Primordial Era: Qingxu

Wang Xuan, his eyes heavy with sleep, stepped out of the internet café. He had spent the night immersed in the game, and now, at dawn’s first light, exhaustion washed over him.
“At last, I’ve reached level 50. Tomorrow, I can challenge the Celestial Sovereign in a PK match,” he mused.

“Fengshen”—the first globally immersive virtual game of the twenty-fourth century—drew from the wellspring of Chinese mythology, weaving together hundreds of tales: Classic of Mountains and Seas, Investiture of the Gods, Journey to the West, Mount Shu, and more, resurrecting an ancient era of immortal heroes.

Wang Xuan was an orphan, his parents gone since childhood. The gold they left behind ensured a life free of want. With the arrival of “Fengshen,” he found himself captivated, choosing the Yu Xu faction of the Chan Sect, apprenticed to Qingxu Virtue Celestial among the Twelve Golden Immortals, assisting the Kingdom of Xiqi against the Shang Kingdom’s Jie Sect.

Morning dawned, the sky a hazy blend of darkness and light. The streets were empty. Wang Xuan, fighting fatigue, headed home. Though he owned a computer, he preferred the internet café for the company; since his parents’ deaths, solitude had become his companion, and the loneliness drove him to lose himself in the virtual world.

The world of immortals—free and unbound, soaring with swords, traversing mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas—filled him with longing. The game’s ninety-nine percent realism made immersion inevitable.

Thunder suddenly roared overhead. A bolt of blue-red lightning crashed down