Blue Star.
This day was destined to be etched in history.
The virtual reality game 《Deep Red Continent》 officially launched its open beta!
The game was officially open to everyone, and the price of the gaming pods was affordable for average families.
Official online store inventory was cleared within seconds of being listed. Long queues formed outside offline physical stores, stretching from the storefronts to the street corners, and turning into another street.
Someone started a live stream while queuing, pointing the camera at the long line, with the title ‘Deep Red Continent Open Beta Day 1: The Grand Queue.’
The number of viewers in the live stream surpassed one hundred thousand within minutes, and the bullet screen scrolled rapidly, filled with ‘envy’ and ‘I want one too.’
Social media was abuzz with discussions about 《Deep Red Continent》.
Some showed off the gaming pods they had snatched, some asked for guides from closed beta players, and some speculated about what new content would be available in the open beta.
Eight out of the top ten trending searches online were related to the game. The remaining two were about entertainment star Yin Runa’s cheating scandal and political news from a certain country, but their combined clicks were less than a fraction of the Deep Red Continent topic.
Blue Star’s official agencies once again fell into anxiety. This virtual reality game had caused so much trouble during its closed beta; although the Nightmare Sickness incident had temporarily passed, no one knew if players would trigger new disasters within the game.
The official stance on this game shifted from initial vigilance to helplessness, and finally to numbness.
They were powerless against it; the mastermind behind the game seemed to have no intention of communicating with Blue Star’s officials from the very beginning.
Zhou Ping had been relatively idle lately. After the spread of Nightmare Sickness was cut off, the research group’s focus shifted to scientific research, but it was clear there had been no progress; this Nightmare Sickness had already ventured into unscientific territory.
Patients’ symptoms disappeared on their own. Every day, Zhou Ping would go to the office, read a few reports, attend a few meetings, and then he would have nothing else to do.
His workstation was by the window, outside which stood a ginkgo tree, its leaves already turning yellow and falling with every gust of wind.
Sometimes he would stare blankly at the fallen leaves, lost in thought.
On the day 《Deep Red Continent》 launched its open beta, he opened the game’s official website.
A huge banner hung on the page, reading: “Open Beta Launched, Welcome to Deep Red Continent.”
Below the banner were various game feature introductions.
Zhou Ping leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes in thought.
“How can one catch tiger cubs without entering the tiger’s den?”
He turned this thought over and over in his mind several times, each time feeling as if he was going crazy, and growing more resolute in his madness.
So he picked up his phone and ordered a gaming pod.
Soon, the gaming pod was delivered to his doorstep.
The packaging box was huge, carried in by two deliverymen.
They placed the box in the center of the living room, unpacked it, set up the gaming pod, and plugged it in for testing.
Everything was normal. Zhou Ping signed for the delivery, saw the deliverymen out, then calmly lifted the pod’s lid and lay inside.
The lid closed, his vision darkened, and the game system’s startup sound echoed in his ears.
“Welcome to Deep Red Continent. Please create your character.”
Zhou Ping pondered for a moment, then typed a few words into the nickname field: 【Legendary Investigator】.
...
Three items lay before Yue Shi.
A pottery figurine, a paper-doll, and a blank tombstone.
The Three Immortals had all been refined into artifacts.
All of them were excellent items.
The pottery figurine’s ability: It could transform any object, living or dead, into a pottery figurine and control these figurines.
The paper-doll’s abilities: Substitute Life Technique, Joss Paper Luck Drain, Paper Ash Shaping, and Burning Paper Soul Summoning.
The tombstone’s ability was the most powerful: whoever’s name was carved on it would die, much like a certain Death Note, but it was effective even against True Gods.
Yue Shi had almost fallen victim to it just now.
After putting the three artifacts into his spatial storage, Yue Shi stood up and brushed the dust from his knees.
The snow leopard squatted at his feet, looking up at him, its tail held perfectly straight.
Yue Shi bent down and picked up the snow leopard. The cub rested its paws on his shoulder and rubbed its head against his chin.
“That Ximen family... I remember you,” Yue Shi muttered softly, his expression suddenly turning vicious.
He knew he wasn’t a good person and had never intended to be one.
He had wantonly killed innocents, caused destruction, and spread malice countless times, never feeling any guilt.
But this time was different; since entering this world, he truly hadn’t sought trouble.
The people he killed had attacked him first; he had merely defended himself, even holding back a little in his counterattacks, not deliberately torturing them, nor dragging out their entire families to kill them.
Compared to his usual beastly behavior, this time he had been incredibly kind.
Yet, despite his kindness, the Ximen family had come after him repeatedly!
Yue Shi wasn’t a hypocrite; if the Ximen family could have crushed him in one go, he wouldn’t have said a word.
But since the Ximen family lacked the power to overwhelm him, they shouldn’t blame him for not holding back!
“I must go back and kill them until their nine generations find no peace!”
The snow leopard rolled over in his arms, its paws flailing a few times in the air.
Yue Shi had almost been killed by the Tablet Immortal just now, but thankfully he had a backup plan. A lone wolf like him had to have many life-saving and escape methods.
That snow leopard wasn’t raised for nothing.
The full title of the Far Side of the Moon: Great Sovereign of Absolute Yin and Extreme Evil, Black Heavenly Lord of Utmost Wickedness and Darkness.
Yue Shi was one-quarter, the living Utmost Evil.
However, he had already found three other Authorities on the Far Side of the Moon, completely devoid of sentience, which he only needed to slowly digest one by one.
The snow leopard was essentially a special avatar created by Yue Shi, specifically for digesting Authorities.
Just now, at the critical moment, the snow leopard completed the fusion with the Authority of Utmost Evil.
Otherwise, he would have truly died for a while and had to use other more troublesome methods to remove the curse.
Utmost Evil, symbolizing the principle of root contamination and alienation, was not merely simple error or madness, but a fundamental defilement of all that was correct and normal.
Utmost Evil was the cancerization of order, the distortion of definition; it did not destroy things, but transformed them into a desecration of their original form.
The Tablet Immortal’s inevitable death rule was thus tragically twisted.
The main abilities manifested by the Authority of Utmost Evil were: 【Sinister Growth】, releasing a radiation source to breed twisted, mutated life and phenomena in the surrounding environment, and capable of targeting specific objectives to cause rapid, malignant deformation.
【Logic Tampering】: Interferes with the operation of rules, transforming normal rules into erroneous, evil, and abnormally distorted rules that defy common sense.
【Sacred Desecration】: Causes beings with logical thought to experience cancerous mental changes, generating eerie thoughts that would otherwise be impossible.
【Evil Immortality】: As long as the concepts of ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ exist, It, as the source of their opposites, ‘abnormality’ and “deformation,” will exist forever.
Rate on N.U.
