“What?” Ou Tao seemed to realize something. His finger slashed through the air at once and tapped Exit.

His consciousness returned to reality. He gently set the helmet on the bedside table, then saw Professor Liu Runhua staring blankly at a projected analysis chart.

“Hey, Professor, what’s going on? What’s with that look?”

“A miracle. This is a miracle! The damaged part of your sister’s brainstem has grown granulation tissue. There are even nerve endings in it, and they’re extending toward the lower brainstem! This is impossible. Human flesh can only regenerate so much. A high-level structure like the central nervous system—once it’s damaged, it shouldn’t be able to grow back. This is a medical miracle!”

Ou Tao froze in shock. He turned to look at the crystal on the table. Its blue glow was gone now. It had turned grayish-brown, like an empty can after the drink had been drained.

Then he looked at the screen. It was the illusory world he had created for his sister. On the other side of the server were mountains of boxed meals. Every single one was the fruit of his sister’s hard work. Every single one was filled with warmth and care. On the side screen, his sister sat with her legs folded beneath her, watching a video alone. She looked unbearably lonely.

He wanted so badly to hug the real her.

He wanted so badly to eat the food she had made with her own hands.

But the greatest distance in the world was nothing more than this moment. She was on the other side of the screen, and he was on this side. Virtual and reality.

“Bika, call me a car. I’m going to Hamiyou headquarters!”

When large-scale projection first became reality, social order had gone through a brief period of chaos. Projecting things into the real world looked cool as hell, but it could also cause accidents very easily.

For example, someone might project a Godzilla onto the road. It was only an illusion, sure, but a driver in a maglev car could still get scared out of their mind, yank the wheel, and slam into a nearby skyscraper.

So the government set a rule. Each person could project at most one cubic meter of illusion. But there was one place without that restriction.

That place was Element Plaza.

This was where people unleashed their wildest ideas. Anything they wanted to project, they could project here.

“Chicken, you’re too beautiful! Ah-oh, bei bei bei bei~”

At the center of Element Plaza, a thirty-nine-meter-tall projected giant was bouncing up and down, sliding his feet back and forth, and dribbling a gigantic basketball four meters wide. Ou Tao had already prepared himself to see some bizarre projections, but a giant over thirty meters tall playing basketball still caught him off guard.

Every era had people like this. They mourned the past, obsessed over what had been lost, and chased after things that had already faded away. Especially in the year 2333. In order to create controllable nuclear fusion, humanity’s entertainment industry had regressed like crazy, then miraculously revived.

That lost stretch of history made people nostalgic. It made them imitate it too. They called this act of copying their ancestors from three hundred years ago the “Entertainment Renaissance.”

And its influence had spread into politics, religion, music, and more.

“Everyone, everything we’ve gone through is wrong! It’s trash! It’s crap! It’s filth! It is now 8:40. In the election, I ask every one of you to vote for me! I will save our people from boredom! I will bring back the glorious age when five shut-ins played games while one shut-in picked up the takeout!”

A middle-aged man in a suit with a small mustache was giving a fiery speech. Thousands had gathered around him to watch. He suddenly thrust his right hand into the air.

“For the former glory of otaku!”

Around him, well-dressed people in suits and ties, obviously upper-class at a glance, raised their right hands at the same time as soldiers holding submachine guns, eyes fixed forward, faces cold and proud.

“For the former glory of otaku! For the former glory of otaku! For the former glory of otaku!”

The roar shook the air. After passing through that crowd, they ran into a second group.

They were all beauties, dressed in gorgeous women’s clothing. Arm in arm, they stood in a circle as if in prayer. In the middle, surrounded like the moon among stars, was a stunning beauty holding a small booklet. On it were seven bold characters:

Beginner to Master: Crossdressing.

“Thank you, crossdressing, for granting us the sacred path of purification. For guiding us into deep Zen, for cultivating our bodies and minds. Thank the heavens for granting us this path of self-cultivation!”

“Crossdressing liberates the mind! Crossdressing purifies the soul!”

A ring of gorgeous beauties stood in the plaza, hand in hand, solemn and devout, praying in rough male voices. And no one around them found it strange in the slightest.

To them, this was perfectly normal.

“Ah!” Bika covered her ears. “These people are complete lunatics. Do they really think holding gatherings like this can comfort the spirits of the crossdressing martyrs from three hundred years ago? They even brought out large-scale projections!”

“I don’t know if the ancestors can see them,” Ou Tao said, “but one thing’s for sure. They must’ve had great tempers, or they’d have burst out of their coffins and strangled them by now.”

Hamiyou’s headquarters was located in Building 451 of Element Plaza. Ou Tao stepped through the automatic doors, then onto a maglev elevator. Electromagnetic control handled the gravity, so even at a speed of one hundred meters per second, he didn’t feel the slightest discomfort.

He arrived on the 133rd floor and walked in. A projected virtual figure appeared before him, a silver-haired woman with a cold, proud face. She was probably one of Hamiyou’s virtual characters. She bowed respectfully.

“Mr. Ou Tao! Great Bro, the Chief Planner, has been awaiting you for quite some time!”

“By the way... is his name really Great Bro?”

“Of course not. We’re just riding the wave of the Entertainment Renaissance. That’s why we use the names of people and companies from three hundred years ago as code names.”

“Mr. Ou Tao, you’re finally here!” Great Bro was wearing a proper suit today for once. He really did look like a talented young elite. “How’s your sister?”

“Much better. How many of those blue crystals do you still have? I’ll buy them from you for ten million each!”

“I’m sorry, but even if you offered one hundred million each, there still wouldn’t be any. Because I only had that one.”

“Then where can I get more?”

Great Bro gestured for him to follow.

He walked to a metal wall and leaned forward. A scanner appeared on the metal door in front of him, and he lined up his pupil with it.

The wall sank inward and opened like a gate. The moment Ou Tao stepped inside, he felt like he had entered an internet café.

And yet, it also gave off the vibe of a combat command center.

More than a dozen people were typing on virtual keyboards. In front of them floated over a dozen moving screens. On those screens was a first-person view. The characters were fighting. Their enemies included knights, rogue mercenaries, dragons, and elves. It looked like they were playing some medieval sword-and-magic game.

Voices kept ringing out over the relay channel.

“We need a priest over here! We need healing!”

“No good, Heavenly Principle’s skill range isn’t enough!”

“Damn it, the captain of the Third Knight Order is dead! The bandit gang took him out!”

“You’re playing games?” Ou Tao asked, confused.

“Wrong. We’re exploring another world.”

“That joke isn’t funny.”

“I’m not joking, Ou Tao. Controllable nuclear fusion is basically an artificial sun. The moment it was created, humanity had already conquered the entire solar system. But the government wasn’t going to stop there. Once the device was completed, they began launching overclocked pulses to explore other star systems. They wanted to search for more power and bring it under human control.

“After thirty-three years of transmission, while you were spending your days gaming, the government had already destroyed nineteen worthless civilizations. But five months ago, we discovered a valuable civilization fifty million light-years away. We’re preparing to explore it. We call it the Otherworld.”

“The crystal that can heal my sister... is it there?”

“Yes. That world is dangerous. The Chinese Academy of Sciences found it first, and the government is still researching it. But we can’t pass up a business opportunity like this. Through quantum entanglement, we can send things from that world back here. We can also send signals over there. Organic warp transfer still isn’t possible, though, so the only way is to implant a biochip into the back of a native’s neck. Then you use a helmet to control the body of a dead person in that world. That’s why we need top-tier gamers. You’re better at controlling another body under full-dive conditions.”

“Stop.” Ou Tao raised a hand. “I don’t get any of this. I’m just a sixteen-year-old kid!”

“In simple terms, if you want to cure your sister, you have to send your consciousness into someone else in the Otherworld. After that, treat it like a game where death means no respawn. Except everything in that game is real, and whatever you get there, you can bring back. Got it now?”

“Will I be in danger? I mean, all that quantum stuff sounds pretty intense.”

“No. Your body stays in this room. If excessive stimulation causes a heart attack, the system will automatically cut the power. Pulling the plug is unbeatable.”

“Alright then. Which station am I using?”

“We’ve prepared a new level-three account for you. His name is Rod. He’s a level-three farmer. He had a lucky encounter when he was younger, and he also has a daughter.”

“Level three? That’s way too weak. Give me the strongest account you’ve got.”

“We’ve only been exploring the Otherworld for six months. The strongest account we have is only level thirty-six, and it’s not even a sword-type class. Your Uncle Rod has SSS growth potential, and his awakened class is also a perfect fit for you. Since this project began, out of all the companies in the know, we’ve had it the worst. We need you.”

As he said that, Great Bro stood at attention and bowed deeply.

Ou Tao looked at him, then at the photo of his sister on Bika’s screen.

“Seventy million a year. We sign the contract first. And if you find more of that crystal that can cure my sister, I get priority.”