On the evening of July 30, college student Zhou Jue found cockroach parts in his Guochao takeout, an event historically known as the "Half-a-Bug Massacre."
Looking at that hairy insect leg, Zhou Jue not only lost his appetite, but also stopped feeling sleepy.
It was summer vacation, and he had chosen to stay on campus to work and earn money. After all, no matter which worldline you were in, it was hard to find a youth hostel where you could sleep comfortably for an entire year for five hundred yuan.
Tomorrow was July's payday and one of his rare days off. With the takeout having disgusted the sleepiness out of him, Zhou Jue decided to treat himself to an all-nighter.
He went to an internet café near campus, booked a station with practiced ease, lay down in the gaming pod, and put on the helmet. Zhou Jue logged into his gaming platform account, then began his familiar process of selecting a consort.
But electronic impotence often followed cyber kidney deficiency. Looking at his library full of mediocre beauties, Zhou Jue felt that the money he had paid for the night was about to go down the drain.
Rather than waste his thirty yuan, Zhou Jue decided to stay up grinding for money and call it a little extra income.
Before that, however, he still opened the platform's new game recommendations as usual, displaying the admirable persistence of an emperor who continued holding consort selections despite having lost the ability to perform.
Zhou Jue clicked into new games' homepages again and again, then sighed and backed out again and again. As a cyber emperor, he could no longer find these offerings worthy of his attention.
Until... at the very bottom of the second page of recommendations, he spotted a somewhat interesting name-"World of Disorder."
What first caught Zhou Jue's attention was not the name, but the long string of tags beneath it:
[Full immersion], [Multiplayer online], [Role-playing], [Open world], [Action-adventure]...
Boring.
Zhou Jue shook his head.
[R18].
Wait, my beloved consort!
Zhou Jue's eyes lit up, but his big head soon defeated his little head, and he began thinking again:
Come on, bro, can these tags even go together?
Right now, Zhou Jue felt as though someone had entered an old lady into the consort selection. What was this?
This was cyber deception of the emperor! Such insolence!
But looking at that final tag, Zhou Jue felt tempted again-what if? What if it was interesting? Wouldn't he be missing out?
And so he and a nonexistent opponent fell into a game-theory dilemma:
"World of Disorder" could be chocolate, or it could be shit.
Zhou Jue could be human, or he could be a dog.
Both parties in the game possessed duality, and everyone who knew understood the relationship between those four things. That was why Zhou Jue was torn.
After a long while, he gritted his teeth and clicked into the game's promotional page:
Even if it was shit, he was going to give it a thorough tasting today!
Then Zhou Jue saw the glaring [Closed beta registration] section.
Fuck, he'd been played!
At that moment, Zhou Jue felt like a cyber emperor who had finally regained his virility, only to discover that his entire harem had already gone through menopause-the timing was all wrong!
He left the game's promotional page, double-checked that he was browsing the "New games" list rather than the "Most anticipated" list, and casually submitted a bug report.
That's what you get for toying with Our feelings!
After finishing all that, Zhou Jue had intended to scroll away, but the more he thought about it, the angrier he got. As if possessed, he clicked into the "World of Disorder" promotional page again and began browsing the promotional artwork and introduction to the setting.
[...The tides of mana have swept across this world, and its original order has now been lost. As one of the most ancient souls, you can no longer stand by and watch this happen. A young lord proficient in Soul Summoning happens to possess the body you need. Please help him rebuild order in this world...]
"Actually, it is kind of interesting..."
Although the promotional artwork and synopsis made it clear that the earlier [R18] tag probably did not mean what he had imagined, he still could not help muttering under his helmet:
"Gotta admit, they really can stitch things together... just depends on how the finished product turns out."
After reading the promotional material, the cyber emperor's anger had mostly dissipated. After a few seconds of hesitation, he clicked [Closed beta registration], deciding to look forward to the closed beta or open beta.
The page switched to a questionnaire, and the first question asked his age.
Zhou Jue was no idiot, and he was already an adult anyway, so he filled it in truthfully and began looking through the remaining questions.
Most of the questionnaire asked miscellaneous questions, such as how many hours he usually gamed each day, his average daily active time, whether he could accept bloody and violent content, and so on, until question 20 at the very bottom:
[In your everyday gaming, which alignment do you lean toward: A: Lawful B: Chaotic C: Other (please specify)]
Zhou Jue thought for two or three seconds and felt that the question was not particularly rigorous-
He leaned lawful, but what was the fun in being lawful all the time?
The same went for chaos. If things were so chaotic that even basic rules did not exist, where was the gameplay?
After a moment's thought, Zhou Jue, a veteran of gaming hell, curled his lips slightly.
He selected option C, then typed into the text box:
[I want to belong to the lawful faction, but I like doing things that cause chaos.]
Finally, without even looking, Zhou Jue ticked the box beside "I have read and agree to the Game User Terms and the End User License Agreement," then clicked submit.
[Submission successful-Odin Game Company thanks you for your support].
Beneath the successful-submission message box was a line of small text in parentheses:
(Share the game homepage to a group chat to increase your chances of being selected for the closed beta.)
Zhou Jue had long since grown numb to this kind of marketing. With practiced ease, he shared the game's registration page to the gaming group where he usually chatted, then exited the page.
Next, Zhou Jue continued his cyber consort selection, but unfortunately, not a single game managed to elicit a physiological response.
Two hours later, a resentful Zhou Jue began farming gold for extra cash with practiced proficiency.
In World of Disorder, Ed easily integrated the functions provided by [Otherworldly Half] into Little Green, thoughtfully configuring them to resemble those back home.
And so, after a "ding," Little Green's voice rang out in his mind:
"One unlucky sucker signed up, haha. He even shared it."
"What do you mean, unlucky sucker? He's obviously a player. How dare you speak so disrespectfully of my precious players?"
As he spoke, Ed could no longer hold back his laughter either. This was not because of the joy of being about to lure someone into the pit, but because his hands were currently working on a humanoid object with a crooked mouth and misaligned eyes.
This was the first requirement that [Otherworldly Half] imposed on soul summoning-creating a body.
For an ordinary person in this world, there might have been no way to meet that condition other than digging up a corpse.
But with his [Vitality Touch Mark] ability, Ed could create this sort of "living corpse" that lacked a soul but possessed the characteristics of life. As for the missing body parts, he filled them in using special plants made by Little Green.
However, looking at the vessel before him, with its mismatched eyes, uneven shoulders, unequal legs, pigeon chest, and hunched back, Ed regretted not being an art student for the first time. At least then he could have given it a presentable face.
"Do you think the players will accept it?"
Ed tried to obtain Little Green's approval.
"Anyone who can look at that without getting sick is a god. If it were me, I'd quit in a second."
So the sapling commented,
"You're pretty good-looking yourself, but the vessel you made is somehow this abstract."
"Please enlighten me, Brother Tree."
When faced with something he was not good at, Ed was always especially polite.
"Leave it to me."
As those words fell, green guide lines appeared across the vessel in Ed's vision, tracing out the shape a normal human ought to have.
At the sight, Ed nodded repeatedly and reached out with both hands, overjoyed...