383: Chapter 383 Female players really do get special treatment?

The indicator light on the hibernation pod turned from red to green.

With a soft "hiss" from the pressure valve, the hatch slowly opened.

Director Li Guoan instinctively tightened his grip on his thermos, while Zhang Yunhai, Sun Feng, and several other experts stood up in unison, their eyes fixed on the interior of the pod.

The timer froze at eight minutes and forty-two seconds.

Less than ten minutes.

Lin Miao propped herself up against the wall of the pod with one hand and nimbly flipped herself out.

Once she was steady, she quickly straightened her tactical suit, stood at attention, and raised her hand in a salute.

"Reporting! Initial exploration mission complete. Safely logged off!"

The tension in Director Li Guoan's facial muscles instantly relaxed, and he let out a long breath.

He set down his thermos and stepped quickly toward Lin Miao, sizing her up from head to toe.

"Good! It's good that you're back safely." Director Li Guoan turned to Sun Feng. "How are the physical stats?"

"Heart rate is normal, brainwaves are stable, and all indicators are within the threshold."

Sun Feng looked at the real-time data on his tablet, his voice tinged with excitement. "A perfect adaptation!"

Chen You, sitting in his chair, also straightened up.

"That two-meter-tall chicken didn't scare you, did it?"

Lin Miao turned to face Chen You and the others, her expression meticulous.

"Reporting to Captain Chen, the Spawn Point was indeed near a thatched cottage, just as you said. I also encountered that giant Mutated Grass Chicken."

"And then?" Zhang Yunhai leaned in with his voice recorder.

"It used Charge against me; it was very fast, with an estimated force of around two hundred kilograms," Lin Miao recalled the details of the fight.

"I chose not to meet it head-on. I used a side step to evade its frontal peck, then concentrated spiritual power in my right fist and struck the side of its neck."

Lin Miao paused, her tone remaining flat.

"With one punch, its neck snapped. The system notified me that I had completed the novice mission."

The conference room fell silent for two seconds.

Zhang Yunhai swallowed hard and turned to look at Chen You.

The corner of Chen You's mouth twitched.

When he first entered the game, he had been chased all over the hills by that chicken.

In the end, he had barely managed to wear the chicken down by relying on health potions.

Now Lin Miao goes in and one-shots it?

"With the physical fitness of the First Layer of Qi Refining combined with a burst of spiritual power, fighting a level 1 novice mob is indeed a dimensional strike."

Chen You coughed twice, trying to save face. "What happened after you left the village?"

"After killing the target, a guiding beam of light appeared behind the thatched cottage," Lin Miao continued her report.

"I searched the Novice Village but found nothing special, so I followed the light beam out of the Novice Village."

"I didn't encounter any obstacles, nor did I trigger the Scenario Campaign you mentioned before."

Sun Feng's eyes lit up, and he quickly wrote several keywords on the whiteboard.

"No Scenario Campaign?" Sun Feng pushed up his glasses, speaking rapidly. "What does this mean? It means that the Source Realm's initial screening mechanism isn't fixed!"

Zhang Yunhai chimed in, "Exactly. Combined with our previous deductions, the Yuanjie System possesses extremely high intelligence and judgment logic."

"It likely assigns different development paths based on a player's initial performance, or even their gender."

"Comrade Lin Miao, where did you go after leaving the village?" Director Li Guoan asked the crucial question.

"The system notified me that I had entered a neutral zone, on the outskirts of a city called 'Chuxin City'," Lin Miao replied.

Chen You's eyebrows shot up.

Chuxin City? He had never heard of it.

"What happened after you entered the city?" Director Li Guoan pressed.

For the first time, a slight awkwardness appeared on Lin Miao's face.

She frowned slightly, seemingly organizing her thoughts.

"After entering the city, I originally intended to find a weapon shop or armor shop to see if I could obtain some basic equipment.

But on the main street, I was stopped by an NPC with fluffy ears."

"Fluffy ears?" Sun Feng recorded quickly. "Did he attack you?"

"No." Lin Miao shook her head, her expression turning a bit strange. "He handed me a flyer and asked me... if I had a dream."

"A dream?" Zhang Yunhai was stunned.

"Yes." Lin Miao stood straight and, in a standard reporting posture, repeated the NPC's words clearly and precisely.

"He asked me if I wanted to stand on the Source Realm's biggest stage, if I wanted to make my 'center-position' debut."

The conference room fell into a dead silence once again.

Director Li Guoan's hand, holding his thermos, froze in mid-air.

Zhang Yunhai's voice recorder almost fell to the floor.

The marker in Sun Feng's hand drew a long black line across the whiteboard.

Chen You had just taken a sip of water and nearly spat it out.

"Cough, cough, cough..." Chen You clutched his chest, coughing violently.

No one paid any attention to Chen You's loss of composure.

The members of the expert group were already deep in a brainstorming session.

"'Center-position debut'?" Zhang Yunhai's brow was furrowed as he paced back and forth in the conference room.

"'C' is an abbreviation for 'Center', meaning the middle or core. This NPC's words are definitely not as simple as they appear on the surface."

Sun Feng slapped his thigh, his expression excited. "I've got it! This is another form of civilization testing!"

"What Chen You encountered was a survival campaign, testing martial prowess and survival instincts. What Lin Miao encountered is a test of social class advancement!"

"Makes sense." Pan Yu joined the discussion. "As a high-dimensional world, the Source Realm must have a complex internal social structure."

"This so-called 'center-position debut' is likely hinting at whether a player is willing to enter the world's core ruling circle through some selection mechanism."

"This is a form of cultural infiltration and rule assimilation." Pan Yu's face was grave. "What else did that NPC say?"

Seeing these top-tier national minds so serious, Lin Miao didn't dare to be negligent and tried hard to recall every detail.

"He also said the whole city is currently going crazy for the 'Voice of Star Source'."

"He said that if I signed up, with my looks, even if I were just a Trainee for 'two and a half years', I could gain a massive amount of firepower value."

Lin Miao added with some distress, "I don't know what firepower value is. But I suspect it might be some special energy measurement unit in the Source Realm."

"To avoid making a wrong judgment, I didn't agree rashly. I used the excuse of needing to consider it and immediately logged off to report."

"Well done! Caution is the primary principle." Director Li Guoan nodded in approval.

He turned around and looked at the dense analytical diagrams on the whiteboard, his expression more serious than ever.

"'Voice of Star Source'... 'firepower value'..." Director Li Guoan pondered.

Sun Feng said with realization, "This is definitely a deeply hidden chain quest."

"The treatment of female characters in the Source Realm is indeed completely different from that of males."

Director Li Guoan turned to look at Chen You, who was still coughing.

"Little Chen, what do you think?" Director Li Guoan asked seriously.

Chen You grabbed a few tissues and wiped the corner of his mouth.

He looked at the phrases circled by the experts on the whiteboard—"core ruling circle," "energy measurement unit," "cultural infiltration"—and felt a massive headache coming on.

What the hell gender difference!

That was just some Talent Show I made up on the fly yesterday to max out the Prosperity Level!