Chapter 4: Chapter 4: This Game Is an Opportunity
Wu Dahu was so shocked he was trembling slightly as he looked at Han Tian. "Boss, don’t you think this game... this game... is a little too real?"
From the moment he’d logged in, he hadn’t seen a single mosaic-like square of graphical artifacting that would indicate a coding error in the environment.
They were in a small courtyard, semi-enclosed by three tile-roofed houses to the left, right, and ahead of them—all completely quaint, antique-style buildings.
Everything within sight was perfectly and logically constructed.
They could even smell distinct scents. They felt the fatigue from their gaming sessions wash away, replaced by an incredible vigor, as if their minds had been scrubbed clean.
When they looked up, a vast, azure sky was dotted with white clouds. Everything was so beautiful and real it was absurd.
They were dressed in simple cloth robes. Poor, maybe, but authentically so.
The only thing that was off...
...was when they pinched their own cheeks.
’Good, we’re in the game.’ There was a sense of touch, but no pain.
Han Tian was actually just as shocked, but his calmer personality kept it from showing.
But his heart was already racing. Hearing the shout from outside, Han Tian said, "That must be the guide NPC calling for us. Let’s go take a look."
The NPC was outside the courtyard.
To avoid shocking A Wu by letting him see the puppets in the courtyard establishing a conscious connection, Song Jiulai hadn’t told him where the people came from. She only told A Wu that they were new recruits.
And A Wu had obediently refrained from looking.
Until Wu Dahu and Han Tian walked out.
When the two of them saw what was outside, their shock intensified.
Back in the day, the Longevity Sect had lost the fight for territory and could only build its Sect on a pathetic mountainside where the Spiritual Energy was thin.
The buildings in the courtyard were, in fact, the main hall.
Yes, they were so pathetic they didn’t even have a proper grand hall.
Song Jiulai had been quite clever when she named the game.
Stairs led out and down from the courtyard. At the bottom had once been a patch of wasteland, which the previous Sect Master had leveled to build a circular, open-air structure. It was pieced together from irregular stone slabs and now served as a makeshift place for cultivation.
A Wu was standing there.
Further down were A Wu’s living quarters—two small houses—and next to them, the Spirit Grass Medicine Field he was in charge of.
Han Tian and Wu Dahu were dumbfounded.
At this point, neither of them could maintain their composure. They stared at their surroundings, their mouths hanging open.
No matter how you put it, the Yunzhou Continent was overflowing with Spiritual Energy. Even this dilapidated, unknown mountain was breathtakingly majestic and magnificent.
Built halfway up the mountain right on the edge of a cliff, the terrain was perilous. Mist and clouds swirled around, making everything at the foot of the mountain seem ethereal and indistinct.
The first glance evoked the artistic conception of classical poems describing grand mountains nearing the heavens, their ranges connecting to the distant sea.
A more challenging thought also came to mind: *The road to Shu is hard, harder than scaling the blue sky...*
’Oh crap, my Huaxia DNA is acting up!’
"This... this... this modeling! This level of realism! HOLY SHIT!!"
As he walked over, Wu Dahu’s legs were trembling, and so was his voice.
It was truly hard to describe finding a game with this level of technology on Blue Star in the year 2024.
A full-dive VR game? Was the realism at ninety-nine percent?!
My god, he played games every day! Had some new domestic technology appeared that he’d missed in the news?
Where the hell did this thing come from?
Forget him—even Han Tian, who had seen masterfully crafted triple-A titles and tasted spectacularly rotten flops, and who could talk your ear off about any game, was completely and utterly baffled.
He had truly never seen anything like this!
An indescribable thrill even spread through his entire body.
He had a premonition: this game was going to change his life!
"Junior Brothers, why are you still standing there in a daze?"
A Wu saw the two of them standing there like idiots and was a little confused.
’It’s a bit rude to think,’ he mused, ’but why do these people the Sect Master recruited seem a little... dim-witted?’
"Hey, hey, we’re coming, we’re coming."
Han Tian and Wu Dahu were startled. This game had nothing—no tutorial, no interface. The NPC in front of them was very likely the start of the main questline.
A Wu was standing on the circular structure, right next to the cliff. The height was enough to give anyone vertigo with a single glance, but he didn’t seem to feel a thing.
Han Tian and Wu Dahu walked up to A Wu. When they saw that the person before them was only about ten years old—clearly a minor—the situation immediately became awkward.
’What are we supposed to say?’
It was Han Tian who broke the silence, cupping his hands in an awkward gesture. "Um, Senior Brother?"
He had just heard the kid call them "Junior Brothers."
A Wu nodded. "I know you are new disciples recruited by the Sect Master. I am A Wu, the First Disciple of the Longevity Sect. From now on, I will also be your First Senior Brother. I will guide you in all matters within the Longevity Sect."
Wu Dahu chuckled and whispered to Han Tian right in front of A Wu, "This little brat wants us to call him First Senior Brother?"
A Wu, whose long hair was tied back, had a delicate and youthful face. He frowned, adopting the mannerisms of a stuffy old man. "Do not be disrespectful to your Senior Brother!"
Just as Wu Dahu was about to retort, a system notification boomed like thunder.
[Players may not reveal their player status to any NPC, nor may they easily offend an NPC. A Wu is the First Senior Brother of the Longevity Sect and possesses decisive authority. If expelled from the Longevity Sect by A Wu, it will be considered a game failure, and the player’s ID will be banned for this session.]
Wu Dahu instantly behaved himself.
He immediately bowed his head and admitted his mistake. "First Senior Brother, I was wrong!"
’Damn it all! If this were any other game where an NPC dared to take such an attitude with a player, Wu Dahu would have already fired off a 30,000-word rant at the game developers! He’d be screaming about what a trash game and trash story it was for not treating players like gods.’
But this was VR! Full-dive! An Immortal Cultivation Game!!
Just by standing here, Wu Dahu understood what the system meant when it said, "You will begin a brand-new life."
’First Senior Brother was just asking him not to be rude. What had First Senior Brother done wrong! It was all his own fault!’
Seeing Wu Dahu admit his mistake so readily, A Wu broke into a smile. "It’s alright. You’re new and unfamiliar with things. Your Senior Brother doesn’t blame you."
Hearing such mature words from someone so young was rather comical.
But right now, Han Tian and Wu Dahu didn’t dare to laugh.
Han Tian immediately seized the opportunity to ask, "Excuse me, First Senior Brother, where is the Sect Master right now?"
The Sect Master was the female protagonist.
The website had clearly stated that the Sect Master, Song Jiulai, was the absolute protagonist of this game.
A Wu said, "The Sect Master is currently in seclusion. She said that I will be responsible for all your daily tasks. The Sect is short on resources right now, and with so many new disciples recruited this time, there’s a shortage of housing. You will need to build your own temporary residences."
’So the first thing we do is construction? We’re good at that!’
The innate talent of the Huaxia people lay in farming and building. Even if they didn’t know how, they could look up the information in minutes.
But this was an Immortal Cultivation Game. Han Tian still had to ask the crucial question. "Senior Brother, now that we’re in the Sect, can we all cultivate?"
’Cultivation in a full-dive simulation game should definitely be possible, right?’
A Wu replied, "The Sect Master said that once all the disciples have arrived, she will first impart the art of physical body cultivation."
The real reason was that since they all had puppet bodies, it was impossible for them to have Spirit Roots.
The system said there was a way to solve this, but they had to wait until all the positions were filled.
Song Jiulai herself didn’t even know what the next step was, so naturally, she had to dangle a carrot in front of them for now.
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