Gao Chao was very honest. Nine years ago, he was specially invited by a game company to participate in the global technical test of “Wuxia World,” which was limited to only one hundred people. Seven and a half years ago, he took part in the closed beta, which was limited to one thousand people worldwide... As for the later internal test with a global limit of ten thousand people, he was already behind bars and had no chance to participate.

Volume 1 【004】A Woman Alone Under the Sun for a Thousand Miles

At twelve noon on May 15, 2128, the highly anticipated 99% ultra-realistic virtual action online game “Wuxia World,” which had been promoted for over a decade, officially launched its open beta.

Players could create their game characters an hour in advance and even enjoy some small features in the character creation interface. At eleven o’clock on the 15th, Charles Green had already created his character and picked a rather meaningful ID.

The character he created was vastly different from himself, creating a strong visual contrast.

In the game, he was far from his real height of 1.8 meters—at most, the character was about 1.7 meters. The game character didn’t have a celebrity face either; no matter how you looked at it, he seemed rather plain, with a chubby and awkward build. The powerful eight-pack abs were gone, replaced by a slightly protruding beer belly.

Brian the Great deliberately created such a short, awkward, and poor chubby guy to make it easier for a glorious comeback later.

In the character selection interface, he listened carefully to the system’s built-in newbie tutorial.

The opening tutorial lasted a full twenty minutes. Most players would choose to skip it, while patient players could glean something useful from it. More advanced players could analyze a lot of information from this tutorial. Through the newbie guide, Charles Green already realized that the current open beta version was quite different from the two versions he had tested in the past.

Charles Green wasn’t worried. No matter how much things changed, the core remained the same. He had long since grasped the essence of “Wuxia World,” and minor changes weren’t enough to hinder his plans.

The character selection interface was a spacious, classically styled hall full of martial arts flavor. In the center stood the short, awkward, and poor chubby guy. With 99% realism, Charles Green controlled the chubby guy as he walked around the hall.

If a professional were present, it would be easy to see that the chubby guy wasn’t just wandering aimlessly—his steps were a rather advanced form of “animation-cancel kiting.” This kind of movement often appears in competitive games, especially in the early stages when no one has powerful offensive skills. Proper use of animation-cancel kiting can deal considerable extra damage.

After kiting in the air for half an hour, Charles Green was very satisfied with his own performance, awareness, and reaction speed. From any angle, his recent series of actions didn’t look like those of a soon-to-retire, middle-aged player, but rather like a passionate youth at the peak of his abilities.

“Hmm, the old man really didn’t lie to me…”

After finishing his kiting practice, Brian the Great muttered to himself.

Seven years ago, Charles Green could have pulled some strings to apply for medical parole and leave prison, but in the end, he didn’t. That was because he met a very interesting eccentric old man in prison.

The old man knew a special kind of qigong. According to his boasts, as long as you practiced this qigong in abstinence for five years, you’d become a legendary national soccer team striker once you left… Moreover, this qigong could keep a person’s reaction speed at its peak. In other words, the twenty-seven-year-old Brian the Great was no different from when he was twenty. With the help of qigong, this peak state could be maintained until about thirty.

The new ID he created in Wuxia World was to commemorate that old man.

At 11:52, Lily called again, her seductive and enchanting voice tinged with excitement: “Hey, I’ve finished creating my character. It’s called 【妹可辣舞】. What’s your name? I’ll add you as soon as I get in.”

“Mei ke… la wu… make… love?” Brian the Great chuckled. With his god-level lewdness index, he instantly deciphered the true meaning behind Lily’s ID. This nickname really did reflect Lily’s usual style. After laughing, he said, “Mine is 【千里日空妇】.”

Lily was silent for a moment, then asked, “Not using your old signature ID?”

Charles Green: “No, let’s start over.”

Lily: “Why do you always like to use IDs with hidden meanings that no one else understands? What does this new one mean?”

Charles Green: “You’ll find out later. The world’s perverts will tell you the answer.”

……

At exactly twelve o’clock, the open beta began.

Wuxia World lived up to its name. The game was divided into hundreds of small worlds, such as the dozen or so worlds based on Jin Yong’s martial arts novels, several based on Gu Long’s works, several from Huang Yi’s novels, and others from famous authors like Liang Yusheng and Wen Rui’an.

Choosing which small world to enter was a very important decision for early players. Transferring from one martial arts world to another required spending in-game currency, which most players couldn’t afford at the start. Moreover, entering different martial arts worlds offered different adventures.

Currently, the two most popular martial arts worlds on the official forum were the “Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils” world and the “Smiling Proud Wanderer” world. Besides the huge fan bases of these original works, the main reason was that in these two worlds, players could pick up peerless martial arts skills for free, which made countless players’ hearts race.