[Friendly reminder: this book may very well go the same way as my Firefly book. After all, my account has a hidden bug: once one book gets popular, the next one I write is guaranteed not to get particularly popular.
Of course, I do hope this book will be an exception, and I also hope its rating can surpass the last book's.]
[Also, this world's setting is very similar to Earth, including its games, just with an added apocalypse. Now, let me take you into this story. Please feel free to leave your brains here.]
[Brain storage]
"Chat, watch this! Trading one for three-fast hands, huh? Gaming with a C-rank ability-worth it!"
Luo Li spoke into the microphone with a teasing edge to his voice, his long fingers leaving afterimages across his phone screen.
Onscreen, the Yuan Ge puppet he controlled wove back and forth with its master like phantoms, unleashing a bloodbath among the enemies. In the end, he sacrificed himself to take out three of their key players.
Comments scrolled through the livestream.
[Godlike! How many years of being single did it take to develop those hands?]
[Li Dog's Yuan Ge is seriously smooth. Just a little hard on his own life.]
[Using C-rank "Super-Speed Reaction" for gaming-you've really got it figured out. An ability-user squad is clearing a vampire nest in the next district, and you're here stomping people in the Peak Tournament?]
[Coward! You have an ability, but instead of going to the front lines, you hide at home playing games!]
At the comment calling him a "coward," Luo Li raised an eyebrow, casually finished the match, then leaned back lazily in his gaming chair.
An irreverent smile appeared on his face, handsome enough to make a living on looks alone. His clear voice carried an unmistakable air of giving up on trying. "Oh, it's our hater friend again? Thanks for the hard work, thanks for the hard work. Your patrol brought you all the way to my little stream?
"Clearing out vampires? That's dangerous! What if one scratches me? What happens to this handsome face?
"Besides, I'm contributing to humanity in my own way, okay? Ever heard of food for the soul?
"When I beat the other team senseless in the Peak Tournament, there might be a few vampires over there having a mental breakdown. Doesn't that count as saving the nation by a roundabout route?"
As he spoke, he opened his Yuan Ge power rating page. The number 25001 gleamed brightly.
"See that? Twenty-five thousand. Goal achieved! Working the competition to death starts with me!
"Next match, let's keep going. That enemy jungler who killed me once last game? I've got my eye on him this round. If I don't kill him ten times, no sausage in my late-night instant noodles!"
That was Luo Li: a gaming streamer thriving in the Peak Tournament of a certain game nicknamed "Pesticide," thanks to his C-rank Super-Speed Reaction ability in an age of apocalypse and superpowers.
He had the looks, a great voice, gameplay that was half showmanship and half entertainment, and an utterly laid-back attitude.
Outside, vampires ran rampant while ability users and the military fought on the front lines. Yet he had made his little corner into a haven amid the apocalypse-if one ignored the occasional piercing alarms outside the window and the ominous, dark-red Cloud of Blood Erosion that perpetually shrouded the sky.
He had no interest in the adventures of those "brave souls." Rather than face those bloodsucking monsters with their vicious fangs and terrifying speed, he preferred to toy with opponents using Yuan Ge's puppet in the virtual canyon, enjoying the thrill of controlling the tempo.
Being called a coward? He had long since grown immune. He could even cheerfully fire back, living by one principle: "As long as I lie flat enough, nobody can drag me into the rat race."
A new match began, and Luo Li made good on his "promise."
The enemy jungler unfortunate enough to have killed him once was subjected to merciless targeting.
Yuan Ge players generally held grudges, and Luo Li was among the very best at it.
He calculated every skill's cooldown precisely, exploiting the advantage in fine control granted by Super-Speed Reaction to coordinate his character and puppet flawlessly.
"Third time!" Luo Li chuckled as Yuan Ge gracefully recalled his puppet onscreen, finishing off the low-health jungler.
"Sixth time! Still dare to show your face?"
"Ninth time! Bro, having a breakdown yet?"
The livestream was filled with merriment. His fans loved every moment, while his haters kept spamming "inhuman."
Luo Li was completely immersed in the satisfaction of this "revenge," as though none of the turmoil outside had anything to do with him.
Vampires? An apocalyptic crisis? How could either compare to the sense of accomplishment from making precise calculations in a game and hunting down the same target ten times?
Finally, fifteen minutes into the match, Luo Li used the fog of war and a flowing combo to send the jungler, who was already cowering at the fountain entrance, straight back to the respawn point with pinpoint precision.
"Tenth time! Perfect!"
Luo Li snapped his fingers, a satisfied smile on his face. "Boys, mission accomplished. We can push now! This is what happens when you mess with a Yuan Ge player!"
As the enemy crystal exploded, Luo Li stretched contentedly. His Peak Tournament points had risen a little more, his Yuan Ge power rating was steadily improving, and today's stream had delivered on entertainment.
He casually exited the game and opened another icon on his desktop-Honkai: Star Rail.
In the recently released Version 3.7, the storyline on the planet Amphoreus had reached its climax. He had not yet had time to experience it.
"Time to relax a little and check out Castorice's story..." he muttered, opening the latest story chapter.
Onscreen, Iron Tomb was defeated, Amphoreus was reborn, and Cyrene underwent a transformation... As Luo Li watched Castorice's cold, solitary figure in the story, bearing the chill of the River of Souls alone, separated from the world by an untouchable barrier, something inexplicably stirred within him.
"This story really... twists the knife," he murmured, his fingers unconsciously tapping the desk.
At last, the story reached its end.
A new dawn came to Amphoreus, while Castorice remained like a silent butterfly at the edge of the reborn world, gazing into the unknown distance with a trace of acceptance and a trace of uncertainty. On the
screen, the words "The end" appeared.
Luo Li let out a long breath. Just as he was about to switch back to the streaming interface and chat with his viewers about his impressions, something suddenly changed.
Without warning, the computer screen before him went pitch-black.
It was not the blackness of a power outage. It was as though all light had been sucked away in an instant, plunging it into utter, profound darkness.
"Huh? What's going on? Did the monitor break?"
Luo Li froze, then instinctively gave the monitor a pat.
But the next second, that pure darkness began twisting and spinning, as though a miniature vortex had appeared at the center of the screen.
The air in the room instantly turned icy. An indescribable ripple of energy spread outward, something modern technology could never have produced.
Luo Li shot up from his gaming chair, his pupils contracting slightly.
His Super-Speed Reaction ability made him extremely sensitive to changes in his surroundings. This was definitely no ordinary equipment malfunction!
The pitch-black vortex slowly expanded, emitting a ghostly blue glow as cold as the waters of the River of Souls.
Then, under Luo Li's dumbfounded gaze, a slender figure slowly emerged from the vortex's center amid specks of blue light like shattered butterfly wings.
The figure solidified from an illusion and landed gently on Luo Li's floor, strewn with tangled cables.
It was a young woman.
She wore an exquisite, foreign-style outfit predominantly in deep blue and dark purple, its skirts resembling layer upon layer of butterfly wings.
Her skin was so pale it was almost translucent, possessing a cold beauty unlike that of the living.
Her hair fell past her shoulders, shimmering faintly purple.
Her features were breathtakingly beautiful, yet veiled in an aloofness that kept others at bay and a sense of compassion. Her deep eyes seemed to hold a silently flowing River of Souls.
The young woman frowned slightly and looked around. This cramped, cluttered space, filled with unfamiliar glowing objects-computer, keyboard, screen-was utterly unlike anywhere she knew on Amphoreus.
Her gaze finally settled on the room's only living person-Luo Li, whose brain had currently crashed.
Her rose-colored lips parted, and an ethereal voice carrying a hint of wariness and confusion rang clearly through the silent room:
"Sir... where is this?"
Luo Li opened his mouth, but his throat felt as though something had blocked it.
He stared at that utterly familiar face he had just seen in the game's story. His heart hammered, and all his blood seemed to rush to his head. After stammering for a long while, he finally squeezed out her name. "C-Castorice?! In the flesh?!"
The young woman before him was none other than Castorice—the Battlefield Saintess from Amphoreus in Honkai: Star Rail, burdened with the Death Curse!
She seemed a little surprised that Luo Li could name her, but soon returned to her cool expression.
Tilting her head slightly, she studied the young man, who looked rather at a loss, and the bizarre, unfamiliar surroundings.
Luo Li's mind was in chaos.
A game character crossed over? The dimensional barrier broke? Or have I been gaming so long that I'm hallucinating?
He abruptly pinched his thigh. The sharp pain told him this was no dream!
Outside the window, the wind blew with the faint, mournful howling peculiar to the apocalypse, reminding him of this world's true nature.
Yet inside, a young woman who should only have existed in a virtual world stood alive before him, carrying a host of mysteries and... a deadly curse.
Looking at Castorice's seemingly frail figure, which appeared to be surrounded by an invisible force field, he instinctively stepped half a pace back, then could not help stepping forward again.
He wanted to make sure, yet dared not approach.
The legendary "Death Curse," fatal to the touch... This isn't a game setting. What if...
Castorice seemed to notice his hesitation and fear. A faint, almost imperceptible trace of understanding passed through her clear eyes.
She stood there quietly, like a red spider lily blooming on the banks of the River of Souls, beautiful and dangerous.
They stared at each other in the room filled with an eerie, icy presence, one shocked and at a loss, the other cool and bewildered.
After a brief silence, Luo Li summoned more courage than he ever had in his life, swallowed, and asked the crucial question in a slightly trembling voice. "Castorice... c-can I touch you?"
At this abrupt and somewhat presumptuous request, Castorice did not grow angry. Her violet eyes merely shifted slightly to settle on Luo Li's nervous face.
She remained silent for a moment, as though confirming something, then answered softly in her distinctive, ethereal voice, tinged with compassion. "If you do not fear the chill of the River of Souls."
As her words fell, the temperature in the room seemed to drop another few degrees.
It was not a physical cold, but a chill that pierced straight into the soul, born of the boundary between life and death.
Luo Li looked at the dreamlike young woman before him, then at the blood-shrouded apocalyptic sky outside. His head instantly felt twice as big.