Chapter 121 – Evil Fire Invasion

Fang Zheng had assumed that “understanding the situation” would involve some casual chitchat, a few questions to clarify what happened, and maybe a pat on the head with a praise like, “What a brave little kid,” before it was all over. But to his surprise, the baby-faced officer called over another officer with a square jaw, and while the latter stayed behind at the hospital, Fang Zheng and the baby-faced officer ended up at the police station, sitting face-to-face in a formal interrogation, taking statements. This pressure was too much for the usually unrestrained Legion Leader, who subconsciously dropped his usual adjectives, adverbs, and excessive punctuation, drastically reducing the average word count per sentence.

“Are you sure he fell on his own?”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to seriously hurt someone over a few hundred bucks…”

“So, he failed at pickpocketing and turned to robbery?”

“Probably not. He threw the money on the ground when he ran, which is why I was confused about why he kept running so desperately… Hey, do you think maybe he didn’t realize he’d already dropped the money?”

“…”

“Sorry, forget I said that.”

“His psychology isn’t hard to understand. He’s on our surveillance list—shows up now and then to clock in. He’s probably sick of seeing us and doesn’t want to deal with us anymore. What I don’t get is why you chased him so desperately. While we encourage such spirit, personal safety should always come first.”

“If I hadn’t caught him at all, fine. But I did catch him! How could I just let him run away after that? And you didn’t see how arrogant he was—if I were the Thunder God, I’d have struck him with lightning—”

“…”

“Sorry, I shouldn’t be promoting superstitions.”

The Legion Leader’s unrestrained nature was ruthlessly suppressed in the tense, restrained environment of the police station, draining his MP at an alarming rate, leaving him visibly haggard.

By then, it was already 10 PM. Fang Zheng glanced up at the glass window on the interrogation room door. Though he couldn’t see anyone outside, just knowing that guy was waiting out there gave him some peace of mind…

Birdy, if you can hear me, I want lamb skewers for late-night snacks TAT

“Wait a minute,” Fang Zheng said belatedly, only just processing the officer’s earlier words. “You said he’s on your list? I knew his skills weren’t amateurish! Hey, if you guys follow the clues and bust the whole pickpocketing ring, is there a reward? What about my medical expenses—”

Never mind. No environment, no matter how tense or restrained, could ever rein in the Legion Leader’s wild heart.

The officer sighed, rubbing his forehead. He hadn’t mentioned it earlier to spare the victim’s feelings, but now he was certain this guy had a heart of steel: “Don’t hold your breath for the medical expenses. He lives with his grandma, who’s over eighty and survives on welfare. I guarantee you won’t find anything valuable even if you ransack his place. We searched him too—all he had was a phone. If he had money, he wouldn’t be stealing a few hundred from you.”

“Uncle Officer, whose side are you on…?”

“Of course, the side of the good-hearted people. Don’t worry, even if I have to twist his arm, I’ll make him write you an IOU.”

“You think he’ll pay?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the point?!”

“Psychological comfort.”

Uncle Officer, you should join the Ghost Server Legion. Your shamelessness is a perfect match for us, ahhh TAT

Jokes aside, after finishing the statement, the officer patted his shoulder and sighed sincerely: “Just take it as bad luck. Last time he got into a fight, I ended up covering the medical bills too. That’s how society is—good people get the short end of the stick. But think of it this way: at least your conscience is clear, and you won’t be scared of ghosts knocking on your door at night.”

“This is getting more and more confusing,” Fang Zheng frowned. “You two aren’t secretly related, are you? You just said he’s on your blacklist…”

“Not exactly a blacklist, surveillance, more like a graylist,” the officer seized the chance to promote law-abiding positivity. “You might not know this, but as local officers, we all have a list. The people on it are either troublemakers who aren’t bad enough to be jailed, or ex-cons who still need ideological reform—basically, unstable elements in society. So we keep a close eye on them, communicate often, and educate them. If a crime happens, we start our investigations with them.”

“That list sounds kinda amazing…”

“Rein in your runaway imagination. This list doesn’t update automatically—it’s built up over years of grassroots work. My mentor passed it to me when I was first assigned here, and someday, when I have my own apprentice, I’ll pass on the updated version.”

Fang Zheng stopped teasing or joking. For the first time, he studied the man in front of him, who was about his age.

Same baby face, same sharp uniform, but slowly, those details blurred and reshaped in his eyes, turning into a wall—a solid barrier separating peaceful, ordinary folks like himself from restless troublemakers like the guy lying in the hospital.

Before leaving, Fang Zheng couldn’t help asking: What would happen to the guy in the hospital? The answer was that if this was his first offense, the amount wasn’t enough for jail time—just detention. But if he was a repeat offender, it’d be a different story, and they’d call Fang Zheng back.

“I don’t think he’s an amateur,” Fang Zheng said honestly. “His technique was smooth, and his hand speed was fast.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll investigate thoroughly,” the officer assured him, then added as an afterthought, “But his dad used to be a magician, so maybe he’s had practice.”

“Ten minutes ago, you said his family was just his grandma!”

“Yeah, now it’s just his grandma. His dad was executed two years ago.”

“…”

“You look like you want to ask about his mom.”

“Please, no. Just let him remain a glorious pickpocket in my mind.”

The taxi sped through the night. Fang Zheng leaned against the window, drowsy, but every time he was about to fall asleep, a bump would knock his head against the glass, waking him up. He’d yawn, his eyelids drooping again, and the cycle repeated.

After who-knows-how-many knocks, a hand suddenly pulled his head over. Before he could react, he was resting against Birdy’s shoulder.

Birdy didn’t say anything, just gently stroked his face a couple of times with his other hand, as if soothing a child to sleep.

Birdy was touching the bruised side of his face, yet strangely, Fang Zheng didn’t feel any pain. Maybe he was just too exhausted, and Birdy’s shoulder was too comfortable—once he leaned in, he never wanted to leave.

But no.

Fang Zheng struggled to sit up.

Birdy frowned slightly, as if sensing Fang Zheng’s worry, and glanced at the driver in the rearview mirror before saying calmly, “It’s fine.”

Fang Zheng shook his head vigorously, then stared at Birdy for a long time—so long that the other’s face seemed imprinted on his heart—before finally speaking: “The train tickets… we forgot to refund them.”

“…” Birdy exhausted his HP and MP bars to keep his face from twitching before patiently explaining, “Small money. Not worth worrying about.”

Fang Zheng teared up: “I want to worry about big money, but where is it? Where is it?“

Meng Chudong found it for him: “Next time you chase someone like that, the IOU will double.”

Fang Zheng: “…Can you call me?”

Meng Chudong: “?”

Fang Zheng: “Call my phone. Now.”

On the last night of Future Battlefield, the Legion Leader lost face, lost money, and had his custom ringtone replaced with a brutal live recording—dubbed the “custom edition.” But to be fair, no matter how crude the phone’s recording software or how terrible the audio quality, nothing could mask the voice’s cool, detached aura or the love flowing beneath that aloof surface—

[Fatty, answer the phone. If you don’t, you’re dead.]

For full effect, loop this three times.

The move went much faster than Fang Zheng expected. Fifth Brother and Diamond had come with just their backpacks, and Birdy didn’t even bring that. All Fang Zheng had to do was negotiate the lease termination with his landlord, sell the two desktops at a depreciated price, and then become a backpacker himself, following his three friends in search of enlightenment.

In just two days, Lu Yue had already found them a place—three bedrooms, two living rooms, reasonable rent, and most importantly, only a ten-minute walk from the internet café. The two innermost private rooms had even been prepped for them, complete with “Staff Only” signs.

Truth be told, even now, Fang Zheng and the other two were at best casual acquaintances with Lu Yue, having shared a couple of drinks. Although Birdy owned a quarter of the shares, Lu Yue wouldn’t see a dime of that money. So Fang Zheng was silently grateful for all the effort Lu Yue had put into helping them—until the third day after they exchanged numbers. When Fang Zheng called him, Lu Yue had left his phone with the front desk girl. Fang Zheng followed the ringing, looked down, and saw three noble words flashing on the caller ID:

[Princess Legion Leader]

The glass heart of the Legion Leader shattered into pieces. From then on, his opinion of his boyfriend’s childhood friend shifted from fan to anti.

The whole process—scouting, moving, and settling in—took about a week. During the scouting phase, the four still logged into the game occasionally to check in, but once they got busy with the move, they went completely offline. By the time they finished unpacking, furnishing Lu Yue’s rented place, shopping for bedding and kitchenware, and customizing their private rooms at the internet café to their liking, Huaxia Online had undergone a sea change.

The first thing that greeted the Ghost Server Legion Leader was an avalanche of guild applications. Reject one, another popped up. Bulk reject? The next batch arrived. Eventually, he just set the guild to “closed.” Following Sister Blood Bull’s advice, he checked the forums and realized that after the interview, they’d gone viral—hailed as “the last shred of sincerity in an era of collective posturing, the final conscience of the sleaze meta.”

Then he logged into QQ and was bombarded with messages—requests for power leveling, max-level carries, gear farming—clearly from people jumping on the bandwagon after the interview. The Legion Leader could tolerate that, but what the hell was with the offline selfies captioned “Meow~~~” asking to be sugar babied?!

Next, Drink Till You Drop sent him a link. Clicking it led to another Huaxia forum post: the Dutch Chamber of Commerce’s combined guild had also reached max level, becoming the second combined guild on Huaxia Summit to do so—and the only one in the entire game so far to have defeated the final boss of the endgame dungeon! And in the max-level screenshot—the boss was dead again! Another purple drop! Are you the RNG God’s illegitimate children or what?!

Before the Legion Leader could recover from the shock, the RNG God spoke—

[System] Dimensional Rift, activated.

Simple words, without flourish or flashy punctuation, yet they plunged Huaxia Summit into silence. Maybe not just Huaxia Summit—perhaps the entire Huaxia universe held its breath for a moment, filled with suppressed excitement.

“Let’s go?” Mad Lad asked in YY.

“Duh,” replied 2B.

Even Fifth Brother, who had been posting job listings with descriptions so fantastically brutal they were almost beautiful, seemed to sense something and switched back to the game.

The most anticipated new feature after level 70—the Dimensional Rift, allowing free travel between any server—was now live!

According to the official preview, the Dimensional Rift would appear once a day on any open-world map, lasting only one hour. Players had to find and click on it within that time to travel to another server. Once there, they could stay for two hours before being sent back. However, if they died on the foreign server and weren’t revived by a same-server healer or Blesscaller within two minutes, they’d be forcibly returned to their home server’s respawn point and barred from re-entering the rift that day. One key detail: foreign players were safe in the main cities of other servers. If they could survive the trek across multiple open-world maps to reach a main city (foreign players couldn’t use the local Teleport Masters—they had to run), they could enjoy their visit in peace.

Fang Zheng: “Besides Fighter Jet, Mad Lad, Fifth Brother, Diamond, Birdy, and me, who else is in?”

Your Uncle: “Me, me!”

Your Sister & 438 & Crossplayer: “Good luck, everyone!”

Sister Blood Bull: “Statistically, you have a 50% chance of not finding the rift.”

2B: “And if we do?”

Sister Blood Bull: “A 99% chance of being slaughtered abroad and sent home in a body bag.”

As it turned out, trusting Sister Blood Bull led to eternal life.

Finding the rift seemed like searching for a needle in a haystack, but when the entire server worked together, the open-world maps were quickly scoured. In under ten minutes, a player from Five Peaks Pavilion found it, and Drink Till You Drop generously shared the location server-wide. Clearly, when the battlefield expanded to the entire Huaxia universe, players’ sense of belonging shifted from guild to server—just like how people bond over shared hometowns domestically and shared nationality abroad.

Though the rift’s location was shared, everyone had different destinations in mind, so Huaxia Summit players didn’t form one massive combined guild. Instead, they split into small teams of three to five, each heading to different servers.

The Ghost Server’s destination was decided by vote. Six to one, Your Uncle’s “I have a friend in Fairy Dreamland I’ve always wanted to play with, and today’s the day! >_<” was mercilessly crushed under the six-fingered mountain of “Holy Light Sanctuary.”

They’d expected the journey to be rough.

They’d expected foreign players to be marked conspicuously by the system.

They’d expected the trip to be short-lived.

But the roughness, conspicuousness, and brevity still exceeded the Ghost Server team’s expectations.

Roughness: The loading screen had just transitioned to Holy Light Sanctuary‘s open-world map, and their seven avatars had barely appeared, when dozens of locals greeted them with hospitable smiles.

Conspicuousness: In a sea of emerald-green bamboo, seven foreign players blazed with crimson flames that might as well have been shouting, “Look at me! Over here!”

Brevity: How long does fifty versus seven take? The Legion Leader tearfully informs you that the gap between life and death was the time it took him to bend down and pick up a fifty-cent coin. (Admittedly, the coin’s placement wasn’t ideal, adding to the retrieval difficulty.)

[Party] 2B Fighter Jet: Sigh, should’ve listened to my wife.

[Party] Fifth Brother’s Trading Post: Fifty vs. seven—losing isn’t shameful. No need to stay silent and type instead.

[Party] Little Lucky Charm: Yeah, who knew they’d be camping like that? Fighter Jet, chin up!

[Party] 2B Fighter Jet: You guys are overthinking it. You think I’m the kind of fragile snowflake who’d be ashamed over one death?╮(╯_╰)╭

[Party] 2B Fighter Jet: I’m typing because she doesn’t like me calling her “wife”=_=

[Party] Milk is Mom: But you’ve been calling her that for half a year…

[Party] 2B Fighter Jet: Exactly! And now she suddenly won’t let me!

[Party] 2B Fighter Jet: You think it’s menopause?

[Party] Fifth Brother’s Trading Post: Hah, screenshotting that!

[Party] 2B Fighter Jet: Fifth Brother! You’re my real brother! Hugging your leg! >_<

[Party] Fifth Brother’s Trading Post: After seeing your photo, I can’t picture this pose=_=

[Party] Mad Lad: He’s just pure split personality.

[Party] 2B Fighter Jet: That’s what makes gaming fun!~\(^o^)/~

Whether 2B and Sister Blood Bull were joking or serious, Fang Zheng couldn’t tell. 2B was perpetually eccentric, making it hard to distinguish truth from trolling, while Sister Blood Bull was always deadpan—so much so that even her jokes sounded serious, blurring the line. The two polar opposites had somehow turned their relationship into one of the Ghost Server’s top ten unsolved mysteries.

But now wasn’t the time for gossip. Their first inter-server trip had ended in crushing defeat. Though the speed of their demise was unusually fast, as they rested at the respawn point, others who’d ventured to different servers began dying and returning, proving that the rift wasn’t meant to be an easy ride.

Once fully recovered, Fang Zheng chatted with fellow travelers at the respawn point, asking about their experiences. While none had been ambushed immediately like them, reaching the nearest main city required crossing over a dozen open-world maps, inevitably encountering local players—especially those farming world bosses or heading to dungeons, who naturally united against outsiders. Often, fights started evenly matched, but as more locals arrived, the odds tipped, and by the time coordinates were broadcast in chat, summoning reinforcements, it was a bloodbath. Most didn’t even last until the third wave before dying.

Meanwhile, Drink Till You Drop also returned—barely fifteen minutes after everyone had left.

[Local] Milk is Mom: Drink, thoughts on the inter-server experience?

[Local] Drink Till You Drop: Public enemy number one.

[Local] Big H: Perfect summary.

[Local] Milk is Mom: You died too?

[Local] Big H: If anyone makes it to a main city, they’re definitely cheating.

Just as Fang Zheng was about to type in agreement, a red glow appeared in the top-left corner of his screen—a familiar, glaring crimson, like flames, marking the outsider’s discordance with the server.

[Huaxia] [Holy Light Sanctuary] No Birds Over a Thousand Mountains: So this is Huaxia Summit. Not bad.

[Huaxia] [Holy Light Sanctuary] No Birds Over a Thousand Mountains: Can someone screenshot this for me? My angle sucks—can’t capture the grandeur.

The visitor sat atop the city gate tower—the highest point of Huaxia Summit’s largest main city. Even zoomed in from the respawn point, his clothes, face, and even his ID were blurry. Only the flames were clear, burning brightly at the pinnacle of Huaxia Summit, overlooking the server with unrestrained arrogance.