The exploration of the Mystical Galaxy dungeon was in full swing today.
The game channel was still chattering away, with messages scrolling by at lightning speed.
Everything was running normally.
Until an event happened that instantly made the game public channel and forums blow up.
#Holy crap, go look everyone, the first place on the Mystical Galaxy dungeon leaderboard has changed!!!#
The moment this post came out, countless players clicked on the Mystical Galaxy dungeon leaderboard.
At this very moment, not only had the first place on the Mystical Galaxy dungeon leaderboard changed, but behind the team ranked first, the number of explored planets had reached a shocking fifty.
You must know that the further you go in the Mystical Galaxy, the harder the planets become. Up to now, exploring fifteen planets could get you into the top ten percent, but sixteen planets could directly put you in the top ten thousand! The previous first place had only finished exploring twenty-three.
And the current first place was a full fifty.
Being able to reach fifty wasn’t because their strength stopped there, but because the dungeon cap itself was fifty!
However, this wasn’t even the most shocking part.
What was most shocking were the members of the first-place team. Although there was one ID nobody recognized, obviously pulled in just to make up numbers, the remaining two—one was named: Big White Goose of Small Village Star, and the other… was named: Star.
Big White Goose of Small Village Star monopolized the top three of the Contaminated Star solo point leaderboard and the top five of the arenas year-round. Active in the public view of various dungeons and events, he was one of the people standing at the peak of the Virtual Life game, and one of the star figures in the game.
Many people guessed the real identity of this account owner, with some believing they were from the military, and others thinking they were one of those famous wanted interstellar criminals.
As for who the account owner was, no one knew.
As for the other ID, it almost never appeared in front of everyone.
Yet it sat high at the number one spot on the Contaminated Star solo historical point leaderboard, and to this day, no one had been able to surpass it!
To the players in the game, almost everyone knew of it, and there was even a considerable portion of players who came into contact with Virtual Life precisely because of the person behind this ID.
The ID name Star—the owner of that account was none other than the imperial General—Lu Xincheng, renowned across the interstellar era and the dream lover of countless young men and women!!
What on earth was going on?
What happened??
Why did these two people end up together???
Could it be that Big White Goose really was someone from the military, which was why he knew the General?
The Virtual Life forum discussion volume instantly hit maximum capacity. Just as everyone was wildly guessing what kind of relationship existed between Big White Goose and the General, and what Big White Goose’s true identity was, wave after wave followed. Someone clicked into the homepage of the General’s account and discovered that after finishing the dungeon, the General hadn’t logged off, but had instead chosen spectator mode.
Huh?
Wait… Spectator mode???
Holy crap?
The General would actually use spectator mode?
No wait, whose face was big enough to make the General personally go spectate them!???
Time turned back fifteen minutes.
Having roamed and dominated the game for so many years, Wen Fengyu always acted as the big shot carrying others. It was rare in his life to experience the joy of lying down and winning.
If described in a single word, it was: awesome!
An overwhelming kind of awesome—it was so damn awesome!
Especially after seeing his arch-rival private message him and send: “? Don’t you think calling in backup is shameful?”, it felt even more awesome.
Wen Fengyu tapped on the keyboard at lightning speed: Not at all, thank you! If you’ve got the ability, go call in backup too.
His arch-rival fell silent for a long time before sending a single sentence: Heh, you can only act cool this time. Do you think I don’t have anyone to call? If it weren’t for… !
There seemed to be more characters unfinished at the end, but for some reason, his arch-rival suddenly went offline.
If it weren’t for what? He definitely didn’t believe his arch-rival could call in backup either. After all, who else could be stronger than their Imperial General?
Finally getting to watch his arch-rival suffer a loss, the childish Best Actor Wen was practically thrilled to death, wishing he could take a screenshot on the spot and announce it to the public.
However, a shred of remaining sanity still calmed him down, preventing him from doing something so outrageous.
Still, it felt awesome!
Just as Wen Fengyu was feeling self-satisfied and having the time of his life—
“The friend you added…” Suddenly, the man’s voice broke the silence of the modestly sized study.
Through a layer of virtual helmet, the voice carried a slightly mechanical coldness.
Wen Fengyu’s expression changed, and his good mood vanished in an instant.
Oh no, the fact that he accidentally added someone was still discovered!
Lu Xincheng almost never logged into this account on usual days. Now that there was an extra friend, one didn’t even need to guess to know he had added them.
Wen Fengyu’s heart instantly leaped to his throat.
However, the next moment, the man’s cold voice came over: “He is currently teaming up with others.”
Ah… He wasn’t yelling at him. Thank goodness, thank goodness.
Wait! Realizing something a beat too late, Wen Fengyu abruptly pulled off his helmet, “What did you say? He teamed up with others??”
Disregarding his image entirely, the Best Actor Wen sprang up from the sofa. He ran over to Lu Xincheng’s side, completely ignoring the threat of the little ragdoll cat, and directly reached out to yank the terminal screen over to his own side.
“Slap!” The little ragdoll angrily got up and gave Wen Fengyu’s face a smack.
Perhaps because they were at least somewhat familiar faces by now, the kitten didn’t extend its claws, and the soft pink paw pad landed on his face.
It actually felt quite comfortable…
At that instant, the dazed and confused Wen Fengyu seemed to awaken some special fetish.
However, he hadn’t forgotten about the main business. Wen Fengyu quickly snapped back to his senses, staring stubbornly and disbelievingly at the screen.
Sure enough, inside the General’s friend list, right behind the account named “Bored”, it was currently displaying: In a party (3/3), dungeon entry time: 13 minutes.
A party of three.
Which dungeon could they have entered?
So… this guy not only rejected the General’s invitation, but also went and found people to form a team for the Mystical Galaxy dungeon by himself?
For a moment, Wen Fengyu suddenly had the illusion that he and Lu Xincheng had been cuckolded, leaving him too shocked to speak.
He believed that even if he opened a small account and posted this matter online, probably nobody would believe it.
What the heck is this…?!
No! He had to see what kind of person this “Bored” character was, who rejected his friend request and also rejected Lu Xincheng’s invitation!
In Virtual Life, friends could spectate matches.
The blond Best Actor blinked his eyes, gazing shyly and affectionately at the black-haired man in military uniform: “My dearest General, are you interested in this account that rejected your invitation?”
The warm desk lamp on the table flickered slightly. Lu Xincheng lowered his gaze, his golden-yellow pupils reflecting the terminal screen, and spoke calmly: “Speak your mind.”
“Alright, actually, it’s just that I want to use your account to spectate.”
Lu Xincheng placated the little ragdoll cat crouching in his arms and glaring hostilely at Wen Fengyu. His gaze lingered slightly on the name “Bored” on the screen for a few seconds before he handed the terminal over to Wen Fengyu.
Wen Fengyu happily took the terminal, then raised an eyebrow and shook the terminal in his hand: “Aren’t you going to watch?”
It was phrased as a question, but before the man could answer, he had already turned on the projection function of the terminal. Soon, a screen projected right above the desk.
Lu Xincheng hadn’t intended to watch, but for some reason, his heart suddenly stirred, and he stopped the movement of getting up to leave.
The stray hair across his forehead fell loose, sweeping a faint projection across his cold and rigid brows and eyes, also veering his gaze into shadow.
The eyes hidden vaguely beneath the hair suddenly lifted.
On the projection screen, after Wen Fengyu tested and confirmed that the “Bored” account hadn’t disabled its spectator function, his cursor swiftly clicked on the word “Spectate,” and instantly the screen went dark, entering the loading interface.
Going back a bit further in time, right after finishing his fiery declaration to run the dungeon right now, he immediately pulled Lin Xiansheng into his party and teleported to the front of the dungeon.
“Boom—!”
A low roar abruptly erupted from ahead, crashing over like a giant wave!
At the same time, red lights flashed inside the mecha’s cockpit, and the mecha body vibrated slightly. Red exclamation marks kept popping up on the display screen, and a mechanical female voice issued continuous warnings: Warning! Warning! The difficulty of this dungeon is relatively high. Players are advised to immediately stay away from this location!!
Meanwhile, the young man inside the cockpit simply raised his head. Outside the display screen, a grand, endlessly vast black vortex floated quietly in the depths of the starry sky, rotating and contracting. Black particles danced around the vortex, and surrounding light seemed to be forcibly pulled in by a gravity well as it approached, being torn, compressed, and crushed.
This was precisely the entrance to enter the Mystical Galaxy.
Aside from Lin Xiansheng’s duo, there were also many other players piloting mechas, curiously observing the dungeon.
However, it could be said that among all the players present, apart from Lin Xiansheng, the rest at worst piloted mechas of Level 85.
Someone quickly noticed a grossly out-of-place Level 65 mecha in the crowd.
Someone immediately typed in the nearby channel: This isn’t a dungeon that a Level 65 mecha can enter.
SendSendSend: You gotta have guts to come at Level 65. Where is it? I don’t see it.
GeneralLuIsAwesome: What? Who didn’t come through with a low level? Can’t a Level 65 come take a look? Who says people have to enter the dungeon.
Hahaha, of course you can come at this level too, as long as you have a high-tier pro carrying you.
Well, you’d have to find a pretty badass pro for that. This dungeon is going to be super hard. I just hit max level myself, and I wouldn’t dare run it yet since my gear hasn’t been upgraded. I heard some studios offering guaranteed top ten percent clears have requirements—they don’t take accounts that aren’t max level.
Among the numerous dialogues, the only common opinion was that probably nobody would dare enter this dungeon with a Level 65 mecha without a high-tier pro carrying them.
After all, if a character died in the game, it would still produce a certain impact on the player’s spiritual power in real reality, making them feel uncomfortable for quite a long time.
Wind And Fire naturally saw the chat on the auxiliary channel, feeling more unsure inside, but since he had already come this far…
He typed in the party channel: Hold on, my friend is coming right away.
Toward his client, Lin Xiansheng’s attitude could be described as very friendly: Sounds good.
About ten minutes later, another pitch-black mecha appeared at the party. Above the mecha, white text displayed the account owner’s ID: Zhouzhou’s Little Wooden Boat.
However, even though everyone had clearly arrived, Wind and Fire still hadn’t entered the dungeon.
Lin Xiansheng looked thoughtfully at the deserted party channel, roughly guessing that the other two must be private messaging.
And Lin Xiansheng’s guess was correct; Wind and Fire and Little Wooden Boat were indeed private messaging.
Zhouzhou’s Little Wooden Boat was one of Zhang Zhou’s rare old fans ever since he started streaming.
He had a habit of checking out his teammates after forming a party. The moment he was pulled into the party, he immediately clicked open Lin Xiansheng’s homepage, and at just a single glance, he recognized that this account was Zhang Zhou’s old account, as well as the protagonist who had flooded their fan group for several days a period ago.
Of course, upon recognizing the account, Little Wooden Boat immediately privately messaged Wind And Fire.
Wind And Fire: You’ve got to be kidding? He’s really that Bored guy who was third on the Contaminated Star point leaderboard last week?
Zhouzhou’s Little Wooden Boat: Correct, I could never mistake this account.
Wind And Fire: Then that feels secure. Should I launch it?
Zhouzhou’s Little Wooden Boat: ……
Zhouzhou’s Little Wooden Boat: But you know what? On the day this account rushed to third place, someone in our group asked Zhouzhou what was going on. Zhouzhou said he gave this account to a friend and heard that they encountered a bug where the point settlement went wrong, which was why it rushed to third.
Wind And Fire: Sweeping soy sauce emoji.
Don’t do this to me, I’m scared! What about the 5,000-Star Point deposit!!
Zhouzhou’s Little Wooden Boat: Discussing it here is useless anyway. Forget it, forget it, just launch it. We’ll know once we’re in the game.
After the two finished discussing, Wind and Fire directly turned on his mic in the party channel: I’m about to enter the dungeon, get yourselves ready!
It seemed the private chat was over.
Lin Xiansheng lowered his double eyelids, disabled the mecha’s built-in warning function, and the cockpit instantly fell silent.
At this moment, Wind and Fire clicked the button to enter the dungeon. The black vortex that had been rotating slowly suddenly erupted with intense suction.
A wave of dizziness washed over him, and a game loading interface appeared before his eyes. After about ten seconds, before his vision even recovered, the first sensation he felt was coldness.
Lin Xiansheng opened his eyes, and what greeted his view were countless planets in the starry sky.
The planets varied in color, and surrounding each planet were star rings of various colors—purple, rose gold, and a passionate, affectionate red, like light gauze wrapping the planets within them, beautiful and shocking.
Lin Xiansheng subconsciously wanted to pick up his terminal to snap a photo of this scenery in the starry sky. But remembering that he was in a game, he stopped his action.
He quite liked recording beautiful scenery in the form of photos, and on sudden whims, he would even upload them to his Starnet account.
That way, even if beauty vanished, if the photos recording the beauty were still there, that moment would become eternal.
Feeling the weak thumping of his heart, Lin Xiansheng let out a gentle breath.
However, he had to admit that Virtual Life was indeed very realistic. At least some of the planets before his eyes right now, he had truly seen in the interstellar era before.
They obviously all had real-life prototypes.
And currently, the planet closest to them was white like ice and snow, covered by a blizzard.
Compared to the distances between other planets, this planet seemed to stand alone in a corner, solitary, cold, and desolate.
This was also the first planet they were going to explore.
“The road to the planet probably won’t be peaceful, everyone be careful.”
Wind And Fire’s voice rang out in the party microphone.
Although the difficulty coefficient of the first few planets wasn’t high, once inside the dungeon, levels, skill equipment, and health pools were directly locked, making it impossible to recover via healing potions in the backpack. Therefore, maintaining health ahead of time was essential.
Of course, there was another reason: getting damage hurts! Lin Xiansheng didn’t want to hurt. His body was battered and broken; whenever an illness flared up, it hurt like death, so he might as well avoid it in the game.
The young man let out a soft breath.
This character of his had spiritual power and physical constitution stats of only Grade B, which merely met the baseline requirements for piloting a mecha.
A strange spiritual power quietly emerged, surprisingly intertwining and merging with the character’s own spiritual power.
“Swish—!”
Lin Xiansheng slowly raised his double eyelids, and his field of view was left with only black and white colors.
Below the spherical black space were white grids. All objects within the space floated above the white grids, connected and structured by individual white lines, forming a unique three-dimensional perspective model.
He could clearly see all the structures within the lines, with everything unable to hide.
It was as if there were a pair of invisible eyes in the higher-dimensional space outside this spherical sphere, like a god overlooking the mortal world.
Suddenly, red points of light emerged one by one within the spherical space.
Lin Xiansheng curved the corners of his lips slightly. He didn’t turn on his mic but typed instead: Follow me.
After the message was sent out, the propulsion system operated, blue light flowed across the surface of the white mecha, and then a streak of white light charged out first.
Wind And Fire: He had just said to be careful! Did he just charge out so recklessly?
After mentally ranting eight hundred times, he exchanged glances with Zhouzhou’s Little Wooden Boat and immediately piloted his mecha to follow as well.
Three streaks of flowing light flashed across the starry sky in a split second, quickly approaching the first planet.
Along the way, there were completely no monsters blocking their path.
Could this really be so smooth?
Before Wind and Fire could react, Lin Xiansheng sent another message: Prepare to descend.
Exploring the Mystical Galaxy—since it was called exploration, their mission requirement was to explore each planet and obtain key clues for heading to the next planet upon landing on the planet.
However, it was certain that even for the easiest difficulty planet, the key clues wouldn’t be that easy to find and would involve a bitter battle.
Yet the moment Wind and Fire and the other guy landed on this white planet following Lin Xiansheng, Lin Xiansheng charged straight ahead as if he already knew in advance where the key clues were, and still no monsters launched any attacks along the way.
Before the two of them could catch up to Lin Xiansheng, Lin Xiansheng had already acquired the key clue.
Giving them zero time to think, Lin Xiansheng typed again: Let’s go to the next planet.
Wait, this isn’t right, is it?
By the time the two of them followed closely behind Lin Xiansheng’s tail to arrive at the next planet, Lin Xiansheng repeated the exact same feat and charged straight for the target once again.
You must know that the key clues for each planet refreshed randomly, and there were simply no strategy guides available.
Along the way, Wind and Fire and Little Wooden Boat could only focus on keeping up with Lin Xiansheng. Without even knowing what happened, they had already finished exploring one planet after another.
According to statistics compiled by some gaming masters, the average exploration time for a single planet in the Mystical Galaxy was around seventeen minutes.
Yet they had only entered the game for twenty minutes, and not only had they not fought a single battle, but the two of them didn’t even know how many planets they had already finished exploring.
The problem was that the key clues on each planet refreshed randomly, with zero strategy guides to rely on.
How could anyone manage to bypass all combat and directly find the key clues like this?
Even those few strongest players in the entire server (excluding the General) couldn’t achieve this level!
If they had never heard of anyone running speed hacks in Virtual Life, the two of them would have suspected that Lin Xiansheng was running a wallhack, alright!!
Just as Wind and Fire was in a daze, still wondering if he was dreaming—
On the interstellar flight path, the leading white mecha suddenly stopped.
The young man’s violet eyes grew increasingly vibrant, flashing with a cold luster. In his eyes, as they went deeper, countless red-light points emerged from the darkness.
Finding a navigable route through them wasn’t impossible, but combat was inevitable no matter what.
Feeling his body begin to feel uncomfortable, Lin Xiansheng calculated that after exploring one more planet, the settlement count should safely land them in the top ten percent.
He typed: Get ready, it’s time to fight.
The moment the message was sent out, Wind and Fire’s eyes saw it, but his brain hadn’t caught up yet.
Stripes of flesh-colored giant long worms were already writhing and surging over from all directions. The long worms had white wings growing on their backs, and their body surfaces reflected a metallic sheen.
And hovering above each long worm’s head was glaring red text: LV100.
Every single worm was at Level 100!!
They were ten levels higher than the maxed-out players themselves.
Wind And Fire & Zhouzhou’s Little Wooden Boat: Wait, is the difficulty scaling speed this damn fast??
The long worms didn’t give them time to be shocked. Their giant bodies violently coiled up, appearing right in front of them with lightning speed and wrapping around the mechas.
Wind And Fire could already hear creaking sounds coming from inside the mecha frame due to the squeezing. There was no time to be shocked now; the energy system operated, and a light shield surged out from the surface of the mecha, bouncing the long worms wrapping around him away.
He swiftly switched out his ion light sword and slashed fiercely toward the long worms.
“Bang—Bang—Bang!”
However, the tenacity of the long worms exceeded the two men’s expectations. After the ion light sword struck the long worms’ bodies, it sparked intense flashes, and after a prolonged stalemate, it was directly bounced off!
Not a single scratch had been left on the long worms’ bodies.
The mecha equipment of the two of them couldn’t be called super strong, but it was at a medium level.
Countless long worms surged forward, separating the two of them from “Bored” and cutting them into different battlefields.
“Hey!” Wind And Fire’s hand gripping the light sword tightened, fire blazing behind his mecha as he wanted to rush over to Bored’s side.
Although he didn’t know what method Bored used to avoid danger and explore up to this point, no matter what, Bored’s mecha was only Level 65. Under level suppression, once separated from them, how could he possibly survive?
Zhouzhou’s Little Wooden Boat: “We can’t get across! Never mind Bored, let’s survive the immediate crisis first!”
Wind And Fire frowned, but at this moment he could hardly protect himself and genuinely had no way to look after Lin Xiansheng, so he had to nod: “Alright.”
The two of them piloted their mechas, wielding their light swords as they charged into the swarm of bugs. In a flash, this battlefield plunged into intense combat.
And right at this moment, it was precisely the twenty-third minute since they entered the dungeon.
No one noticed that an account had quietly entered this space via the friend spectator function, taking everything that happened into full view.