Chapter 4
Chapter 4: This Game Was a Fated Chance
Wu Da Hu still looked half-struck by lightning as he turned to Han Tian. Even his voice trembled.
“Big shot… don’t you think this game is… too real?”
From the moment he entered, there were no glitches. No broken textures. No mosaic blocks. No obvious seams where code should have shown through.
They stood in a small courtyard with a half-enclosed layout. Three tiled houses wrapped around it on the left, right, and back, ancient-style architecture built with a kind of stubborn realism that made it feel lived-in.
They could smell things.
They could feel the air.
Even the fatigue from sitting too long at a computer seemed to drain out of their bodies, leaving them strangely clear-headed, as if someone had rinsed their minds clean.
Above, the sky was a rich blue, scattered with slow white clouds.
Their clothes were simple cloth, poor but real. They looked down at themselves and saw bodies that moved with convincing weight.
The only thing that confirmed it was still a game was when they pinched their own faces.
There was touch.
No pain.
Han Tian was shaken too, but his nature kept him more controlled. His heart was still racing, though. He glanced toward the voice outside and said, “That’s probably the guide NPC. Let’s go.”
The NPC was outside the yard.
Song Jiu Lai hadn’t told A Wu where these people came from. She’d only said they were new disciples. She didn’t want him staring into the yard and panicking over a row of puppet dolls waking up like the dead.
A Wu had obediently avoided looking.
Until Wu Da Hu and Han Tian stepped out.
What they saw made their shock deepen.
Back then, the Longevity Sect had lost the fight for good land. It clung to a miserable stretch of mountainside where spiritual energy was thin and weak.
The courtyard buildings were basically the sect’s “main hall.”
Which was another way of saying the place was so pathetic it didn’t even have a proper hall.
Song Jiu Lai’s game title was painfully accurate.
Leading down from the yard was a stairway. At the bottom of the steps sat a rough, circular open-air platform, pieced together from uneven stone slabs. The previous Sect Master had flattened a patch of wild land to build it. Now it barely served as a place to practice.
A Wu stood there.
Below that were two small houses where A Wu lived, and beside them the herb fields he tended.
Wu Da Hu and Han Tian stopped dead.
Clouds drifted along the cliff edge. The mountain fell away into mist. Everything below looked half-real, half-dreamlike, as if the world had been painted and then softened with fog.
Even for a nameless, broken mountain, Yun Zhou Continent felt majestic. Like the land itself was breathing.
Wu Da Hu swallowed hard. “This… this modeling… this realism… holy shit.” His legs shook as he walked, his voice trembling with it. “In 2024 on Blue Star, how is this even possible? Full-dive tech at, what, ninety-nine percent realism?”
He played games every day. He followed news. He wasn’t some shut-in who never looked up from his screen.
So where did this come from?
Han Tian had tasted every kind of game, from the best-made masterpieces to the worst disasters, and he was still completely blank.
He’d never seen anything like this.
A chill of anticipation crawled up his spine.
A Wu watched them gaping and frowned, confused. “Junior Brothers, why are you still standing there?”
Han Tian and Wu Da Hu snapped back like they’d been caught daydreaming in class. They hurried forward. With no guide UI and no tutorial pop-ups, the NPC in front of them likely was the start of everything.
A Wu stood at the very edge of the platform, close enough to the cliff to make a normal person dizzy. He looked unbothered, like the drop meant nothing.
Up close, he was clearly a child.
That alone made Wu Da Hu and Han Tian hesitate.
Han Tian forced himself to move first. He cupped his hands in a clumsy imitation of an old salute. “Senior Brother?”
A Wu nodded. “I know you are the new disciples Sect Master recruited. I am A Wu, the senior disciple of the Longevity Sect. From today onward, I am also your Senior Brother. Everything you do in the Longevity Sect will be guided by me.”
Wu Da Hu couldn’t help himself. He leaned toward Han Tian and muttered, “This little kid wants us calling him Senior Brother?”
A Wu’s long hair was tied back, his face young and clean. He frowned, adopting the stiff tone of a stern elder. “Do not be rude to your Senior Brother.”
Wu Da Hu opened his mouth.
And the System struck like thunder.
“Players must not reveal their player identity to any NPC, and must not offend NPCs lightly. A Wu is the Senior Brother of the Longevity Sect and holds decision authority. If you are expelled from the Longevity Sect by A Wu, it will be judged as game failure. Your player ID will be banned.”
Wu Da Hu went rigid, then instantly folded. He dropped his gaze. “Senior Brother, I’m sorry. I was wrong.”
In any normal game, he’d already be writing a thirty-thousand-word rant about NPC attitude and garbage design.
But this wasn’t normal.
This was full-dive.
This was a cultivation world.
Just standing here, breathing this air, Wu Da Hu finally understood what the System meant by “a brand-new life.”
A Wu only demanded respect. How could A Wu be wrong?
The one at fault was him.
A Wu’s stern expression softened into a smile. “It’s fine. You’re new and unfamiliar. Senior Brother won’t blame you.”
The contrast was almost comical: a child speaking like an old man.
Wu Da Hu and Han Tian did not dare laugh.
Han Tian moved the conversation where it mattered. “Senior Brother, where is Sect Master right now?”
Sect Master was the heroine. The site had made that much clear. Sect Master Song Jiu Lai was the absolute center of this entire game.
A Wu said, “Sect Master is in seclusion. She said your daily tasks will be handled by me. The sect’s resources are scarce. Many disciples have been recruited, and there is not enough housing. You must build temporary shelters for yourselves.”
So the opening was base-building.
That part, at least, sounded familiar.
But Han Tian asked the question that burned at the core of every other thought. “Senior Brother… now that we’ve joined the sect, can we cultivate?”
A Wu answered without hesitation. “Sect Master said once all disciples arrive, she will teach you body cultivation methods first.”
The truth was that they were in puppet doll bodies. They couldn’t develop spiritual roots at all. The System claimed it had a way to fix that, but only after recruitment was complete.
Song Jiu Lai herself didn’t know what the next step would be.
So for now, she dangled the carrot and prayed the hook held.