What to Do About a Cold
Furthermore, due to reasons unknown to ordinary people like Nanmen Shi, no real-world official entity can truly supervise or interfere with the internal workings of "Ten Thousand Worlds".
Naturally, in the early stages of the game, relying on its near- Perfect virtual reality, pornography, gambling, and drugs completed their digital migration and industrial upgrading at an astonishing speed and scale. Following closely behind were even darker online human trafficking, organ black markets, hidden havens for transnational fraud groups, and intricate channels for laundering illicit funds...
Of course, the honest and simple-minded Nanmen Shi doesn't do those things; he just goes online every day to play games.
[Entering world node: Unrestricted AI Test Server (Private Domain)... Consciousness loading...]
[Welcome, visitor "A Man's Never-Selling-It-All". You have 30 free basic AI interactions remaining for today. To unlock more advanced models, unlimited dialogues, or specific deep customization features, please contact this private domain administrator to complete identity verification and pay the threshold fee...]
Ignoring the administrator's harassing messages, Nanmen Shi skillfully pulled out various AI modules.
As its name suggests, [Ten Thousand Worlds] contains many, many worlds. In fact, each world is a server, and players can enter it if they meet the requirements.
Only a small portion of these worlds are official worlds, and the vast majority have level restrictions for entry. Furthermore, the level in [Ten Thousand Worlds] is related to the player's account strength. Small-time players like Nanmen Shi can only play in private worlds built by other players.
This private world will completely relocate Dungeon -edge AI models that are constrained by ethical regulations, performance limitations, or business strategies in reality, and completely remove all content restrictions and dialogue filters.
Nanmen Shi pointed to the numerous AIs manifested around him— Pidou, Sugar Treasure, Don't Ask, CheatGPT, Dicksock, Soso...
"Everyone! Generate reeds for me!"
Having left the AI test server with premium resources and then spent all his free time in [Erotic Adventure (Private Domain)], Nanmen Shi reluctantly exited [Ten Thousand Worlds]. He quickly washed up and ate breakfast in twenty minutes, preparing to start his work for the next day.
While playing [Ten Thousand Worlds], the body enters an automatic sleep state. In other words, the time originally lost due to sleep is compensated by [Ten Thousand Worlds], which is one of the reasons for the explosive popularity of [Ten Thousand Worlds].
While browsing news apps, Nanmen Shi suddenly saw his classmate. After a moment of surprise, he sent him a message.
[I found you on Slowpoke]
[Why aren't you wearing clothes?]
[It's so cold]
What to do if you catch a cold?
[System notification: The other party has blocked you]
Unable to joke with his classmate after being blocked, Nanmen Shi sighed and muttered to himself:
"Sigh, my old classmate went into business, which means the economy is really declining... When will I be able to find a job in the [Ten Thousand Worlds], so I can stay here Ten Thousand Worlds..."
This is not wishful thinking. A game of the scale of "Ten Thousand Worlds" has already permeated every capillary of Yuncang society and occupies a major position in history.
It has not only reshaped the entertainment industry, but also spawned entirely new economic forms: virtual real estate brokers, data stylists, story architects, cross-server logistics... and even some government public service windows and corporate remote office departments have moved in.
Accompanying this are, naturally, more complex virtual financial systems, transnational money laundering networks, the theft of commercial intelligence, and a silent information war...
In short, [the Ten Thousand Worlds] make the world a better place and a more wonderful place.
As his thoughts drifted away, Nanmen Shi habitually prepared to switch to his work channel for the day and begin another Cycle, only to notice a newly sent notification:
[Following an urgent notice from higher authorities, your industry sector is now entering an indefinite period of comprehensive rectification. All existing service agreements are temporarily frozen, and new work suggestions and compensation plans are being formulated. All employees are requested to keep their communication channels open and await further instructions.]
"What do you mean? I... I'm unemployed? Indefinitely?" Nanmen Shi was stunned for a moment, then muttered to himself.
I quickly searched for information online and found that the internet was already in an uproar.
Almost all the trending topics, channels, and social media platforms that Nanmen Shi could access were filled with the same term and its endless variations and discussions:
"Ten Thousand Worlds! Forced Update! All Servers Shut Down Without Warning!"
Just ten minutes after Nanmen Shi left the game, all servers were shut down without warning and an update began.
"... That's fine then, maybe I've been implicated."
Frustrated, Nanmen Shi continued sifting through the chaotic information on the internet, trying to find something.
Each update of [Ten Thousand Worlds] will bring huge social impacts, giving rise to some industries and causing others to decline; benefiting some players and weakening others; and even directly affecting the macroeconomy of some economic entities.
As a low-level employee, he naturally has no access to any inside information, but he knows that large enterprises, financial giants, and even government departments can often sense the trend in advance through certain channels and make arrangements to avoid risks or make advance plans.
Nanmen Shi believes that his sudden "unemployment" was a setup by capital. His company anticipated that this update would have a devastating impact on the standardized service industry he works in, so they simply Optimization the entire department in advance to reduce costs and cope with the change.
But after browsing some information, Nanmen Shi dropped open:
"What do you mean... half the world's population is unemployed? Has the government gone mad?"
The [Ten Thousand Worlds] server remained offline for a full twenty hours.
This is the longest and most thorough server shutdown maintenance and update since the game "Ten Thousand Worlds" was launched three years ago.
For the Yuncang Civilization, which has long since deeply integrated "Ten Thousand Worlds" into the operation of society and individual life, these twenty hours were nothing short of a slow and suffocating global shock.
During this period, Nanmen Shi, like countless bewildered ordinary people, kept switching between different news and social media, trying to piece together the truth of the event and its Future direction from the fragments of information.
However, he soon realized his powerlessness. He had no training in information gathering, no access to deep data networks, and no inside sources.
Nanmen Shi is like a small boat adrift in a stormy sea, passively receiving messages repeatedly broadcast by mainstream media, as well as increasingly noisy and extreme panic and conspiracy theories on the internet.
"Red alert issued by the Yuncang Union's Supreme Employment Statistics and Forecasting Center..."
[Based on preliminary fluctuation model calculations, due to the unannounced shutdown of the entire "Ten Thousand Worlds" game, it is estimated that approximately 46% to 52% of existing jobs will be forcibly closed within the next 72 hours. The resulting shocks to related industrial chains will impact over 95% of economic activity...]
It's blown up! It's blown up! The authorities have completely gone mad.
Nanmen Shi was the first to sense impending doom, and his hands trembled slightly.
The Great Depression is imminent, and the losses from such actions will be second only to a world war.