The interview is out, brothers. Give Xiaodao a boost and help me climb higher on the new rankings.
Friends' group: 132548482. Another empty group: 38792152.
Sun Fei froze.
"Daily game time limit? What the heck is that?"
He had never expected something like this to happen so suddenly. It was outrageous! He had been just about to get down to business, so how could this...
The next instant, Sun Fei's vision blurred.
Then the whole world gradually grew fuzzy and distorted before his eyes, like an old television with a bad signal. Static crackled, snow flickered across the screen, and then the signal vanished entirely.
Darkness descended.
Sun Fei opened his eyes and found himself back in the king's hall.
The magnificent gilded decorations, exquisite vessels, and soft red bed with its golden trim stood in stark visual contrast to the gloomy, bloody scenes in the world of Diablo. Sun Fei was instantly filled with confusion.
"What's going on? Could it be... I just had a nightmare?"
Sun Fei found that he was still lying in bed, drenched in foul-smelling sweat and burning up, as though he had just come out of a steaming sauna.
He stared blankly for a moment.
Then he pushed himself upright with both hands.
At that moment, Sun Fei was surprised to discover that the grogginess he had felt when he first woke up had vanished at some point, and so had the dull pain in his chest and head.
What was going on?
Had it not been just a dream?
Subconsciously, Sun Fei felt as though something strange had happened to him, but he couldn't say exactly what it was.
The entire hall was silent and empty.
Sun Fei got out of bed, stood up, and stretched lightly.
Rip!
Several tears suddenly appeared in the white, round-necked shirt with knightly patterns that Sun Fei was wearing. It hung from him in strips, like the beggar-style outfits favored by the alternative crowd in his previous life. Even the crotch of his pants had split in several places, exposing his "private scenery" for all to see.
"Holy crap, what's going on now?"
Sun Fei jumped.
The recent string of unexpected events had nearly given him a nervous breakdown.
Looking down, Sun Fei realized that the knight's shirt that had once fit him perfectly seemed a little smaller, and his pants were a little too tight as well. So when he exerted himself just now, he had easily ripped both his shirt and pants...
"Shoddy workmanship, shoddy workmanship! I never thought the fabric in another world would be such poor quality. It tears at the slightest pull!"
A breeze blew past, and Sun Fei felt a chill.
The wind blew on his little pecker, making it wonderfully cool.
"I'd better find something to wear..."
Sun Fei swept his gaze around the hall and soon spotted an ornately decorated object shaped like a wardrobe. He walked over and opened it, and sure enough, it obligingly held all kinds of luxurious clothes. He picked out a close-fitting black knight's outfit in his size, put it on, and walked over to look at himself in a nearby bronze mirror.
One look left Sun Fei stunned.
A spirited young knight dressed in black appeared in the mirror.
He was about 1.8 meters tall, with a slender, upright figure and a streamlined build. His thick, shoulder-length black hair was tied behind his head with a bronze hairband inlaid with rubies. Though his face wasn't the sort of handsome that made men jealous and women go mad, his thick eyebrows, large eyes, and sharply defined features gave the young man an unmistakably heroic air in his every movement!
"Holy shit, is that pretty boy in the mirror actually me?"
Sun Fei waved his arms and legs around in disbelief.
The person in the mirror made the same movements.
Only then did he convince himself that the handsome guy in the mirror really was him. Sun Fei put his hands on his hips and laughed foolishly at the ceiling. "Wahahaha! What a bargain, what a bargain! I really hit the jackpot this time! That idiot king named Alexander might not have had much in the brains department, but his looks are certainly reliable. Hahaha, at least he's a lot easier on the eyes than I used to be."
Sun Fei preened and posed in front of the mirror, delighted beyond measure.
His smug, showy behavior was no different from that of the male and female celebrities in his previous life who came back from getting plastic surgery in South Korea.
From now on, I'm Alexander, and Alexander is me!
Sun Fei happily clenched his fists and said it firmly to himself in his heart.
After admiring himself for a while, he turned and went to the row of medieval-style suits of armor standing in the center of the hall, each propped on a two-handed greatsword. He chose a suit about his own height, drew the matching two-handed knight's longsword, and swung it around smugly a few times, hoping to get a feel for being a king.
But the next second, a strange look came over Sun Fei's face.
"Why is it so light? Is this sword carved out of wood to fool people?"
The two-handed greatsword was about 1.3 meters long and gleamed coldly. It looked to weigh at least thirty or forty jin, yet in Sun Fei's hand it felt like a stalk of straw, with no weight to it at all. The strange sensation, unlike anything he had ever experienced, astonished him.
Clang!
Deciding to test it, Sun Fei casually swung the sword backhanded at the suit of refined steel armor beside him.
What happened next left him dumbstruck-
A crisp sound rang out, and the seemingly gentle blow effortlessly cut the armor, which was at least three or four millimeters thick, in half at the waist, as though it were a block of tofu. A moment later, the upper half of the armor fell to the floor with a clatter, split in two.
"Hiss..."
Sun Fei sucked in a breath.
Even someone as thick-skinned as him couldn't help being stunned by what he had just seen. "What the hell? What the hell... What's going on? What's going on? My... how did my strength... suddenly get so great?"
At the thought, Sun Fei flicked his wrist subconsciously.
The sword still felt as light as nothing.
Yet he could clearly see that with one hand, he had sent the heavy two-handed greatsword flashing through four or five dazzling sword flourishes like afterimages. Its massive blade also hummed as it vibrated.
"This feeling..."
Sun Fei closed his eyes and recalled how it had felt to swing the sword.
It was remarkably similar to the feeling of wielding a two-handed giant axe to slaughter monsters after his barbarian character in the world of Diablo had reached level five in his dream. The amount of strength matched exactly, too.
"Could it be..."
Sun Fei was suddenly startled.
"Could I have actually brought the barbarian character's abilities from the game into reality?"
He was stunned by his own idea.
After a long while,
Sun Fei decided to test his astonishing conjecture. He slid the two-handed greatsword back into the armor's scabbard and looked around at the other weapons in the hall.
Suddenly, his eyes lit up.
In a distant corner of the hall, Sun Fei spotted an oddly shaped two-handed giant axe. From the end of its handle to the edge of its exaggerated curved blade, it was at least 1.5 meters long and appeared to weigh around a hundred jin. It stood heavily beside a suit of pitch-black armor, pressing a sizable indentation into the stone floor.
Strange patterns were carved into the dark axe head, giving it a murderous air.
Sun Fei hurried over, reached out, and lifted the giant axe into his hands.
At once, a wondrous feeling of connection spread through every nerve and every cell in his body. Sun Fei felt as though he and the giant axe had become one, as though it were part of his own body.
He closed his eyes and savored the sensation.
"That's right. This is exactly how it felt in the game after the barbarian's Axe Mastery skill was raised to three points. I can do whatever I want, nothing is beyond me..."
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
The two-handed giant axe spun and chopped nimbly in Sun Fei's hands like a windmill, trailing wave after wave of soul-stirring dark light. All kinds of incredible barbarian axe techniques flowed from his hands with consummate skill, as though he were a grandmaster who had practiced with a giant axe for decades.
By this point, Sun Fei was completely convinced of his conjecture.
There was no mistake.
He really did possess all the abilities of that level-five barbarian in the world of Diablo from his dream: strength, axe techniques, stamina, attack power, defense... He had every ability that belonged to the level-five barbarian game character.
The immense strength gave Sun Fei an unprecedented sense of security.
"So this is what power feels like? I wonder what level this kind of strength puts me at in this fantasy world?"
As he reveled in the intoxicating sensation of power, Sun Fei suddenly thought of another serious problem. "Right, didn't that expert guy say the enemy was attacking the city? Maybe I should go take a look..."
Once the thought entered his head, it could no longer be contained.
Perhaps, with his current strength, he really could do something.
But before setting out, Sun Fei picked a suit of heavy knight's armor roughly his size for safety's sake and went to enormous trouble to put it on.
The heavy knight's armor covered Sun Fei from head to toe.
He lowered the visor of his helmet, covering his face, though he could see everything outside clearly through the eye slits. Sun Fei felt that his getup made him just like Robert Downey Jr. in the American blockbuster "Iron Man." The slightest movement produced a metallic clanging from the armor's joints, making his blood boil.
He looked imposing and full of murderous intent.
In the past, the full fifty-jin suit of heavy armor would have been enough to crush the shit out of Sun Fei. But now that he had it on, it felt no different from wearing a new ultrathin, breathable Li-Ning sports shirt. He barely felt it at all.
Clang, clang!
Sun Fei showily tapped his armor with the black two-handed giant axe. Listening to the pleasing sound, he was very satisfied. "Haha, now even if I'm hit directly by an arrow, I won't be in any danger!"
Time to set out!
Sun Fei quietly walked out through the doors of the king's hall and looked around.
He had originally been wondering how to show off in front of the soldiers guarding the palace, but there was no one guarding the front of it at all. Everything was silent. Only when he reached the outer gate did he find two soldiers covered in wounds, asleep against it.
By the look of things, the two soldiers had just come down from the front lines of the city's defense. Exhausted, they had fallen asleep against the gate.
"Damn, even my royal palace is down to two wounded soldiers on guard. Looks like the fighting on the city walls has reached a fever pitch..."
Listening to the battle cries coming from afar, Sun Fei felt his heart tighten.
He couldn't help quickening his pace.
Perhaps he didn't have much time left.
Please give me some support. If I can't climb the rankings even with the interview up, that'll be too embarrassing.