A vast, complex torrent of information surged through his mind. Fu Songcheng’s gaze flew across the virtual panel, his expression growing colder and colder as he delved deeper into the data.
Source Star’s arrogance and cruelty far exceeded his imagination.
Here, Fu Songcheng saw Source Star’s true attitude toward “Child Stars.”
Source Star’s intelligent brain system recorded the IDs of every lifeform on every locked Child Star.
Most entertainment projects were observed at Source Star’s home base. Fu Songcheng clicked open a few historical record files—the scenes were appalling.
Based on viewers’ preferences and whims, they would release highly contagious zombie viruses onto Child Stars, coldly watching a prosperous civilization reduced to a blood-soaked apocalypse within days; they would arbitrarily alter a planet’s climate patterns to create decades-long extreme cold, tsunamis, and droughts, savoring every variation of natural disaster; they would even, in pursuit of more thrilling visual effects, randomly alter some humans’ genes, inducing mutations that produced bloodthirsty aberrations, with kin eating kin.
When an observation cycle ended and viewers’ interest faded, these Child Stars were mostly left battered and riddled with holes, facing destruction, ultimately reduced to silent, desolate wasteland in the universe.
Of course, life’s tenacity was terrifying—there were always some Child Star survivors who could barely find a way to adapt and survive in the ruins, lingering like ants.
But Source Star clearly had no interest in rebuilding these ruined homes. Once entertainment value was lost, the Child Star was thoroughly abandoned, erased from the observation list.
Just like that, they destroyed Child Star after Child Star, as casually as crushing bacteria in a petri dish.
And the reason Death Party caused such a sensation on Source Star was because it was different.
This was the first time in Source Star’s history that a battlefield wasn’t opened inside a Child Star, and the first time trans-dimensional spatial leap technology was used to drag thousands upon thousands of humans from a planet—physical bodies included—directly into a meticulously constructed virtual space.
Here, there wasn’t a single apocalypse, but countless bizarre instances, countless stories of wildly different styles and eras.
The blueprints for these instances came partly from Source Star’s own designs, partly extracted from the thousands upon thousands of Child Stars they had already destroyed.
More variables, broader scope, more bizarre death methods—that was why Death Party had such high attention and viewership.
Fu Songcheng looked at the constantly jumping viewer bullet-comment data, a bleak chill welling up in his heart. All their struggles, pain, even partings of life and death—in Source Star people’s eyes, were nothing but electronic pickles to go with their drinks.
Fu Songcheng wanted to see more of the specifics on how Child Star people were pulled into the space, but the bright red number above the crystal pillar had already jumped to its final moments.
[00:03]
[00:02]
[00:01]
Time was up.
Fu Songcheng felt his brain swim slightly, and the futuristic ring-shaped space before his eyes instantly shattered like glass.
He blinked, his vision refocusing—what met his eyes was the dim, ambiguous lighting of the rest-area room.
And Yu Huaiting, right beside him, close at hand.
Yu Huaiting’s chest rose and fell slightly, his eyes full of the resentment of unsatisfied desire and a fierce aggressiveness.
He’d been stirred up himself, only to be left hanging, forced to wait aggrievedly and anxiously through another ten minutes for Fu Songcheng.
But he never idled while waiting for Fu Songcheng—by now, he’d already stripped him bare.
“Done with your business?”
Yu Huaiting’s voice was terribly hoarse. His broad palm pressed directly onto Fu Songcheng’s shoulder, unquestionably flipping him over and pinning him beneath.
Feeling the scorching body heat and dangerous aura of the person above him, Fu Songcheng knew he couldn’t escape this time.
He had no reason to refuse anymore—and besides, having deliberately strung Yu Huaiting along just now, he’d thoroughly provoked the viciousness of this wolf.
Fu Songcheng sighed, resignedly closed his eyes, and was turned over and over all night by this insatiable beast.
The next day, sunlight shone through the rest area’s simulated window into the room. The two slept until noon before slowly waking.
They ate a simple lunch. Ignoring Yu Huaiting’s hints that he wanted to keep cuddling, Fu Songcheng dragged him to the training room for extra practice.
Over the next two days, Fu Songcheng and Yu Huaiting’s lives were extremely regular.
Every day at midnight, Fu Songcheng would punctually click the link in the email and descend upon Source Star in the form of neural signals, racing against time to consult useful information.
And by day, he dragged Yu Huaiting into the training room for live combat sparring.
Though Yu Huaiting felt sorry for him, he still cooked dinner at night and didn’t let Fu Songcheng off either—calling it “weighted training”—and took quite a few extra hits from Fu Songcheng.
The high-intensity training was effective: in two days, Fu Songcheng’s personal Power Ranking climbed two more places, stopping at fifteenth.
On the afternoon of the third day, Chen Muhuai finally came out of his instance.
The moment he reached the rest area, he spammed Fu Songcheng with messages.
[Chen Muhuai]: Engineer Fu! You’re fifteenth! That’s so badass!
[Chen Muhuai]: You have no idea how miserable I was this time! I entered a survival instance called “Midnight Haunted House.” I started out broke, renting a cheap single room in an urban village. Good grief—the first night, blood seeped out from under the bed; the second day, the walls were stuffed full of hair!
[Chen Muhuai]: That landlord uncle—coming to collect rent in the middle of the night is one thing, but he carried his head in his hand while asking me for the rent. I stuck the room’s horse-head ornament onto his neck, and only then did he leave.
That was terrifying.
[Fu Songcheng]: Good that you made it out alive. Rest a few days, and exchange some items to restore your spirit.
Just as he was saying this, Fu Songcheng’s system panel flickered, and he received a new message.
It was from Dawn’s Chen Ke.
[Chen Ke]: Mr. Fu, they’re about to enter an instance again soon. We’d still like to ask you to bring people through the instance—would that be alright?
Just as he was about to reply, the system gave another crisp ding.
[System Notification: You have an encrypted email from a special channel. Sender: Shen Ning.]
Fu Songcheng immediately opened it.
The email wasn’t an invitation to Source Star, but an advance notice.
[Fu Songcheng, you know Death Party has huge popularity.]
[We want to improve our reputation. For your next instance, we’ve chosen a less dangerous one for you and Yu Huaiting, but I hope you can clear it in a way that’s more appealing to viewers—more dramatic.]
Reading this, Fu Songcheng frowned slightly. Since when did entering an instance make him a contractor?
But this coincided with Fu Songcheng’s own plan. Yu Huaiting had been able to lure Quan Heng into risking himself entering the instance—so could he, too, through putting on a show, attract more Source Star people to come down?
Death Party—let the waves rise higher, high enough to lure these people into their own destruction, dying in the arena they built themselves.
“What’s wrong?”
Yu Huaiting sensed the shift in Fu Songcheng’s mood, walked over, and leaned in beside him, glancing at the panel.
Because of the encryption permissions, Yu Huaiting couldn’t see the email’s contents—only Fu Songcheng’s grim expression.
Fu Songcheng closed the panel, turned to Yu Huaiting, and took a deep breath.
“The next instance isn’t dangerous.”
“That’s so boring.”
Yu Huaiting propped his chin on his hand, his gaze burning as it fixed on Fu Songcheng’s lips.
Fu Songcheng looked at the man before him whose eyes held only him, curved the corners of his mouth, and used his slender fingers to lift Yu Huaiting’s chin, his voice low and full of bewitchment.
“For this instance, we’re going to play something different. You need to cooperate with me—put on a big show.”
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