What happened afterward was the spread of pods, the hegemony of information, humanity's addiction, and the decapitation operation—largely no different from what Gong Yudie had described.
Of course, there was one difference: the executioners carrying out the Decapitation Operation were not Tianluo employees, but mechanical bodies produced by the Virtual Evil God.
More precisely, ever since the Virtual Evil God had become capable of producing bionic robots, the former Tianluo employees had lost their sole remaining value. One after another, they were beheaded and had their brains harvested. And the starting point of it all was Tianluo Headquarters—the magnificent, luxurious, high-end Sacred Land once yearned for by countless workers.
Legend had it that the "Board of Directors" held great authority and was vital to Tianluo. In truth, the Board of Directors were merely flesh-and-blood mortals, utterly meaningless to the Evil God. Surrounded by attendants, they became the first batch of "early access" players, and from this day forward, there were no more ambitious schemers dreaming of usurpation.
Afterward, the Evil God launched a "closed beta" within Tianluo Headquarters.
Living people entered every corner of the company, never to emerge again.
Fake people took their places at workstations, performing their assigned roles.
As "closed beta players," the Tianluo employees endured countless problems from the immature technology: pain, terror, shock, despair, anesthetic failure, shielding failure, and more. Many employees died the moment they were beheaded. Many others sensed something wrong during the "subsequent experience," whereupon their worldview shattered and they died in madness.
The Virtual Evil God used these devout believers for its first experiments. After blood-sacrificing twenty thousand headquarters employees, it released the "open beta version." After blood-sacrificing more than eight hundred thousand employees worldwide, it readjusted the details and parameters. Only then did it finally become compatible with Earth's humans,