Just then, Shen Ning’s voice came through the private channel, carrying a hint of teasing amusement: “Want to know the Bitter Couple progress recorded in the backend?”
Quan Heng was already annoyed and answered irritably, “How much?”
Shen Ning began negotiating without any courtesy. “In exchange for the mid-roll ads in the livestream, my VR equipment brand gets 7% of the airtime.”
“Fine. Tell me how much.”
Quan Heng agreed just as crisply.
Only then did Shen Ning slowly reveal the answer: “When he came to you for a team-up, the love value was 17%. Now it’s -3%.”
Quan Heng was somewhat disappointed. “Even like this, it’s still not satisfactory?”
Shen Ning laughed on the other end of the communicator and asked him, “So do you want to go again?”
“Again.”
Quan Heng gritted his teeth, his gaze turning incomparably resolute. “I want him to personally invite me to go drinking.”
Originally, after Fu Songcheng and Yu Huaiting finished the Avalon instance, Yu Huaiting would invite him to drink, where they’d meet a disruptive red-dress girl.
Quan Heng had to reach this plot point. He knew who that red-dress girl was, and he was going to kill her here.
…
Fu Songcheng stood before the holographic projection, watching the fake “Fu Songcheng” on screen standing in the empty waiting area, his expression shifting unpredictably, his lips occasionally pressing together slightly, as if pondering something.
Fu Songcheng’s brows knitted tightly.
That person on screen seemed to be communicating with someone outside.
Who was he talking to? Someone behind the Death Party system?
He seemed very interested in Yu Huaiting, re-entering the instance they’d first entered together with Yu Huaiting.
Fu Songcheng flipped through the identity system update documents he’d just received from the secretary.
The [Lover] identity, following the branching route, would ultimately split into [Bitter Couple] and [Lifelong Partners].
The [Close Friend] identity granted attribute buffs when near, but required maintaining identical decisions.
The [Sworn Enemy] identity was similar to [Bitter Couple], but without shared senses—to the death, without rest.
Some identities Fu Songcheng had seen before when the public screen opened; others he’d never seen.
He continued flipping back—it was the Death Party livestream variety show proposal.
On the first page of the proposal was plainly written the show’s core selling points: authentic emotional simulation, extreme survival reversals, close-up interaction with top players.
And in the “Top Players” column, Yu Huaiting’s name was highlighted in red, with Fu Songcheng’s name added beside it in handwriting.
Fu Songcheng’s expression grew darker and darker, the chill in his eyes as if it could freeze into ice.
Fu Songcheng finally understood: the people hidden behind the system were humans from Source Star.
Possessing a technological level far beyond ordinary comprehension, they weren’t satisfied with their own reproduction and began searching the universe for celestial bodies similar to Source Star’s environment.
Having found them, they scattered the same sparks of life as their own, nurturing new humans on those planets.
From a genetic and biological standpoint, Source Star people and Blue Star people were completely identical humans.
At first, it was merely a grand life-seeding experiment.
But as time passed and more and more sparks were scattered, the civilizations on various celestial bodies began to develop. Source Star people gradually lost their initial patience for observation; highly advanced technology had solved all survival problems, and severe spiritual emptiness began to emerge within Source Star.
To resolve this emptiness, they began promoting “entertainment” projects on these seeded planets.
They no longer regarded the humans on these planets as equal life, but as created property, objects of observation, even disposable consumables.
Casually manufacturing natural disasters, inciting wars, even directly destroying a planet’s civilization—all merely to stimulate consumption on Source Star’s livestream network, to stimulate those long-numbed emotions.
Because they styled themselves the “source” of planets, the creators who gave life to other planets, all the planets they’d seeded had a unified designation in Source Star’s archives—Child Stars.
Blue Star was just one of these countless Child Stars.
Designation: 73641.
The Death Party project set its sights on Blue Star.
Using technology, they connected to Blue Star’s sequence and teleported all of humanity into this game called Death Party. They observed Blue Star people’s struggles on the edge of life and death, savoring their fear, betrayal, love, and despair.
They’d even already decided to ultimately develop the instance game into a metaverse park of interactive role-play exclusive to Source Star people.
Fu Songcheng sat on the sofa, unable to return to his senses for a long time.
So all of them, in the eyes of Source Star people, were nothing but sets of data for amusement.
Then what were they? Were they the real NPCs?
Did their existence serve only so another group of people could enter Death Party to pursue thrills?
Finally, Fu Songcheng opened a file titled [Emotional Module Optimization].
Inside were densely packed data line charts and numerical reports; the report’s header read “Emotional Interference Module Monitoring.” Every component, every module interacting, jointly influencing human brain responses.
Fu Songcheng felt a violent dizziness rushing to his head, the edges of his vision beginning to blacken.
His hands and feet were ice-cold; his heart beat heavily in his chest.
He slammed the materials in his hand heavily onto the table and slumped onto the sofa as if drained of strength, his gaze vacant as it turned toward Yu Huaiting’s livestream projection.
“Yu Huaiting…”
Meanwhile, in the virtual dream space, time had been reset countless times.
Quan Heng restarted the dream for the fifty-third time.
After dozens of failures, Quan Heng finally recognized one fact: any behavior that didn’t match Fu Songcheng would trigger Yu Huaiting’s rejection.
Quan Heng gave up accommodating Yu Huaiting and chose the shortcut.
He restored Fu Songcheng’s original technical stats.
In the clumsiest way, he repeatedly watched Fu Songcheng’s past clear recordings.
Frame by frame, he studied Fu Songcheng—imitating the angle at which Fu Songcheng held the dagger, imitating the speed and pauses of Fu Songcheng’s speech, even repeatedly practicing Fu Songcheng’s gaze.
On the twelfth restart, his protective instinct was too strong—he blocked in front of Yu Huaiting ahead of time, was deemed a hindrance by Yu Huaiting, and got cut down together with the enemy in one slash.
On the twenty-eighth restart, he deliberately acted too cold, ignoring Yu Huaiting’s coordination. Yu Huaiting found it boring and simply abandoned him, clearing the instance alone.
On the forty-fifth restart, his look stopping Yu Huaiting wasn’t forceful enough, and he also failed to notice Yu Huaiting causing trouble. Yu Huaiting stared at him with suspicion for a long time, and ultimately the invitation plot wasn’t triggered either.
In Quan Heng’s eyes, the amnesiac Yu Huaiting was, in the end, nothing more than an NPC trapped in a time loop—even if he was his favorite, most favored player, he could be squandered at will.
Give the wrong response, fail to nail the movements, and he’d press the reset button, forcing Yu Huaiting to lose his memory and return to the starting point of the invitation, accompanying Quan Heng to grind the progress again and again.
He was an NPC, a toy to be observed, manipulated, and fooled—a benchmark for Quan Heng to prove himself.
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