It was midnight. On the roof of the building next door, the stray cat named Chun started singing its utterly miserable love songs again, more punctual than an alarm clock.
"What should I do? Man, I'm bored." Dong Zhe stretched his stiff spine and, out of habit, steered his hunter out of the town hall, making a circuit of every building in his garrison. Wherever he went, his followers spoke to him with deep respect.
"Commander, I salute you!"
"Commander, it's an honor to serve you!"
Once again, Dong Zhe marveled at the game. Its AI really was meticulously designed. Almost every NPC had distinct characteristics that set them apart. Sometimes, it even felt as though they weren't mere NPCs, but living, breathing, flesh-and-blood intelligent beings interacting with you.
The barracks, the Gladiator's Sanctum, the stables, the engineering workshop, the tannery, the mine, the herb garden-he even went to have a look at the fishing dock. Every last building was already at max level.
He mounted his engineering motorcycle, rode outside the garrison's north gate, then took the portal in the tower there to Ashran. The crowds on the island had thinned considerably compared with a few months ago. The bustling prosperity of the old days was gone. To be honest, apart from adding garrisons as a new feature, the Warlords of Draenor expansion was still the same old thing, old wine in a new bottle. Many veteran players had tried out the garrisons, then fallen silent again once the novelty wore off.
Once again, he sighed. This game, which had once brought him countless moments of awe and joy, was finally slipping into decline after ten glorious years. Perhaps, in another year or two, it would die out completely?
He stopped letting his mind wander and casually opened his friends list. Every name on it was dark gray, indicating that they were offline.
"I should log off too. Better get to bed early. There's a whole pile of stuff to deal with tomorrow." Thinking about work made him irritable. He disliked sucking up to his superiors, and things weren't going well for him at the company. He pursed his lips, then clicked his Garrison Hearthstone. In the center of the screen, his human hunter began casting. Two seconds later, the familiar loading screen appeared. In the picture, seven savage-looking Orc clan lords of Draenor glared viciously at him, as though fighting him in the instance earlier hadn't been enough and now they wanted to leap out of the screen for another all-out battle.
At the bottom of the picture, the blue progress bar crept to the right like a snail. Under Dong Zhe's helpless gaze, it stopped with about a fifth of the way left to go.
"Please don't get stuck. Please don't get stuck..." Dong Zhe prayed devoutly. To his disappointment, however fervently he pleaded in his heart, the progress bar remained utterly motionless, as though the game had frozen.
He knew perfectly well what had happened. Fine. Stuck on the loading bar again.
"I'm so #%&* done with this! What kind of garbage server is this?!" Dong Zhe was beside himself with rage. He slammed his hand onto the desk and swore furiously. "Can't even let a guy go to bed in a good mood!"
Perhaps he had hit it too hard. The impact shook the monitor, and ripples passed across its LCD screen. It made the Orcs in the picture look as though they were smiling at him, a chilling sight.
"Oh, crap, my monitor!" Dong Zhe surrendered at once. He reached out to steady the monitor, which had cost him well over two thousand yuan and which he had bought specifically for World of Warcraft. "Please, Almighty Blizzard, I was wrong, okay? I'll never say another bad word about you..."
But his repentance had clearly come a little too late-a ball of eerie green light shot out of the strangely sinister-looking Gul'dan's hand on the crackling screen and struck Dong Zhe square in the chest. Before he could even cry out, his whole body went rigid and he passed out.
Two hours earlier, %$#&*, Gul'dan's lair.
This was their eleventh attempt at progressing on Gul'dan. To be honest, many of the guild's old members had already left, and opportunities to scrape together a full raid like today were rare. The guild leader had bought potions for the entire raid out of his own pocket, forced everyone to enchant their gear, and even laid out a feast. They weren't stopping until they brought Gul'dan down.
"Everyone, wake up! I told you, if we don't bring Gul'dan down this week, I'm disbanding the guild!" the guild leader threatened through gritted teeth on YY. He was already the guild's third leader and had lived through its glory and decline. The pitiful handful of people left in the guild now had him feeling dejected. "We're not getting the server's first disband. I can't live with that shame!"
Their luck seemed pretty good this time. After a frantic scramble and utter chaos, they finally knocked the boss's health below Execute range. By then, only fifteen people in the raid were still alive, and most of them were already half-dead.
"Rush! Rush! Shaman, mages, hunter's dog, get us pumped!" Finally seeing hope, the guild leader bellowed in his ragged voice on YY, his northeastern accent running wild. "We might not get world first, but I refuse to believe we can't get server first!"
The Shaman reacted quickly and popped Bloodlust. Everyone began furiously pumping out DPS. Even the healers couldn't resist throwing in a few damage spells. After one final frenzy, Gul'dan at last exhausted his life.
"No, this is impossible!" His voice echoed through the great hall. He struggled, then fell unwillingly. Green blood corrupted by fel spilled from the corner of his mouth, staining a large patch of ground green like pus. From Dong Zhe's angle, Gul'dan's head was tilted, his eyes fixed on him, his twisted face filled with venomous hatred. "I curse you! I curse you to lose everything and die a miserable death! Even after death, you shall find no rest! Your flesh shall be possessed by an evil spirit and made into a puppet. The wealth, love, and glory it enjoys shall all belong to that spirit and have nothing more to do with you! Hahaha! Feel envy! Feel rage! Savor eternal suffering, mortal!"
What the hell? Why are you staring at me? I wasn't the only one who brought you down. I just fired the last shot! Looking into Gul'dan's eerie eyes, Dong Zhe suddenly felt a chill run through him. His scalp prickled as he shouted on YY, "Those lines are vicious! Surely Blizzard wouldn't make a game this terrifying?"
"What's terrifying about the lines? Wasn't it just 'No, this is impossible!'?" someone on YY said, roughening his voice to imitate Gul'dan. "What the hell is scary about that? Quit messing around and loot the body!"
At once, YY erupted into howls and wails, some rejoicing and others lamenting.
"No way. Nobody else heard that curse?" Dong Zhe was starting to doubt himself. He ran over and clicked the boss's corpse. As the class with the longest range, hunters were always the last to loot.
System notification: You looted 3 gold, 58 silver.
"My luck is so %&* rotten! Didn't get a single thing this week. What a complete waste of a lockout!" he swore furiously. As for what the boss had said, he had long since put it out of his mind.
Note: YY is a type of group chat software.