"If You're Strong, Climb 10,000 Meters"

"This game is hardcore as hell..."

As a ray of morning sunlight fell from the balcony onto Ren Suo's dejected face, he realized he had actually stayed up all night.

Ever since buying "If You're Strong, Climb 10,000 Meters" yesterday, he had done nothing but play the game apart from eating and sleeping.

Unlike its almost minigame-like name, once he entered the game, he found its realism was not much different from "Killer." He could even create a character.

And he could create a female character.

Ren Suo was instantly captivated by the game's default female character—a radiant, saintly face that inspired longing, flowing golden hair tied into a ponytail, and a black training suit covering her entire body yet unable to hide her devilish figure...

Damn it! Why couldn't he strip off her clothes and adjust her body?!

Naturally, Ren Suo chose the female character directly. Given a choice, who the hell wanted to watch some grown-ass man flailing around on the screen...

Did people think that those toe-picking burly men who played female characters in online games were all sinister little creeps? No, they just hoped their character would be a little more pleasing to the eye while they played.

Besides, male and female characters each had their own advantages in this game.

"Male: Stamina recovers faster."

"Female: Can react quickly when facing danger."

For all those reasons, Ren Suo chose the female character with a clear conscience. As someone afflicted with both clumsy-hand syndrome and laziness syndrome, he had no interest in making minor adjustments to that perfect face.

He definitely didn't want to lick her. He just wanted to look at her every day... Well, actually, he did want to lick her.

However, this game skipped the naming stage, automatically setting the character's name as 'Seeker of the Way.'

Yet after the game began, it was completely different from the sort of game Ren Suo had imagined, where he would watch a young lady perform exciting, thrilling, dazzling moves.

The realistic game visuals turned into sprites, the ground became brown, and the sky became blue—yes, the game directly used colors to distinguish heaven and earth!

Most importantly, even the young lady had turned into a stick figure.

It was very strange. The visual style had fallen from the level of "Killer" to the level of Tetris. If this were on Earth, suing them for consumer fraud would have been a sure win.

On the screen, the stick-figure Seeker of the Way stood at the very bottom, with many platforms above her. Whenever Ren Suo controlled the Seeker of the Way to jump, she would leap onto the platform above.

The game was simple. At the lower left was an altitude bar showing the current altitude of 0 meters. At the top of the altitude bar was a green marker labeled 10,000 meters—that was the goal for clearing the game.

At the upper left was a green bar. It decreased whenever the Seeker of the Way jumped, but recovered quickly. It was basically a stamina bar.

Other than that, there was nothing. It was that simple—Ren Suo merely had to control the Seeker of the Way and keep jumping upward.

At first, it was extremely easy. It could barely even be called jumping—the entire screen was filled with platform stairs, and the Seeker of the Way practically walked across them.

However, after playing for an hour, Ren Suo realized something was wrong, because the altitude bar was rising far too slowly.

On average, after jumping for one minute, the altitude bar only rose by two meters. Easy as it was, this was way too slow...

In the first hour, he reached 102 meters.

In the second hour, he reached 240 meters.

By the third hour, just as Ren Suo was finally losing patience, a prompt suddenly appeared in the game: "Are you willing to spend 5 Merit Points to immediately jump to the first checkpoint?"

Besides the green marker at the very top, the altitude bar also had many white markers in the middle. Those were checkpoints. After failing, he could restart directly from a checkpoint.

The first checkpoint was at 2,048 meters. At this pace, he would have to play for at least another twenty hours to reach it...

No wonder the game only cost 8 Merit Points even at a 50% discount. It was damn miserable to play.

For just 5 Merit Points, he could avoid twenty hours of torment. Where else could he find such a good deal?

Of course, Ren Suo chose—nope!

He had started with 14 Merit Points, and only had 6 left after buying the game. If he spent another 5, he would only have 1 left!

Ren Suo truly couldn't bear to part with them. Mainly because he now knew that the Little World Game Console was likely something beyond his imagination. He didn't know whether it was a god's toy, charity from aliens, or a gift from people of the future... In any case, it couldn't hurt to be cautious.

If his Merit Points reached zero, would the game console disappear?

If his Merit Points were deducted into the negatives, would he get erased or something?

Compared with those potential threats, twenty measly hours were nothing worth mentioning. Time was the cheapest thing young people had...

Ren Suo also looked at the game's in-app purchases:

"Reach the 5,896-meter checkpoint, 10 Merit Points"; "Reach the 6,853-meter checkpoint, 12 Merit Points"; "Oxygen Tank, 1 Merit Point"; "Survival Rope, 1 Merit Point"...

The highest checkpoints he could reach were only at 5,896 meters and 6,853 meters. Above that, he had to climb on his own. What puzzled Ren Suo more were those items—surely the Seeker of the Way didn't need them.

Anyway, Ren Suo wasn't going to spend a single cent!

Thus, in the dawn of the next day, Ren Suo finally stubbornly reached the first checkpoint before he could no longer take it and went to sleep—the game wasn't impossible to pause, but once he started playing, he got absorbed in it, because the force behind every jump the Seeker of the Way made was controlled by Ren Suo.

If the distance was far, he had to press harder; if it was close, he had to press lightly. There were also many forks in the path. Every time he chose a branch and went upward, new routes appeared. It was a game that demanded intense concentration. Unless pressure from his bladder forced him to stop, Ren Suo simply couldn't take his hands off it.

Ignoring that godawful setup, the game was actually pretty good.

He slept for a full eight hours. When Ren Suo woke up, it was already nearly two in the afternoon. The whole morning and noon had vanished just like that, and an unprecedented wave of hunger swiftly assaulted his pituitary gland...

"Two large bowls of Braised Beef Brisket Noodles with Fried Sauce! I'm starving!"

"Coming right up!"

There weren't many people eating noodles at this hour, so Ren Suo easily found an empty seat. As he anxiously waited for his noodles to arrive, his gaze was suddenly stolen by a girl across the street.

She wore a red puffball dress, pigtails, and white stockings. Her features were exquisite, her skin milky white, and she carried several bags in both hands, looking as though she had just returned from shopping. A sweet fresh-meat "oh no" smile hung on her face. Even Ren Suo, who had sped through the internet for many years, had to admit that among all the girls he had seen in person, she ranked in the top five.

Even Ren Suo, who had been called the senior master of the go-with-the-flow school in university, felt an urge to go over and ask for her WeChat or something.

However, the reason Ren Suo had suddenly noticed her was not her beauty, but because looking at her made his heart stir!

That feeling was the same as when he saw Li Dan and Mo Zhaolong—the saliva his tongue automatically secreted when it saw delicious food!

"Your noodles."

Ren Suo turned his head and looked at the steaming, fragrant noodles before him, his appetite instantly whetted.

For some reason, as he ate his noodles, Li Dan, Mo Zhaolong, and the girl who had flashed into view earlier remained on his mind...