52: The live stream screen went black.

The screen went black.

It didn't fade slowly. With a snap, it went straight to black. It was as if someone had pulled the power cord.

The last frame froze at the moment Chen Xi collapsed. His body was leaning backward, his eyes were open and vacant. Then there was black. Pure black.

In the upper-left corner of the livestream room, the viewer count was still jumping: 8,734,921.

The bullet chat stopped for three seconds.

For three seconds, not a single comment appeared. It was empty. Only that number kept jumping: 8,735,102.

Then, it exploded.

[???]

[What's going on?]

[Is it lagging?]

[Master Xi???]

[Did he disconnect?]

[That moment just now...]

[Holy shit, Master Xi fell?!]

The bullet chat scrolling speed jumped from dozens per second to hundreds, then thousands. Dense white text filled the black screen, overlapping and covering each other until the words were illegible.

[He fell! I saw him fall!]

[This isn't acting! He really fell!]

[What about the heartbeat! There was a heartbeat sound just now!]

[There's no sound anymore!]

[Everything's gone!]

[Admin! Get out here!]

[Customer service! Where's customer service!]

[Is the game company dead?!]

People began spamming gifts. Rockets, sports cars, castles. Special effects exploded on the black screen, colorful lights flashing before vanishing. Only the black screen and bullet chat remained.

The viewer count broke nine million.

The hashtag #Master Xi's Livestream Interrupted# appeared on Weibo. Time of posting: 23:17.

At 23:19, the hashtag #Master Xi Sacrificed# appeared.

At 23:21, #Master Xi Sacrificed# climbed to 47th on the hot search list.

At 23:23, it climbed to 12th on the hot search list.

At 23:25, it reached number one on the hot search list.

It was followed by the word [Viral].

The Weibo servers began to lag. Refreshing the page resulted in a loading circle that spun for three or five seconds before loading. Even when it loaded, it was a mess, with distorted timelines and duplicate content.

Douyin, Kuaishou, Bilibili, Zhihu, Hupu, Tieba. Every platform, every community. Everyone was spamming the same thing.

[Did you watch the Sihang Warehouse livestream?]

[Is Master Xi dead?]

[Is this real or fake?]

[Is it a game or is it real?]

[Who has the recording?]

[I just recorded my screen! That last moment...]

[Send it to me!]

WeChat groups, QQ groups, Moments. Screenshots, short videos, GIFs. The second Chen Xi fell was clipped, slowed down, and slowed down again. His body leaned back, his eyes widened, and his pupils dilated. Then, the screen went black.

The comment sections exploded.

[I don't dare to watch anymore...]

[If this is acting, I'll eat shit on livestream.]

[I felt something was wrong when that Little Chen died earlier.]

[Something is wrong with this game.]

[Definitely wrong.]

[Call the police!]

[Call the police for what? Calling the police because someone died in a game?]

[What if it's not a game?]

[If it's not a game, what is it? Time travel?]

[The more I think about it, the scarier it gets.]

Movement began overseas as well.

On Twitter, the hashtag #XiYe appeared. The accompanying image was a screenshot of the black screen with an English caption: "Chinese live streamer dies during ultra-realistic war simulation stream."

On Reddit's r/livestreamfail subreddit, a post was titled: "Chinese streamer ‘XiYe’ collapses and possibly dies on stream during hyper-realistic WW2 sim. Stream cuts to black."

Comments:

“WTF?”

“This is fucked up.”

“Is this real?”

“Looks real.”

“The blood looked too real.”

“The sound when he fell...”

“This is not a game.”

On Twitch, several big streamers were broadcasting the recording. The livestream title: “ANALYZING THE CHINESE STREAMER DEATH CLIP.” The viewer count was in the hundreds of thousands.

A streamer paused the frame, pointing at Chen Xi's falling posture: “Look at the way he falls. That’s not acting. The head hits the ground, the neck goes limp. That’s...that’s real.”

The comment section was flooded with “OMG” and “Holy shit”.

The game company's phones were ringing off the hook.

The customer service hotline was busy. The busy tone: Beep—Beep—Beep—

The company's official website was being swarmed. The announcement board on the homepage was blank; the latest announcement was still the "Server Maintenance Notice" from three days ago.

Under the official Weibo, the number of comments surpassed five hundred thousand within ten minutes.

[Come out and explain!]

[What happened to Master Xi!]

[What is going on with the game!]

[Where is he! Has he been sent to the hospital!]

[Give us an explanation!]

[Playing dead?]

[Where is the company address! I'm going there!]

At 23:40, the game company's official Weibo released a statement:

"Regarding the abnormal livestream situation of streamer 'Master Xi' tonight: We have noted the situation, and our technical team is urgently investigating. Currently, our preliminary judgment is a livestream signal transmission failure. The streamer himself is safe; we urge netizens not to believe or spread rumors. The specific cause will be announced as soon as it is clarified."

Within three minutes of the statement being posted, comments broke one hundred thousand.

[Signal failure? Your mother is dead!]

[The man fell down and you're calling it a signal failure?]

[Safe? Safe my ass!]

[The recording is right there! Do you think we're blind?]

[Where is the streamer! Start a livestream to prove it!]

[Prove it!]

[Prove it!]

[Prove it!]

The game company did not respond again.

At 23:50, another topic climbed the hot search list: #This Is Not A Game#.

Clicking on it, the first Weibo post was a long article by a major influencer:

“I watched the entire recording. From the lighthearted and quirky first day to the later realistic gore. When that Soldier named Little Chen died, I knew something was wrong. Now the streamer has fallen too. I have a terrifying theory: this isn't a game at all. What we are watching are things that actually happened. In some place, at some time, real people died on a real battlefield.”

This Weibo post was reposted over fifty thousand times.

Comments:

[I have that feeling too...]

[It's too real, terrifyingly real.]

[Those wounds, that blood, those sounds...]

[If it were a game, this technology would have won a Nobel Prize long ago.]

[If it's not a game...]

[The more I think about it, the scarier it gets +1]

Conspiracy theories began to emerge.

[Secret military experiment?]

[Consciousness upload?]

[Reality show?]

[The Truman Show?]

[Have we all been deceived?]

[Is the streamer being coerced?]

[Could it be... time travel?]

[Time travel +1]

[Parallel universe?]

The discussion became increasingly esoteric. It rose from a game glitch to social security, and then to human ethics.

At 0:03 AM, a post on Hupu was pushed to the top: “I'm a medical student, and I carefully analyzed the video of the streamer collapsing. Dilated pupils, disappearance of the carotid artery pulse, and cessation of breathing. These are typical signs of sudden death. If this is acting, I'll eat my Medical Practitioner Certificate.”

Attached below the post were screenshots from medical textbooks and a frame-by-frame analysis of the video.

Replies:

[Professional]

[Terrifying]

[So he's really dead?]

[Dead in the game, and dead in reality too?]

[What kind of technology is this exactly?]

[Consciousness connection? Death of consciousness leading to physical death?]

[The Matrix?]

At 0:15 AM, a content creator on Bilibili released a video: “Deep Analysis: The Technological and Ethical Dilemma Behind 'Master Xi's Livestream'”. The video was half an hour long, covering everything from VR technology to brain-computer interfaces, quantum entanglement, and the essence of human consciousness.

The view count broke one million in ten minutes.

The bullet chat was dense:

[My scalp is tingling]

[I don't dare to watch anymore]

[This world is crazy]

[Are we witnessing history?]

[Witnessing my ass, this is murder!]

[Who is committing murder?]

[The game company? The government? Aliens?]

Panic was spreading.

It wasn't just one person's panic. It was a collective, networked, spreading panic.

Many people couldn't sleep.

Refreshing the page, refreshing, and refreshing again. Waiting for news. Waiting for the game company to issue another statement, waiting for the streamer to start broadcasting, waiting for someone to come out and say "it's all fake, just for entertainment."

But all they got was a black screen.

And more and more speculation.

0:30 AM, "Great Wall" Command Center.

Director Long stood before the main screen.

The screen was divided into three sections. On the left was the monitoring of Chen Xi's vital signs: heart rate 23, blood pressure 58/32, blood oxygen 71%. The numbers were red and flashing, with an alarm prompt below: [CRITICAL].

In the middle was the black screen of the livestream room. The bullet chat was still scrolling; the speed had slowed down a bit, but it was still dense. Gift effects exploded from time to time.

On the right was a monitoring map of public opinion across the entire network. The curve was skyrocketing, beginning to climb at eight o'clock tonight, jumping vertically at eleven-thirty, and still surging upward now. In the keyword cloud map, the words "Master Xi", "Death", "Game", "Real", and "Conspiracy" were the largest and most prominent.

“Public opinion is out of control,” a middle-aged man in military uniform said beside him. “Within three hours, global discussion volume has exceeded two billion. Intelligence agencies from seventeen countries have already initiated investigation procedures.”

Director Long didn't speak.

He looked at the numbers on the left screen. Heart rate **22**. It had dropped a bit more.

“What does the medical team say?” he asked.

“It's the same as before,” the middle-aged man said. “Physiological indicators have completely collapsed, but no physical damage can be found. The Chief Medical Officer's take is... the body 'believes' it is dying.”

“How long can he last?”

“I don't know. Maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours. It depends entirely on his willpower.”

Director Long fell silent.

He looked at the middle screen. On the black screen, a bullet chat comment slid by: [Master Xi, come back.]

Dozens of identical ones followed: [Come back.]

[Come back.]

[Come back.]

Gift effects exploded. One hundred Super Rockets, a site-wide broadcast. Gifting user: [Descendant of the Dragon].

The bullet chat went quiet for an instant.

Then it exploded.

[The top donor!]

[Brother Long!]

[Brother Long spoke!]

[Does Brother Long know the inside story?]

[Brother Long, save Master Xi!]

[Brother Long!]

Director Long looked at that gift record.

Then he turned to face everyone in the command center.

“Initiate the 'Great Wall' contingency plan,” he said. “Phase one, control public opinion. Phase two, medical support. Phase three... full takeover.”

“Yes, sir!”

The order was given.

In the command center, dozens of people moved simultaneously. The sound of typing, voices on calls, and the beeping of instruments blended together.

Director Long walked back to the main screen.

He looked at Chen Xi's vital signs.

Heart rate **21**.

Blood pressure **56/30**.

Blood oxygen **69%**.

Still dropping.

He reached out and pressed his hand against the screen.

Right on those jumping numbers.

His fingers trembled slightly.

“Hang in there,” he said, his voice so low that only he could hear. “Kid, hang in there for me.”