by <unknown>
While she was watching, Long Yunxin suddenly felt that she was somehow touched.
She had a weird feeling. When she was the Archon of the Curly Dragon civilization, she felt that the people of the Curly Dragon Sector were too ignorant and shortsighted. How could they not foresee that a great catastrophe was coming but simply dwell in the pleasure in front of their eyes? Why could they not accept working sixteen hours a day, huge salary cuts, and devoting all the resources to the construction of the space fleet?
They had no sense of the big picture at all. They were too selfish and blind!
Therefore, when she ran into the dilemma a second time, she had chosen 'suppression' without any hesitation.
But right now, when she was 'experiencing' everything in person from the perspective of an ordinary person of the Curly Dragon Sector, she somehow changed her attitude again.
Chapter 1308: DLC |
The so-called nine-nine-six working system is truly a great burden for the ordinary people. This is not a life at all!
The whole national economy is functioning based on high benefits. A reckless reform is indeed a great shock to ordinary people. In the statistics reports, they are just rows of numbers that could be considered or sacrificed, but in real life, they are living people with hearts, who can complain and even resist!
Mining on the resource planets at the edge of the sea of stars, they are faced with infinite darkness and a high death rate all year round. Every ton of crystals is stained with their blood. No wonder so many people of the Curly Dragon Sector were discontent!
The Curly Dragon Sector has never developed any space cruising technology in the past how many millenniums. To build a space fleet from nothing is too difficult! For an ordinary person, they may not see any obvious progress at all after living a frugal life tor twenty years. It's like a journey in a dark night where one can never see the direction of dawn. Nobody can take the suffering!
When Long Yunxin saw that her character turned from a young and energetic girl into a dry, wrinkled woman who could barely catch her breath from the burden of life, her feelings changed.
The girl had been born in the 'golden age' before the shortage of resources became a problem. Growing up in a honeypot, she was innocent and carefree, taking all the happiness in her life for granted.
However, three days after she and her equally kind and innocent husband were married, the government announced that the Curly Dragon civilization had entered the era of 'Glorious March'. The benefits would be greatly reduced, working hours would be extended, and everybody would be forced to deposit their money and purchase national bonds to support the space fleet.
When she watched this part, Long Yunxin had a feeling that she was a victim of her own doing—she had issued the very same policies many times when she was the Archon.
At that time, she had been viewing the future of the Pangu civilization condescendingly from the big picture. She had never thought what the change actually meant to the ordinary people.
After going into the era of Glorious March, the ordinary woman of the Curly Dragon Sector that she played found her life, which was as delicate as a greenhouse, shattered ruthlessly.
The working hours were significantly lengthened, but the salary was reduced by half. That missing half of her pitiful earnings had to be deposited into a designated account in the 'Universal Development Bank' for ten years. If she withdrew the money before those ten years were up, not only would she receive no interest, even a huge amount of her principal deposit would be appropriated!
With the resources being devoted to the space fleet, the prices were soaring, and the currency was devaluing in society. Everybody was living ill at ease.
Currency inflation and economic crisis would break out every two to three years. Eventually, a strict ration system was implemented in order to stabilize the situation.
The warmth between her and her husband was soon ripped into shreds by the cruel reality. Her husband, whose blood and sweat were exhausted in the factory during the day, became more and more taciturn, sensitive, and unapproachable.
Their marriage and their relationships with their own family were all on the verge of collapse.
Finally, bad news came over one day. The latest mining starship developed at tremendous cost proved to be another failure. In the great explosion, the resources that everybody contributed by cutting their own expenses were wasted!
People could not hold their fury anymore. They went to the streets to demonstrate and protest, including Long Yunxin's 'husband'!
Long Yunxin knew that the company her 'husband' was in was about to go bankrupt because of a shortage of raw materials. He had been in a terrible mood recently and would even mumble to the wall every once in a while.
Too worried, Long Yunxin called her husband's name in the crowd on the street.
A scorching airwave suddenly rose in front before a cluster of intense black smoke soared up!
Along with the ear-splitting exclamations, Long Yunxin heard the shrieks when crystal bullets were tearing apart the air, which was the last sound that she heard in the game.
"Ahhh!"
Long Yunxin suddenly woke up from the game. She had somehow started living in it instead of watching as a bystander at some point.
As if she had just escaped from a nightmare, she breathed for almost a whole minute before she finally calmed herself down.
However, after reviewing the life of the ordinary person, her breath became hasty again because she discovered that it was exactly the episode where suppression turned into slaughter when she was playing the game for the second time.
This explains a lot. Everything I'm experiencing as an ordinary person is caused by what I chose just now!
Long Yunxin vaguely touched upon the true meaning of the game 'Civilization'.
She was not fond of simulations and strategies, but she had no objection to role-playing.
Following that experience, she played another ten roles in the Curly Dragon civilization, all as relatively uninfluential ordinary people.
She was once the president of the labor union who fought for better benefits for the members.
She was also an ordinary soldier who participated in the suppression and slaughter.
She was a miner who went to the resource planets for mining, only to die in an accident leaving no bones behind.
She was also the closest family member of the deceased miner.
The more corners of the bottom of the Curly Dragon civilization that she reached out to, the more complicated her feelings became.
There are only limited resources on one planet. To make a civilization live long and prosper, they cannot be bound to the planet!
However, it isn't so easy to leave the planet. There's a good chance that, after decades and astronomical resources are wasted, and after countless tragedies take place in countless families, nothing is earned in the end!
It's difficult, almost too difficult, for a civilization to develop, or rather, to merely survive, in the sea of stars!
Long Yunxin did not know how to approach the conundrum.
She was going to select more civilizations and try the life in the Medicine Fork Sector, the Martial Meritocrats Sector, and even the Sand Primitive Sector, when a line of shining words at the bottom of the main menu caught her attention.
It seemed that she had met certain requirements while she was playing the game just now. A brand-new module of the game was now activated.
The module was a DLC of 'Civilization' named 'Rise of the Imperium'.
Above the five words that seemed to be forged out of iron and emitting the smell of smoke was an overwhelming flag of black lightning. A black shadow in full armor was standing right below the flag.
Over the past few years, rumors about the Imperium of True Human Beings had been propagating in the three Sectors. Stories about the rise of Blackstar the Great had even dozens of different versions.
Long Yunxin immediately guessed that th
e DLC was about Wuying Qi's rise after he arrived in the Star Ocean Republic, how he stole the supreme power, ascended to the throne, and established the Imperium of True Human Beings.
As she expected, the introduction of the DLC specified that 'Rise of the Imperium' was a whole new world generated with the enormous database and computational ability of 'Civilization'. The map of the DLC was focused on the Star Ocean Republic, the most prosperous land of the human worlds.
The players were free to choose the roles they were to play. They could be the representatives in the parliament of the Star Ocean Republic, or the leaders of a major sect, or a general of the central army which guarded the capital, or a head of the natives of the half-independent worlds at the border. They could accelerate, decelerate, support, or stop the arrival of the Imperium of True Human Beings.
Of course, if they were willing to, they could also play Wuying Qi himself and experience the rise of darkness from the very perspective of 'Blackstar the Great'.
But right now, most of the functions were still being perfected. Not all the identities were accessible yet. There were few roles that the players could actually choose.
Long Yunxin selected a random name from the list. Her eyes flashed as she appeared in a whole new world.
Information was dumped into her brain.
She was an ordinary citizen of the Star Ocean Republic, and her husband was an experienced expert of tunnel architecture.
Ten years ago, she had followed her husband to settle down on the small resource planet. She worked in an elementary school, which was affiliated to the mine. She also had two lovely kids, a boy and a girl. Her life was warm and peaceful. It would not be bad at all if such days could last forever.
But their peaceful life was broken by war. The resource planet was occupied by the incoming enemy. The command center of their side that had been deployed there earlier had retreated in a hurry, leaving all the civilians including them behind.
They did not give up resistance. Many remaining soldiers and the young people among the civilians crawled into the complicated tunnels and continued the battle, defending the dignity of the Star Ocean Republic in vain.
Although her husband did not directly join the underground resistance force, he was providing help for the resistance force with his professional knowledge. He also offered his home to be a secret meeting place for the resistance force at the risk of his own life.
A lot of computational ability and rendering ability had been devoted to the tale of the anonymous person, building a world was unable to be differentiated from reality.
She seemed to 'see' that she was roaming in front of her house, holding her daughter and son, but in fact staying on alert for the members of the resistance force in her house.
She could even feel her anxiety, worries, fury, hatred, and all the indescribable emotions.
Will the enemy discover the resistance force? If it is discovered, how are they going to punish us?
Will our army march back in the future?
I don't matter, but can my son and daughter return to the motherland and grow up safely and healthily?
Long Yunxin was consumed by worry, truly walking in the shoes of the character in the game.
Right then, she suddenly felt the ground shiver slightly before she smelt the intense smell of something being burnt. Hundreds of deep blue electric arcs darted up from the horizon, as if ten thousand volcanoes that were filled up by lightning had erupted at the same time!
She saw the enemy's starships taking off in a hurry, only to be caught up and ripped apart by the electric arcs before they broke out of the boundary of the gravity sphere!
But before she had the chance to cheer at the result, the lightning turned into an overwhelming tsunami, sweeping across the entire planet and swallowing the enemies, the soldiers of the resistance force, and the civilians including herself and her children alike!
Long Yunxin struggled out of the game again.
Her body was so cold that she was almost a dead person, but her teeth were clattering hard in cracking noises.
She knew who she had been playing now.
She was one of the eight million civilians that were 'sacrificed' by Blackstar the Great in the Battle of Karan.
[ol][li data-annotation-id="c3148741-3123-40f2-9c9e-36b8addc0323"]"Nine-nine-six" means "from nine a.m. to nine p.m., six days a week".[li data-annotation-id="583db036-ed98-49cc-9192-571a855cb72e"]DLC stands for Downloadable Content, a gaming term for additional content that you pay extra for on top of the base game.[/ol]
Chapter 1309: Real and Illusionary |
Long Yunxin had heard about the Battle of Karan before.
It was the most crucial procedure on Wuying Qi's rise to the peak of power. All his accomplishments later were based on the event.
In the battle, Wuying Qi 'sacrificed' eight million civilians and wounded soldiers on Karan, blew up the supreme command center of the invaders from the Covenant Alliance, took over the military assets from Covenant Alliance, and seized more than ten border worlds.
Whether or not it was worthwhile to sacrifice eight million to save eight billion was a tricky question. It was also a heated topic that often appeared in the debate matches in Flying Star University.
Long Yunxin had once given it some thought herself.
But at that time, she had been sitting on a couch comfortably, enjoying the finest food, and chatting with several good friends. They had been viewing the event from the perspective of the representatives of the Star Ocean Republic, Blackstar the Great Wuying Qi, or even the unbiased offspring beyond the leadership of the Star Ocean Republic and Wuying Qi. Their discussion had been pure empty talk.
She had never tried observing the whole event from the perspective of an ordinary person that was living on Karan at that time.
No. She was not 'observing' the event; she was 'experiencing' the event in person as a witness of history.
Long Yunxin swallowed hard, feeling that her throat was both smelly and cold. Her soul seemed to have fallen into an icy cave, and her internal organs were entirely frozen.
Her body, however, was scorching, and her skin was in excruciating pain, as if the scourge of the electric arcs in the virtual world was still lingering inside her bones.
Her hands shivering, she selected characters of different identities.
Those characters were either the miners who had been living on Karan and devoting their lives to the excavation of the raw crystals silently, or the teachers, doctors, nurses and waiters who were the family of the miners and the refinement specialists, or even the soldiers and the battle heroes who had not been transferred yet because of the heavy wounds they suffered in the previous battles.
Although they were all the most unremarkable cells in the civilization, there were still countless marvelous and extraordinary stories to them.
The ordinary young people who were the bottom-level miners, after the invaders from the Covenant Alliance occupied Karan, picked up their spades and raw crystal shredders and became unpredictable guerilla soldiers deep inside the interconnected tunnels.
The doctors, nurses, and waiters who used to work in the living area, on the other hand, went behind the invaders' back, hid a lot of assets, and secretly brought the assets into the tunnels.
The battle heroes who had suffered heavy wounds held each other's hand, supported each other, and charged at the overwhelming starships of the Covenant Alliance.
What left the deepest impression on Long Yunxin was a young female teacher on Karan.
After the tiny planet was scourged by the fire of war, she stood up and protected the twenty-odd elementary school students in her class.
She hid a flag of the Star Ocean Republic in secret and taught the children to sing the national anthem of the Star Ocean Republic time and time again.
When the deafening fulminations of starships echoed outside, the young voices were the last wall of defense.
When she was singing the national a
nthem, she would sometimes burst into tears and say, "Wherever we end up in the universe in the future, do not forget your hometown. Remember that we are from the Star Ocean Republic. We are from Karan. We are people of Karan!"
However, everything they did—
The stubborn resistance of the guerilla forces, the valiance of the disabled soldiers, the persistence of the civilians, the crisp sounds of the teacher and the kids… None of that mattered.
Whatever the specific 'victory conditions' of a character were, it was impossible for them to survive to the arrival of dawn.
Everybody's outcome was the same. They were swallowed by the storm of lightning from the underground and blown to smithereens together with their home!
No miracles, no superheroes, no twists and turns and counterattack in desperation. Doom was their only future!
It was a game that could never be won. Or rather, it was not a 'game' at all, but a certain highly simulative and intriguing 'computer graphics'.
Yet, something uncanny about the game attracted Long Yunxin to play it time and time again, making her experience the last feelings of the residents on Karan, their hope and their desperation, before the final doom!
The last CG was focused on the female teacher.
When the crystal bombs that Wuying Qi planted deep inside Karan detonated all the Purple Thunder Crystals on the planet, triggering an overwhelming hurricane of lightning on the horizon, the female teacher was the first one to discover it.
She immediately jumped to her feet and opened her arms toward the tides of lightning, while she roared and asked all the children to stand behind her.
It was like a 'Chicken vs Eagle' game that they often played, where she was the hen protecting all the 'chicken' behind him.
In such a posture, the female teacher competed with Blackstar the Great, who was to establish the Imperium of True Human Beings soon.
Although the dazzling light made her blind for a moment, glamorous fire was still raging inside her eyes.
