Deep in the Gobi Desert, a bizarre convoy—funny enough to make any regular army laugh its teeth off—was crawling slowly forward.
Leading the pack were five steel monsters belching heavy black smoke.
Every roar from Palu No. 1’s skyward exhaust pipe spat a burst of incompletely burned flame, like an asthmatic fire dragon.
Tethered to the rear of these kitbashed war vehicles were dozens of industrial hemp ropes, thick as thumbs, stretched taut as they pulled dozens of crude flatbed carts converted from lander wreckage.
Beside the carts walked hundreds of tattered men wearing only the coarse cloth shorts provided by the system.
Ropes were bound across their backs and pickaxes rested in their hands as they trudged forward, leaving deep footprints with every step.
Looking for all the world like ancient Egyptian slaves building the pyramids, they dragged heavy supply crates and empty haulers through the harsh terrain.
“Cough, cough… Isn’t this a bit too hardcore?”
A new player wiped away the mud and sweat caked on his face.
“Didn’t the official trailer show starships blasting each other? Why is it our turn to play towboat haulers?”
“Save your breath.”
Beside him was a burly bald man, currently panting so hard his tongue stuck out.
“Be satisfied. The cart up ahead still has two brothers who passed out from heatstroke. This game is toxic—it even simulates the nausea after getting heatstroke. That guy just threw up all over me a second ago…”
“That’s called realism!”
The harsh static of a bullhorn suddenly exploded through the air.
Sitting in the passenger seat of Palu No. 1 was Construction Site Palu, holding a megaphone rolled out of scrap metal.
His face, dark and shiny from prolonged sun exposure, wore the quintessential smile of a capitalist.
He leaned out the window and pointed at the boundless wasteland ahead:
“Brothers! Hang on for five more kilometers! Ahead lies virgin territory, untouched and waiting! Think about what those pickaxes in your hands are for—they’re your keys to the rich list! See this vehicle I’m riding? Last week, I was chewing sand alongside you, but this week, I’m a proud vehicle owner!”
“If you want to be rich, build roads first; if you want to flex, haul loads first!”
Palu’s loud yell made several troublemakers who had planned to drop their ropes and go on strike hesitate.
In a world without a top-up store, the ferocious alien armor worn by the veteran players and the roaring war vehicles before them were the most potent stimulant.
It was visible, tangible class mobility.
“Fuck it! I’m all in!” The bald new player spat heavily, coughing up sandy spit, and adjusted the padding under his shoulder straps.
“If it means driving a Gundam in the future, I’ll endure!”
The team pressed on.
As they penetrated fifty kilometers into the heart of the Gobi, the landscape began to look bizarre and terrifying.
“Stop! All hands on high alert!”
Li Lei’s sharp command suddenly barked through the comms channel.
The five modified vehicles in the lead slammed on their brakes almost simultaneously, their tires plowing deep ruts into the gravel ground.
The large hauling squad behind couldn’t react in time, and dozens of players collided like dominoes.
Curses rose, but before they could fully spew out, the words choked back into their throats at the sight before them.
The wind and sand gradually subsided.
The bright sunlight suddenly diminished by half.
“Is… is that a mountain range?” someone asked in a trembling voice.
“No. Those are bones.” Hardcore Lao Wang put down his crude surveying instrument, his Adam’s apple bobbing with difficulty.
Less than two kilometers directly ahead of the convoy, an off-white, super-colossal skeleton lay half-buried in the yellow sand.
It was monstrously massive.
A single rib protruding above the surface pierced the sky like a hundred-meter-tall skyscraper, its weathered tip jagged and sharp, casting a terrifying silhouette across the ground.
Following the line of the rib farther into the distance, the main spine of this skeleton undulated continuously until it sank past the horizon, stretching at least five kilometers long by sight alone.
What did that mean?
If restored to a living organism, the largest blue whale on Earth would probably look like an undergrown loach in front of it.
“My sweet goodness…”
He stared upward, utterly stunned, at the rib that blocked out the sun.
“Is that a size a carbon-based lifeform can grow to? When this thing was alive, couldn’t it swallow half our base in one bite?”
A dead, solemn silence fell over the area.
Everyone remained frozen in a daze, staring upward.
Once the players snapped back to reality, they exploded with excitement as if discovering a whole new continent.
“Holy shit! Is this the new map for version 1.1?”
“Megalophobia patients dying on the spot!”
“This modeling is insane! That overwhelming pressure hitting my face—my legs are literally shaking!”
“Is this the sea of stars? I love it! Isn’t this ten thousand times better than those cheap reskinned web games?”
“Look up ahead.”
Following Lao Wang’s finger, the convoy slowly circled around the massive ribcage.
As their perspective shifted, a shadowy area previously hidden by the skeleton came into view.
It was a deep grand canyon, but the rock walls on both sides were not rough like natural formations; instead, they exhibited an extremely neat, razor-straight smoothness as if carved by blades and chisels.
At the end of the canyon, several fallen black stone buildings loomed faintly in sight.
Though mostly buried by wind and sand, the standing ruins and broken walls were covered in complex, precise geometric engravings.
Even after enduring countless ages of erosion, those lines still emitted a cold, rational industrial aesthetic, completely out of place in the wild Gobi.
“Artificial structures…”
“We found ruins! An intelligent species really existed here!”
The discovery detonated among the players like a heavy bomb.
The grievances and exhaustion accumulated over the long march vanished in an instant, replaced by the wild ecstasy and greed of explorers discovering a new continent.
“Brothers! Where there are houses, there are people; where there are people, there are treasure chests!”
“Charge! Whoever snatches it first keeps it!”
“Don’t push! My pickaxe! Who stepped on my foot?!”
The “Beggar Gang Corps” that was half-dead just moments ago now ran faster than rabbits, dragging their flatbed carts in a wild charge, terrified that being a step late would mean missing out on even the broth.
…
In the command bridge, Yao Qian was trying to get the AI to recreate a galgame from his memory.
Just then, a system notification chimed in his mind:
[Alert/Opportunity: Ruins detected.]
[Triggered hidden prerequisite tech tree: Alien Archaeology.]
[System Recommendation: Host is advised to immediately redeem “T-1 Autonomous Archaeology Robot” for professional excavation.]
[Price: 500 Energy Points per unit.]
“Pfft—!”
He stared wide-eyed at the number, the corners of his eyes twitching madly.
“Five hundred points?! Why don’t you just rob me? My total net worth is only a little over two thousand points, and one broken machine takes a quarter of my pie?!”
[It is a precision instrument.]
Yao Qian clutched his chest in agony.
A deeply absurd feeling suddenly welled up inside him.
On the ground, he was the high-and-mighty, exploitative capitalist extorting the players’ hard labor, trading a few points for the ores they slaved all day to dig up.
Yet in front of this damn Ember System, was he, Yao Qian, anything more than another corporate wage slave?
This system was like an even more heartless vampire, finding every excuse imaginable to drain the precious energy points he had so painstakingly accumulated.
Was this the true nature of the universe?
“I’ll buy it!” Yao Qian gritted his teeth, the sound carrying all the heartbreak of poverty.
“But I’m only buying one!”
A beam of light shot out from the bottom of the starship, whistling down toward the canyon below.
…
On the ground among the ruins.
The players had scattered across every corner of the ancient structures like a plague of locusts.
Sounds of hammering and digging echoed constantly; some were even trying to pry off reliefs on the main gates with the sacred crowbar of physics.
“Whoa, holy crap!”
An exclamation came from a collapsed side hall.
A new player named “Mojin Captain” was sticking his rear up, digging frantically through a pile of rubble.
His pickaxe seemed to hit something hard.
As he pried open a heavy stone slab, a dazzling, blinding purple light instantly pierced through the murky yellow sand in the air.
The light was extraordinarily pure, like the richest violet juice frozen inside crystal.
Even in broad daylight, it radiated a soul-stirring, seductive enchantment.
The surrounding players halted their actions instinctively.
Dozens of eyes stared dead fixedly at the crystal—barely the size of a fist, yet flickering as if breathing.
*Hum—*
Everyone’s personal terminal vibrated simultaneously.
Li Lei looked down at his wrist.
A line of text on his quest interface was flashing furiously, colored in the crimson-gold reserved for the highest value items:
[Discovered High-Value Strategic Resource: “Violet” Super-Energy Ore!]
[Item Rating: Purple (Rare)]
[Usage: High-tier starship reactor fuel / Energy weapon charging core / Shield generator primary component]
[Recycle Price: 1 unit = 500 Contribution Points!]
“How… how much?!”
Mojin Captain’s hand trembled so violently he almost dropped the stone on his foot.
He swallowed hard.
This wasn’t a stone—this was a down payment on an ocean-view house!
“Five hundred points?!”
Construction Site Palu jumped off the vehicle with so much force he nearly sprained his ankle.
“One little broken rock can trade for half a car?!”
“Why the hell are we still mining iron?!” The sanity evaporated from Hardcore Lao Wang’s eyes.
“Brothers! Start hunting for stones! I knew this game wouldn’t mistreat the grind lords!”
No mobilization was needed.
No command was necessary.
If earlier they had been driven by excitement and awe toward the unknown, right now, this group of players had been thoroughly ignited by pure, glistening profit.
“Dig! Dig it out even if we have to gnaw through stone with our teeth!”
“Hey you, don’t get in my way to riches! Get lost!”
“Boss Li! Drive the carts over! We’re stripping this place clean! Don’t leave behind a single floor tile!”
Under the afterglow of the setting sun, the colossal prehistoric skeleton cast a mottled shadow, and within that shadow, the flame named “Greed” burned into a raging wildfire across the Fourth Cataclysm’s camp like never before.
In this moment, the hardships of the journey and the dread of death shattered into dust before the prospect of overnight riches.