After closing the chat with Chen Yu, Fu Songcheng leaned against the headboard.
“What are you thinking about now?”
A warm body pressed over from beside him. Having finished the cheesecake, Yu Huaiting forcefully squeezed into Fu Songcheng’s embrace, occupying his entire line of sight.
Yu Huaiting’s arm circled Fu Songcheng’s waist, his head pillowed on Fu Songcheng’s leg, and he rubbed his head against Fu Songcheng discontentedly. “I want…”
His rubbing made Fu Songcheng a little ticklish. Fu Songcheng raised a hand and ruffled Yu Huaiting’s hair. The strands were soft, yet couldn’t conceal the wildness and possessiveness in this man’s bones.
“Later.” Fu Songcheng’s voice was low and gentle. “There’s still something to do at midnight.”
“Mm.”
Yu Huaiting answered verbally, but his body suddenly flipped, pinning Fu Songcheng beneath him, his eyes fixed tightly on Fu Songcheng, blazing flames dancing in his gaze. “What if I can’t wait?”
Fu Songcheng looked at that handsome face so close at hand, thought about Yu Huaiting’s combat prowess, and still didn’t dare let him have his way—he was afraid he’d faint and miss the deal with Shen Ning.
“I’ll use my hand to help you?”
Fu Songcheng proactively extended his left hand, climbing to the back of Yu Huaiting’s neck, applying a little force to pull him toward himself.
Then his other hand followed the trail downward.
Yu Huaiting’s breathing visibly quickened.
“Once you’re done with your business, I want the full course.”
Fu Songcheng naturally knew what he meant. His left hand pinched Yu Huaiting’s neck, while his remaining hand secretly gathered strength, wrestling with that spot. “I’ll wait for you.”
Yu Huaiting sucked in a sharp breath from Fu Songcheng’s pinch.
Just as his desire was about to reach its peak, Fu Songcheng blocked it again. Several times he wanted to just go through with it, only to be pinched back by Fu Songcheng with a hint of punishment.
…
…
Fu Songcheng helped Yu Huaiting for a long time, and Yu Huaiting was somewhat unwilling to admit defeat.
It took a long while to finish once.
How could that be enough for Yu Huaiting?
Fu Songcheng’s hand was somewhat sore. Yu Huaiting lay panting on top of him. Time was almost up—Yu Huaiting couldn’t help warning.
“When you come back, we’ll continue…”
At exactly midnight in rest-area time.
In the room, a system notification only Fu Songcheng could hear sounded on time.
[System Notification: You have an encrypted email from a special channel. Sender: Shen Ning.]
[Check immediately and accept the invitation? (Note: This operation will consume mental energy. Please ensure you are in a safe environment.)]
The instant Fu Songcheng pressed Accept, the environment switched rapidly.
When Fu Songcheng opened his eyes again, he found himself standing in a massive ring-shaped space.
Ten steps away, Shen Ning sat, seeming to have been waiting for him all along.
“Welcome to Source Star, Mr. Fu.”
Shen Ning’s voice echoed through the empty room, no emotion discernible.
Fu Songcheng warily looked around. He tried to step forward, only to find he wasn’t actually on Source Star—rather, it was a technology similar to VR that let him temporarily see everything on Source Star.
Shen Ning explained flatly, “The current technology only allows you to come to ‘Source Star’ in this way.”
“Your body remains in the instance rest area. We’ve merely intercepted your visual, auditory, and olfactory nerve signals and transmitted Source Star’s real-time scene data directly into your brain.”
“But for the information you currently want to obtain, that’s already enough.”
Fu Songcheng was silent for a moment, his brain rapidly processing the current situation.
If he were merely a set of projected neural signals, that meant he couldn’t cause any substantial physical damage on Source Star—but at the same time, Source Star couldn’t “kill” him in this space either.
An absolutely safe, yet absolutely restricted, trading venue.
Fu Songcheng steadied himself and posed his first question: “Is your time flow rate the same as Death Party’s rest area?”
Inside instances, time was chaotic.
An instance might last a month while only a few hours passed in the rest area.
What about Source Star, then?
What time dimension did they exist in?
“The same.”
Shen Ning’s answer was concise.
Source Star’s time flow rate was identical to the game’s rest area.
The time flow ratio between the real world and the instance rest area was roughly 1:15.
Source Star being identical to the rest area meant it was also at a 1:15 ratio to the real world.
Which meant: for every one year that passed on Blue Star, a full fifteen years had passed on Source Star.
If Blue Star had experienced five thousand years of civilization, then in Source Star’s dimension, that was seventy-five thousand years.
Not to mention that, in Source Star’s words, Blue Star was merely one of the seeded Child Stars—a development speed fifteen times faster than Earth’s, plus the first-mover advantage; no wonder their technology was so far ahead.
Shen Ning turned and walked to a massive console, her slender fingers flying across the virtual keyboard a few times.
“This is Source Star’s deep web access terminal. It can only download information, not upload data. You can observe, but you cannot interfere.”
Fu Songcheng nodded. Shen Ning agreeing to bring him to Source Star would naturally come with all kinds of restrictions.
“One day that I’m here means one day I keep Source Star’s secret.”
“Then I can only pray you die quickly in an instance and keep this secret forever.”
Shen Ning’s words were cold, though her expression was smiling. How could she bear to let her most admired player die in an instance? Even if Fu Songcheng pushed his luck right in front of her and threatened her, to Shen Ning, it only made her more satisfied.
Across all these games, this was the first time Shen Ning had been handled by a Child Star person—worthy of the player she admired.
Fu Songcheng answered Shen Ning’s curse with a smile: “Then I’ll pray that before I die, I can come visit more and strive to find a way to defeat you.”
Shen Ning knew he wasn’t joking, and knew the purpose of his wanting to come to Source Star. She waved a hand and left the place, speaking without turning her head.
“From now on, every day at midnight, you only need to click the invitation link in the encrypted email to descend here directly and consult whatever information you need.”
As Shen Ning’s voice faded, a bright red countdown number appeared above the crystal pillar: [06:59].
Fu Songcheng wasted no more words.
He strode to the terminal.
He reached out, trying to touch the virtual keyboard. The instant his fingertip was about to pass through the light and shadow, the terminal’s sensor captured his brainwaves.
No physical touch was needed—Source Star’s technology had already achieved full brain-computer interaction.
A vast, complex torrent of information poured into Fu Songcheng’s brain.
All sorts of bizarre Source Star characters scrolled rapidly across his retinas, then, through the system’s built-in translation module, automatically converted into the Earth language he could understand.
Fu Songcheng searched for useful information.
About Death Party, about seeding Child Stars, about logging into Child Stars.
Time slipped by, second by second.
Fu Songcheng saw all kinds of evaluations about Death Party. He and Yu Huaiting currently had very high popularity among viewers—a large part of it coming from the daily interactions between him and Yu Huaiting.
Leave a Reply