Life Is an Adventure

Life was an adventure; In Debt Big Eye had always held that statement as his creed. So— Stepping into a pit once in a while was no big deal. In truth, back when he first saw the list of regional publishers, he had felt a faint premonition of dread. But hearing the publisher solemnly swear they would deliver an authentic, unadulterated open-beta release, he had half-believed them anyway. As it turned out— He was simply too honest for his own good. He believed whatever people told him, forgetting that not everyone was as down-to-earth and solid as Brother Guang. When he watched that mosaic turn into more mosaics until he himself turned into a mosaic, the sea of stars reflected in his pupils finally crumbled into sheer panic. What the hell?! Why couldn't he control his own body?! Wait— Holy shit! "Stay away from me, aaaaah!" His soul left his body. He had been remolded into an entirely different shape. Then, not just his mind, but his very existence felt violently pumped full of "harmony" and censorship. When the dust finally settled, In Debt Big Eye stared blankly at his wiped-out account balance and a debuff reading "Endurance -10%, Duration: 30 minutes." The light slowly drained from his eyes. Just now... What on earth happened? Where did I come from, and where am I going? Why must humans hurt one another? And— What happened before the Big Bang? He gradually began contemplating the meaning of life, like a true sage. From this day forth, the wasteland had gained yet another reformed, upstanding citizen... probably. It wasn't even a question of whether it was realistic anymore. This was way too fucking educational! ... "Achoo!" At that same moment, Chu Guang—having just returned to the safe zone from the Leech Cave—sneezed and rubbed his nose, grumbling under his breath. "Who's praising my handsome looks behind my back now..." Never mind. No point pondering who it was; he had heard variations of that so often his ears had calluses. Just as Chu Guang stretched and prepared to log off, he suddenly bumped into a familiar face. The reason he called her familiar was that her tall 1.8-meter frame and generous chest were practically carved from the same mold. It went beyond just the character model. Even that silly, ditsy cuteness was identical—she looked unmistakably not very bright. Chu Guang brought up the minimap and clicked on her name; even the ID was in the exact same style: [Player ID: Yaya7778] Mm. Looks like she had to tack on quite a few digits to register it. Definitely her. Seeing her looking left and right as if searching for something, Chu Guang thought for a moment and decided against going over to greet her. After all, if every action had an equal and opposite reaction, awkwardness worked the same way. Yet just as he was about to slip around her, those wandering eyes darted right toward him. "...Wait! Please wait a moment!" Though he had a hunch this would be trouble, since he had been spotted, Chu Guang stopped and tossed a party invite her way, asking in team voice, "What's up?" Halting in her tracks, Yaya flushed crimson, stammering for a long while before finally squeaking out, "Are you Ah Guang?" Hearing that, Chu Guang didn't need to guess to know that Ye Shi must have blabbed. Otherwise, even if she knew his handle and that he used his real face in open beta, there was no way she could have pinpointed his exact server region and tracked him down. Then again, he hadn't asked his buddy to keep it a secret anyway. Back to the matter at hand. Looking at Yaya, whose face was as red as an apple, Chu Guang didn't quite know what expression to make either. How to put it? She really was somewhat different from other players. As the first player on the entire server to awaken the Poison Identification talent, he had made extensive use of her back then—especially whenever he couldn't decide whether a mutated creature was edible. During the Alliance's early food crises, she and Elaina had been indispensable, greatly expanding the diet of the River Valley Province's survivors. Later, once the Alliance established the Institute of Biological Research, Yaya no longer had to test everything one by one. But whenever Chu Guang wanted takeout without going through a massive hassle, he still troubled her to run errands. Though she was a casual player and it hadn't disrupted her gameplay, tricking her into delivering takeout over a thousand times with the promise of "raising affection unlocks hidden quests" was admittedly a bit unfair. On top of that, he had passively listened to many of her private secrets and real-life troubles... even though he hadn't wanted to, and had hinted more than once that she should guard her privacy and stop dumping everything onto an NPC. In short, it was indeed rather awkward. Still, other than keeping a straight face, he had no better option. "...It's me. What is it?" "So you really are a real person..." "I am." "Wh-Why did you pretend to be an NPC..." "That's a long story. Lots of complications and difficulties. I don't expect you all to understand; if you must hate me, that's fine too." "Hate... I wouldn't go that far." Yaya's face was as red as a lantern, steaming like a boiling kettle. Her lips twitched for quite a while before she finally blurted out what had been bottled up inside for so long. "Then the things I said before..." Chu Guang looked aside with a subtle expression. "I haven't told anyone." *So you DID hear everything!* In that instant, as if equipped with a Mask of Pain, Yaya clutched her head with both hands and squatted down onto the ground. The dreams vanished from her eyes, just like Big Eye who had lost all his dreams. "Hey, are you alright?" Deaf to the world around her, she crouched there clutching her head, mumbling in a hollow daze: "It's over... My life... is over..." Chu Guang sighed. "There's really no need for that. I belong to Universe Alpha. You can treat everything over there entirely as a dream. Even if someone in a dream knows your secrets, it won't affect your real life at all." He wasn't very good at comforting people. After all, in the past two hundred years, let alone receiving comfort from anyone, he hadn't even had time to catch his breath; the moment he closed his eyes and opened them again, it was a new beginning. The only one constantly by his side was Xiao Qi, who had weathered 777 cycles of reincarnation with him. Sometimes, even he couldn't tell how much humanity was left in him. Or perhaps, as a Gestalt Lifeform, he was never a human in the full sense from the very beginning, but a god created by a human. Just as Chu Guang was pondering what to do, Yaya—having crouched on the ground for quite a while—suddenly stood back up with a flushed face, as if she had finished venting. To Chu Guang's surprise, there was no resentment or negative emotion in her eyes; instead, there was an unexpected sincerity. "Um... thank you." "Hm?" Meeting Chu Guang's inquiring gaze, Yaya smiled shyly. After fidgeting for a moment, she finally voiced what had been hard to say. "Actually, at first I thought it was just a really realistic game. I never expected someone to suddenly tell me it wasn't a game, but another world... "To be honest, I was really startled at first, but once I calmed down and thought about it, I felt a kind of unexpected... pleasant surprise? I never imagined the people I helped were real, or that someone as ordinary as me in real life could help so many people. Maybe it's not the right thing to say, but that's truly how I feel..." "There's nothing improper about it. I'm glad you feel that way," Chu Guang smiled warmly, adding with genuine appreciation, "Besides, that kindness isn't ordinary at all. Many people spend their entire lives harbored in hostility toward themselves, others, and the world. I hope you'll continue sharing that kindness with those around you... whether in your world, or in ours." "Thank you..." Yaya gave an embarrassed smile, continuing, "Actually, the same goes for you too. You could have said nothing at all, right? And just secretly kept going like before, doing that..." Unable to find the right words, she made a snipping gesture with two fingers like scissors. If she hadn't smartly added "...harvesting the leeks and all," Chu Guang would have almost mistaken it for one of the emoticons Tengteng often posted on the forums. Looking at the overly naive Yaya, he offered a faint smile. "Maybe so. Perhaps I went public just to harvest leeks more conveniently. After all, I never claimed to be a good person." To his surprise, Yaya grew serious upon hearing this. "I know you are! You're actually... a very gentle and kind person, not devious like everyone says. "Sometimes you could have been far more ruthless, or less humane, but in the end, you always tried your best to find a way where everyone won... like the win-win you always talk about? Hehe, even though I don't understand that much, I'm a Perception-type with sharp instincts, so I can feel it! "Anyway, thank you for making the game!" Yaya bowed deeply. The moment she straightened up, she seemed to feel bashful again. Scratching her cheek with an index finger, she flusteredly summoned the system menu and logged off. The open-beta server was rather convenient in that regard; logging off in a safe zone made one vanish into thin air, instead of leaving a clone body behind like in the "closed beta." *Thank you, huh...* *Who would have thought she hadn't come to demand an explanation?* Gazing at the spot where Yaya had vanished and the bustling crowd moving back and forth, the corners of Chu Guang's mouth curved into a faint smile. In a soft murmur, he said: "You're welcome." Somehow, it all felt worth it. ... As the days passed and the calendar flipped from the beginning of December to its tail end, both parallel universes embraced a new year. Universe Beta, the year 2027. The open beta of Wasteland OL had operated smoothly for a month. Global player counts easily surpassed one hundred million, with concurrent players peaking at forty million—smashing world records and continuing to break them day after day. Across Earth, nothing catastrophic occurred. Topics like "How to Avoid Entering the Wasteland Era" seamlessly replaced the earlier arguments over "How to Coexist with Extraterrestrial Civilizations." Someone proposed that the United Nations allocate a seat to the Alliance of Universe Alpha, but receiving no response from relevant parties, the proposal was dropped. Strictly speaking, the morphogenetic field was the duty of Shelter 404; the Alliance was not an all-governing entity, and it truly had no operations in that domain. Only the closed-beta players who truly set foot on Alliance soil were regarded as genuinely living in Universe Alpha. Everything else could wait for later. Meanwhile, alongside the operation of the Wasteland OL open-beta server, an amusing little episode unfolded. A small South Seas island with a population under one hundred thousand saw its online users surpass ten million, simply because the island was rumored to have access to the purest, completely uncensored version of Wasteland OL. Because laws and regulations varied wildly across regions, and each region cut and censored content in different ways, more and more people grew intensely curious about what the complete version of Wasteland OL actually looked like. While the gaming helmets couldn't be hacked, the world never lacked clever individuals. Soon enough, people set their sights on routers. Routers alone weren't enough; server nodes were also required. Thanks to this, the picturesque vacation island enjoyed unprecedented prominence. Relying on its modest territory and population of fewer than a hundred thousand, it managed to attract hundreds of billions in data center investments. With demand surging, the island drew massive influxes of IT professionals and digital nomads. Although the People's Federation that once existed in Universe Alpha remained a distant, unrealized prospect, countless grassroots, cross-regional collaborative organizations dedicated to breaking down information barriers emerged among the player base. Some did it to realize their self-worth; others merely wanted to fool around with 2D waifus. Beyond dismantling informational boundaries, they also devoted themselves to preventing groundbreaking technology from being turned to evil, striving within their power to build an order matching that technology so Universe Beta would avoid sliding into a dystopian fate. After all, what bestowed advanced technology upon Universe Beta's civilization was not a true extraterrestrial race, but another "them" from the future. Hoping for those people to "descend" out of pity was completely unrealistic. Their order had to be built by their own hands; those who only waited would wait forever. All "they" could do was give them a push. In the end, the road ahead had to be walked by their own feet. For only they truly knew where they wanted to go... On the other side, Universe Alpha likewise welcomed the second year of the new era. Although Chu Guang's "retirement" triggered spontaneous nostalgia and entreaties to stay from countless Alliance citizens, fortunately, it did not disrupt the Alliance's order. What they did not know was that their revered Administrator hadn't gone anywhere at all; he had simply spent a month in the shelter playing the game, leveling from Level 0 to Level 30. In fact, ever since the day the Alliance was founded, Chu Guang had been preparing for this moment. Even before the expedition to Sunset Province, he had spoken to Xiao Qi about this very issue... On the shores of Ling Lake. The split-claw crabs that once ran rampant had been eaten to extinction by the players, and the reed-dotted beaches had become a popular walking spot for local residents and a paradise for children to play. Unlike the open-beta server, everything here had a completely different atmosphere. Strolling along the quiet path, Chu Guang looked at the flourishing scene with a smile, speaking to Xiao Qi perched on his shoulder. "Remember what I said a long time ago? The Alliance's greatest hidden danger wasn't the threats of the wasteland, but that if I died or disappeared one day, River Valley Province would be left fractured among warlords, each corps fighting under my name..." "But now, I can say with one hundred percent confidence that this final weakness no longer exists." Even Lü Bei, the most single-minded of all, had finally come to understand the Guards Corps' true mission under his constant guidance— What they truly needed to defend was not the Administrator's dignity, but the dignity of the law. The Alliance's army came from the Alliance's citizens, and from now on, it would be loyal only to the citizens of the Alliance. "Mm! I remember! Back then, Xiao Qi thought you were going somewhere far, far away again... though Xiao Qi didn't know where you were going either." Sitting on Chu Guang's shoulder, enjoying the evening lakeside breeze, Xiao Qi contentedly narrowed its eyes like a truly living sprite. It was living, beyond any doubt. Even in a mechanical body. He knew better than anyone what this little fellow had silently endured behind the scenes. "You've worked hard." Chu Guang smiled. Raising an index finger, he tapped its forehead and spoke in a soft voice: "No matter how far I go in the future, I will always take you with me."