Song Shi'an took the script. The cover was titled " Number One Winner," and the cover design had a cyberpunk style, with neon tubes and virtual data streams intertwined, giving it a very high-end feel.
Ji Shuyao adjusted his glasses. "This script is one of the top ones this year. Getting a role would be a great achievement, so I hope you can polish it well. If all goes well, it'll be released during this year's Spring Festival."
Song Shi'an stared at the script; it was for the Spring Festival release, so he'd have to work on it carefully. "No problem, Brother Yao, I promise to polish it well."
Ji Shuyao stood up. "I'm leaving first, there's still a mess waiting for me to clean up."
Song Shi'an, without looking up, flipped through the script. "Okay, okay, take care Brother Yao."
Ji Shuyao walked to the door and looked back at him again, sighing softly. What a mess this is! One problem after another, why can't the artists under his management give him a break?
Song Shi'an leaned back on the sofa and began to carefully study the script.
His role doesn't seem to have much screen time; he only appears in the later stages of the story, so he's probably not an important character. Qu Lingzhou, that's a nice name.
The story is set in a future technological world where holographic virtual technology has permeated every corner of human life. A giant company called " Tianquan Technology " has developed an infinite flow holographic game.
Once inside, players can experience completely different lives in various dungeon worlds.
Ancient battlefields, post-apocalyptic wastelands, deep-sea ruins, steampunk cities—whatever scene you can imagine, it's all here.
On its first day of release, the number of online users worldwide exceeded one billion. Some people did business in the game, some fell in love, and some even quit their jobs in real life to spend all their time making money in the game.
The profits from one instance of dungeon runs are equivalent to a month's work outside, so who would want to return to that dreary, real world?
Until the system suddenly crashed, the consciousness of all online players was locked in the game pod, the exit button turned gray, and forcibly disconnecting would result in brain death.
The game's mastermind, " Tianquan," issued a server-wide announcement: Within 72 hours, the last survivor will gain control of Tianquan Technology's entire database and all assets of the virtual world company, valued at over 800 billion. The consciousness of the losers will be permanently trapped in an infinitely looping instance, unable to exit or die.
This is a death game where your soul is the stake.
The male protagonist Lu Ci, originally entered the game to find someone, but accidentally clicked on the wrong link and got trapped inside—his sister.
Before he could find the person, he was locked up himself. He fought his way through the levels, from the ancient Roman Colosseum in the first level to the Deep-Sea Abyss in the seventh level, and gained many followers along the way.
There's a retired special forces soldier, a genius hacker girl, a shrewd businessman who made his fortune reselling equipment in the game, and a young man who seems to know nothing.
This young man is Qu Lingzhou.
Lu Ci found him in the fourth level, " Plague Town ". The rules of that level were to find the source of infection for Patient Zero. The whole town was full of mutated NPCs. If a player was bitten, he would be infected and lose his mind within ten minutes, becoming a new infected.
Qu Lingzhou huddled in a corner of an abandoned clinic, surrounded by hordes of zombies. His only weapon was a rusty scalpel, the handle of which was cracked.
Lu Ci casually pulled him out of the pile of zombies, his reasoning simple. "More hands make light work; even just handing him a bandage would be helpful."
Qu Lingzhou could only help by handing over the bandages.
He had extremely poor physical fitness, getting out of breath after running just a few steps, and zero combat skills. He couldn't even learn the most basic system hacking techniques taught to him by the hacker girl.
Every time he encountered the enemy, he was either on the run or waiting for someone to come to his rescue.
While the main characters were battling the zombie horde at the front, he was crouching in a corner behind them, clutching a first-aid kit.
While his teammates fought the boss in the blizzard, he wrapped himself in a blanket and warmed himself by the fire in the camp.
One time, Lu Ci couldn't help but ask him, "How did you even make it to the fourth level?"
Qu Lingzhou thought for a moment, then answered seriously, "I was lucky."
Upon seeing this, Song Shi'an frowned. What was the purpose of this character? Was he meant to highlight the male lead's great love? To embody the humanitarian spirit of the main characters?
He grabbed a bottle of Cola from the refrigerator and continued reading.
The more you watch, the more something seems off. In the fifth level, " Mirror Labyrinth," the main characters are trapped in an infinitely reflecting glass matrix, and each of them must confront their deepest fears.
The hacker girl is trapped in the memory of a fire that killed her in her childhood; the special forces soldier repeatedly relives the day his comrades sacrificed themselves on the battlefield; Lu Ci sees his younger sister trapped in a game pod, silently calling for help.
Everyone was struggling on the verge of collapse, but Qu Lingzhou wandered around the maze, found a forgotten backdoor program, and casually paused the entire instance's timeline.
During the pause, he pulled people out of their hallucinations one by one, then returned to his corner before time resumed, continuing to be his mascot.
When Lu Ci woke up, he found that everyone had inexplicably cleared the game, and he thought it was a system bug.
In the sixth level, " Deep-Sea Abyss," the submersible carrying the main characters is crushed by a giant octopus, scattering everyone in the pitch-black depths of the ocean, with only enough oxygen to last for fifteen minutes.
In the darkness where visibility was less than a meter, Lu Ci saw a figure swimming leisurely in the distance, as relaxed as if taking a bath in his own pool.
When the oxygen ran out and everyone surfaced, miraculously alive, Qu Lingzhou was already wringing out his wet clothes on the beach.
Song Shi'an placed the Cola on the coffee table, sat up straight, and... wait, a marginal figure who had gone through five or six high-difficulty levels, only had his clothes slightly dirty...
Lu Ci's skin was almost completely gone, while Qu Lingzhou's hairstyle remained perfectly intact.
By the end of the eighth level, the main characters were either dead or severely injured, leaving only nine out of twenty.
They stood before the gate to the final level, behind which lay the core of the entire game, the location of the Tianquan mastermind.
The door opened, and behind it was neither a monster nor the final boss.
It was a spacious white room with a chair in the center and a wall-sized monitoring screen in front of it, displaying the real-time consciousness status of all the trapped players.
Each red dot represents someone still struggling in the dungeon; the dense red dots flashing on the screen resemble a city at night.