2: Chapter 2 Fire Seed Shelter

"What... what the hell... what exactly is this?!"

Lin Li's voice echoed in the empty underground space, carrying a hint of undisguised trembling.

His bloodshot black eyes were staring fixedly at everything before him.

Due to extreme disbelief, he even forgot about the sharp pain in his body and the numbness in his arms.

There were no hundred-meter-tall Titan mechs as he had imagined.

There were no Space Marines lined up in phalanxes, holding Bolters.

And there was certainly no planet-killing weapon capable of blasting an entire planet into glass shards with a single shot.

What presented itself before Lin Li was an underground space of about one hundred square meters.

The architectural style here was completely different from the rough, barbaric Gothic wasteland architecture on the surface.

Every inch of the walls and every piece of the floor here displayed a pure silver-white color.

There were no seams from joints, no traces of welding.

The entire space seemed as if it had been poured and grown at the atomic level from a single piece of unknown memory metal.

Minimalist, cold, yet it exuded an extreme sci-fi aesthetic that surpassed the current warhammer 40,000 era.

And in the very center of the entire space, a circular metal platform stood quietly.

A faint blue shimmer flowed across the surface of the platform.

Directly above the platform, a massive, complex holographic image was suspended.

It was a nebula-like light and shadow that constantly rotated, intertwined, and collided.

Lin Li stared up at that holographic image for just three seconds.

"Hum—"

A strong sense of dizziness and nausea instantly rushed straight to his brain.

It was as if countless overlapping dimensions were forcibly shoved into his retinas, and his logical thinking nearly collapsed at this moment.

"Creator, please do not look directly at the multidimensional topological projection."

The basin-sized body of STC-73 floated silently to Lin Li's side, its originally cold mechanical voice now carrying a hint of pride as if seeking credit:

"Your current cerebral cortex development is insufficient to process this multidimensional information torrent. If you force yourself to watch, your brains will boil within ten seconds."

Lin Li abruptly looked away, clutching his chest and dry heaving twice.

He gasped for air, pointing at the surrounding silver-white room, his mouth twitching crazily.

"This is what you called... a great creation that can revive humanity?"

Lin Li's voice suddenly rose an octave, like a cat that had its tail stepped on:

"I was being chased by a group of greenskins who wanted to eat me like braised pork! And you show me a basement without even a hair in it?! Where is my gun? Where is my invincible fleet? You could have at least given me a wheelchair with a Gatling gun!"

"Correction, this is not a basement."

STC-73's red optical lens flickered up and down anthropomorphically, seemingly expressing disdain for Lin Li's ignorance.

"This is the top-secret sequence of the Golden Age—the first underground level of the Fire Seed Shelter."

The Men of Iron's faint blue scanning beam swept across the entire space.

"Although 99% of the Shelter is still in a state of physical lockdown due to severe energy depletion, the technological value of this mere 100-square-meter first level is enough to make those Mechanicus heretics on the surface, who only know how to plug cables into their brains, kneel down and lick your soles."

Lin Li took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the urge to curse.

He was a realistic survivalist.

Since he was already here, complaining was meaningless.

He dragged his scarred body, limping, and began to examine this so-called first level of the Fire Seed Shelter.

The 100-square-meter space was reasonably divided into three independent areas and one public area; the holographic projection from just now was in the center of the public area, though it had disappeared again.

Lin Li was the first to push open the door to the first room on his left.

The room was very small, with only a single bed made of unknown material and a simple set of table and chairs.

Lin Li's gaze skipped over the bed and nailed itself onto that table.

His eyes slowly widened, and his expression became spectacular, as if he had seen a ghost.

On that table, full of futuristic sci-fi style, sat a computer.

Yes, a computer.

And not some void terminal full of holographic projections and cyberpunk style.

But a retro, square desktop computer tower with a physical keyboard and mouse!

The most absurd thing was that the side of the case was a solid piece of transparent glass, with four huge cooling fans installed inside.

At this moment, those four fans were accompanying a subtle whirring sound, crazily flashing with red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and purple RGB marquee lights!

"What the f..."

Lin Li stared blankly at the RGB lighting that was blinding his eyes, his brain instantly crashing.

In this desperate and oppressive Warhammer universe, suddenly seeing a light-polluted tower identical to an internet cafe, this strong sense of contrast almost made him laugh out loud.

He ignored this strange computer and turned to walk toward the slightly larger second room.

As soon as he stepped inside, a pure breath of life rushed toward him.

Inside the second room, four cylindrical glass capsules, each two meters high, stood side by side.

The capsules were filled with some kind of pale green viscous liquid, and tiny bubbles rose from the bottom from time to time.

Various complex metal pipes connected the top and bottom of the capsules, emitting a faint fluorescence.

Inside the capsules were four humans with different appearances, their eyes tightly closed.

"What is this? Cloning tanks?"

Lin Li stepped forward and reached out to touch the cold glass exterior wall.

"To be precise, it is a Soulless body cultivation matrix."

STC-73 floated over like a ghost, its tone carrying an extreme reverence for the glory of the past.

"Creator, please allow me to introduce this great project to you."

The Men of Iron's red lens projected a hologram, showing a phantom with a monocle and messy hair.

"In the distant Golden Age, the great Dr. Z had already keenly perceived the existence of the Warp."

"He discovered that the active thoughts and emotions of humans were like torches in the night within the dimensions of the Warp, not only attracting the prying eyes of demons but also being twisted and corrupted by those evil entities."

"In order to completely solve this fatal flaw, Dr. Z secretly launched the Seed Project."

STC-73 pointed to the four cultivation capsules.

"These capsules use the genes of pure-blooded humans as a blueprint, consuming basic materials to cultivate a kind of absolutely perfect combat unit clone."

"They possess extreme plasticity and can adapt to any extreme wasteland environment, but most importantly, their brains are physically cut off from any connection to the Warp. They... have no souls."

"Therefore, they are absolutely immune to the corruption of Chaos demons!"

Lin Li listened, stunned.

"No souls? Isn't that just a vegetable? What kind of war can a bunch of vegetables fight?"

"Excellent question, Creator. This is Dr. Z's most brilliant concept."

STC-73 turned around and looked at the hall outside.

"The physical shells are cultivated in this universe, while the souls that drive these shells... are forcibly pulled and projected from those multiverse parallel universes that have not yet been polluted by the Warp, by the central hub of the Shelter across the barriers of dimensions!"

Boom!

The moment he heard this sentence.

It was as if lightning had struck Lin Li's brain!

He was a modern person from Earth; he was too familiar with this setup.

Pulling consciousness across dimensions?

Projecting into clones?

Remotely controlling biological weapons that feel no pain, do not fear death, and are not even afraid of Warp mental pollution?

"This is... isn't this just a 100% real immersive virtual reality online game?!"

Lin Li's breathing became rapid instantly.

If what STC-73 said was true.

If he could use this Shelter to pull the souls of those goofy players from Earth who screamed about having no games to play, suffered in various high-difficulty Soulslike games, and styled themselves as The Fourth Calamity...

To throw this group of gamers, who would slap a dog on the side of the road and dare to challenge gods just to get an achievement, into this Warhammer world filled with greenskins, xenos, and Chaos demons...

Then who would be the real monsters?!

"Gulp." Lin Li swallowed hard.

He seemed to have already seen a group of crazy players with funny IDs, shirtless, holding rusty steel pipes, screaming as they charged toward a Chaos Greater Daemon.

"Creator, your heart rate is spiking abnormally again."

STC-73 reminded him coldly.

"I'm fine... No, I'm *more* than fine!"

Lin Li suppressed the surprise in his heart and walked quickly toward the third and largest room.

The third room was practically a small heavy industrial workshop.

On the left side of the room lay a massive machine with a shell made of heavy adamantium.

It had a huge funnel-shaped entrance, and the interior was filled with terrifying crushing gears. The surface of the machine was printed with the words "Material Recycling Terminal" in an ancient Gothic font.

And on the right side of the room was a precise, but currently semi-damaged, Matter Constructor.

"This must be a workshop."

Lin Li thought.

"By issuing tasks."

STC-73 provided an explanation at the right time, completely completing the closed loop of the entire system.

"The Shelter will submit tasks to you through that main control computer in the first room."

"When you complete the tasks, you will receive core authority points for the Shelter."

"These points can not only be used to repair this semi-damaged Matter Constructor, allowing it to produce invincible weapons for you, but can also be used for Quantum Probability Extraction (Gacha)!"

"And some special tasks can even unlock other levels of the Shelter."

After listening, Lin Li took a deep breath.

He turned around and limped back to the first room, standing in front of that computer tower crazily flashing with RGB marquee lights.

He supported himself on the table with one hand and pointed speechlessly at the light-polluted case with the other.

"So, such awesome cross-dimensional summoning technology, such a grand gene cloning project, and the final operating terminal... is this thing that looks like it belongs in an e-sports internet cafe?"

Lin Li couldn't help but start complaining:

"I seriously suspect now that this Dr. Z person was definitely a hardcore gaming addict before he died. I even feel like me crossing over is just one part of a hardcore survival game he designed!"

Complaining aside.

Lin Li's body was still very honest as he pulled out the chair and sat down.

When his fingers touched the familiar plastic mouse, a wonderful feeling of a lifetime ago surged into his heart.

The monitor lit up instantly.

There was no complex code, only a concise UI interface similar to Earth's management software.

Lin Li skillfully grasped the mouse and clicked on [Shelter Asset Overview] in the top left corner.

[Shelter Name: Seed]

[Currently Unlocked Levels: 1]

[Energy Reserve: 1.2% (Extremely dangerous level, may shut down and disconnect at any time)]

[Available Cultivation Capsules: 4 / 4]

[Weapon Reserve: 0]

[Food Reserve: 0]

[Purified Water Reserve: 0]

[Material Reserve: 0]

Looking at that row of "0"s, the ambition for grand hegemony that had just risen in Lin Li was instantly extinguished by more than half by the cold water of reality.

No food, no water.

He frowned, quickly moved the mouse, and clicked on the [External Surveillance Matrix] option.

The screen flashed and switched to a god's-eye view of the outside of the sentry tower.

The appearance of the surface had not changed; it was still that dilapidated concrete sentry tower.

The only difference was that at the doorway that had been knocked down by the Squig, a heavy armored airtight door emitting a cold metallic luster had now risen, fitting perfectly.

And outside the airtight door...

Many figures had appeared again; those were the Squigs and Gretchins that hadn't dispersed yet.

Even, because of the energy fluctuation that erupted during the teleportation just now, many wasteland creatures had also been attracted and were wandering outside the airtight door.

"Although the door is blocked, I am still trapped to death."

He hadn't had a drop of water, and his physical strength had been exhausted to the limit.

If he stayed in this absolutely safe Shelter, he wouldn't be eaten by greenskins, but at most in three days, he would be thirsty and hungry to death.

"Ding—dong!"

At this moment, an exaggerated golden pop-up window, styled like the early web games on Earth that said "Click to get the Dragon-Slaying Blade," suddenly popped up on the computer screen!

Accompanied by a blinding flash, a line of large text occupied the entire screen:

[Main Quest Generated: Summon Players, Resolve the Crisis!]

[Quest Description: Great Creator, the Seed has been ignited, but the storm is right outside the door. Please immediately exercise your highest authority, activate the clones, and clear the low-level carbon-based mutants outside the door.]

[Quest Reward: Shelter Points 100, open first Quantum Probability Extraction (Gacha) authority!]

Lin Li looked at this pop-up window and was stunned for a full three seconds.

Then.

His mouth slowly, bit by bit, curved upward.

In the depths of his eyes, originally full of fatigue and despair, a crazy flame unique to modern internet trolls ignited.

"Isn't it just blowing smoke and recruiting people?"

Lin Li placed his hands skillfully on the mechanical keyboard.

"I spent three years working as a game operations planner on Earth. You indigenous people in the warhammer 40,000 universe have no idea what real game operations are!"

"Clatter, clatter, clatter!"

The crisp sound of keyboard tapping echoed rhythmically within the quiet underground Shelter.

"Clatter, clatter, clatter!"

The crisp sound of mechanical keyboard tapping rang out abruptly in the empty, silver-white hall on the first floor of the Shelter.

Lin Li's hands, stained with dried blood and mud, were flying wildly across the RGB keyboard as if he were playing the piano.

His eyes were focused to the extreme, carrying a hint of pathological fanaticism.

"73, listen up! Immediately utilize your computing power to generate a webpage for me!"

Lin Li stared at the screen, issuing instructions to the Men of Iron behind him without looking back:

"No need for complex interaction logic, just a single page! But the art style must be maxed out, understand? Take the wasteland, despair, Gothic religious fanaticism, and an endless sense of slaughter—crush them all and stuff them into the background of this webpage! Especially the big guys!"

The red lens of STC-73 flashed at a warning frequency: "Creator, your words are full of logical loopholes and deceptive concepts."

"Shut up, this is called game operations!" Lin Li retorted bluntly.

"Creator, with my computing power, I could build a cross-dimensional holographic universe simulator for you in 0.001 seconds. Why create this primitive information carrier based on a backward 2D plane?"

STC-73's red lens flickered with obvious confusion.

"Because this is Earth! Earth players love this stuff!"

Lin Li slammed his hand on the table, a cold and utilitarian smile curling at the corner of his mouth:

"If things are too advanced, Earthlings will treat them as viruses or scams. We need to package it in a way they can understand!"

"The game is called [warhammer 40,000 Online]."

"Bold, color it red, and enlarge the promotional slogan—put it right in the center of the webpage!"

Lin Li took a deep breath and recited the most hardcore game copy he had ever written, word by word:

"[In this desperate 41st millennium, there is no peace, no mercy, only endless war.]"

"[100% absolutely real immersive virtual reality! The world's first dive-in MMORPG with full synchronization of pain, smell, and touch!]"

"[No selling stats! No selling equipment! Everything depends on manual effort! Aliens, Chaos, and Demons are all your trophies!]"

"[First closed Alpha test, limited to 4 spots worldwide. Register now and get a luxury game helmet (free shipping)!]"

"Beep—webpage generated, cross-dimensional data anchor established."

STC-73's efficiency was outrageous.

As soon as Lin Li finished speaking, a beautiful, oppressive, and epic dark-style webpage instantly popped up on the screen.

In the center of the webpage was a countdown reservation button, like a burning dark red seed.

"Perfect," Lin Li exclaimed.

But immediately, his stomach cramped violently.

The intense hunger and dizziness caused by dehydration nearly made him collapse onto the keyboard.

He struggled to lift his head and glanced at the [External Monitoring Matrix] in the upper right corner of the screen.

Outside the armored airtight door, although that group of green Squigs couldn't get in, their cruel instincts made them choose to besiege it.

Even two huge, mutated wasteland dogs joined the siege, scratching the metal door with their claws.

He couldn't get out.

No food, no water.

He was like someone trapped in a luxurious, high-tech iron coffin.

If these 4 test spots couldn't be filled, if no one on Earth believed in this broken webpage that looked like a scam...

Then he, and the starving people in the settlement outside waiting for him to bring back food, would all die!

"Success or failure depends on this..."

Lin Li gritted his teeth and skillfully logged into his QQ account, which hadn't been active for a month.

He didn't go to any large forums to post; the review process there was too slow, and it would easily be deleted as spam.

He needed rapid feedback now.

He clicked into a QQ game group called [I Also Want To Be Happy].

This was a group chat composed of over two hundred hardcore gamers who were obsessed with gaming and scoffed at all the reskinned games on the market.

Lin Li took a deep breath, and with the newly generated webpage link and a highly inflammatory message, he decisively pressed the Enter key and sent it to the group!

...

Meanwhile, on Earth, 2:15 AM.

The peak "cultivation" hour for night owls.

In the QQ group, only a few brothers had been complaining about a certain masterpiece delaying its release.

Suddenly, an account with the ID [Group Admin - Immortal Lin] popped up, @everyone like a zombie coming back to life.

[Group Admin - Immortal Lin]:

"Brothers! Stop sleeping! Top-secret internal channel!"

"I've obtained beta test access for an epoch-making masterpiece! GW officially authorized, 100% full-immersion virtual reality online game warhammer 40,000 Online》, secretly developed by Fire Seed Shelter Studio! No equipment requirements—fill in your address and we'll ship a neural connection helmet for free!"

"Top-secret first test, only 4 spots! First come, first served. You'll regret it for the rest of your life if you don't play!"

"[Webpage Link: warhammer 40,000 Online - Fire Seed Shelter Test Application]"

As soon as this message appeared.

The originally somewhat dead QQ group instantly fell into a strange silence for five seconds.

Five seconds later.

The whole group was like a cesspool hit by a dynamite pack—it instantly exploded!

The first person to jump out and reply was the group's notorious troublemaker, who also happened to be the member who argued with Lin Li the most.

[Devil Muscle Thor]: "???"

[Devil Muscle Thor]: "Wait, Immortal Lin, you disappeared for over a month. I thought you'd been kidnapped for your kidneys, but it turns out you went off to run a pyramid scheme?!"

[Devil Muscle Thor]: "What the hell is 100% immersive virtual reality! And free shipping for a helmet? Brother, if you've been kidnapped to northern Myanmar, just send a period, and the bros will pool money for your ransom right now!"

Immediately after, the group's recognized Warhammer lore fanatic, the master of overthinking, and member [Praise Ming Shen] (real name Li Yiming) threw out a long string of professional analysis.

[Praise Ming Shen]: "Too fake, Old Lin. This copy is too low-quality. Not to mention whether those conservative British guys at GW would authorize a studio I've never heard of to make a VR game."

[Praise Ming Shen]: "Just look at the 100% immersion and pain synchronization settings. The most advanced brain-computer interface technology on Earth currently struggles even to make a monkey play table tennis. You're telling me you can synchronize pain in Warhammer? If you could really get slashed by a Chainsword in the game, wouldn't your brain fry in reality?"

But this rational analysis obviously couldn't stop the curiosity of the few truly insane players in the group.

[Why Panic When I Have Flash]: "Holy shit! Pain synchronization?! Can I perform extreme dodging in the game? Can I rely on micro-manipulation to dodge Bolter bullets? Regardless of whether it's a virus or not, I'm going for it!"

[Liver Emperor]: "I'll just ask one question: can I mine? Can I build? Can I hand-craft buildings? If I can, forget about 40K—even if it means going to the Warp to fix the sewers for Slaanesh, I'm in! Link clicked!"

[Miracle Walker]: "Old Lin! Is there a non-disclosure agreement? Does this game allow streaming? '100% real' is such a cliché marketing term now, it's hard to fool followers. But I happen to need content. I've filled in my address—you'd better really send me a helmet!"

Looking at the messages scrolling on the screen.

Lin Li, sitting in front of the Shelter computer, grinned from ear to ear, a cunning light flashing in his eyes like a hunter seeing prey fall into a trap.

"Complain, question, you silly netizens."

"When you actually put on the helmet, open your eyes on this wasteland where even the air tastes like rust, and see that group of green Squigs that can swallow you alive..."

Lin Li laughed with a twisted sense of humor:

"I want to see if you can still laugh!"

"Beep—"

Just then, on the computer screen in Room 1, a crisp prompt box popped up on the background of the flashing red webpage.

[Four consciousness anchors matching the dimension detected and responded.]

[Player IDs locked: Praise Ming Shen, Liver Emperor, Why Panic When I Have Flash, Miracle Walker.]

"Only four spots?"

In the QQ group, a member named [Big Black Pen] sent a message with grief and indignation.

[Big Black Pen]: "Brother Lin! Immortal! Why can't I make a reservation after clicking in! I want to play too! I'll accept it even if it's a scam—can you let me be the fifth fool who gets cheated!"

Lin Li looked at Big Black Pen's wailing and could only shrug helplessly.

It wasn't that he didn't want to, but in Room 2 on the first floor of the Shelter, there were currently only those four poor cultivation pods.

"73."

Lin Li ignored the continued sarcasm of [Devil Muscle Thor] in the group, decisively logged out of QQ, and turned to look at the Men of Iron floating in mid-air.

"The soul coordinates of the four players have been locked."

Lin Li pointed to the four light green cultivation pods in Room 2, his voice low and powerful.

"Next, how are you going to send those so-called game devices across the multiverse to them on Earth?"

STC-73's cold mechanical voice carried a hint of arrogant coldness.

"Creator, please do not use the backward concepts of Earthlings to measure the greatness of the Fire Seed Shelter."

The Men of Iron's red lens instantly burst into a dazzling light. The lights on the first floor of the entire Shelter dimmed at this moment, and all energy was frantically diverted to the nebula projection in the center.

"The so-called helmet is just a physical disguise that conforms to their current civilization's cognition."

"At the moment of establishing the connection, the underlying laws of the Shelter utilized minor material reorganization in the dimension where they are located, directly materializing four neural connection terminals in front of their retinas and within their reach."

"Now..."

STC-73 slowly turned to the four pods that began to bubble violently, the green cultivation fluid beginning to boil frantically.

Meanwhile.

In four different corners of the Earth.

[Praise Ming Shen] was sitting in his room full of Warhammer figures, disdainfully preparing to continue typing to refute in the group.

Suddenly, a voice came from outside the door: "Delivery!"

He opened the door to see a sci-fi-style dark silver metal helmet sitting there.

He checked the time on his phone; only ten minutes had passed!

"Holy shit, Old Lin, you're for real!"

At the same time, a courier appeared at the doors of [Liver Emperor], [Why Panic When I Have Flash], and [Miracle Walker].

Four people.

Four different locations.

Looking at the real, cold metallic helmet in front of them.

The thoughts in their minds about scams, pyramid schemes, and jokes were shaken at this moment.

A sense of absurdity, excitement, mixed with disbelief and extreme anticipation, surged frantically along their spines!

Could it be...

That missing person in the group, Lin Li... was telling the truth?!

Without any hesitation.

For this group of The Fourth Calamity who were extremely eager for novelty and excitement, let alone a helmet, even if it were an electric chair, they would dare to sit on it and try.

Four people, in different places, simultaneously reached out, picked up the heavy metal helmet, and slowly put it on their heads.

"Visual nerve connected."

"Pain perception set to 100% synchronization."

"Soul data transmission starting —"

"Welcome to warhammer 40,000."

When these four cold system prompts exploded in their minds, their consciousness was pulled into an endlessly deep dimensional vortex.

And inside the Fire Seed Shelter.

Lin Li stood quietly outside the glass pod in Room 2, watching the green liquid in the glass pod gradually fade.

The four clones suddenly opened their eyes.

In those four pairs of eyes, there was no despair or numbness towards the world like the Warhammer natives.

What they had was a kind of clear...

Shock.