The vast Crimson Fleet sped through a golden-red river of energy.
For the players standing aboard the Crimson Boat, this was a faster-than-light interstellar voyage. The surrounding walls soared like the heavens, while the torrent of energy beneath their feet surged and roared.
"Too slow."
From his High-Dimensional Perspective, Gu Yuan watched the progress bar crawl along like a snail and shook his head helplessly.
His divine body was simply too enormous. For the microscopic "cells," traveling from the heart to the lungs was no different from an interstellar expedition. Even drifting along with the arterial blood flow would take an incredibly long time.
"I can't let them keep drifting around. The players will get bored and quit."
Gu Yuan swept his gaze ahead. Not far from the heart's exit stood an important checkpoint—the [pulmonary valve].
Due to long-term energy buildup, a natural "transfer station" had formed there.
"Let's build the first outpost there."
[Server Announcement: A transfer station—"Sighing Corridor"—will soon be reached ahead.] [Notice: The stellar journey is long. For resupply and regrouping, all Kinfolk are requested to dock at the corridor.]
Following the system broadcast, the players saw the endless river of stars ahead suddenly split apart. A gigantic white gate, so magnificent it was suffocating, stretched across heaven and earth.
It was an arterial valve made of three translucent giant leaflets that radiated a gentle holy glow. Each leaflet stood as towering as the Himalayan Mountains, blocking and diverting the rushing blood flow.
"This modeling... I'm about to kneel."
Vanguard Across the Realm looked up at the massive gate, simultaneously overwhelmed by fear and worship of something colossal.
The starship slowly came ashore. This was not the lungs, but a stretch of white land formed from calcified deposits.
At that moment, a lonely figure was already standing on the land.
It was a giant three meters tall, clad from head to toe in battered golden heavy armor and holding a broken spear. Beneath his helmet was nothing but a void-like black mist, with only two points of ghostly blue soul-fire flickering within.
This was the guide NPC Gu Yuan had created by expending divine power and drawing upon his remaining immune memories—[Ancient Watcher Zero].
The players swarmed ashore and immediately surrounded the only NPC.
"Holy shit! There's an NPC! A living one!"
"Big bro, got any quests for us?"
Brute Force Yields Miracles gathered his courage and poked the giant's armor with his Bone Hammer.
Clang!
With a sharp ring, the giant suddenly turned his head. His ghostly blue eyes fixed on Brute Force Yields Miracles, scaring the burly man into stumbling back three steps.
The giant spoke in a hoarse voice like grinding metal:
"Newborn... Kinfolk?"
"Too weak."
"You do not even have the right to survive that calamity."
Though his words were mocking, a huge golden question mark still lit up above the giant's head.
[Story Quest: Clear the Corridor Sludge] [Quest Giver: Watcher Zero] [Description: The gates of the Sighing Corridor have been clogged by "Void Dust." This has blocked the route to the Storm Star Domain. As recruits, this is your only value.] [Objective: Clear "hardened sludge" near the gates (0/1000).] [Reward: Unlock the "Corridor Teleport Point" and receive Bio-Energy +50.]
"Tch, so it's just a menial job."
Brute Force Yields Miracles curled his lip, but his body honestly accepted the quest. "Whatever. As long as it pays. I'm dying to buy that skill book."
In an instant, the once-silent corridor became a bustling scene.
Though it was only a dull mining and cleaning quest, the players managed to make it entertaining. Some competed to see who could dig faster, while others studied whether the sludge could be turned into equipment.
In the high-dimensional space, Gu Yuan watched the endless stream of Bio-Energy flowing into the system and nodded in satisfaction.
After several hours of the players' frenzied slaughter, exploration, and cleanup, his Bio-Energy reserves had finally crossed the threshold.
[Current Bio-Energy Reserves: 12,000 points.] [Heart Core Shield Energy: 0.05% -> 0.08%.]
"Enough energy." Gu Yuan's eyes sharpened. "The first thousand players are useful, but there are too few of them. Against the hundreds of millions of Virus Legion members in the lungs, this force isn't even enough to fill the gaps between their teeth."
"I have to recruit more."
But there was a problem. Gu Yuan's soul was extremely weak right now, and maintaining real-time high-dimensional connections for a thousand people already consumed most of his processing power. If he wanted to bring in more players, he had to sever the connections and use the energy on hand to deeply repair and expand the server—his own Soul Network.
"I can only make these guys suffer for now."
Gu Yuan waved his hand and pressed the server-wide kick button.
[Server Announcement: To all beloved Kinfolk.] [Now that the Sighing Corridor region has been opened, this world will undergo a "version update and server expansion" in order to accommodate the arrival of more warriors.] [Estimated maintenance time: 8 hours.] [Countdown: 10, 9, 8...]
"Holy shit? Server maintenance?"
Brute Force Yields Miracles, who had been digging sludge, froze. "Don't! I only need one more chunk to have enough money for that skill book! Just give me one more minute!"
"This game actually has server maintenance?"
Vanguard Across the Realm was also caught off guard. He had been about to explore the dark region deep within the corridor.
But the system was merciless.
[3, 2, 1.] [Connection terminated.]
Everyone's vision instantly went black.
Blue Star, the real world.
It was already late at night.
Magic City, Cloud Apartment.
The lid of the life-support pod slowly slid open.
"Phew..."
Vanguard Across the Realm, Chen Feng, removed his neural-link helmet and abruptly sat up.
A powerful, nauseating sense of heaviness struck him all at once.
In the game, he was a Hunter with an Agility stat as high as 12, capable of running across walls and roofs, his body as light as the wind;
But here, when his consciousness returned to his body, he only felt like a drowning man clad in hundreds of pounds of lead. His fingers were stiff, his reactions slow, and even breathing felt difficult.
"This feeling..."
Chen Feng raised his hand, wanting to grab the glass of water on the table.
His brain issued the command: reach out, grip it.
In the game, that movement would have been completed with lightning-fast precision.
But in reality, his hand trembled as it stretched out, and his fingertips merely brushed the side of the glass.
The glass tipped over, rolled onto the floor, and spilled water everywhere.
Chen Feng froze in place, his arm still outstretched as he stared fixedly at his disobedient right hand.
Everything that had just happened in the river of stars felt as though it had truly been nothing more than an incredibly vivid dream.
Chen Feng laughed at himself, bent down, and laboriously picked up the glass.
Though reason told him it was only a game, the enormous sense of loss from having once possessed a perfect body gnawed at his nerves like an addiction.
He did not want to remain in this useless shell.
He wanted to go back.
Back to that world where he could control everything and wield a Bone Blade to tear monsters apart.
Chen Feng lay back down in the life-support pod and stared stubbornly at the countdown displaying "Server Under Maintenance."
"Eight hours..." He gritted his teeth, his eyes bloodshot. "Hurry up..."
At the same time, Jingdu City.
Inside a special care ward.
Li You, Cloud Pomelo, removed her helmet. It was the first time she had ever been forcibly logged out of the game.
The ward was silent, save for the steady beeping of the machines.
She instinctively tried to lift her leg, just as she had done countless times in the game.
But this body did not move at all.
Stiff, cold, and completely numb.
Li You blankly stared for several seconds, then suddenly pulled the blanket over her head. Suppressed sobs drifted out from beneath it.
"Why... Why did you make me wake up..."
The more real it had felt to run and jump through the river of stars moments ago, the crueler the reality of lying in bed now became. This was not a game at all. It was the most beautiful dream woven for people like her, and also the cruelest punishment.
She glanced at the time.
Seven hours and fifty-nine minutes remained.
Li You wiped away her tears, and a trace of obsession appeared in her eyes.
She would not sleep.
She would watch over the countdown. Even for a single second, she did not want to enter late.
High-dimensional space, Titan Divine Body.
Gu Yuan had no idea how severe the withdrawal symptoms his "server maintenance" had caused among the players.
At that moment, he was using those 12,000 points of Bio-Energy to make a huge gamble.
"System, invest 10,000 energy points to repair the Soul Network nodes."
"Invest 2,000 energy points to incubate new Kinfolk bodies."
[Command confirmed.] [Constructing new soul-link channels...] [Estimated expansion capacity: 10,000 players.]
As the energy flowed in, Gu Yuan felt his previously muddled consciousness become slightly clearer. The constant, agonizing sensation that his brain was about to split apart also eased somewhat.
"Very good. The server upgrade was successful."
Gu Yuan looked at the new announcement generated by the system and curved his lips into a smile.
If he was going to play, he might as well play big.
Those viruses had probably already noticed the activity around the heart and were gathering their forces.
Then he would prepare an army of ten thousand for them.
He typed a new announcement onto the official website:
[Titan: Genesis Second Beta Test Is About to Begin!] [Version Update: Before the Storm] [Additional Slots: 10,000.] [New Race/Class Branch: Flame Prison Guard (Divine Guard Advancement).] [The place we are going is the sea of stars—and the abyss of purgatory.]
Blue Star's online world completely exploded with the release of that announcement.
Those who had failed to secure qualifications for the first test and had been mocking the "virus pop-up ads" were filled with regret after seeing the gameplay recordings released by first-test players: "Galaxy Drifting," "Tearing Monsters Apart Bare-Handed," and the "Chitin Lighter."
The forum was instantly flooded with discussion threads about Titan.
"Begging for an activation code! I'll pay ten thousand!"
"Get lost, guy above me. I'll pay fifty thousand!"
"This physics engine, this lighting... Can current human technology really make something like this?"
"Enough talk. Who else wants to team up? I'm a professional commander. I'm definitely getting into the second beta!"
A storm known as the Fourth Calamity was gathering strength, preparing to sweep across Gu Yuan's entire divine body world.
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