As soon as he got close to Lu Xingcheng, the docile and well-behaved little ragdoll cat in the man’s arms suddenly flipped over, arched its back, bared its teeth at Wen Fengyu, and let out a threatening low growl.
Wen Fengyu’s mouth twitched. He tossed his terminal onto the desk and immediately backed away. Only after he moved a full meter away from the man did the little ragdoll glance at him sideways, lie back down, and resume its well-behaved posture.
Generally speaking, ragdoll cats have quite docile personalities. He had no idea if the gene of the ragdoll in their Admiral’s house had gone wrong, but its temper was extremely arrogant. Aside from facing the Admiral and the old man, Wen Fengyu had never seen this cat acting docile at any other time.
If there ever appeared someone who could make this ragdoll lower its head, Wen Fengyu wanted to see it.
After pondering back and forth for a long time, Lu Xingcheng still showed no reaction. Wen Fengyu made a bitter face, his heart turning anxious as well.
The weekly rankings for the pollution star dungeon in the Virtual Life game offered rewards that were quite generous. However, for a top-tier account like Wen Fengyu’s, the rewards didn’t matter much anymore; rather than competing for rewards, they were competing for sheer pride.
In the game, he had a sworn enemy who invariably ran the dungeon and checked the rankings right after he finished, determined to stay one step ahead of him. To make matters worse, this sworn enemy’s account equipment and personal strength were not weak at all, and he genuinely managed to keep Wen Fengyu suppressed.
Consequently, the day after he finished and ranked first, he would drop to second; when he ranked second, before long he would drop to third.
This drove Wen Fengyu so mad that he gnashed his teeth, and he had a pretty good idea who the owner of this account targeting him was. The two of them didn’t get along well in real life either; they were “sworn enemies” in the truest sense of the word.
Yet, as a movie emperor, his time was limited, and he couldn’t stare at the game constantly. Later, he had no choice but to stall until the very end of the week, waiting for his sworn enemy to finish playing before doing his own run. But this sworn enemy of his had plenty of free time and simply refused to play along; they would drag it out, stalling until the final moments when they entered the instance together to compete.
By now, the competition had lasted for several years. Over these years, sometimes Wen Fengyu had the upper hand, and sometimes his sworn enemy did. In short, victories and defeats were split evenly.
Who would have known that this competition would hit a snag last week? Because of something that came up last week, Wen Fengyu had no choice but to run the dungeon early. Sure enough, the next day he was surpassed by his sworn enemy and pushed down to third place. Being surpassed by his sworn enemy was one thing, but right then a brand-new account popped up and successfully squeezed him out of third place altogether!
You had to know that the rewards for the top three on the dungeon point leaderboard were worlds apart from the rest, and the spots had been occupied year-round by him, his sworn enemy, and another mysterious account… and yet he was the only one squeezed out.
The massive wave of attention and shock triggered by this leaderboard change lasted for as long as his sworn enemy mocked him for it. Just yesterday, his sworn enemy had taunted him, telling him not to accidentally get squeezed out of the top three into fourth place again in this newly opened event dungeon.
Wen Fengyu was furious! He vowed to ruthlessly crush that sworn enemy under his feet in this event dungeon!
However, the two of them were evenly matched in strength. If they really compared directly, the outcome was hard to predict. Fortunately, this dungeon was a team-based instance. Ah, if you couldn’t beat them on your own, you could always call for backup!
If it weren’t for the fact that he simply couldn’t add that account that had bumped him off the third spot, he wouldn’t have asked Lu Xingcheng for help.
After all, when their Empire’s Admiral got busy, he was truly busy—how could he possibly have the time to play games with him?
While Wen Fengyu was filled with anxiety, Lu Xingcheng picked up his terminal. The terminal screen lit up, casting a cool, dim glow onto the palm of the man’s hand. Being a brand-new device, the terminal contained only some basic software alongside the Virtual Life game that Wen Fengyu had downloaded in advance.
Lu Xingcheng gazed at the silver terminal in his hand, yet before his eyes floated a lean and familiar figure.
The figure slowly walked toward him… and then raised its head.
Only this time, it was not the face he was familiar with. Beneath soft silver hair lay a stunning, breathtaking face and water-like blue eyes.
Lu Xingcheng fell silent for a moment and closed his eyes.
Aside from the similarly slender and thin physique, there were no identical features at all.
Yet for some reason, whenever he saw this face, he would always think of someone else—
Someone who should be “dead.”
“Happened to leave, huh?” Lu Xingcheng suddenly lifted his eyes, his tone flat and utterly without context. Feeling the blond man beside him frequently casting curious glances, he frowned slightly, rubbed the bridge of his nose to mask the unusual look in his eyes, and said, “Let’s begin.”
Wen Fengyu, who had been waiting endlessly for Lu Xingcheng’s reply, instantly lit up. Putting aside whatever the Admiral’s previous mumbled words meant, he hurriedly replied, “Great, wait for me to log in!”
With that, Wen Fengyu flopped back down onto the sofa and happily pulled out his helmet.
Since Virtual Life was a holographic game after all, it was hard to achieve full holographic operation using just a terminal.
However, owing to unexpected emergencies, Lu Xingcheng rarely used a holographic helmet compared to Wen Fengyu.
The cutscene animation finished loading quickly. Lu Xingcheng lowered his eyes slightly, his golden pupils—devoid of emotional color—reflecting the game’s interface.
The last time he logged into the game was a year ago. Having not touched it for so long, the current interface and unfamiliar controls made Lu Xingcheng feel slightly unaccustomed.
Before long, Wen Fengyu sent a dungeon invitation.
This dungeon was named Exploring the Mysterious Galaxy. The galaxy contained countless planets, with difficulty ranging from low to high; the further back the planet, the greater the exploration difficulty.
Players entering the dungeon would undergo settlement once they actively stopped or were unable to fight. The more planets explored, the higher the ranking.
Because the dungeon had officially opened only yesterday, the team currently ranked first had explored twenty-three planets as of now.
At the same time, because there were many planets in the galaxy with high danger levels, the dungeon required entering as a team of no fewer than three people.
The man covered by the silver helmet on the sofa suddenly clicked his tongue. “Bro, wait a second while I see who else to pull in.”
Wen Fengyu had originally found a third person for the team, but just moments ago, that third person had sent him a message saying something came up and they couldn’t play, logging off right after sending it.
Terrified that Lu Xingcheng would wash his hands of it and quit, he hurriedly opened his friend list, trying to find another friend of similar strength. However, whoever was online right now either didn’t meet the level requirement or was already in a team.
“Nobody?” At this moment, Lu Xingcheng’s cold voice drifted over from afar.
Even though his head was inside the helmet where no one could see, Wen Fengyu still wore a scrunched-up, extremely depressed expression. “There used to be…”
“Then I’ll add someone.”
The man’s cool voice drifted over through the helmet. Wen Fengyu instinctively agreed, only to realize shortly after: wait a minute, his Admiral’s account only had one friend on its list—who could he possibly add?
Then his expression shifted as he finally remembered that when he was logging into Lu Xingcheng’s account, he had accidentally accepted someone’s friend request.
Wen Fengyu ripped off his helmet, only to see that Lu Xingcheng had already clicked the friend invitation button and sent out an invite. And then…
“The other party has declined your invitation.”
Nine large characters stared back harshly from the Admiral’s terminal screen.
Over all these years, there wasn’t much Wen Fengyu hadn’t seen, but someone daring to decline an invitation from their Empire’s Admiral… he had… truly never seen it!
Awesome! Giving a mental thumbs-up, Wen Fengyu grew even more curious about the owner of this account, itching to find the person immediately just to see what kind of extraordinary deity they were!
Whose invitation was this? This was their Admiral’s invitation, for crying out loud!!!
Someone actually dared to refuse??
Wen Fengyu felt as if his heart was being scratched by a feather, itching unbearably. He desperately wanted to dig out the person behind this account on the spot just to feast his eyes on them and see what kind of creature dared reject an invitation from their Empire’s Admiral.
Lin Qiansheng naturally had no idea that he had caught the eye of the currently vacationing Emperor’s Movie Emperor Wen—a man whose fame hadn’t shrunk at all, but instead soared even higher, blazing like the midday sun.
After a brief period of observation, he had figured out the game’s jargon and the going rate for pilot-boosting (power-leveling) inside and out.
For instance, the hottest boosting service lately was undoubtedly the newly opened Exploring the Mysterious Galaxy dungeon.
Especially boosters who could steadily keep their settlement ranking within the top 10% could simply be described as hot commodities.
The minimum fee had been bid up to 50,000 star-points.
You had to know that ten star-points could be exchanged for one star-coin in Virtual Life. Fifty thousand star-points meant a full 5,000 star-coins!
And a whole month of working his job only brought in a little over 10,000 star-coins.
Put that way, hmm…
However, the reason the fees for this event could be bid up so high was largely because the top 10% of the rankings in this event dungeon offered a special avatar frame reward that would never be re-released once the event ended.
In any game, out-of-print items were always expensive.
What’s more, the player base of Virtual Life was unimaginably massive—calling it hundreds of millions of players wouldn’t be an exaggeration. Achieving a top 10% result among so many players made the difficulty self-evident.
Lin Qiansheng opened the interstellar channel. With a thought, a semi-transparent keyboard immediately materialized beneath his hands. He pondered for a moment and moved his fingers. Soon, a message appeared in the public chat: Guarantees top 10% in the Mysterious Galaxy dungeon, message privately if interested.
There were numerous people online in the channel, with messages scrolling by one after another. The moment this message was sent, it was instantly swallowed up by the vast sea of text, making no waves at all.
Lin Qiansheng wasn’t in a hurry. He had only wanted to try it anyway; if nobody wanted it, he’d talk about it later.
However, five minutes later, he received a friend request from an ID called Fiery and Impetuous, with a note attached: Still taking jobs?
After thinking it over, Lin Qiansheng accepted the request.
Soon, Fiery and Impetuous sent a message over: Are you a solo player or a studio?
Boosting and companion-playing in Virtual Life had long formed a complete industry. The vast majority of high-strength players had been recruited into studios, making individual freelance boosters relatively rare. However, because studios charged middleman fees, hiring a freelance booster usually cost slightly less.
Lin Qiansheng: Individual.
Fiery and Impetuous: Oh, doesn’t this dungeon require a team? At least three people. Can I pull my friend along?
The exact number of people didn’t matter.
Lin Qiansheng: Sure.
Fiery and Impetuous: Okk, then about how much to boost to the top 10%?
Lin Qiansheng pondered for a moment and ultimately gave a price slightly lower than the market rate: 30,000 star-points, 5,000 as a deposit. Guaranteed top 10%, no pay if we don’t make it.
Thirty thousand star-points converted to 3,000 star-coins.
Clearly, this price tempted Fiery and Impetuous greatly. As soon as the quote was sent, Lin Qiansheng received a transfer of 5,000 star-points. Then Fiery and Impetuous added: Alright, deposit sent. What about your main account? Send me the ID to check out.
What main account did he have? Lin Qiansheng answered truthfully: This is my main account.
The maximum level for a Virtual Life account character was level 90, and any mecha owned also capped at level 90. Furthermore, this Mysterious Galaxy dungeon was extremely difficult and even enforced a party requirement; entering without max level was definitely discouraged.
Yet Lin Qiansheng’s account level was barely 70, the mecha displayed on his homepage was only level 65, and the mecha’s quality, equipment, and most important power source—Star Source Stones—were graded into four tiers: White, Cyan, Purple, and Gold. His mecha’s quality, equipment, and Star Source Stones were merely at Cyan.
Entering the dungeon with an account like this meant getting instantly wiped out, let alone helping him hit the top ten percent?
At some planet, the boy hiding under a silver helmet felt ice-cold all over. To describe it in one word: heartbroken.
We’re doomed, help! Was he a complete idiot?! How could he let a low price muddle his brain and bypass a second-hand trading platform, transferring the deposit directly in-game!!
Had he actually run into a scammer??
That was 5,000 star-points, which he had painstakingly saved up for ages!
Fiery and Impetuous felt a hollow chill in the pit of his stomach, his life devoid of hope, regretting why he had randomly added someone advertising in the public chat.
If it really was a scammer, getting the money back was practically impossible.
Hesitating for a moment, the disheartened boy clicked open Lin Qiansheng’s homepage, wanting to study it further to see if there was anything he had missed that could give him peace of mind.
As he looked, he suddenly felt that this account’s ID looked a bit familiar…
Lin Qiansheng waited for a bit. Seeing that Fiery and Impetuous hadn’t spoken, he typed to ask: When are you planning to run the dungeon? I don’t have time during the daytime from Monday to Friday, should we set a time first?
Generally, for stability and fear of last-minute accidents, players rushing the rankings chose to run it during the final days of the event.
The Typing… indicator in the dialog box lingered for a long time, then vanished, and then appeared again.
Repeating this dozens of times, no message was sent.
Lin Qiansheng: Well, he hadn’t said anything agonizingly confusing, had he?
Since he had nothing else to do right now, Lin Qiansheng waited patiently, wanting to see what on earth this guy could possibly spit out.
Finally, after twenty repetitions, the long-hesitating Fiery and Impetuous replied. However, instead of answering Lin Qiansheng’s question, he asked: Are you… that “Boring” guy who ranked third on the pollution star leaderboard last week?
Why was anyone still remembering this matter!
Meanwhile, on the other end, Fiery and Impetuous had made up his mind.
Damn it, if the person he added really was “Boring”—the one who surged to third place on the pollution star leaderboard last week and stirred up a massive storm on the forum, then having him carry him into the top ten percent didn’t seem entirely impossible!
Anyway, the deposit was already paid and couldn’t be recovered even if it was a scammer. Fiery and Impetuous gritted his teeth: My friend is online right now, let’s run it right now!
Consequently, when Lu Xingcheng emerged from the dungeon, what he saw on his friend list was that the friend who had rejected his invitation was currently forming a party with someone else.