clearly saw the scene before him, for the first time, a look resembling human “utter bewilderment” appeared on his plant-like face.
Before him was a barren, scorched wasteland.
Never mind a towering hive spire; there wasn’t even a slightly larger mound of dirt left!
Thaar stood in the cold wind, spinning around twice in a daze.
Looking at the empty wilderness, his four eyes were filled with confusion, his mind completely blank.
He had come to colonize.
Yet now, he couldn’t even find his home.
After a long time.
He threw his head back and let out a shrill, grief-stricken, and utterly wronged roar toward the heavens:
“Where the f*ck is my ship?!”