Chapter 461 (1/2)

A Hardcore Gaming World of Extreme Difficulty!

The first thing Zhao Youyue saw as she passed through “Two Dimensional Gate” was the title, “Tale of Wuxia 3 – Swords of the Future”. [1]

Zhao Youyue was ecstatic. Finally, the “Two Dimensional Gate” was doing its job!

This was a triple-A hardcore title, and had been entirely made in China. It was not as popular as Zhao Youyue had expected. The designers just had to make it too difficult for most. [2]

As a sandbox game, players enjoyed the freedom of doing anything they wanted in the game. They could be a courteous swordsman, a despicable thief, or even a filthy rapist! Zha Feng, the producer of “Tale Of Wuxia,” was widely-known throughout the industry. A lot of players cursed him for making highly tricky games. He must enjoy torturing players!

Most of the players could not finish the prequels of “Tale Of Wuxia.” Beating the mini-boss of some random scumbag faction was already nigh-impossible. How do they even move on from there?

That first mini-boss also doubled as the game spinmeister who persuaded incompetent players to quit. They were not worthy of playing “Tales of Wuxia”!

Players questioned the claims of the game which stated that it was simply telling the tale of a righteous swordsman. These questions were not without ground, as a great deal of the quests actually involved despicable acts

Zha Feng had clarified that the “swordsmen” in his game were meant to depict “poor souls trapped between good and bad.” Therefore, the characters they played in the game was struggling to survive by defending the innocent, while being the executioner of the devil at the same time.

That’s right, in the prequels of “Tale Of Wuxia,” mastery of a martial art did not affect the game much. The strongest martial art master in the game was almost beaten to death in a fight with twelve young men. He had better odds only in one versus one battles.

In other words, players should avoid fighting a crowd. The best method was to isolate them, defeating them one by one.

There were only a handful of iconic martial art masters in this reality. In people’s hearts, a master must be powerful regarding inner strength and the skill of light body. They could defend the weak and innocent while winning the war against an army of ten thousand soldiers, ripping off the head of its general.

Usually, a protagonist in a game gradually mastered different skills, and eventually became the undisputed hero.

Unfortunately, it was not Gu Long nor Jin Yong who wrote this novel. Even though some of them had been made into dramas, they could not leave a deep impression in the hearts of people.

This world produced new novels of fairy tales and fantasy almost on a daily basis!

In this reality, China was a leading country. It was a world leader in the gaming industry and movie industry. They consistently produced remarkable fairy tales and fantasy themed products. Martial Arts-themed franchises would only last a few years before being replaced.

On the contrary, in a parallel reality, the martial art novels of Liang Yusheng [3], Jin Yong and Gu Long were always the top choices of people – until the birth of the online novel platform.

This reality did not even host a single, influential martial artist!

Therefore, Zha Feng’s depiction of martial arts was that of a darker, despicable vein. His following sequels of “Tale of Wuxia” only intensified the tone.

He used an alternate history as the premise of his game. He told alternate histories of “Sixteen Kingdoms” [4] where Han Chinese citizens [5] were traded “goods” as slaves or even as a food source [6]

There were some random jokes on the internet, stating that cannibalism was one of the effective methods of “The Great Ethnic Fusion.” [7]

“Tales of Wuxia” contained various creatures, such as serial killers, monsters, demons, evil spirits, and zombies. Perhaps they all represented the various aspects of human’s dark nature. Players could choose to work as part-time exorcists, for these creatures were the source of valuable ingredients of rare potions.

A lot of people thought that this was an anti-hero swordsman sandbox, open-world, a book that one could read and understand instantly. Only after being tortured by the complexity of the game, players would just release their frustrations on its producer Zha Feng. When faced with some unbeatable boss or a stage which required skillful controller-work, they would screenshot it and upload it with the hashtag – “Malicious Contraption of Zha Feng”!