Arrival!

Blue Star Calendar, year 2045.

Although the Deep Blue Network had long since conquered brain-computer interface technology, propelling human society into an era of universal holography, an insurmountable Wall of Sighs stood before all game developers: 75% immersion.

This was the biological firewall established by the human brain to protect its consciousness from falling into chaos. Whether it was the Penguin Empire's Metaverse or Blizzard's Titanfall, once any attempt was made to break this threshold, players would be forcibly disconnected due to brain overload.

Until this night, when that pitch-black pop-up window violently tore through this wall.

Magic City, city center, Cloud Apartment.

The neon lights from outside the window reflected onto the pale face of Chen Feng. He leaned exhaustedly against his million-dollar Silver Wing life-support pod, his gaze dull as he stared at the electronic medical report he had just received on the holographic screen.

"Synaptic response delay syndrome..."

Chen Feng muttered to himself, his fingertips trembling slightly. To an ordinary person, this was merely a minor annoyance involving occasional hand tremors; but to him, a man who had once stood at the pinnacle of the God's Domain professional league and was hailed as the God of Combat, this was a death sentence.

His APM (actions per minute) had plummeted from his peak of six hundred to three hundred, failing to even match a second-tier trainee. This fall from the clouds into the mire was more painful than death.

"Ding."

With a soft chime, that pitch-black pop-up window abruptly covered the glaring black text on the white background of the medical report.

[Do you want to understand the meaning of life?]

A self-deprecating sneer curled the corners of Chen Feng's mouth, his eyes filled with gloom: "It's 2045 already, and people are still using this ancient virus meme to scam others?"

He raised his hand, intending to close this prank. But the moment his finger was about to touch the close button, he stopped.

That line of text seemed to possess a certain magic, like a needle piercing into his long-numb heart.

His professional career was ruined anyway; could life get any worse? If this was a scam, then let it be; at least it was better than facing this medical report.

With a sense of self-abandoning desperation, Chen Feng pressed the confirmation button that glowed with a blood-red light.

The next second, there was no loading bar as he had expected.

The life-support pod beneath him suddenly emitted a low, unprecedented roar, and immediately after, an irresistible torrent of data instantly submerged his consciousness. There was no dizziness, no nausea, only a sense of weightlessness as if his soul had been instantly extracted.

At the same time, Jingdu City First People's Hospital.

The late-night intensive care unit was filled with the faint scent of disinfectant. Li You lay on the hospital bed, struggling to move her eyeballs.

Paralyzed from the neck down for three years, her world had been cruelly compressed into this three-square-meter bed. Even with the most advanced holographic equipment, she could only "float" in the network world by capturing her eye movements and weak brain waves, but she could never simulate the sensation of her feet touching the ground.

"Can I really... run again?"

Li You looked at the pop-up window in her retinal projection, her heart beating violently. This might be a lie, but for someone drowning, she would cling to even a straw.

She closed her eyes and let out that desperate cry in her mind: Confirm.

The moment her consciousness returned, Chen Feng thought he had died.

He was floating in a pure white space, surrounded by flowing liquid light, as warm as a womb. In front of him, four massive gene spirals were rotating slowly, each exuding a powerful aura that made his heart tremble.

A grand and majestic voice resonated directly in the depths of his soul:

[Please select your evolutionary path]

Chen Feng's gaze swept across the options.

[Divine Guard], heavy as a mountain; [Life Weaver], full of vitality; [Spirit Pivot Envoy], wreathed in thunder. Finally, his gaze locked firmly onto the second option.

[Hunter] (Prototype: Killer T-Cell)

Role: High-speed assassin, weak-point breaker.

Description: An executioner walking in the shadows, specializing in killing rebels.

"High-speed... assassin..."

Chen Feng looked at the streamlined black bone blades, and the passion that had long been extinguished in his heart reignited at this moment. The reaction speed he had lost in reality, the pleasure of controlling his body—he would find it all back here!

"I choose this one." Chen Feng's voice was hoarse but firm, "This time, I will take back everything I lost!"

Meanwhile, in another corner of the pure white space.

Li You was staring blankly at her own "legs."

They were a pair of non-human limbs covered in white exoskeleton, with smooth lines and full of power. She tentatively issued a "lift leg" command.

It moved.

No delay, no obstruction.

Li You tried to jump in place, and her body soared lightly into the air. The moment she landed, the vibration from the soles of her feet was so clear, so real.

"Wuu..."

She covered her mouth, tears streaming down uncontrollably. She jumped and hopped around the space, laughing like a madwoman, and finally, her trembling finger pointed toward the profession named [Life Weaver].

Since heaven has given me a chance at rebirth, I will use these hands to repair and heal everything.

Coordinate: Heart Core Sanctuary

Boom--!!!

Chen Feng felt as if he had been stuffed into an intercontinental missile and slammed heavily into the ground. The violent impact made him stagger, but he quickly steadied his stance.

As the dust settled and he saw the world before him, this former professional gaming god was left completely speechless.

"This is... way too exaggerated..."

This was a grand, dark-red world. The sky was a dome woven from countless massive scarlet pipes; those pipes, as thick as dragons, were translucent, and one could vaguely see golden-red torrents surging within them, emitting thunderous roars.

The air was filled with a scent he had never smelled before—like rust, yet also like high-purity ozone; inhaling it into his lungs even brought a sense of excitement akin to oxygen intoxication.

But the most breathtaking sight was the crimson sun suspended in the center of the plaza.

It was a giant heart core, pulsing violently.

"Thump... thump..."

With every beat, Chen Feng could feel the earth beneath his feet trembling, his very bones resonating along with it. This wasn't a sound effect; this was the heartbeat of a god!

Chen Feng looked down at his own pitch-black claws, which looked as if they had been polished from obsidian, and swung them forcefully through the air.

Sshhh--

The sound of the air being torn apart was clearly audible. No lag, no stuttering; it was ten times more sensitive than his body at its peak in reality!

"Is this really a game?"

A surprised female voice came from nearby.

Chen Feng turned his head to see a petite female character with a massive mechanical backpack crouching on the ground, holding a dark-red fragment in her hand.

It was Li You. Her face was flushed with excitement: "Look! The material of this floor! The system prompted me that I collected 'Trace Myocardial Fiber'! And I just pinched myself; it really hurts, but it's a bearable kind of pain!"

At this moment, white light flickered constantly across the plaza as one thousand closed-beta players descended one after another.

Some had transformed into two-and-a-half-meter-tall [Divine Guard] units clad in heavy white bone plate armor, bumping their chests against each other like the Hulk to test physical collision; others had become [Spirit Pivot Envoy] units wreathed in blue electric arcs, attempting to shock their teammates' hair with their fingers.

Just as this group of "country bumpkins" was still marveling at the epoch-making physics engine and graphics, a sudden change occurred.

[Warning! Warning!]

[Hostile biological entities detected! Coordinate: Pericardial Defense Line, Zone E3.]

The shrill alarm instantly drowned out the grand, background heartbeat.

The red dome above the plaza suddenly tore open, as if a wound had burst. A mass of black mist, like ink dropped into clear water, spread rapidly.

"Roar--!!!"

Accompanied by a teeth-grinding screech, the first monster lunged out from the black mist.

It was a black arthropod creature the size of a calf. Its body dripped with green pus, and its compound eyes flashed with bloodthirsty red light. The moment it landed, its sharp mouthparts corroded the fleshy floor, sending up sizzling white smoke.

That was a Void Locust, the very pathogen inside Gu Yuan.

The system's cold and majestic voice exploded in the minds of all players:

[Server-wide Epic Quest: First Blood]

[Objective: Annihilate the vanguard of "Void Locusts" invading the Pericardial Defense Line (0/500)]

[Reward: Unlock pain regulation system, open bio-energy exchange list.]

No cutscenes, no NPC chatter. The monsters were right in their faces!

The foul, fishy stench that hit them made many players turn pale; a few timid ones were even so frightened that they collapsed to the ground, their legs turning to jelly. This kind of overwhelming, hyper-realistic pressure was nothing like the games they had played behind screens before.

But for some, their eyes had changed.

Chen Feng lowered his center of gravity. Beneath his black chitinous faceplate, those eyes that had once been filled with exhaustion and gloom were now burning with a raging fire.

This feeling... this racing heartbeat, this surge of adrenaline...

"This is what I wanted..."

A ferocious grin split Chen Feng's face. The bone blades on his arms popped out with a crisp mechanical click.

In reality, he was a cripple who couldn't even hold a water glass steady.

But here, he was a Hunter.

"As long as it has a health bar, I'll kill even a god for you to see!"

The moment the locust lunged toward a terrified player, Chen Feng transformed into a black bolt of lightning and cut instantly into the battlefield!