The two then returned to their personal rest room.
As the rest room’s heavy door slammed shut behind them with a bang, the ever-present, shadow-like sense of being watched—as if it wanted to dissect a person’s very soul—was finally sealed off completely outside the door.
Fu Songcheng’s steps faltered. The spine that had been propping him up like a javelin all this time instantly lost all its strength, slumping in defeat.
He slid down bit by bit along the cold metal wall until he was sitting on the soft carpet.
The feeling of total collapse swept through every limb and bone in an instant, making even lifting a finger feel like effort.
Yu Huaiting walked over quickly, carrying a gust of wind that hadn’t yet settled, and dropped to one knee beside him.
Fu Songcheng buried his head deeply, unreservedly, into Yu Huaiting’s broad shoulder.
He leaned all his weight—along with all the anger and helplessness he couldn’t tell anyone—onto Yu Huaiting.
“So tired.”
An extremely faint murmur came from the hollow of Yu Huaiting’s shoulder, carrying a barely perceptible hoarseness and tremor.
Yu Huaiting silently extended both arms and pulled his lover into a tight, hard embrace.
He knew. He knew it all.
His gege was doing something very great.
His gege was helping himself—and everyone—vent their anger.
And what Yu Huaiting had to do was stay with him, assist him, and wait for fate’s final verdict.
“I’m here.”
Yu Huaiting’s voice was low and hoarse, the resonance of his chest passing through their pressed-together bodies.
“Win or lose, I’m with you.”
He opened his mouth, countless emotions churning in his chest, stuck in his throat like venom-coated glass shards. Swallow them, and it was a bloody mess; spit them out, and they were shattered fragments.
The chess game had reached its end. The dagger was revealed. Yet he had no certainty of victory.
He, Yu Huaiting, and the billions of humans on Blue Star still struggling daily for survival points—from the moment they were born, they were insignificant pieces on this chessboard called Death Party.
A single chess piece, even with all its strength, how great a storm could it stir in the chess player’s hands?
Could it overturn this massive board that shrouded the entire star system?
His emotions, in the end, were painfully swallowed back into his throat, turning into a heavy, silent sigh.
His lover stayed quietly by his side, healing him.
…
The next day, when the harsh virtual sunlight lit up the rest area, the countdown floating at the very top of the Source Star forums had quietly turned a startling bright red.
[12 hours left until the ‘Descent of the Gods’ version launches!]
Yet the ordinary Blue Star players in Death Party were utterly unaware.
Everything was as usual in the system plaza.
Someone was haggling over a low-quality dagger that had dropped in last night’s instance; someone was getting drunk in a virtual tavern at the street corner, loudly boasting about how he’d narrowly escaped death.
Living from dawn to dusk.
The rest room door was pushed open.
The second before stepping out the door, Fu Songcheng had already re-armed himself to be impregnable.
He acted like a beneficiary without a shred of resentment, like a newly minted upstart whose mind had truly been corroded by the system’s power.
His steps were leisurely and lazy, his posture so relaxed it was almost arrogant.
He’d changed into a lavish windbreaker worth a fortune from the system shop, the corners of his eyes even carrying just the right amount of mild smile.
Yu Huaiting trailed half a step behind, accompanying him as he wandered aimlessly through the rest area’s market.
Through the high-dimensional screen, Source Star viewers saw only these two top players—ranked first and second—squandering wildly.
The two walked, browsed, chatted, and laughed.
Fu Songcheng toyed with a useless gem glowing faint blue that he’d just bought, conversing with the person beside him in a light tone.
Yu Huaiting’s gaze rested focused on him, occasionally nodding in agreement.
The scene looked as if they were discussing tactics for the next instance—or simply whiling away the long, boring time.
The virtual cameras hidden in the void stayed locked dead on them, trying to capture every subtle expression.
However, as the two’s agility attributes rose to terrifying levels, a problem emerged that gave the director’s room a massive headache: the footage frequently caught double images.
These double images couldn’t be eliminated by any technical means, because this wasn’t equipment malfunction—it was simply that these two moved too fast.
One second they’d be at a stall looking at a long sword; the next, when the camera zoomed in, all it caught was a fragment of a coat hem.
The dozens of experienced directors in the livestream room were sweating anxiously.
Even at bustling street corners, empty shots lasting dozens of seconds often appeared—the frame showing nothing but the bustling ordinary players and empty streets.
Only dozens of seconds later would the directors relocate the two, loafing by a fountain several hundred meters from the last coordinate.
[Are the directors eating for free? Where are they?]
[What’s going on—they’re as hard to catch as slippery wide noodles!]
[Can the official backend forcibly lower their agility attributes? I’m getting dizzy watching—I’m going to throw up!]
[The one above, stop being sour. They earned those attributes through their own strength—why should they be lowered? Though honestly this speed is insane—it’s practically teleportation.]
They clearly lived under the watch of tens of thousands of Source Star people, stared at by countless eyes—yet seemed to exist at no exact coordinate at all.
The next three or four days were all like this.
Even after the “Descent of the Gods” version launched and a hundred thousand new players logged in, Fu Songcheng and Yu Huaiting seemed to take no special action.
Their daily schedule was: go out. Wander.
They seemed tireless in using the high mobility brought by their surging agility to dart all over the vast rest area, playing with the viewers and cameras trying to track them like monkeys on a string.
Shen Ning stood before the massive holographic screen, coldly watching the livestream cut once again to a thirty-second empty shot.
The screen’s cold light fell on her refined yet cold face, reflecting the gloom in her eyes that she couldn’t dispel no matter what.
Faint unease.
She didn’t know what these two were doing, so she pulled up the behavior report generated by the system. The report densely recorded a pile of purchase and usage records for displacement items: [Blink Scroll], [Shadow Cloak], [Coordinate Shifter]…
Accompanying these records were intermittent, fragmentary surveillance footage.
These two were absolutely not being honest—but the incomplete footage truly revealed no clues.
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