The dust cloud hung heavy over the Gobi desert like a collapsed wall, refusing to disperse for a long time.
“Blech—”
A wretched dry heave shattered the silence.
Like a chain reaction, retching and vomiting broke out one after another around the twenty landing pods jutting out of the ground like tombstones.
Li Lei braced his hands on his knees, feeling as though an invisible hand had violently squeezed his stomach.
He shook his head, trying to dispel the dizzying sensation of his brains sloshing around inside his skull.
His bare feet stepped on the coarse, reddish-brown gravel, sending sharp jolts of pain straight up his spine to his skull.
This wasn’t playing a game; this was literally paying to suffer.
“My… my back…” In a nearby pile of rocks, Construction Site Palu was trying to extricate himself from a twisted posture.
The impact of the landing had almost rattled his spine to pieces.
“Isn’t this physical feedback a bit much? I feel like I’ve herniated a disc.”
Though they bitched and complained, not a single person chose to log off.
On the contrary, the eyes of these players were practically glowing.
Hardcore Lao Wang completely ignored his bleeding forehead—the masterpiece of bumping into the doorframe while exiting the pod.
Like a lecher who had spotted an absolute beauty, he sprawled across a massive boulder, frantically rubbing his face against the stone surface.
“A miracle… This is a miracle!”
Lao Wang grabbed two fist-sized rocks and slammed them together.
*Crack!*
Sparks flew, and stone fragments scattered.
Trembling, Lao Wang picked up a fragment, held it to his eyes, and spoke in a voice shaking so hard it cracked.
“Look at this fracture! Do you see this? This irregular crystal cleavage, this randomly generated texture! This isn’t some pre-rendered destruction model—it’s real-time calculation! This is physical destruction based on molecular structure!”
“Just how much computing power does it take to run this?” A player next to him couldn’t help but reach out to touch the fracture.
Immediately, the sharp stone edge sliced his finger open, and blood welled out.
“Holy shit! I’m bleeding! And there’s this warm, sticky sensation…” Instead of crying out in pain, the player stuck his bleeding finger into his mouth and tasted it.
“A bit metallic, like rust. This is too realistic, isn’t it?”
This almost pathological curiosity quickly infected everyone.
Some began punching and kicking the landing pod’s hull to test for metal fatigue; others tried shoving their heads into the sand to search for clipping bugs; there was even a guy with the ID “Only Thighs” who was trying to pee his name onto a dry rock.
The results were both despair-inducing and ecstatic.
There were no invisible walls, no texture glitches, and no clipping.
It was as if this were a truly independent, functioning universe, coldly and precisely adhering to its own laws of physics.
“Uh… guys, can we turn down the pain settings first?”
A tearful voice rang out, thoroughly dampening the mood.
Keyboard Warrior No. 1 was huddled in the shadow of a landing pod, clutching his ribs and grimacing.
That hard impact during landing had probably broken one of his ribs.
He tapped frantically in midair, poking the semi-transparent UI screen only he could see, causing ripples to spread across it.
“Where are the pain settings? Why are they grayed out?” Keyboard Warrior No. 1 panicked.
“This makes no sense! What kind of game starts with one hundred percent pain settings? I want to make a complaint! I want a refund!”
Before his voice could fade, a blood-red warning box suddenly popped up right in the center of everyone’s field of vision.
The vibrant red looked as though fresh blood had just splattered across it:
[Warning: This body is a biological clone. Once configured, the nervous system completes physical link solidification.]
[Prompt: To change pain settings, please re-select after dying and respawning.]
“Thank goodness… thank goodness I chose fifty percent pain when I first logged in…” a nearby player muttered, patting his chest with a look of sheer relief, glad he had dodged a bullet.
“They’re playing for keeps…”
“I just wanted to lay some bricks. Is it really worth putting my life on the line?”
“Main quest!” Li Lei suddenly shouted, his voice echoing across the desolate Gobi. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
“Let’s do the main quest first!”
The crowd snapped back to reality, remembering what they were here for.
Almost simultaneously, fifty naked grown men turned and lunged toward the landing pods behind them.
“Get out of the way! This is my pod!”
“Finders keepers!”
A grating screech of metal scraping metal rang out.
The storage compartments on the inner walls of the pods were violently pried open, and supply packs were dragged out one by one.
Construction Site Palu pulled a half-meter-long tool from a canvas bag.
It was an all-metal heavy pneumatic industrial pickaxe.
Jet-black all over, its handle was wrapped in non-slip matte tape.
The pick head was a tungsten alloy spike gleaming with a cold light, with a high-pressure gas canister attached to the rear.
“Heavy! It’s got kick!” Construction Site Palu gripped the handle with both hands and swung it violently.
*Whoosh—*
The sound of the air being torn apart was deep and powerful.
To any man, this beast of an instrument, brimming with the aesthetics of industrial violence, was far more alluring than a purely cosmetic supercar.
“With this thing, I could dig clean through this planet!”
However, the real conflict erupted in the very next second.
“Guns! There are guns!”
Someone yelled, and the semi-orderly looting scene instantly erupted into chaos.
Under the main pilot seat of every landing pod lay an inconspicuous black engineering plastic box.
Right now, one of those boxes had been pried open to reveal a rugged, blocky black pistol resting inside, alongside two magazines fully packed with brass bullets.
The “Defender” kinetic pistol.
The problem was, there were only twenty landing pods.
Which meant there were only twenty guns.
But there were fifty players.
Keyboard Warrior No. 1 was quick.
Darting like a monkey toward a freshly opened box, he reached out to grab the gun.
“I’m a ranged class! This gun is mine!”
“Bullshit! I reached Global Elite in CS! Give it to me!” A muscular brute next to him shoved him aside with a shoulder check, reaching his massive hand toward the grip.
Shoving, cursing, and physical altercations flared up instantly.
*Clack!*
A crisp, highly piercing sound of metal snapping into place brought all the noise to a grinding halt.
It was the sound of a slide racking back.
Li Lei stood on a protruding boulder, holding a newly assembled Defender in his hand.
The dark barrel wasn’t pointed at anyone; instead, it was lowered toward the ground, though his finger was resting professionally outside the trigger guard.
“Have you all had enough?”
“This is a team dungeon, not reality.” He lowered his gaze and holstered the gun back into the tactical belt around his waist—the only piece of clothing accessory in the tool kit.
“There are twenty guns in total. I’m taking one, leaving nineteen.”
“Who knows how to use a gun? And I mean a real gun, not on a keyboard.” Li Lei scanned the crowd.
“Veterans, anyone who’s been to a shooting range, or police officers, step forward. The rest of you, stick to the pickaxes.”
Someone grumbled, “On what basis? We’re all players here…”
“On the basis that this thing’s recoil will dislocate your wrist!” Li Lei suddenly raised his hand.
Without even looking to aim—indeed, before anyone could even see how he drew—he fired.
*Bang!*
Muzzle flash flickered.
Fifty meters away, a fist-sized rock shattered into dust.
“Guns are for perimeter security. Pickaxes are for clearing paths and mining.” Li Lei holstered his gun.
“If you don’t want to die, follow orders. If you want to commit suicide, you can get the hell out right now.”
Order was established on this brutal alien planet for the very first time.
Crude and rough as it was, it was effective.
However, having resolved their internal conflict, nature immediately taught these arrogant bipeds a lesson.
As the twin suns sank completely below the horizon, the scorching Gobi desert cooled down drastically within minutes.
Biting wind laden with sand whipped past, scraping against their bare skin like sandpaper.
Worse still were the plants.
A type of deep purple shrub, resembling barbed wire, blanketed the desert.
Every branch was covered in vicious backward-facing barbs.
“Ow! My butt!”
Keyboard Warrior No. 1 had barely taken two steps before he accidentally brushed against a bush.
The inner side of his thigh was instantly gouged with bloody scratches, causing him to do a frantic tap dance on the spot.
“Is this place even fit for human habitation?!”
“The dev is a total psycho! Absolutely!”
A group of grown men, holding high-tech kinetic pistols and heavy industrial pickaxes, were now waddling like plucked quails, squeezing their legs together as they shuffled cautiously through the thorny brush.
It was a sight to behold, to say the least.
“This game… is way too rough on the rear.” Breaking Bad stared at his scratched shins with a face of utter despair.
While everyone was cursing up a storm, wishing all kinds of misfortune upon the dev’s family, one player in the corner of the group stood out as completely different.
A player with the ID “Bear Grylls’ Cousin” wasn’t rushing like the others.
Instead, he was crouching by a clump of those godforsaken thorny bushes.
Holding a sharp stone flake, he skillfully peeled away the thorny outer bark of the shrub, revealing the flexible white fibers underneath.
His fingers danced nimbly as he wove, crossed, and knotted several coarse fibers.
The crowd stopped, staring at him in dumbfounded awe.
In just a few minutes…
A crudely made but clearly thick, windproof grass skirt—most importantly, one capable of shielding critical areas—took shape in his hands.
Bear Grylls’ Cousin stood up, calmly tied the grass skirt around his waist, and even adjusted its fit.
His former “exhibitionist” look was transformed into a wild, primitive barbarian warrior.
Silence fell over the area, with only the sound of the wind blowing.
Everyone’s eyes glued onto the grass skirt, their gazes filled with a longing even more intense than when they had first seen the guns.
“Boss…”
Keyboard Warrior No. 1 was the first to rush forward, his wind-chilled, purple face squeezing out an incredibly obsequious smile.
“Uh… could you make a set of this haute couture for your little brother here? I’m willing to offer my manual labor! I’m strong!”
“Get lost! Just now, who was the one whining about carrying a single box?” Construction Site Palu shoved him aside and pulled out his heavy industrial pickaxe from his pack, presenting it with both hands.
“Bro! Big Bro! This pick is yours. Just weave me one! As long as it covers my butt!”
“I want one too! I’ll trade you a magazine!”
“I’ll pay! Can I wire you money in real life?”
A few hours later.
As the last trace of twilight was about to vanish over the horizon…
A bizarrely styled squad assembled once more on the Gobi desert.
Fifty muscular men with bare, broad chests stood together, their lower halves uniformly clad in grass skirts fluttering in the wind.
Some of them gripped futuristic black pistols, while others shouldered heavy industrial pickaxes.
This forced mix of primitive savagery and futuristic industrialism exuded an indescribable absurdity, yet somehow felt inexplicably badass.