Zhou Jue's expression was quite a sight. The vicious look from the earlier free-for-all involving everyone's cyber relatives had yet to fade, but the joy of gaining access was already close to overflowing.
"Click."
Zhou Jue pressed a keyboard shortcut, capturing the other netizens' embarrassing antics alongside his own moment of god-tier luck, then sent it to the gaming group.
The group, which had been raging like a storm a moment earlier, instantly fell silent, as though the internet had disconnected.
The shiny screen reflected the hideous face of a luck-bragging seal showing off his pulls. Zhou Jue's lips curled brazenly upward, and when nobody in the group replied, he began kindly "reminding" the netizens he had been arguing with:
A Zhongde Dried Meat Wholesale: "@Do Some Farm Work Oops, my hand slipped~"
A Zhongde Dried Meat Wholesale: "@Chief Shit Appraisal Master What's this? I can't read. Read it out for me."
Do Some Farm Work: "Mods, kick this fucker, thanks."
Chief Shit Appraisal Master: "Heh, go ahead and click that link. They'll send you a plane ticket to ○ State in a minute. You won't be laughing when kidneys start flying everywhere."
A Pot of Pothos: "[Image] I got it too."
The rarely serious fellow also posted a screenshot in the group, and it was even of an internal app page. Clearly, he had received it at almost exactly the same time as Zhou Jue, but had chosen to investigate first rather than come into the group to flaunt it.
The image he posted now was not a screenshot of successfully gaining access, but a page showing the installation package downloading, with the progress bar already past halfway.
Do Some Farm Work: "Another expert?"
Chief Shit Appraisal Master: "You two are on the same flight."
Brother Kong Is Benevolent and Righteous: "I just checked. That game's official website is displaying normally again, and the game link is back on the rankings, in the same spot as before. It's got some credibility, right? Otherwise, they wouldn't have unblocked it."
Chief Shit Appraisal Master: "Like hell I believe that."
Do Some Farm Work: "+1"
Some people claimed they did not believe it, but were actually grinding their teeth to pieces behind their screens.
Yu Yun gripped his thirty-two-inch monitor with both hands, staring fixedly at the chat window as though he wanted to stick his head inside.
His online ID was "Chief Shit Appraisal Master." As a freelancer, he did have some understanding of games of his own.
He had not been mindlessly trashing that page earlier, either. It had simply looked bizarre no matter how he examined it, giving off the thoroughly unreliable feel of an amateur outfit.
Besides, everyone knew that game publicity generally required building hype beforehand, and the promotional materials were all from development and did not represent the final quality.
What legitimate game company started testing less than three days after its first promotional release? If they were in such a rush, why not just serve it up directly?
Fortunately, he had also preregistered for the game. Since it did not collect personal information anyway, he had casually filled out the questionnaire.
Just as Yu Yun's eyes were about to split with fury, another image popped up in the gaming group, breaking through his already fraying defenses even further.
Inspired Moves Are Called Jing: "[Image] Hehe, way faster than that other game, 'The Dove of Zero.'"
Chief Shit Appraisal Master: "Wait, is your newbie protection period not over yet? Jing, these waters run deep. You're too young to handle it. Let your big brother appraise it for you."
Inspired Moves Are Called Jing: "No."
Outside the screen, Yu Yun was so angry he wanted to cough up blood. Never had he needed a blue capsule so badly to slap the person on the other end of the internet.
At this point, he had only one steadfast ally left-
Chief Shit Appraisal Master: "@Do Some Farm Work Bro, let's observe a moment of silence for their soon-to-be-departed kidneys."
The message sat all alone in the group for two minutes. Seeing that his brother, who normally followed up seamlessly, had not responded, Yu Yun typed a "?" into the input box and sent it.
Do Some Farm Work: "Well, um... family members with test access, I'll punish myself with three drinks for my earlier rashness. Please don't chase me around the main city hacking at me. [Image]"
Looking at the familiar contents of that pop-up, Yu Yun felt a mouthful of old blood lodged in his chest that he could not bear not to spit out.
How could a mere test slot make this online shotgun, who had still been badmouthing the game two days earlier, switch sides, lay down his arms, and surrender with courtesy? What had happened to this world?
Yu Yun clenched his teeth, his hands flying over the keyboard before him.
Chief Shit Appraisal Master: "Bro, did you put out for the game designer? We were trashing it together during the day, and then you ate spicy hot pot at night and went knocking on their door to apologize?"
Do Some Farm Work: "If putting it that way makes you feel better, I don't mind. Anyway, let's not contact each other for a while. I'm afraid 'World of Disorder' might get the wrong idea."
Zhou Jue walked into the empty dorm room, looked at the secondhand gaming helmet on his bed, and began a fierce internal struggle.
On the game homepage accessible only to closed-beta players, he had just seen when the test would begin-eight tonight.
He did not know whether his curses at the damned developers a few days earlier, telling them to hurry up, had actually been heard. Otherwise, how could a game go from concept promotion to handing out closed-beta access to starting the test in less than a week?
Zhou Jue did not understand, but that did not stop him from looking at the clock on the wall in anticipation.
The test would begin in another hour. If the game really contained the sort of content that was not quite suitable for playing in an internet café, he still wanted to start playing somewhere private, like the dorm room where he was alone.
But could the secondhand gaming helmet he had just picked up online really run a game that was still in testing?
Internal test builds like this generally had poor optimization, and there might well be game-breaking bugs everywhere...
In another world, Ed calculated the time until the server opened while muttering his upcoming lines very quietly.
Like the introductory opening spiel in any game, he needed a piece of introductory text that could get everyone fired up without being quite so cryptic.
Ed considered himself reasonably quick-witted, and making up stories and writing copy were no problem, but speechlike occasions like this had never been his forte, in either his previous life or this one.
"Dora A Green, help me."
Ed suddenly remembered his symbiote, which was clearly not an old grandpa, did not quite count as a system, had no particularly powerful abilities, and could at best be considered an otherworldly phone assistant (watch out for the long, complicated sentence).
"Sigh, what am I going to do with you?"
Little Green's voice appeared in Ed's mind with the intonation of a cartoon from another world, and then a line of subtitles appeared in the previously blank lower portion of his vision.
Ed reproduced the nonexistent voice in his own mind, as though a big-headed blue-and-white robotic cat really were standing before him, pulling something incomprehensible out of the pocket on its belly and saying:
"Ta-da! The occult teleprompter!"
Ed's expression immediately relaxed. The other half of his soul watched the time in the other world intently. Seeing that the four players he had selected had already put on their helmets, he opened the webway constructed from souls at the exact stroke of eight-
"Link start!"