Researchers alerted

Ke Meng ate breakfast and checked his temperature before heading out. Everything was normal, so there probably wasn't anything wrong.

He went downstairs with the camera equipment he had bought for twenty thousand yuan, planning to use his car as material for his next review video.

He wasn't particularly wealthy. He owned only two properties, and he hadn't bought his car either; it was part of the inheritance his parents had left him. Compared with truly rich people, he was just an ordinary man.

Without family around, he had grown used to living alone like this.

At some point, seeking out fun had become Ke Meng's greatest hobby. Even when something might carry a little risk, he was willing to give it a try.

He was curious about what sort of skill the Shadow-Grasping Hand would be.

Against the pitch-black backdrop of space, a planet whose land was surrounded by an orange ocean revolved around its star.

The orange ocean was a distinctive feature of Orange Star. Its waters contained an immeasurable number of orange plankton. Influenced by trace elements and minerals in the seawater, these plankton had evolved a special light-sensitive outer layer over billions of years, one that did not absorb longer-wavelength orange light.

Since these plankton filled the seawater across the globe, the entirety of Orange Star's oceans appeared orange.

Mech City was a highly developed city of intelligent machines on Orange Star.

Artificial intelligence oversaw daily life and industrial production in Mech City. None of its residents needed to perform any physical labor.

In Mech City, the only jobs humans needed to do were in scientific research.

Those who lacked research skills, or simply didn't want to pursue research, could enjoy life and entertainment.

Virtual reality games, developed through disciplines such as neuroscience, materials science, and Brain Waves studies, were among Mech City's most popular everyday pastimes. The number of virtual reality games currently on the market had reached nine hundred and one.

In an extremely tall skyscraper in Mech City, the man lying in the bedroom of apartment 06 on the 210th floor suddenly opened his eyes and screamed, "Aaah! Aaah!" His expression twisted, veins bulged on his forehead, and he appeared to be in extreme pain.

The large pod lid covering the bed displayed danger alerts and sounded warnings:

"Warning! Warning! Abnormal Brain Waves! Suspected brain injury!"

"Safety protocols activated! The research institute and local hospital have been notified!"

"Research institute personnel have been dispatched!"

"Estimated arrival time of hospital rescue aircraft: 68 seconds!"

As the virtual Game Pod blared its warnings, the Game Pods of two other people in Mech City also sounded loud alarms and notified the research institute and local hospitals.

In Mech City, there was no option to call the police, because robots had replaced human law enforcement. Artificial intelligence monitored every public space, leaving no criminal able to live there undisturbed.

The local hospitals were also staffed by medical robots. A maglev transport vehicle on constant standby immediately entered a vacuum maglev tube and soon reached a maglev station near the patient.

A small, electrically propelled passenger aircraft slowly flew out of the transport vehicle, passed through a vacuum transfer station and an isolation zone, then emerged from the transport tube.

It flew several hundred meters and arrived outside the balcony on the 210th floor at precisely the sixty-eighth second.

The skyscraper's artificial intelligence took control of apartment 06 on the 210th floor. The balcony railing retracted, and two medical robots rushed inside with a stretcher, finding the resident howling in a frenzy.

Before they arrived, the city's central AI had taken over the Game Pod's AI, and the patient's physical data and live footage had been uploaded to the medical system for analysis.

The medical robots injected a powerful sedative as soon as they entered. The man howling in a frenzy gave two muffled grunts, then closed his eyes a few seconds later and stopped thrashing.

The two robots then carried him aboard the rescue aircraft and rushed back to Mech City General Hospital.

The two men driven into similar frenzies elsewhere were also picked up by rescue aircraft dispatched to the scene and flown to local hospitals.

At Mech City Research Institute, the director was startled by the sudden alert.

"Three people sustained brain injuries and were forcibly logged out by the safety system!" he read from the red text on the light screen, utterly astonished.

For the technologically advanced civilization of Orange Star, suffering brain injuries from playing virtual games was simply inconceivable.

Virtual Game Pods had been in operation for decades. Apart from a few minor issues during the first years of operation, such as players exhausting themselves and developing neurasthenia after gaming for forty-eight hours straight, or a small number experiencing excessively long delays in their Brain Waves connections, no further problems had occurred after those issues were fixed.

These machines had never caused brain injuries. Every Game Pod underwent exceptionally strict quality control. Even a one-in-ten-million defect meant being sent back for remanufacturing, with production standards matching those for spacecraft.

Knowing how serious the situation was, the director immediately checked the AI's safety measures. Its task list showed that it had already reassigned five researchers to the maglev transit level at the first opportunity.

If the director had issued the orders himself, making an actual decision would have taken several seconds longer than the artificial intelligence. Having the AI issue orders was therefore the fastest option, a rule written into its programming.

Of course, the director could also cancel the AI's actions after it issued its orders, but he wouldn't do that. This was about saving lives; there was no reason to cancel anything.

"Send the news to all researchers. Anyone available should attend a meeting. Also, dispatch Virtual Game researchers and medical researchers to the hospitals to assess the situation. And notify the people at the World game company. Tell them to come see me immediately."

"Orders executed." The message appeared on the light screen instantly.

Soon afterward, the director entered the conference hall, which was already filled with researchers in white research uniforms.

The researchers were people on Orange Star who had risen above trivial pleasures. They were passionate about research, delving deeply into knowledge across technological disciplines to make Orange Star's technology even more advanced.

Thus, whenever they gathered, they were always researching one thing or another.

Today's research topic was highly unusual. Everyone stared at the words on the large light screen with grave expressions.

"Three players sustained brain injuries while playing a virtual game"

After looking at the large light screen, every researcher hurriedly lowered their head to download the meeting materials.

They swiped through the light screens in their hands. Some read through the three players' life histories, from childhood to the present.

Some checked the Game Pod's operating code from the preceding few minutes, trying to identify anomalies.

Some read the three players' game data.

Under normal circumstances, the game system had no right to record players' private activities. Video footage was only available if the players recorded it themselves.

As a result, no one knew what the three had actually experienced. They could only review the gaming videos the players had made and posted online.

"Central AI, are there any recent videos? We want something that just happened, preferably recorded in the last few minutes."

A researcher specializing in gaming asked urgently. He was desperate to know why playing a game could cause brain injuries. For a civilization whose technology had already entered the interstellar age, this was simply inconceivable.

"The database has been updated. The latest video has been added to the database. Please review it." The central AI downloaded every file from the Game Pod's storage, reviewed them at lightning speed, and, after determining through logical analysis that the footage could help treat the players, immediately uploaded it to the database.

Everyone perked up at this and pulled up the latest video to watch.

In the video, they saw a group of dog-headed humanoids tightly binding five players.

Ahem, they were playing a virtual game, after all. The technology involved was fairly advanced, and that was roughly how the setting worked.

This wasn't Earth, but its culture was extremely similar to Earth's.

In other words, it was a three-way connection between [the protagonist's planet], [the game world], and [Orange Star].