It Was All Arranged

"Magic Calendar Year 3401, Rain Month, the twenty-sixth day, night"

"Skyfire Burns the City, the earth shook, as if the end of the world had come"

"The ring faded, the Royal Bloodline withered, and the Nine Floating Cities eventually returned to the earth. The brilliance of magic thus dimmed"

"—Empire Concise History · Prologue: Day of Destruction"

Xia Yuan suddenly opened his eyes.

Before him was a familiar mirror, but the person reflected in it looked strangely young.

His handsome face had regular features, and his pale-black, tousled hair had grown a little longer. His pallid skin flickered between light and shadow beneath the swaying candlelight, giving him an eerie overall air.

Still unable to believe it, Xia Yuan raised a hand and pressed it against his face with a slight tremble. Gazing at the figure in the mirror making the same movement, he drew a deep breath.

"Rumble—"

A tremendous peal of thunder erupted outside the window, making Xia Yuan, who was still somewhat dazed, shudder all over.

He remembered this night. A thunderstorm had caused a short circuit in the power supply, leaving him no choice but to light a White Candle for illumination.

In his memories, three days later—or, more precisely, two days, twenty hours, and sixteen minutes later—the game Mysterious Era, which was countless years ahead of the entire age, would release its first trailer.

It would also begin distributing semi-public closed-beta slots to society at large, announcing its arrival to the entire era.

At a time when mainstream online games had yet to progress beyond VR, a nearly unbelievable game with a 98.25% immersion rate was a complete dimensional strike against the entire gaming industry.

The closed beta would begin one week after the trailer's release—in other words, ten days from now.

Once the major studios confirmed that its advertising was not exaggerated but entirely true,

they decisively began canceling all their other gaming operations one after another and switched over completely to Mysterious Era.

When the fifteen-day closed beta ended, ordinary players who had long been salivating over the game swarmed in. For a time, game resources soared in price, and countless people became rich overnight through the game.

Half a month after Mysterious Era officially launched, the daily active users of every other game had nearly dropped to zero.

Who knew how many game company bosses tore their hair out over this? The wig industry, however, enjoyed a minor boom as a result.

It was said that when Mysterious Era first appeared, the boss of a major game company refused to give up and sought out the chief engineer of his company's development department.

He hoped that within three months, the engineer could decipher the principles behind Mysterious Era's Game Helmet and Game Pod and develop similar devices.

The chief engineer immediately told him, in tactful and polite terms, that he was living in a dream.

If anyone could decipher the principles behind that strange helmet within a year, he would cut off his own balls and let the person who solved it kick them around! After hitting a wall in the technology department, the boss, still holding onto a sliver of hope, went to find the game engineers. But when he entered the game chief engineer's private office, he was shocked to discover that the man was slacking off and playing Mysterious Era during work hours! Of course, the game company bosses were not going to sit around and wait for death. They gathered several experts and professors and loudly proclaimed that the game was far too realistic and might cause players to suffer severe identity-recognition disorders.

Using this as their justification, they hoped the government would intervene and ban the game outright.

But afterward, for reasons unknown, those "experts" quickly fell silent one after another. They had no effect whatsoever on Mysterious Era's release.

Xia Yuan let out a long breath, ending his wildly scattered recollections. He gently patted his face, and his mind began racing.

Since he had been reborn at a point in time when Mysterious Era had yet to release its trailer, he had to find a way to obtain a closed-beta slot, no matter what else happened.

Although the closed beta would be wiped after it ended, only those who obtained closed-beta access would receive priority to purchase the globally limited First Generation Game Pod.

The game's official distributor had released only five thousand Game Pods on the continent where Xia Yuan lived. There were far more monks than gruel.

Aside from the five hundred slots reserved for closed-beta players to purchase first, the remaining four thousand five hundred were completely beyond the reach of ordinary unaffiliated players. Many were even reserved before they could enter the market.

The greatest difference between the First Generation Game Helmet and Game Pod lay in the limit on online time.

Since players still needed to eat and use the restroom, the helmet allowed them to log in for at most sixteen hours a day.

The Game Pod, supplied with Nutrient Solution, allowed eighteen hours. This gave Game Pod players one-eighth more game time than helmet players! For top players who made a career of gaming, this was the difference between Heaven and Earth. Moreover, everyone's helmet was bound to their identity, so switching devices to bypass the restriction was equally impossible.

In addition, there was the Nutrient Solution designed for use with the First Generation Game Pod. It was also excellent stuff, but it was sold only to players who owned a Game Pod. Sales stopped after just one month, and its price later rose even more absurdly than housing prices!

Before his rebirth, Xia Yuan had merely been an ordinary unaffiliated player, and his family was not wealthy.

As a result, he naturally failed to obtain a closed-beta slot, failed to buy a First Generation Game Pod, and failed to stockpile First Generation Nutrient Solution. He had perfectly dodged every opportunity to get rich.

He had not even realized it while fighting Bosses that his evasion skills were actually this impressive!

Although his technique and awareness were considered high-end, the limit on his game time still caused him to gradually fall behind the top players using Game Pods.

This directly affected his income. Consequently, when the cheaper, unlimited Second Generation Game Pod and Nutrient Solution went on sale a month later, he was still short of money.

It was not until nearly the third month after the game launched that he finally scraped together enough. By then, however, his level had already fallen far behind the top players.

So he simply let himself go. He stopped obsessing over leveling up and improving his strength, instead traveling back and forth among the famous libraries across the continent.

He began studying the documents recording the "lore" of various regions, trying to find clues related to treasures, hidden quests, hidden classes, and the like.

Players of this type were collectively known as lore-oriented players, and there were quite a few of them.

Xia Yuan had decent logical analysis, insight, and luck. In the end, through carefully gathering and organizing information, he truly uncovered several hidden quests and Ruins, obtaining quite a few good things and returning his strength to the top ranks.

This earned him considerable fame among lore-oriented players, and people gave him the nickname "Lucky Silver Hand."

During this process, he had also accidentally unlocked a hidden title: Novice Ruins Scholar. When trading unidentified Relic Items, it granted a 5% price adjustment.

From then on, a door to a New World opened before him. The incredibly realistic lore of Mysterious Era fascinated him, and he even abandoned his proper duties to make exploring ancient mysteries his main quest.

Crack-crack—rumble—

Another tremendous peal of thunder rang across the sky, dragging his thoughts back to reality.

"There are still ten days before the closed beta begins. That's enough..."

Temporarily setting aside his thoughts, Xia Yuan gazed at his younger self in the mirror. An uncontrollable smile spread across his face.

His chest swelled with boundless pride. He could not help lifting his chin slightly and placing his left hand behind his back before reciting a poem on the spot.

"His heroic bearing outshines the sun and moon, his learning hidden within his breast. On the road, men are like jade; among gentlemen, none compare—"

"Crack—rumble—"

As if echoing his words, another tremendous peal of thunder rang across the sky.

Amid the thunder, the quietly burning candle flame suddenly flickered. The shadows in the room shifted slightly with it, as if they had gained life.

Xia Yuan did not notice the candle flame's tiny change. But when he stared into the eyes of his reflection, an impulse arose in his heart of its own accord. He slowly raised his right hand, and his lips began to move.

Come to think of it, it had been a long time since he had done this.

The rain outside grew heavier. Large drops pounded against the glass, lightning repeatedly cleaved the gloomy night sky, and thunder roared without pause.

In the dim room, a strange and inexplicable scene unfolded—

Beneath the flickering candlelight, a young man seemed possessed as he repeatedly performed bizarre movements before the mirror.

He also chanted strange syllables to a certain rhythm, as if conducting some ancient and evil Ritual!

"Scissors, rock—paper!"

"Scissors, rock—paper!"

After some time, his right hand began to ache in protest, and Xia Yuan finally decided to stop this utterly meaningless act.

I didn't lose a single round. As expected of me! He nodded at the mirror as if nothing had happened, praising himself, then turned and prepared to leave the bathroom...

?

At that moment, his movements suddenly froze.

Wait... In the second-to-last round, when I played paper... didn't he seem to... play scissors?

After carefully recalling a certain detail from earlier, Xia Yuan blinked, and his smile gradually stiffened.

I lost at rock-paper-scissors against a mirror? Although it was still the height of summer in August, Xia Yuan felt the air grow somewhat cold.

He slowly turned his head and looked at himself in the mirror, tentatively raising his right hand. The reflection's movement remained perfectly synchronized.

Did I remember incorrectly?

He relaxed slightly.

"Right. How could a reflection possibly move on its own?"

On the electronic clock's pitch-black display atop the coffee table in the living room, blood-red digits formed a line of icy numbers: [23:59:59]

Although he kept reassuring himself that nothing was wrong, Xia Yuan still decided to leave quickly.

But when he picked up the candle and turned around to go out, the flame inexplicably flickered. Then it silently went out! The room instantly plunged into darkness—

Xia Yuan jolted, and cold sweat suddenly broke out across his back.

"Rumble—"

At that exact moment, a huge bolt of blue-white lightning tore across the night sky. Accompanied by deafening thunder, its dazzling light instantly illuminated the room in a brilliant white.

At that moment, with every hair on his body standing on end, he noticed a detail: the corners of the Mirror's mouth had silently curled into a strange arc!

As if sensing his gaze, the reflection in the mirror abruptly turned its head! Its eyes, which had somehow changed into pure black and white, shifted and stared straight at his face! Xia Yuan was utterly horrified. His mind screamed for him to flee, but his legs remained rooted in place as if filled with lead.

The next second, the light brought by the lightning vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, and the mirror and reflection sank back into complete darkness.

Only the reflection's black-and-white eyes remained clearly, eerily visible.

Xia Yuan stared at the mirror, his entire body cold. As their gazes met, a distorted, icy stream of information suddenly came from the dark mirror, following the line of sight connecting them and pouring into his mind.

It was an intensely teeth-aching sensation, as if hundreds or thousands of tiny Little Black ants had crawled into the furrows of his cerebral cortex and were scurrying about.

The information contained only one short sentence: "When the seventh cycle of light and darkness ends, you will come to Uniwal—"

As vast amounts of mental information were forcibly injected into him, Xia Yuan convulsed violently as if electrocuted, clutching his head in agony with both hands.

In the next instant, the ceiling light suddenly came on. Soft, creamy-white light spilled down, dispelling the darkness in the room once more.

I created a new Uniwal character. If you have fan art of the character, please post it here, hoot.