"Welcome to Primordial Immortal Cultivation Record!"
"Please select your gender!"
Ying Huaixu: "Male!"
"Selection successful. Entering appearance customization!"
Appearance customization was just a fancy term for making a face.
Ying Huaixu took this step very seriously.
After all, buyers cared a great deal about looks in a full-dive game like this.
Naturally, Ying Huaixu put plenty of effort into his face, making it as handsome as possible.
After all, he was gambling on a starter account. If he rolled good spiritual roots, this account would be worth a fortune.
"Confirm submission!"
After sculpting a ridiculously handsome face, Ying Huaixu clicked confirm.
But something seemed different today.
"Buzz..."
"Please link your identity information for the anti-addiction system!"
Ying Huaixu froze.
"Huh? Another system update? Didn't you used to link your ID after rolling your spiritual roots? Are they deliberately trying to stop account-farming studios?"
Still, it didn't matter.
He could always unlink it afterward.
Ying Huaixu had no choice but to link his identity.
Everything was ready.
The system's voice sounded again.
"Please select your world difficulty."
"Easy, medium, hard, hell, challenge, nightmare, Hongmeng..."
Without a second thought, Ying Huaixu chose Hongmeng.
Obviously. Rich people only played Hongmeng Mode these days.
For one simple reason: only Hongmeng Mode could show just how rich they were.
Never underestimate a Hongmeng game's ability to squeeze money out of players.
"Warning: Hongmeng Mode offers more opportunities, but after you use your ten starting Creation Rejuvenation Pills, death will permanently erase your save and all associated data."
A pop-up appeared next.
Without even looking, Ying Huaixu confirmed that he had read and agreed to the terms.
He was in a hurry to roll his spiritual roots.
After a series of inputs, Ying Huaixu finally got things moving.
At last, he saw that familiar spatial wormhole pull him in.
"Young master, young master, wake up!"
Ying Huaixu opened his eyes to a familiar scene and the familiar commoner starter outfit, while the heroine's familiar voice reached his ears.
Ye Ningshuang, the main heroine whose story ran throughout the entire Hongmeng World.
She also served as the players' early-game guide NPC.
"Young master, you scared me half to death! You were perfectly fine, so how did you suddenly... Hmm? Young master, what's wrong?"
Ye Ningshuang watched Ying Huaixu keep rolling his eyes upward!
Ying Huaixu, meanwhile, was looking for the skip button in the upper-left corner.
Then he grew confused.
"Seriously, where's the skip button in this shitty game? Fuck, just wait until I log out. I'm going to flame the hell out of you! You didn't even post an announcement."
Even more baffling, wasn't this NPC a little too intelligent?
She could actually hold a real-time conversation?
"Young master, are you all right?"
Ying Huaixu couldn't be bothered with this NPC.
He simply got out of bed and hopped out the door under Ye Ningshuang's stunned gaze.
Ye Ningshuang opened her mouth, then murmured worriedly, "This young master seems to be an idiot..."
But Ying Huaixu frowned.
Something felt very strange.
Granted, Primordial Immortal Cultivation Record was a full-dive simulation game.
It was known as the little blue pill of the gaming world.
But wasn't this account a little too realistic today?
Why the hell was he getting tired?
Still, none of that mattered.
Ying Huaixu hopped over to the stone table outside the courtyard.
Several weapons lay on it for him to choose from.
Without hesitation, Ying Huaixu picked up the longsword.
He really had no other choice.
Using a longsword gave him a chance to roll sword-related spiritual roots.
And a cultivator who started with sword spiritual roots could often fetch an astronomical price.
Then Ying Huaixu charged off again, longsword in hand, hopping all the way.
The first beginner quest was to help Ye Ningshuang deal with an impending crisis.
Actually, it didn't matter whether he accepted the quest first.
He could kill everyone and come back to accept it afterward.
Ying Huaixu wanted efficiency right now. He wanted to get this account rolled quickly, without wasting any more time.
Meanwhile, inside a ruined temple in Peaceful Town, a burly man over six feet tall sat on the floor, covered in wounds.
A crowd of underlings surrounded him.
The burly man was in a terrible mood.
He even took out a small box, his face filled with fury!
"This fucking thing is nothing but trouble!"
He was bitter about it, too.
As a bandit, robbing people was an everyday occurrence.
But ever since he had found this little box on a corpse a few days ago, people had been hunting him nonstop.
At first, he had figured that anything worth so many people coming after him had to be a treasure.
So he had absolutely refused to hand it over.
The problem was, he couldn't open the thing.
As more and more people came after him, however, he finally decided he couldn't keep it on him any longer.
If the pursuit continued, he felt certain he would die.
"We'll rest here tonight and leave tomorrow morning!"
After some thought, he put the little box beneath the temple's damaged statue.
He left it in plain sight, as though afraid someone might miss it!
"Oh, right. I heard there's a girl in this town named Ye Ningshuang, a real beauty. Bring her here. I'm going to enjoy myself tonight!"
"Once I've had my fun, you can have her!"
His underlings immediately grew excited.
"Just wait, boss. I'll go bring that little bitch over right now!"
But the underling had barely finished speaking when screams rang out outside the door.
"What's going on?"
The burly man's face tightened with anxiety.
An underling rushed in from outside, a deep gash across his back.
"Run, boss! A villager from Peaceful Town showed up, and he's slaughtering everyone!"
The burly man: "???"
"A villager? Slaughtering everyone? Are you kidding me?"
Before the underling could explain, he breathed his last!
The burly man hurried outside to investigate.
Then he witnessed a bizarre scene.
A young man was using a longsword to cut down his underlings like vegetables, with nothing but the most basic chops, slashes, and thrusts.
The strangest part was the young man's footwork. He couldn't make sense of it.
It seemed like a movement technique, yet somehow it didn't.
What he didn't know was that...
Ying Huaixu was just as baffled.
"What's wrong with this game today? Where the fuck are the monsters' health bars?"
"And is this really a Hongmeng-difficulty world? Why are these monsters so squishy? One slash and they're dead?"
Utterly confused, Ying Huaixu kept glancing at the world difficulty on the map in the upper-right corner.
It definitely said Hongmeng difficulty.
"Is there a bug?"
Oh well. Maybe the developers had deliberately lowered the difficulty.
Then Ying Huaixu started frantically executing combos.
Before long...
He had killed every last bandit underling.
Then Ying Huaixu turned his gaze on the six-foot-tall boss!
The bandit leader was still in a daze.
He felt as though he were dreaming.
How could someone who knew no martial arts kill people so quickly?
It made no sense.
Ying Huaixu, meanwhile, assumed the boss hadn't activated yet.
Finally, the bandit leader flew into a rage.
"You're asking for death, brat!"
He raised his horse-cleaving saber and charged at Ying Huaixu.
But once they started fighting, the bandit leader was dumbfounded.
Ying Huaixu dodged every attack by ducking and dashing, hopping backward, jumping, and rolling.
The moves were utterly plain, yet always perfectly timed.
As he dodged, he kept hacking wildly at the bandit leader with his longsword.
The damage wasn't high, but it hurt.
And the bandit leader never so much as touched the hem of Ying Huaixu's clothes.
Ying Huaixu whittled him down for two whole minutes until he finally died.
Even after the bandit collapsed, his eyes remained wide with disbelief.
What baffled him most was that, after killing him, that commoner rushed straight inside, picked up the little box, and opened it instantly.
"I... pfft..."
The bandit leader died of sheer rage!
Before you continue