Dream Football World

When Hu Lai heard a faint sound from the bedroom door behind him, his left hand swiftly scrolled down on the phone. Then, using four fingers, he pushed the phone toward his wrist, sliding it into the slightly oversized sleeve of his school uniform.

Traditional Chinese middle school uniforms were often extremely loose tracksuits that looked terribly ill-fitting. They wrapped up all the graceful vigor of youth so tightly that it was completely hidden, as if they feared students would lose focus on their studies the moment they saw each other's youthful energy.

To many people who cared about appearances, these uniforms were a prime target for ridicule. But Hu Lai liked the design very much, because when he hid a phone in his sleeve, there was absolutely no sign of it from the outside...

Just after he silently tucked the phone into his cuff, a hand reached out from behind him and lifted the open textbook, exposing the empty desktop.

"Dad, what are you doing?" Hu Lai turned back, feigning surprise as he looked at his father.

A middle-aged man who bore a seventy- or eighty-percent resemblance to Hu Lai said sternly, "Checking whether you've been secretly playing on your phone."

"How could I?" Hu Lai forced a smile. "I study very seriously!"

"Seriously? With those scores from your entrance placement test, you still dare say you study seriously?" his father said unhappily.

"That's because I'm not capable enough, Dad. I studied seriously, but my abilities are limited..." Hu Lai said with an ingratiating smile.

"..." His father glared fiercely at him and slammed the textbook into Hu Lai's hands. "Be serious!"

"Okay, Dad. I'll definitely study seriously." Hu Lai nodded like a pecking chicken, hoping only to placate his father and get him to leave quickly.

His father turned and walked out, but he did not close the door right away. Instead, he stood silently at the doorway for a while, his eyes fixed on his son's back.

Under his gaze, Hu Lai bent over the desk, sometimes raising his head with a thoughtful expression, sometimes lowering it to write furiously.

There was nothing unusual.

His father then looked around his son's bedroom. The bed was somewhat messy, with the quilt from last night still unmade, lying as it had after being thrown aside that morning; the bookshelf was crammed haphazardly with all kinds of books, some sticking halfway out because there was no room left, looking as if they might fall at any moment; his unzipped schoolbag lay open on the floor beside the socks he had taken off... Everything was no different from usual.

Only then did he gently close the door.

After the faint click sounded, Hu Lai remained in the same position for a while longer. Then he pretended to stretch, straightening up and twisting his waist from side to side with his arms raised. Taking the opportunity, he quickly glanced at the door and saw that it was closed. His father was indeed gone.

Only then did he take the phone out of his sleeve and unlock the screen. It was still on the page he had been viewing before the screen went dark.

A football player whose face was hidden in darkness stood on the right side of the screen with his hands on his hips and a football under his foot. On the left were six large characters: "Dream Football World." The upper "mouth" component of the character for "football" had been replaced by a spinning football—yes, this was a mobile football game called Dream Football World.

The moment he saw the screen, Hu Lai could not wait to let out a chuckle.

After being mocked at school during the day, he had wanted to blow off some steam with a football game. He might not be a highly skilled star in real life, but couldn't he be one in a game?

He had searched the app store for a long time before finding this game. What attracted him was this section of its description:

"...Through 3D scanning and modeling technology, players can create an image in the game that is exactly like themselves, allowing them to enjoy the same immersive sensation as holographic technology. With a fully immersive gaming experience, players will be unable to tear themselves away. It can be said to be the most realistic and most entertaining football game currently on the market!"

Although that description was somewhat suspected of violating the Advertising Law, the claim that scanning technology could create his image in the game had truly tempted Hu Lai, and he had ultimately downloaded it to give it a try.

It was free, anyway. If the description turned out to be nothing but bragging, he could just delete it.

Hu Lai tapped the screen and entered the game. The display changed to the character creation process.

Then a request popped up asking for permission to activate the front camera, and Hu Lai allowed it manually.

The display switched to the front camera view, showing Hu Lai's face along with a circular dotted frame.

A line of text below instructed him: "Please place your face within the dotted frame."

After Hu Lai did so, a new prompt appeared: "Please turn your head left and right."

Hu Lai complied.

"Please nod up and down."

Hu Lai obediently did as instructed, growing even more excited about what would come next—he had seen phones with Face ID register faces like this online. So this game really could use facial scanning for 3D modeling?!

After waiting a few seconds, a line of information popped up on his phone screen. It showed his name, height, weight, and age.

Hu Lai, 170 cm, 52 kg, 16 years old.

Hu Lai froze when he saw the information. He had not expected the game system to display his personal details directly—and all of them were correct!

"Damn, how did it do that? Did it read the data from my phone apps?"

While Hu Lai was still astonished, another input box appeared on the screen: "Please enter your position on the field."

Without hesitation, Hu Lai entered "forward."

A few seconds after he submitted his position, a prompt box popped up: "Football star Hu Lai, welcome to Dream Football World!"

After a burst of dazzling shifting light, a Hu Lai appeared on the phone screen. His height and weight were exactly the same as Hu Lai's in real life, and most importantly, that face... Hu Lai examined it carefully and nearly thought he himself had somehow run into the phone screen. It was hard to imagine this was the result of mobile 3D modeling. It looked utterly natural—however he looked at it, it was a real person, not the product of game modeling.

At least, judging from Hu Lai's limited gaming experience, all those games on the market that touted themselves as "realistic" still looked visibly different from reality, no matter how exquisite their graphics were or how much their CG cutscenes made people exclaim, "It looks just like the real thing!" There was always a kind of weightless, artificial quality to them, lacking the texture of true reality.

But this virtual "Hu Lai" before him had an unmistakable sense of substance. Standing inside the phone screen, he looked like a clip of live-action footage.

Hu Lai zoomed in on the facial details. The "Hu Lai" on the phone looked at him, and he looked back at "Hu Lai." The two of them stared at each other wide-eyed, giving Hu Lai the illusion that he was taking a selfie with his front camera.

"Damn... this is incredible!" Hu Lai murmured in amazement. "Has game technology already developed this far?"

He zoomed the character back out and swiped his finger across the screen, changing angles to observe his virtual self, occasionally clicking his tongue in admiration.

After playing around with it for a while, Hu Lai remembered why he had downloaded the game in the first place—of course, it was to wreak havoc in the game and become the coolest guy on the pitch.

So he tapped Next, ready to enter the game.

The phone screen flickered. It first went black, then white—before returning to the phone's home screen.

Hu Lai stared at his phone's home screen for a moment, then realized that the game... had crashed!

"What... the hell?"

Hu Lai hurriedly found the game icon and tapped it again. At the same time, he prayed that the character he had created was still there and that he would not have to start over.

But this time, nothing happened when he tapped it. If he had not still been able to swipe between screens, Hu Lai would have thought his phone had frozen...

After trying several times, Hu Lai had no choice but to accept the reality that something had probably gone wrong with the game and that he could no longer get in.

So he deleted the game, intending to download it again.

But no matter how hard he searched the app store, he could not find the game.

No matter what keywords he used, he could not find the game called Dream Football World. It was as if the game had never existed in the app store at all.

Still unwilling to give up, he used his browser to search for the game's name directly, but he could not find any useful information either—there were all kinds of football games in the results, but not a single one was the game he had just played.

"How weird..."

Hu Lai was deeply frustrated. The shock of the game's character modeling had filled him with anticipation for it, but who would have thought it would end like this?

So it was not enough that he could not dominate the football field in real life—now he could not even entertain himself in a game?

God, I think you're deliberately trying to make things difficult for me, Hu Lai!

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