Blue Star, Huaxia Region, 23:59.
Inside a rented room, Li Lei strapped on a VR headset he had scored at a secondhand market.
As a reconnaissance company veteran discharged due to an injury, his life had long lost the scent of gunpowder, leaving behind only goji berries in a thermos and knees that throbbed in the dead of night.
“One hundred percent photorealistic immersion? Heh.”
Li Lei stared at the countdown in the corner of his retina with a mockingly cynical look on his face.
Under his username “My Broadsword Is Thirsting,” he had filled out that bizarre questionnaire purely for kicks.
Game developers nowadays had completely lost all shame in pursuit of hype.
Countdown: 00:00.
His finger tapped the air to select “Connect.”
His vision went pitch-black.
Immediately following was an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia and bone-chilling cold.
Li Lei snapped awake.
His first reaction wasn’t to open his eyes, but to cough violently.
His nose and mouth were filled with a thick, viscous fluid, and his lungs burned as if they were on fire.
*Gurgle—*
Instinctively trying to inhale, he was met with even more liquid surging down his trachea.
His limbs were cramped inside a narrow cylindrical space, wrapped in a slippery, slimy sensation.
*Hiss—*
A vibration from pressure releasing echoed around him.
As hydraulic rods pushed forward, the curved, sealed hatch before him slowly slid open to both sides.
The trapped liquid found an outlet, rushing out in a torrent and dragging Li Lei along with it.
Buck-naked, he tumbled with the flood onto the hard metal mesh floor, coughing frantically as he expelled the simulation fluid from his lungs.
“Cough! *Cough, cough, cough!*”
He knelt on all fours, desperately coughing up the “amniotic fluid” stuck in his lungs.
Spasms racked his stomach, spraying bile mixed with mucus across the floor.
The sheer physical agony sent a wave of numbness crawling over his scalp.
If this was a game, the development team was a bunch of antihuman lunatics.
Crisp sounds of shattering glass echoed around him one after another.
Inside this vast, gloomy metal hall, fifty incubation pods were shattering like dominoes.
“Holy shit… *cough cough*… what kind of bullshit spawn is this?”
“Help… I want out… I’m gonna drown…”
Fifty stark-naked figures thrashed and dry-heaved on the floor, looking for all the world like deep-sea fish that had just been hauled ashore.
The air reeked of pungent disinfectant and stale engine oil, while the freezing temperature covered everyone’s skin in goosebumps.
This all-encompassing sensory assault plunged these “hardcore gamers”—who usually dominated the virtual realm—into a state of collective stupor.
A few minutes later, the coughing gradually subsided.
The player with the ID “Hardcore Lao Wang” was a balding middle-aged man.
Without bothering to wipe the mucus off his face, he lowered himself flat onto the floor and stuck out his tongue to lick the metal grid.
“Ptu! Tastes like rust, and a bit salty.” He raised his head, eyes wide with horror and awe.
“Brothers, look at the lighting, the textures… I just felt the ancient grease trapped in the floor cracks. Even if you combined all the computing power on Earth, you couldn’t render this kind of real-time processing!”
Beside him, the player named “Construction Site Palu” was obsessively stroking the metal burrs on the fractured edge of his incubation pod.
Even when the sharp edge sliced open his fingertip and blood seeped out, he looked as if he were admiring a masterpiece.
“CNC machining marks… This isn’t 3D modeling or textures. This is actual industrial tool cutting geometry. A masterpiece… This is a holy masterpiece!”
Li Lei pushed off his knees and stood up.
Years in the military allowed him to regain his composure first.
He cracked his stiff neck, his joints popping cleanly.
This body was young, powerful, and bursting with explosive energy—a hundred times stronger than the broken, battered shell he inhabited in reality.
Instinctively, he reached down toward his groin.
There was no familiar sensation.
His palm pressed against a smooth, completely flat stretch of skin.
Li Lei froze.
He looked down, his pupils contracting sharply.
This male body—otherwise built to perfection—was an absolute void between the legs, smooth and seamless as a department store mannequin.
“…”
A dead silence hung over the hall for three whole seconds.
Immediately following was a blood-curdling screech that nearly blew the roof off the workshop.
“Holy fucking shit! Where the hell are my tools of the trade?!”
The cry was like a drop of water splashed into boiling oil.
Every single person present was a guy; hearing this, they all frantically checked down below.
Moments later, their faces drained of color, and the scene instantly spiraled out of control.
“Gone? My massive… how is it gone?!”
“Devs, get out here! Just because I bragged on the survey that I don’t need women, you actually chopped it off?!”
“I’m filing a report! I’m suing! This is bodily harm!”
A group of buck-naked men bounced around the workshop like crazy.
Some tried to locate a log-out button, while others hurled curses at thin air.
Just then, a prompt of blood-red system text snapped open before their retinas, its font sharp as a blade:
[Initial energy quota insufficient. Non-combat survival organs are temporarily excluded from the generation sequence.]
[This is a battlefield, not a brothel. Focus on survival.]
[—Tinder Commander: Yao Qian]
“What the hell do you mean ‘non-combat organ’?!” Furious to the point of trembling, the player named “Breaking Bad” glanced at “Keyboard Warrior No. 1,” who was still wailing beside him.
A sudden flash of viciousness glinted in his eyes.
“Stop whining!”
“Breaking Bad” wound up his arm and let fly with a vicious backhand across the guy’s face.
*Slap!*
Crisp and loud.
“Keyboard Warrior No. 1” stumbled from the blow, his left cheek instantly swelling red as blood dripped from the corner of his mouth.
Holding his cheek, he stood there completely stunned, his expression shifting from anger to terror, and finally into…
pure ecstasy.
“Does it hurt?”
“It hurts!” Keyboard Warrior No. 1 rubbed his burning cheek, his voice trembling.
“It hurts like hell! My gums are numb!”
The whole room fell dead silent.
Everyone stared fixedly at the clear red handprint.
In an era where virtual reality tech was still stuck at haptic vibration feedback, what did a game capable of perfectly simulating pain, smell, and even the internal churning of organs signify?
It meant this was a second world.
It meant they had truly transmigrated.
Their anger washed away like a receding tide, replaced by an almost unhinged fervor.
It was the raw greed of facing an uncharted continent, the innate desire for conquest etched deep into human DNA.
Nobody gave a damn anymore about missing a few ounces of meat between their legs.
As long as it has a health bar, we’ll kill even a god for you.
“Gentlemen.” Li Lei drew in a deep breath of the oil-laden air, all traces of weariness banished from his eyes, replaced by the glint of a hungry wolf.
“It seems we didn’t come here to play a game—we came to risk our lives. But this life? It’s worth risking.”
“Construction Site Palu” picked up a shard of broken glass from the floor, gave it a casual swish, and chuckled darkly.
“Who cares? As long as I can move and as long as I can build, this place is paradise.”
A PA speaker at the top of the workshop suddenly chimed to life, its emotionless synthetic voice echoing through the hollow hall:
[Attention all units.]
[Proceed immediately to the drop pod ahead and assemble. Objectives have been assigned.]
Accompanying the announcement, the heavy airtight doors at the far end of the workshop crashed open, revealing a deep, dark corridor beyond.
Fifty naked men exchanged glances.
Though their appearance was ludicrous—even borderlining on grotesque—the flames burning within those fifty pairs of eyes were enough to spark a prairie fire.
“Move!”
Li Lei took the lead, charging toward the airtight doors with long strides.
Looking at his back, one would think he had ten thousand troops riding at his heels.