After playing for a while, the two of them continued to explore the world of Nine Crossings.
They could do anything in the game.
Li Shuoxing conjured up a pair of long, narrow wings and hung them on Su Mingqianâs back.
With a slight flap of his wings, he had flown up into the air, and with another harder flap, the wind suddenly came and became millions of arms underneath them, helping them fly freely in the sky.
The wide city and huge buildings grew smaller as they rose.
More and more buildings and streetscape were revealed before their eyes.
Strange beasts crawled through the city, magical landscapes floated in the sky, and some people in robes walked through the city, setting up arrays outside collapsed roads and buildings and repairing them.
But in addition to these amusing things, Li Shuoxing also saw things that werenât so amusing.
The blurred edges of the city, the buildings enclosed by walls of air, the beasts and people flying numbly through the air.
As he flew, the novelty of entering the game wore off. Li Shuoxing suddenly realised that the world the system had created could help him look at his own novel in a very intuitive way and find its shortcomings.
Spirituality, new civilisation, original world.
Those were the three most important elements in the worldview of Nine Crossings .
The conflicts and collisions between these three elements were very violent. Li Shuoxing was very careful about this when he was writing and tried his best to describe them. However, judging from the world that had been constructed now based on his article, there were still many unsatisfactory aspects in these descriptions that could be refined and deepened. They would have more interesting chemical reactionsâŠ
Li Shuoxing flew, stopped, and thought about how to collide these interesting chemical reactions.
This is the world I have created.
I want to use the most magnificent imagination and the most rigorous attitude to transform it into its most perfect form.
Because itâs the best!
Li Shuoxing thought firmly and confidently, until a beep sounded, a task refreshing before their eyes.
[Main Task]: Please go to the city airport and land the spaceship.
Li Shuoxing took a single look at it, then mercilessly closed it.
Su Mingqian was a bit confused. âXimu, arenât we going to follow the task? If we fail this task, the alien civilisation will destroy Earth, right?â
Li Shuoxing was careless. âItâs true that this is the setting in the novel. But, weâve come to play the game. Whoâs going to follow the main storyline? If it fails, it fails. Anyway, it can reset if it fails. The fun in a game is to not take the usual route. Letâs play something interesting firstâŠâ
He had already flown high into the air with Su Mingqian.
Cars became ants, tall buildings became toys, and the city was like a sculpture in a sandbox, small and exquisite.
As he circled the sky, a magical idea suddenly came to him, and immediately, he decided to make it happen!
Li Shuoxing: âMingqian!â
Su Mingqian: âHuh?â
Li Shuoxing aimed for a mage tower floating in the sky over the city. It looked like a giant beehive from the outside, mages coming in and out like busy worker bees. They were the spoils after the defeat of the second coming civilisation.
He left Su Mingqian on the mage tower and said to him, âI have an idea that I want to test out in front. You wait here.â
Su Mingqian had no objection.
He was very interested in the mage tower below him and wanted to study it.
The two of them split up. Su Mingqian peeked in the entrance and entered the mage tower. Li Shuoxing flew further ahead, going up and down, left and right, picking out the best spot, then spread himself out on the exterior of a tall building.
It felt a little magical.
It was like he had turned into film, very thin and large, but not easily puncturableâŠ
Li Shuoxing thought so.
He began to exert himself, like pulling out a radish when he was a child.
He uprooted the building that he had chosen from the ground, then held it and moved it to its chosen position. And then, he fiercely and heavily rooted it into the ground.
There were two thumps, and the ground shook.
And Li Shuoxing was already happily aiming at the next target he had in mind.
He finally experienced firsthand the tremendous thrill of a superpower violently demolishing a city.
And of courseâyou could have the whole city, and the whole world, watching you hand out dog food!
***
The noise from the ground couldnât easily be heard from the mage tower floating in the air, and of course, the vibration of the ground couldnât be felt.
When he noticed that something was wrong, most of the mages in the mage tower were gathered at the windows on the sides of the tower, looking downwards. There were a few set words of chatter drifting in the wind:
âWhatâs happening?â
âWas there an explosion on the ground?â
âHas the Mechanical Civilisation come to Earth?â
Su Mingqian also came to the edge of the window out of curiosity. As he carelessly looked down, he saw a large gap filled with pits in the centre of the city. A word formed by steel high-rise buildings appeared in the centre of the gap.
It stood there, stunning and spectacular, and announcing to the world in a domineering manner:
L, O, V, E.
Then, fog rose and converged within the word, gradually forming into a pale grey figure.
It flew around in the air and stopped on the top of the high-rise buildings. It opened its arms towards the distant mage tower, as if carrying the whole word, the whole city, and the whole world, flying towards himâ
Su Mingqian watched in a daze, until he heard the sound of a click. A shiny silver handcuff, glowing with electricity, was put on his wrist.
Su Mingqian was a bit confused. âWhat is it?â
A black-faced policeman with the handcuffs yelled, âYou and your summoned beast are obstructing public order and causing major damage to public property! Now come back to the police station with us for interrogation!â
However, since Li Shuoxing didnât describe an interrogation in the police station in the article at all, they werenât really taken back to the police station.
So, shortly after the police showed up, Li Shuoxing and Su Mingqian only saw blackness before their eyes. When the scene reappeared, they were back at the gameâs starting point, in the long and wide passage for spirit beasts.
Li Shuoxing pondered, âThis is the gameâs death and resurrection. It seems that, at present, wantonly destroying the cityscape will directly trigger a plot kill.â
With that, he flew straight up into the air and headed towards the centre of the city where he had been hard at work for half a day. Unfortunately, he found that the word he had struggled to make with buildings had disappeared. The city had become flat again.
Li Shuoxing felt a little regretful, but not too regretful.
Because back when he started moving the buildings, he had the wisdom to turn on his video equipment and record it all!
Having finished playing on the ground, and additionally experiencing the sensation of death, Li Shuoxing was no longer attached to that place, but instead pulled Su Mingqian along with him towards the task destination.
It was time to take to the skies and continue to play!
The two of them followed the main task. They reached the spaceship and then followed it into space.
The process was very simple and could be done by following the steps.
But the situation was a bit different when they had gotten into space.
The vast starry sea was as silent as a graveyard, and the enemy fleet, numbers in the thousands, was lined up in the dark night sky.
They were silvery and fierce, like enlarged praying mantises with long, narrow bodies, and front ends which were raised like blades. On those were densely packed black holes, all of which were the fleetâs muzzles.
And, the battlefield was distributed like this.
The humans were on the right, the fleet was on the left, and Li Shuoxing and Su Mingqian were standing in the middle.
It was really striking, really awesome, and really in line with the novelâs requirement for a cool look for the two protagonists.
But, in the virtual reality, Li Shuoxing and Su Mingqian, standing in front of the humans, were like ants facing giant elephants, facing an uncountable fleet of ships in front of them.
Su Mingqian, a scientist in a civilian job, had his heart pounding like a drum, a little wary.
Li Shuoxing, a writer who also had a civilian job, had his heart pounding like a drum, also a little wary.
Su Mingqian stammered, âXi, Ximu, isnât it a little bad to make a virtual online game look so realistic? Itâll make people confused between reality and fantasyâŠâ
Li Shuoxing pretended to be very calm. âYou do seem to have a point. We need to be able to distinguish between reality and fantasy. For example, the enemy in front of us can be made a little less elaborate, so that they look like they donât exist in the same world as us.â
His words trailed off.
A red light, like a waterfall, like a sharp blade, suddenly flashed in the universe, splitting the blackness, splitting the silence.
The battle had begun!
Su Mingqian had never experienced such an artillery bombardment from a soldierâs life.
His mind went blank, and he instantly wimped out.
Li Shuoxing also wimped out!
So, he swooshed into a fog, wrapped himself around Su Mingqian, and turned around to run.
The lonely universe was now occupied by all sorts of brilliant light effects. The attacks from both sides intertwined to form a huge energy network, which covered the entire battle area from top to bottom, from left to right, and from all directions.
Li Shuoxing, who was in the middle of it, ran away for the first time, and didnât run very well. He couldnât get out of the combat range, and was hit several times by energy coming from out of nowhere.
But because of this, he suddenly found thatâŠ
Although the opponent, the mechanical civilisation, looked scary, their hits didnât really hurt.
There wasnât any pain in the game. When attacked, only a blood bar with life value would be displayed. Roughly estimating, the opponentâs most powerful laser sweeping his body would probably deduct less than 1% of his blood.
In other words, as long as they didnât just rush into the local camp as brainless tanks and let these fleets set fire on them, their life safety would be very guaranteed.
After analysing all this, Li Shuoxingâs confidence momentarily grew. Instead of turning around and running away, he wrapped around Su Mingqian and wandered around the edge of the battlefield. Although it was awesome, it was still nasty. He only fired cold arrows and smashed them into ashen remnants.
Under Li Shuoxingâs protection, Su Mingqian slowly came to his senses, stopped being afraid, and began to ponder over how to throw his skills.
It actually felt pretty good, kind of like playing whack-a-mole and manipulating the moles to tear each other apart.
Yeah⊠fun!
The colourful light effect battle lasted for about 20 minutes. Li Shuoxing and Su Mingqian finally finished decimating the last bit of life force in the place. A scoring system popped up at the end of the war.
[Battle]: The Third Civilisation Mechanical Battle.
[Score]: Grade B (highest SSS)
[Comment]: Common. Please make more efforts to get better results.
This was a terrible evaluation.
Li Shuoxing twitched his lips, and closed the evaluation. Pretending that nothing had happened, he calmly asked Su Mingqian for credit, âHow was it? Cub, I played pretty well, right? Iâm a veteran player with ten years of experience in games. Iâm not bragging about my skills. It was just a small scene.â
Su Mingqian pondered.
The scene just now was so chaotic, and he was unfamiliar with his skills. He accidentally used the mind-reading skill on Li Shuoxing again.
He heard:
âWhy is the mechanical fleet so scary ahhh.â
âRun run run run run with the cub!â
âHuh? It turns out it doesnât hurt when they hit. Iâm relieved. I wonât make a fool of myself.â
âLet me hide behind the crowd and tactfully see through the openingsâŠâ
A hint of a smile crept onto Su Mingqianâs lips.
He tried to hold it back and said, âYeah, Ximu, you played very well, really great. I was shocked by you.â
Once Li Shuoxing had been acknowledged, he instantly became humble. âItâs so so. Thereâs still room for improvement. Later on, weâll do this two or three times, stun the whole scene, and get a 3S rating!â
Su Mingqian: âOkay.â
The two of them went straight back to the original point without delay and redid the task.
After their first experience, the second and third were much easier.
Li Shuoxing and Su Mingqianâs fighting level soared, and their task rating quickly went from B to A, and from A to S.
Once they reached this level, Li Shuoxing simply turned on the video and recorded the entire process.
Just like live-action role-playing, the two of them showed the most handsome aspects of Cunxing and Su Mingqian in strict accordance with the description written in the article.
After this performance, the 3S rating finally arrived.
A perfect end to this plot!
After the plot, they both sat side by side on top of the warship.
Li Shuoxing snuck a glance at Su Mingqian. Seeing that Su Mingqian wasnât paying much attention to him, he immediately tried to use the [Ash] skill on the mechanical moon in front of them.
This skill was a magical one with two attack stages. The first was to fix the target into a painting, and the second was to turn the painting into ashes.
Now, Li Shuoxing used the first stageâs ability to frame the moon into the painting.
But the skill failed.
[The system determines that the mechanical fortressâs level is greater than the characterâs level, so it cannot be sealed into the painting.]
Li Shuoxing didnât give up. He tried using it a few more times, but still only got the cold failure prompt.
He had no choice but to secretly make a wish to the system: âSystem, Iâm making this painting for Mingqian, not for myself. Please work hard to change the value behind the scenes for my loverâŠâ
Once again, the voice in his mind resounded clearly in Su Mingqianâs mind.
He took a surprised glance at Li Shuoxing, afraid that heâd be discovered, and then quickly withdrew his gaze.
His heart beat a little faster, and his eyelashes gently fell to cover his twinkling eyes. He also made a wish in his heart: âAsk, satisfy Ximuâs request. Iâm looking forward to his gift to meâŠâ
The next second.
When Li Shuoxing tried using the skill again, the mechanical moon, which was hanging steadily in the sky, changed.
It was like wax withstanding a flame, slowly melting, and like an electronic device interfering with a magnetic field, flickering.
Then later.
Streaks of light trickled down from the mechanical moon.
It was as if the moonâs thin glow had coalesced into a tangible stream, glowing and shining, flowing all the way to a blank canvas in front of Li Shuoxing, on which it coalesced back into an entity.
Li Shuoxing held the canvas in his hand. He reached out, picked out the pocket watch on Su Mingqianâs chest, opened it, shrunk the canvas, glued it in, closed it, then gave it to Su Mingqian.
âI give you the stars and my heart. Happy birthday,â Li Shuoxing said with a smile.
Su Mingqian heard two voices at the same time.
One in his ear, one in his heart. One flowed into his mind, one felt by his body.
He gazed at Li Shuoxing for a long time, letting the intense and tender emotions flow freely through his body. Only then did he reach out, catch the pocket watch, and treasure it in his chest.
He said, âIâve caught it.â
Iâll treasure it and never lose it.
***
The two of them came out of the game later that day.
Li Shuoxing and Su Mingqian were admiring their heroic looks in the game together. Soon, Li Shuoxing couldnât resist his urge to share it. He edited the video, registered a new Weibo account called âOne hundred thousand reasons to cheat Kryptonâ, posted this video, and then forwarded it with his main account.