Lin Xiansheng naturally had no idea that what happened on the game leaderboard would cause such a huge uproar. He was having fun chopping things up like vegetables when a screen suddenly popped up beside him.
Looking at the message on the screen, the young man frowned and finally disconnected from the game.
“Not playing anymore so soon?” Only a little over ten minutes had passed. Seeing the young man take off his helmet, Lu Jing asked casually.
Lin Xiansheng smiled and said with a slight apology, “I am going to step out for a moment.” With that, he took his terminal and left the room.
“An excuse. Don’t tell me you are feeling sick and need to throw up.” Lu Jing turned his head away and sneered.
He just assumed Lin Xiansheng could not handle the game or got beaten up badly, which was why he logged off early. Even though the white holographic helmet was bound to a small account, the character’s mental power and physical fitness were still B-rank, so feeling unaccustomed to it was normal.
However, after a while, seeing that Lin Xiansheng still had not returned, Lu Jing dropped his other tasks, picked up the silver-white helmet with annoyance, and logged back in.
The settings on his small account were messed up, and it felt uncomfortable to use. So annoying, and now he had to fix the settings too!
At the same time, Lin Xiansheng, who had returned to his own room, opened his terminal.
Ever since he agreed with Zhang Zhou to contact him whenever there was news about Lu Xincheng, his unchanging list of contacts finally had a new number added to it.
And just a moment ago, that new contact had sent him a voice message.
[Oh crap, Teacher, did you know? I heard the school is going to invite General Lu for the anniversary celebration!!]
Lin Xiansheng really did not know about that.
To be honest, the anniversary celebration was partly for commemoration, and partly to showcase the school’s strength and help attract more resources.
Especially in recent years, the older generation of professors at Starry Sea Mecha Academy who enjoyed a high reputation in the Empire kept passing away. On top of that, the new generation of teachers had not fully stepped up yet before being poached by other schools. Teacher resources were dwindling, and student enrollment kept shrinking, making it look like they were falling out of the top three mecha academies.
For this anniversary celebration, the school leaders were practically so worried they were about to go bald over recruitment.
However, he never paid attention to those things, and he never expected the method those leaders came up with would actually be to invite Lu Xincheng.
Given Lu Xincheng’s influence in the Empire, it could really boost student recruitment.
It was just that it wasn’t like other schools hadn’t tried inviting the General before, but up until now, no school’s invitation had ever succeeded.
[General Lu is very busy on weekdays, so he probably cannot make it, right?]
As soon as the message was sent, Zhang Zhou replied immediately: Generally speaking, yes… But those leaders actually did something right for once! Please let it be a success, ahhh!!! If it succeeds, I am willing to handwrite “Starry Sea Mecha Academy is awesome” ten thousand times!
Just looking at the text, one could tell how excited the sender was.
Well, for the sake of the student’s hand, it was probably better if it didn’t succeed.
He really was a good person.
Lin Xiansheng was in the “it’s impossible to succeed” camp, but considering that he was supposed to be Lu Xincheng’s “fanboy” on Zhang Zhou’s end, he still sent a reply: [Well, hopefully.]
Hopefully it fails.
Just as he finished tapping send, his light blue eyes flickered. The young man suddenly looked back, withdrawing his terminal. The next moment, with a loud “bang,” the door was violently pushed open.
Before seeing the person, his voice arrived first.
“Our Teacher Lin usually looks so gentle and refined like a jade gentleman, who would have thought he loves to lie so much?”
Lin Xiansheng was already used to Lu Jing’s hot-and-cold attitude and didn’t mind it. He smiled slightly and gave a simple reminder, “Knock on the door before coming in. It’s polite.”
Not minding was one thing, but if someone suddenly walked in while he was changing clothes or something, it still wouldn’t be very good.
“That’s assuming the person deserves to be treated with politeness.” The boy, wearing a white shirt and black trousers, held a silver holographic helmet hooked on his finger. Leaning against the doorframe, he ground his teeth and continued with sarcasm.
Lin Xiansheng thought about it and couldn’t think of what he had lied about.
However, before he had to ask out loud, Lu Jing said it himself: “Don’t think about lying to me a second time. Tell me, have you ever played Virtual Life or not?”
Now, the question was: when had he ever lied to Lu Jing the first time?
Wise enough not to ask that, Lin Xiansheng simply answered the boy’s question, “No, today is my first time playing.”
Lu Jing’s green eyes were filled with suspicion; he didn’t believe it.
In Virtual Life, players could enter a polluted planet solo or in squads every week to pilot mechas and clear out pollutants originating from the depths of the starry sky.
Because of the heavy pollution, players could only enter the polluted planet once a week, with a thirty-minute time limit. During this period, the more pollutants cleared, the higher the score naturally.
The scores reset weekly, and rewards were distributed based on rankings.
Since there was only one chance and the rewards were great, many players spent a lot of money to hire professional boosters just to climb the leaderboard.
His small account had logged off after finishing the pollutants last week. When he logged back in after Lin Xiansheng went offline, the mecha was standing right on the polluted planet.
Looking out, the scenery was devastated, and massive black pollutants could still be seen surging forward not far away.
Although there were still more than ten minutes left before the end, Lu Jing, who was too lazy to continue and just wanted to readjust his mecha, chose to exit.
And at the very moment of exiting, the voice announcing the successful calculation of this week’s polluted planet clearance score reached his mind. With just a casual glance, he almost thought he had logged into the wrong account—
Lu Jing saw that his small account’s ranking had first surpassed his own main account, and then surpassed Zhang Zhou’s top-thirty account.
Finally, it squeezed past the original third place and stopped right at the number three spot.
At the same time, behind the crown representing third place, the final score was revealed:
20,895, beating the fourth-place spot by just a single point.
First time playing?
This small account of his had ordinary equipment, and the character’s mental power and physical fitness were also mediocre.
From the moment Lin Xiansheng picked up the holographic helmet to the moment he put it down, it had taken ten minutes tops. Someone who had never piloted a mecha before, playing a game for the very first time, used an account like that to reach third place on the solo leaderboard in half the time?
Who would believe that if told to others?
“Never played the game before, and reached third on the leaderboard.” The pretty boy’s features turned sharp as he clapped coldly, “I am impressed, truly impressive.”
For years, the top three spots on the solo leaderboard had basically been occupied by those few people, with at most some shifting up and down.
Yet today, the top three had been broken. Even if Lu Jing couldn’t be bothered to overthink it, it wasn’t hard to guess that the Virtual Life game forum was probably about to explode too—and compared to the school, the scale this time would only be much larger.
Lin Xiansheng maintained a calm expression on the outside while screaming question marks in his heart.
Though he didn’t play many games, it wasn’t like he had never played them at all. Weren’t the pollutants he chopped up like vegetables supposed to be common mob monsters that dropped loot everywhere in the game?
How did that end up tied to some leaderboard??
The young man remained silent for a long time before saying with an unblinking expression, “Is the game server stable? There weren’t many pollutants when I went in, and I didn’t kill many either. Maybe the score calculation had a bug.”
“Hah.”
“Virtual Life has never had a bug until now, and it just happens to have one the moment it’s you?”
Lin Xiansheng smiled gently, his expression giving away nothing: “Nothing is absolute in this world. Who knows?”
Lu Jing pouted, his sleek black hair hanging down, his green eyes holding an emotion called unhappiness. He didn’t believe a word Lin Xiansheng said. If this really was his first time playing, it only meant the young man didn’t trust him at all and was hiding a lot of things from him.
Almost out of spite, he thought: Since I’ve already moved in anyway, one day I’m going to make Lin Xiansheng tell me all his secrets!
When the black-haired boy kept his mouth shut, he still looked quite well-behaved, but the moment he spoke, he made people want to hit him.
“You touched my holographic helmet, it’s filthy! Do whatever you want with it, just don’t give it back to me!”
The silver holographic helmet flew across the air in a perfect parabola, landing on the young man’s bed and rolling a few times before stopping.
Snorting, Lu Jing tossed it away and stalked off. Not a minute later, he came back holding a small, exquisite cake. The cake’s dark chocolate surface was sprinkled with finely chopped nuts and dotted with tiny flecks of gold leaf.
“And here is the cake you wanted!” If cakes couldn’t be thrown, Lin Xiansheng suspected the boy would have thrown the cake onto his bed as well.
Placing the cake right at the doorway with another heavy thud, the boy went back inside and locked his own bedroom door from the inside. Even if Lin Xiansheng wanted to return the holographic helmet now, he couldn’t.
Lin Xiansheng rubbed his temples in resignation.
He clearly wanted to gift the holographic helmet to him, yet he always had to speak in such a manner. If not for his status as a prince, Lin Xiansheng really doubted Lu Jing’s personality would keep him from getting beaten up by someone.
He glanced at the delicate little cake. Thinking of something, he hesitated for a moment before deciding to check out the game first.
Upon connecting to the server, his vision gradually darkened. As the progress bar reached the end, the view suddenly opened up, and once again, he saw the vast silver sea of stars.
After feeling around for a bit, Lin Xiansheng quickly found the solo leaderboard that Lu Jing had mentioned.
The leaderboard page popped up, and the first thing that caught his eye were two golden characters: Boring.
This was the ID of Lu Jing’s account.
Hanging in the number three spot, and because it was a sudden surge to the top for the first time, it had an eye-catching “NEW” tag trailing behind it, demanding attention.
After the score calculation, his friend request list had instantly blown up to maximum capacity. And right after he came online, the number of requests didn’t decrease; instead, it grew even more.
However, Lin Xiansheng had no concept of how valuable this leaderboard was; he just felt like this game had a lot of people. He tapped open the request list, and the most recent applicant had a profile picture of a big white goose, accompanied by the note: ???.
The ID was extremely plain, unvarnished, and dry: Big White Goose of Small Village.
If there was anything about it that wasn’t plain, it was probably the fact that this ID happened to be right below “Boring.”
The current fourth-place runner on the solo leaderboard—the unlucky soul who had been squeezed out by a single point.
Yeah, this guy was probably here to pick a fight. Wisely choosing to ignore it, Lin Xiansheng cleared the friend request list with a swipe and opened the historical rankings next to the leaderboard.
He had only meant to take a casual look, but the next instant, the young man’s hands clenched tightly.
In the historical scores, the drop-off from second to tenth place wasn’t that severe, mostly decreasing step by step.
Yet between the second place and the first place lay a chasm as deep as the sky.
Second place had only just touched the edge of thirty thousand, while first place was a full… one hundred thousand points!!
Standing alone at the peak of all historical scores, leaving everyone else far behind.
The record had been set three years ago, yet in those three years, not only had no one surpassed it, but nobody had even reached half of that score.
And the ID sitting securely at the top of the historical rankings was very simple—so simple it unexpectedly felt a bit gentle.
Star.
His pupils dilated unconsciously, and the stray locks of hair falling over his forehead cast a faint shadow across his face. The young man bit his lower lip, staring fixedly at those two characters.
A faint, twitching pain throbbed in his chest. Within just a few seconds, the pain intensified, and a rusty, bloody taste filled his mouth. Lin Xiansheng clutched his chest, gritting his teeth without making a sound. He should have logged out of the game immediately, but he couldn’t help wanting to gaze at that account just a little longer.
Actually, he had still had some doubts about Lu Jing’s claim that Lu Xincheng played this game too. In his impression, Lu Xincheng was always very busy and didn’t seem like the type to play games.
Yet the moment he saw this account, he knew what Lu Jing said was true.
However, the account hadn’t been logged into for several months, and the online hours recorded were also very short.
Cold sweat continuously dripped down the side of his face as the young man stared blankly and unblinkingly at that account. By the time he snapped back to reality, his pupils shrank slightly, and his pale fingertips involuntarily pressed down on a button.
It was the button to send a friend request.
At that moment, he had no bandwidth left to think about the consequences. If he didn’t leave the game right now, he suspected he might actually die here.
Lin Xiansheng took off the holographic helmet. By the time he came out of the game, his silver hair was already soaked through with cold sweat, sticking to his face.
Pain spread throughout his body. Breathing heavily and pale as a sheet, while he could still see his surroundings clearly, he used trembling hands to retrieve a pill, tossed it into his mouth, and swallowed.
His brows twitched slightly.
So bitter.
Good medicine tastes bitter to the illness. It was safe to say that without the pills concocted by Dr. Bai, he probably would have died years ago.
Yet even someone like him, who had undergone special training in the past, found it hard to endure that bitterness surging straight from his churning stomach up into his nose and throat.
Nearly exhausted, the young man curled up on his bed. Who knew how much time passed before the pain in his chest gradually began to subside?
Lin Xiansheng pressed his lips together. His mouth was filled with bitterness—so bitter it made him want to gag.
It was a good thing he hadn’t eaten the dessert Lu Jing brought over first.
Lin Xiansheng thought to himself, finding a bit of amusement in his misery.
Imperial cake—just the name made it clear it was a dessert provided exclusively to the royal family. He’d had the privilege of tasting it before; today, whether due to his physical condition or something else, after eating it, the flavor didn’t seem quite as sweet as before.
Still, the sweet cake ultimately neutralized the lingering bitterness in his mouth. Too exhausted to ponder anything else, the young man fell asleep shortly after. Therefore, he had no idea that the fourth-place account on the game’s solo leaderboard was still continuously spamming friend requests to him.
Inside a large luxury villa belonging to the Wen family in the Capital, a blonde man wearing a white shirt and curled up in a sofa with messy hair stared stubbornly at his screen. Instead of using a holographic helmet, he was using a controller connected to his terminal, repeatedly hammering the buttons.
Finally, he looked up at the ceiling and shrieked: “This guy didn’t even accept my request before logging off, I cannot accept this!!”
Wen Fengyu—currently blazing across the interstellar world, nominated for Best Actor at the tender age of twenty-three, and now a massive internet sensation—was a rising superstar.
He was also precisely that unlucky fourth-place guy who had been beaten by Lin Xiansheng by a single point.
“Wuwuwuwu!” Wen Fengyu pouted with grievance, angrily turning his head to dive toward the other end of the sofa at the man who was resting his eyes.
However, the sharp-featured man had anticipated it long ago. A pair of cold, golden pupils gave Wen Fengyu a faint, indifferent glance… and then shifted aside, avoiding the ambush.
The blonde man, whose tackle hit nothing but air, twitched the corner of his mouth. Losing in the game was one thing, but now he was even being shunned—there was no love left in this world!
Enduring it for a few seconds, Wen Fengyu still couldn’t help wailing, “My third-place reward!!”
“Brother? General, sir? I’m begging you, won’t you help me play a match next week?!”
Almost no one knew that behind Wen Fengyu stood the Wen family, a prominent military dynasty deeply intertwined with the Empire’s armed forces, and that he himself was childhood friends with the current Imperial General…
Of course, nobody knew either that the cold and aloof superstar they saw outside would act like this at home.
However, Lu Xincheng, playing the role of the childhood friend, ignored him entirely.
“Brother, you don’t love me anymore.”
The black-haired man still didn’t respond.
Wen Fengyu gazed resentfully at the man, who was as handsome and godlike as a Greek statue.
Out in the world, all sorts of legends circulated about their Empire’s General, to the point where he was mythologized almost like a deity.
Admired by countless people.
Yet in Wen Fengyu’s eyes, Lu Xincheng was no god. As everyone knew, gods loved all living beings and treated everyone with equal affection.
If Lu Xincheng were truly a god, he wouldn’t have fled to his house just to escape being pressured into marriage by their Emperor, nor would he act like he wanted nothing to do with him!
Ah, well, on the battlefield it was a completely different story—he looked entirely like a creature from a different dimension.
The Western-style living room was lit only by a small, round wall lamp, casting a rather dim light. The blonde man grumbled curses under his breath as he continued to hammer out friend requests. Amidst the background noise of his cursing, an elderly silver-haired man materialized silently out of the shadows behind Lu Xincheng.
“Did you find any news?” The black-haired man, who had been silent the whole time, finally spoke in a low, cold voice.
The old man quietly clenched his hands together and blamed himself, “This subordinate is incompetent; we still haven’t found any news.”
“Is that so.” Lu Xincheng’s tone was very calm, seemingly unsurprised by this result. However, with half his face swallowed by the darkness, his expression was unreadable, while his golden pupils flickered with a chilling, ghostly light.
The old man opened his mouth, as if wanting to say something, but in the end, he remained silent.
Thinking of another matter, the old man spoke again, “General, sir, we received the anniversary invitation from Starry Sea Academy yesterday. Should we decline it like in previous years?”
Lu Xincheng fell silent for a moment and was about to nod.
Yet for some reason, he suddenly thought of the silver-haired young man he had run into at the funeral that day.
Pausing, he closed his eyes.
“Wait, let me see the invitation.”