Chapter 30
Chapter 30: Thriving
Before the game went into open beta, it wouldn’t be submitted for review. But a company still had to exist. There should have been filings, records, a trail—something.
The fact that they couldn’t find a single piece of developer information was downright eerie.
Han Tian stared at the messages on his screen. “You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.” His friend sounded certain, but the certainty sat on a bed of unease. “There’s nothing in the developer filings. Nothing at all. That site has problems, too. We can’t pull the server IP address. It doesn’t even show whether it’s overseas. We had an internal computer expert dig into it, and he still couldn’t trace the IP.”
Normally, even the shadiest setup would at least point to a foreign host. This one didn’t show any origin at all.
His friend’s tone went strange. “You didn’t stumble into some illegal game, did you?”
Han Tian fell silent.
After a long moment, he forced out the truth. “I don’t know if it’s legal or not. But if what you’re saying is true, then yeah—this game has problems. Its technology doesn’t feel like it belongs in this era.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told you before.” Han Tian pressed his fingers to his temples. “This game is full-dive. You didn’t believe me. But it’s real. We put on the VR headset and it’s like we crossed into another world. When I’m inside, sometimes I don’t even realize I’m playing.”
“Holy crap.” His friend sounded genuinely rattled. “That’s impossible. We don’t have that kind of tech. Virtual reality is barely getting started!”
Han Tian didn’t bother arguing. If he hadn’t lived it, he wouldn’t believe it either.
His friend paused, then half-joked, half-blurted, “What if you accidentally found some passage to another world?” He laughed once, too quick. “If it’s that insane, let me log in and see?”
“No.” Han Tian didn’t soften it. “There are no slots right now. It’s bound to your ID, plus face verification. If you die once in the game, your account gets banned—no respawn. Nobody else can use your account either. And the game still hasn’t enabled screenshots or video. We have to wait until the end of the month to trade points for that. So I can’t even prove it to you yet.”
“…Right.” His friend went quiet, thinking.
When he spoke again, his voice had a distant, slippery edge. “If that’s true, this game is going to get watched soon.”
His friend wasn’t an insider, but he had connections. If they couldn’t find filings, somebody more serious was already digging.
Then, like he always did when he got nervous, he reached for an absurd explanation. “Could it be the United States pulling some new stunt to screw with Blue Star again?”
Han Tian snorted. “If they had this technology, do you really think they’d waste it on a game?”
“…Fair.” His friend exhaled. “Then how the hell was it made?”
They had no answer. The discussion fizzled out, but the discomfort didn’t.
In the group chat, Su Da Qiang was still wailing. Luckily, Zhou Xiao had logged out in real life and passed on news: his body had been found.
[Zhou Nu Zi]: Good news: you’re still alive. The System confirmed it. Bad news: you’re completely blue now. You look like a Blue Smurf—just uglier.
[Su Da Qiang]: You don’t know crap!
[Su Da Qiang]: Doesn’t that make me the first person in this game with a built-in skin? A man of color!
[Zhou Nu Zi]: Hahahahahahaha!
Han Tian got curious and logged in to see for himself.
Su Da Qiang’s “body” had already been carried back. Players crowded around, craning their necks and talking over each other.
Even A Wu stared, wide-eyed. “I’ve lived on Flying Sparrow Mountain for so many years, and I’ve never seen a Junior Brother like this!”
The man lying there was still unconscious. Skin that should have been normal had turned an unmistakable, vivid blue—blue in a way that looked impossible, until you touched it and realized it was real.
Su Da Qiang couldn’t log in either. The System only displayed a notice: abnormal status.
The players questioned the System. It scanned for a long time, annoyingly thorough, then finally replied:
[Status abnormal only. No death for now.]
It was poisoning, but not the kind that severed his soul link. This toxin seemed to have changed only his skin color. He could continue playing—once the poison eased.
There was no replay function, so they could only rely on Su Da Qiang’s memory. He’d eaten a black blade of grass, then been bitten by a snake that sprang out of nowhere.
Chen Miao Miao had brought the black grass back to study. The snake that bit him, however, had vanished without a trace.
Su Da Qiang had wanted to be the first Shen Nong in the game, tasting a hundred herbs. Instead, he’d crashed before he’d even begun.
The moment everyone realized that even cultivators could get poisoned, the players agreed on one rule: don’t eat random things outside.
They thanked Su Da Qiang for stepping on a landmine for them and clearing one trap the hard way.
In the real world, Su Da Qiang could only respond with: “…”
A Wu studied the black grass too. It looked like chive leaves from real life—only black. No matter how you looked at it, it didn’t seem edible. A Wu had lived on Flying Sparrow Mountain for years and still had no idea where it came from.
It wasn’t even a spirit herb, yet it had poisoned a cultivator badly enough to change his color.
A Wu scratched his head. “Maybe it has something to do with the snake that bit Junior Brother. For now, we can only wait for him to wake up.”
Since that was that, the players went back to their work.
Three in-game days later, Su Da Qiang—who had been stubbornly trying to log in—finally managed to get back in.
He discovered his body hadn’t suffered any lasting damage. He could cultivate normally. Relief washed over him so hard it almost made him laugh.
As long as he wasn’t dead, it was fine.
Then he looked down at his hands.
The blue skin hadn’t faded at all.
No matter where he went, he was a walking blot of bright blue. The other players burst into laughter every time he showed up, and the air around the sect stayed charged with that simple, stupid kind of happiness.
And while they laughed, the Longevity Sect changed beneath their feet.
The reclaimed spirit fields spread over most of the mountainside. The players built their own houses along the slope beside A Wu, and the more they built, the smoother their control of spirit qi became. With real-world research and a lot of trial and error, basic carpentry slowly turned into something passable.
A proper sect gate began to take shape.
One female player adored building games, and in real life she was a designer. She drew up the layout, and everyone followed her plan. Below the steps, they set thick pillars around the lone round stone building until it finally looked like a sect plaza—small, but real. They could expand later.
They even added railings along the cliff. Most of them still couldn’t fly on qi for long. A careless slip could mean death.
Fan Gu Zhou hurried out a batch of fruit wine. The alcohol wasn’t strong, but the aroma was rich and bright.
A Wu took it down the mountain to sell, and the market opened almost instantly.