Chapter 369 Game Begins Testing

Mom Yang leaned close to Yang Mi's ear and began to whisper the "secrets to managing men" and "folk prescriptions for conceiving a son" that she had heard from who-knows-where, along with her own summarized wisdom...

At first, Yang Mi listened with a blushing face, but gradually, her eyes lit up. She listened more and more intently, even nodding thoughtfully from time to time...

Amid the anticipation and curiosity of countless people, time quietly slipped toward midnight.

The entrance to Xingchen Technology's official game website lit up right on time, and the not-so-large beta client became available for download.

Players who had been waiting for a long time instantly flooded in to start downloading.

Fortunately, the technology Jiang Jing purchased from the System Store was powerful enough; the servers remained as steady as Mount Tai, successfully withstanding this first wave of traffic.

Zhang Wei was an ordinary junior in college.

While browsing Weibo during the day, he had seen Jiang Jing's game announcement. Thinking he had nothing better to do anyway and wanting to see what tricks Jiang Jing could pull off, he joined the downloading crowd as well.

For college students with plenty of free time, trying out new games was a perfectly normal pastime.

Download complete, install, launch.

The moment the login screen popped up, Zhang Wei was slightly stunned.

The UI design and the lighting effects were simple yet full of texture, exuding a high-end feel. It looked nothing like those crudely made products from small workshops.

Upon entering the game, the first thing he saw was the character creation screen.

What Zhang Wei found novel was that the game provided multiple ways to generate a character:

Players could upload a clear photo of themselves, and the game's AI would intelligently generate a highly similar in-game model.

They could also choose from various stylized templates preset by the system.

Of course, there was also the highly customizable manual face-sculpting system.

"This is pretty interesting." With great interest, Zhang Wei chose the manual face-sculpting option. He spent over ten minutes meticulously creating a swordsman character that suited his aesthetic.

Next was a brief but concise novice tutorial, mainly teaching the basic controls.

After the tutorial ended, his character spawned in a starting village filled with Eastern fantasy elements.

There was no auto-pathfinding, nor were there cluttered quest list icons.

Everything required the player to explore on their own.

Zhang Wei controlled his character to wander around the village, trying to talk to the passing villager NPCs.

Miraculously, the first-person perspective of this character was incredibly realistic, as if he were just taking a stroll in daily life.

When he talked to an NPC, he was shocked to find that the game had no fixed dialogue option boxes.

Instead, players had to manually type in the input box or use preset voice shortcuts, which the system would automatically recognize and convert into text to communicate with the NPC.

He tried typing to a frowning old farmer, "Old sir, what's wrong?"

The old farmer looked up, glanced at him, and sighed. "The fields outside the village have been ruined by a pack of demonized wild boars. Alas, what are we going to do about this year's harvest..."

[Quest Triggered: Clear the Monsters (Novice)]

[Quest Description: Help villager Old Man Li clear the demonized wild boars in the fields outside the village (0/3)]

"Holy crap! It's this intelligent?!" Zhang Wei couldn't help but exclaim.

This method of interaction completely subverted his understanding of traditional online games.

He tried typing other phrases to other people, like "None of my business" or "Why are you so ugly yourself?"

Sure enough, different NPCs gave different responses, all with dissatisfied tones.

There was even a butcher who raised his cleaver to threaten him, scaring him into running away immediately to end the conversation.

Thinking about it carefully, this meant that every choice a player made could lead to different questlines or even endings.

Filled with novelty and excitement, Zhang Wei accepted the monster-clearing quest, received a basic iron sword from the NPC, and walked toward the outskirts of the village.

The scenery outside the village was equally exquisite, with vegetation swaying in the wind and extremely realistic lighting effects.

Soon, he spotted his targets—three massive, demonized wild boars with exposed tusks.

In the first-person perspective, Zhang Wei felt his breathing subconsciously grow lighter.

The longsword in his hand felt as if it were truly being held in his own grip.

He approached cautiously and swung his sword at one of the wild boars.

"Roar!" Feeling the pain, the wild boar let out a roar and charged fiercely toward him.

There were no fixed skill buttons. The angle and fluidity of attacks were entirely determined by the player's controls, allowing them to freely combine their own combos.

"This is so thrilling!" Zhang Wei's adrenaline surged as he focused entirely on dealing with the wild boar.

He got hit several times, and his health bar dropped significantly. But in the end, relying on the unconventional tactics he figured out himself—like "stabbing the eyes" and "slashing the hind legs"—he successfully brought down all three wild boars.

When the last wild boar collapsed with a wail, a massive sense of accomplishment and satisfaction welled up in his heart.

This was countless times more fun than those brainless games where you just stand in place and mash skill buttons!

Returning to the village to hand in the quest, his character flashed with light and leveled up.

Attribute points had to be distributed manually, and skills had to be learned by finding the corresponding NPCs.

Zhang Wei was completely hooked.

He explored the starting village tirelessly, talking to every NPC he could converse with, trying out different phrases, and triggering all kinds of quests.

There was helping a little girl find her lost cat, helping a blacksmith gather ores, mediating disputes between villagers...

He discovered that the game didn't just have combat; it also featured a rich variety of life, exploration, and puzzle-solving quests, clearly taking into account the needs of players with different preferences.

Before he knew it, several hours had passed.

Feeling that he had done enough quests in the starting village, Zhang Wei followed the guide to find the teleportation array at the village entrance, preparing to head to a larger city to begin a new adventure.

Following a flash of brilliant teleportation light, his character appeared in a grand and ancient city.

The bluestone streets, the NPCs coming and going—everything was lifelike.

Curiously, he walked toward the armored guard standing watch at the city gate, wanting to see if he could trigger some dialogue.

Just as he approached the guard and was about to ask, a line of elegant stylized text suddenly popped up in the center of the screen:

[The beta experience ends here. Thank you for participating. For more exciting content, please look forward to the official release!]

Immediately after, the game screen froze, then slowly faded out, returning to the login screen.

"Ah?! That's it?!" Zhang Wei cried out, still wanting more, a sense of emptiness in his heart.

He felt as if he had only just touched the edge of this vast world and was eager to explore more.

He reluctantly exited the game, feeling his palms slightly sweaty from the long period of tense play, but his spirit was exceptionally excited.

The game's level of freedom and immersion was simply too strong.

In the first-person perspective, it didn't feel like he was controlling a virtual character at all; rather, he was personally experiencing that adventure.

He couldn't wait to open the forum on the official game website to see how others felt, and to strongly urge them to release the official version as soon as possible.