Chapter 30: Laying a Deadly Ambush
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After reading the entire message, Li Feng and Zou Anmeng were both bursting with excitement.
The ceiling light in the living room cast a scarlet glow over all three faces, mirroring the fervor surging through their hearts.
They were speechless.
There were no words to describe it.
Li Feng burst into laughter. “Hahahaha! We’re just a bunch of ordinary nobodies, yet somehow we’ve stumbled upon such a world-shaking scandal.”
“Idiots.” Zou Anmeng rolled her eyes. She opened the refrigerator, poured three glasses of water, and handed them around to soothe everyone’s throats.
“Really, we’re only here for the entertainment. When the sky falls, the tall ones will hold it up.”
Her voice was gentle, and she had always been composed. “Our lives are so short. We should be thinking about how to survive in the future, how to find work and make money, how to cultivate and become stronger…”
But Li Feng, whose blood was running hot, had no use for such a drink.
He hurriedly picked up another empty cup, ran to the windowsill to collect rainwater, and gulped it down. “I’ll drink this!”
Mouthful after mouthful of icy rainwater, thick with rust and medicinal residue, poured down his throat. Yet it still failed to extinguish the fervor blazing within him.
Then they could not resist browsing through it once more.
As he read, Li Feng said excitedly, “I wonder when they’ll activate this fragment of memory and let us enter it ourselves, experience everything from a first-person perspective, and move about freely?”
It was a power fantasy, too, and an extremely exciting one.
I…
Am the ancient emperor who questioned the Creator and struck out with a sword!
To put yourself in his place—how cool would that be?
Li Feng felt certain he would dream that night.
He would dream that he was the great hero of an ancient mythic epic, raising a long sword high above his head and proclaiming:
“I have lived without shame, my most beautiful queen!”
Zou Anmeng rolled her eyes. “You’re getting ahead of yourself. This thing will probably be banned very soon. That Angel King may be captured and turned into a production cyberbrain, complete with all the clicking and clacking. There’s no way the three of us could afford one of his models.”
Zou Anmeng knew how to read the situation. She understood that merely being able to watch it now was already an extraordinary stroke of fortune.
Li Feng, however, was indignant. “Not necessarily. Everything is open-source now, and it’s already been uploaded online. Some big shot will definitely manage to make it into a book in secret. When that happens, we can browse the black market…”
As the two chatted, the internet outside was blazing with activity, and countless people had gone mad.
“Is it real? The Creator?”
“Lies. Nothing but a scheme.”
“The Creator? In my opinion, he’s merely a more powerful life-form. Perhaps he belongs to an even older extinct civilization and simply regards us as toys.”
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“Ahhh! I don’t care! I want to join the angels! Please save us!”
“Great one from antiquity, let me bring you into our world and make you the master of Rehe Heavy Industries! Please rule over us lowly humans! (When the angel race conquers the world, remember this post and don’t settle accounts with me, great one.)”
—This account has been muted. Five hundred Thought Blades are required to lift the ban.
“Boohoo, you’re still groveling at their feet? Your angel lord is about to be turned into a cyberbrain!”
“Exactly! In front of the company’s army, even a stray dog by the roadside will be made into a cyberbrain product! Let alone an ancient life-form! This is an entirely new cyberbrain prototype! There’s no escape, absolutely no escape!”
“I think it’s a good thing. Long live Rehe Heavy Industries! As expected of the modern charitable corporation evolved from the ancient Jiangnan Confucian Hongnong clan, which has carried on its legacy for a thousand years! Without Rehe’s free blessings, what would you be studying for?”
“You corporate dogs deserve to die! What good could those ancient aristocratic clans and scholar families possibly be? Have you forgotten that ancient Innate Sage? He studied in poverty for years and still failed the imperial examinations. Breaking into Chang’an was easier than passing the exams and entering Chang’an! In the end, he overturned the realm, annihilated the Five Surnames and Seven Houses, and trampled the entire avenue of heaven beneath the bones of the nobles!”
—This account has been muted. Five hundred Thought Blades are required to lift the ban.
“Who are you calling a corporate dog? Now you’ve been banned, haven’t you? The ancient era was the ancient era. These days, a Sage is taken in by a major corporation from the moment he is born and raised with its wholehearted support. How could the two be the same? Losing five hundred Thought Blades serves you right!”
“Damn it, I have money. It only costs five hundred Thought Blades to curse someone. Do you have any? You’re not still a brain-dead pauper, are you, spending your entire monthly salary repaying debts? Can you even afford to curse people?”
The netizen who had been called a corporate dog fell silent.
The bystanders had a good laugh.
“You trolls hurl abuse at each other every day while Rehe Heavy Industries rakes in the profits. As long as you pay, you can even curse the company itself!”
Another passerby came forward with his own story.
“I used to be just like that big shot, paying to curse the company. I even paid five thousand Thought Blades for a protest fee to march against it. Then one month, I forgot to pay the fee for my cloud memory, and that damned company deleted what it called ‘nonessential memories’—my first love, cursing the company, marching in protests against the company…”
—This account has been muted. Five hundred Thought Blades are required to lift the ban.
“Hahahaha! You’re truly pathetic. Everyone knows that once a memory is deleted, it’s as if you never cursed the company at all. What a complete loss—you paid those Thought Blades for nothing.”
Liu Jun watched the internet, speechless.
In this era, saying nothing was treated as a “refusal to participate in the construction of social consensus,” and one had to pay a silence tax.
The moment you spoke, you were bound to get into arguments, trade insults with other netizens, and curse the company.
Once emotions ran high, it became a contest of financial strength.
Minus five hundred. Minus five hundred. Minus five hundred.
By the time you realized what was happening, your salary was gone, and you would be unable to afford food for several months.
It was a perfect system for manipulating this group of educated people—people whose stifled minds demanded an outlet for their frustrations.
An outlet?
Even venting required payment.
Seeing this, Liu Jun had no idea what to do. He could only let matters take their course.
Just then—
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The entire enormous video platform suddenly came under attack.
The theater of the virtual three-dimensional film began to shake violently.
“Angel King, you came after all!”
“A spiritual world formed entirely from Amber Swallowtail cyberbrains. It is the perfect place for you to recover your spirit. As expected, you couldn’t resist!”
With a sharp, frigid shout, a violent psychic force spread through the space.
One after another, majestic and boundless figures appeared.
A voice spoke with cold indifference. “The Divine Trial? Indeed, interesting.”
Another voice was filled with mockery. “A mere third-tier being, holding that mysterious treasure, yet possessing power comparable to ours in the fourth-tier Lightning Realm.”
Those who had reached the Lightning Realm could already abandon their physical bodies entirely, existing as souls that could possess others and descend anywhere.
In this modern age, they could even leap from one cyberbrain to another.
Using the modern network as a bridge, they could descend wherever they pleased.
Thus, they were now known as Cyber Gods, beings who stood above all living creatures.
And yet, Starborne Lightning had allowed even him to reach such a state.
A voice snorted coldly. “Ancient life-form, hand over that treasure to us.”
Every viewer wearing a PC001 Amber Swallowtail cyberbrain felt a sudden, stabbing pain in their minds.
When they opened their eyes again, they had already been forcibly ejected from the screen.
What the hell!
What the hell!
Li Feng and Zou Anmeng hurriedly opened the video again, only to see a glaring scarlet notice appear:
This video has been removed for violating regulations.
The three of them exchanged glances in the living room.
Immortals battling.
No wonder no one had stopped them from watching. It turned out they had been using the viewers as bait.
The two spectators who had been enjoying the spectacle could not help feeling a trace of regret.
“What a shame. We won’t get to see how the battle turns out.”
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