Zhang Yin

<p>In another part of the caverns, the sounds of bare feet slapping against stone cut through the oppressive silence. Panting, clashing, and snarling could be heard echoing within the darkness.<br/>Hearing a whistling sound from her right, a woman dressed in white Greek robes hastily blocked an attack with the dagger in her hand. She slightly stumbled from the force and couldn't help but curse with a beautiful and mature voice.<br/>"Fuck!"<br/>Why did it have to be like this!?<br/>Zhang Yin was a professional streamer and had been visiting his cousin in [New Hope] floating city. He hadn't seen this particular relative for years due to how busy she was, nor was he particularly close with her. But, within their family which had a loose but existing and prevalent hierarchy, she had a much higher status than him. He could only listen when she walked up to him in the last family party and "asked" him to visit her.<br/>However, her apartment had been completely empty when he arrived. After messaging her, she belatedly said that something happened at the company and that she couldn't be sure when she would come back.<br/>Suppressing his twitching eye, he breathed deeply before exhaling all at once. Since he would be waiting for an indefinite period of time, he decided to borrow her Divepod and pass his time by streaming until she returned. Afterall, if she could make him wait after calling him all the way from another floating city, he could use her Divepod.<br/>Walking to her living room, he moved around the couch and headed for the farthest wall from the entrance where his cousin's Divepod was located.<br/>The Divepod in his cousin's apartment was the most recent model. The outside was encased in a smooth and white shell with sleek angles and gold highlights. It rested on a matching white and gold platform and reached up to his hip. Sensing his presence approaching, it's surface rippled and the top automatically opened, revealing a white and gold cushioned bed inside.<br/>The first thought that crossed Zhang Yin's mind was: 'It's so gaudy.'<br/>The second thought was: 'Dammit, I want one too. Why is it that we are related, but she's so much richer than me?'<br/>His conscious, which sounded alarmingly similar to his nagging parents, promptly answered him. 'It's because she works for the family business while you only play games all day.'<br/>Zhang Yin frowned. <br/>'Are you from the 21st century? Playing games and being a content creator is also a legitimate job! You just want me to join the family business!'<br/>Shaking his head, he entered the Divepod and the opening closed shut. Everything was completely dark for a moment before the interior lights turned on. <br/>A smooth and mellow male voice sounded from the speakers. "Welcome, Diver. It looks like this is the first time that you have used this Divepod. If you have an existing Dive Account, you can-"<br/>Before the voice could finish, Zhang Yin interrupted it and said. "Keep using the current account."<br/>It's too much work logging out of his cousin's account, connecting this Divepod across cities to his, transferring all the data from his Divepod to this one, and then logging onto his own Dive Account.<br/>Without missing a beat, the voice also continued. "Of course. Please say the password to continue to use this Dive Account."<br/>Zhang Yin paused before sheepishly climbing back out of the Divepod. Accessing his Holowatch, he quickly sent another message to his cousin.<br/>[5:47 pm<br/>Me: What's your Divepod password?<br/>5:49 pm <br/>Zhang Ruiqing: "Fuck Your Smile".]<br/>Zhang Yin blinked but didn't comment. Quickly sending back an affirmative, he returned inside the Divepod and entered the Divenet.<br/>Going to the GameZone, where all game and game related content resided inside the Divenet, he floated in the endless darkness with dense colorful shining lights surrounding him. <br/>Each shining light represented a game or room, with colorful lights being games, white lights being various fan platforms, gray lights being various trading and communication platforms, and dark lights being incomplete or deleted works and rooms.<br/>For games, the color of the lights represented the genre. Action games were red, Romance games were pink, Comedy games were yellow, Horror games were a ghoulish green, Tragedy games were blue, etc. Games that were multiple genres were a colour made by combining the colors of its genres.<br/>A beautiful and man-made cosmos surrounded Zhang Yin, but he was already used to this sight and, with familiar movements, controlled his avatar and headed to a particular quadrant of space. <br/>Traveling to the center of the GameZone, he came to the place where the most popular games were located. Just when he was about to log into his usual game, [Mystery Continent], a bright flash in his peripheral vision caught his attention.<br/>He saw that a new game was just created and floating right beside [Mystery Continent]. The shining light that represented it was at least thrice as large as [Mystery Continent], which was the largest and most sophisticated game currently existing. Unlike the other lights which were only one color, this light was like a kaleidoscope - constantly changing and colliding with each other, disorderly yet enchanting.<br/>Controlling his avatar, he drew closer to that light.<br/>'Could this be the secret project of some big company? But that makes no sense, why would they keep it a secret?'<br/>Clicking onto the light and causing the game's introductory page to pop up, Zhang Yin looked at the name and it's stunning cover with interest.<br/>[Title: Imagination<br/>Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy, etc…<br/>Description: A world 10 times the size of Earth. A world with diverse landscapes, cultures, history, quests, and equipment. <br/>A world just like reality, to experience everything you can't in reality.<br/>Tags: N/A]<br/>Zhang Yin looked at the surprisingly short description and blinked.<br/>Unlike a regular description, nothing definite was said about the world of [Imagination] except for its size. It also had no tags and a overwhelming list of genres, meaning that he didn't know if the world was futuristic, apocalyptic, primitive, or anything else. For all he knew, it could be an extremely well made wish fulfillment universe of some game that the creator wasn't satisfied with. <br/>Thinking along these lines, the thoughts in his mind became increasingly absurd and Zhang Yin shivered. However, he soon regained his rationality.<br/>Once again, he glanced at the high-quality cover, bright light, and kaleidoscope-like effect before shrugging.<br/>'Anyways, it's not like I haven't played any boring or... "interesting" games before. I'm just trying this out to pass the time and I'll stop playing if I don't like it.'<br/>That was the start of his misfortune.<br/>Who knew that while he was picking the gender of his character, the city's engines would suddenly malfunction. The few seconds of instability caused his Divepod to shake and his finger to veer off course. <br/>Despairing, he could only watch as he accidentally selected [Female] instead of [Male]. He thought that he would be given an opportunity to change his choice or a message asking for confirmation, but the game unexpectedly started right away.<br/>What made him even more speechless was that, because his cousin was self-conscious about her childish voice, she had installed a voice changer that made her sound like a mature woman.<br/>The tragic thing was that he only realized this when the stream had already started.<br/>Finally, this game didn't even give him a tutorial or any time to prepare. He only had a few seconds to take in his surroundings, somewhere extremely smelly and dark, before being thrown straight into a combat scenario. He barely knew what was going on before he was being chased around by monsters. He was helpless against them because he could barely see anything even with the improved sense of smell, sight, and hearing from his race.<br/>Plus, of the 3 senses, one was almost debilitating him in this smelly place, one was useless, and only the last one was useful.<br/>This combination of unfortunate events led to this:<br/>[Fire's #1 Fan: Hahaha! OMG, I'm dying of laughter! This unruly son has finally faced his karma!]<br/>[Smoke It Up: Upstairs, I really think you shouldn't be laughing with a username like yours.]<br/>[Old Hand: What's happened to my son? Why did I suddenly gain a daughter? Fire, do you have something you want to tell your Father?]<br/>[Bun Hit Dog: @Smoke It Up, you're a newbie right? Don't worry, you'll naturally understand once you've been in this fanbase for a while.]<br/>[Fire's Real #1 Fan: The Great God also has days like this… I wonder how many people are clipping this? Pfft- I need to quickly join this world. If I somehow spawn in the same area as the Great God and get to see this sight in person, my life would be complete.]<br/>[Bloodfallen: I think my son's image of being a Great God has been broken forever. No one will ever respect him again.]<br/>[WaterFall: When has my son ever been a respectable figure? Or respected in general?]<br/>[Guest123: This is hilarious, but what the hell is with this fanbase and calling Smoke Without Fire their 'Son'?]<br/>Risking his life to take a glance at the chat, Zhang Yin couldn't help but grit his teeth in anger.<br/>His eyebrow twitched and his face stretched into a false pleasant smile. "You guys, instead of laughing at me, why don't you try to help your Father?"<br/>[Old Hand: How are you my Father? You're clearly my daughter. Why are you afraid of admitting the father-daughter relationship between us? I might send you some gifts if you call me Father.]<br/>[Smoke It Up: Sorry, I don't think there's much we can do in this situation.]<br/>[Guest123: Nevermind, it's not just the fanbase that's obsessed with calling one another 'Son' and 'Father'. Both the streamer and his fans are weird.]<br/>[Simping For You: A desperate Fire is also good… I mean, sorry, Mommy can't do anything for you. QAQ]<br/>Seeing that last comment, Zhang Yin couldn't help but choke in anger.<br/>Taking advantage of his momentary distraction, one of the monsters surged forward. The monsters looked extremely strange, possessing a hairless body and human-like ears. Its hungry eyes turned in their sockets with madness as it snapped its teeth and lunged.<br/>The scrapping of claws against stone alerted Zhang Yin and he hurriedly rolled to the side, causing his character's clothes to be covered in grime. However, he still couldn't react in time and received several deep gashes on his thigh.<br/>Feeling the dull pain that was filtered by the system, Zhang Yin couldn't help but curse again.<br/>"Shit!"<br/>[Fire's #1 Fan: Hahahaha! Son, why don't you roll a little more? Perhaps you'll be so dirty and stinky that it'll chase the monsters away!]<br/>[Simping For You: Son, even when you're covered in blood and gore, you're still the best!]<br/>In this dangerous situation, even though he was about to die, Zhang Yin still had took the time to banter. "You guys actually aren't my fans, right? What kind of fans are so happy seeing their idol suffer?"<br/>[Fire's #1 Fan: Son, being your anti-fan is a requirement of being your fan.]<br/>[Old Hand: Daughter, you misunderstand. All of this suffering is just to help your character development! We're just cheering for you! Hahaha!]<br/>[Buying Soy Sauce: Are you sure this is Smoke Without Fire? I came here to watch the number one ranker of [Mystery Continent], but it seems that he actually isn't that great?]<br/>Immediately, the self-proclaimed anti-fans rose up.<br/>[Old Hand: Upstairs, you dare talk badly about my daughter to my face again?]<br/>[Bloodfallen: In this situation, Fire is actually doing very well. Do you think that you would be able to dodge attacks from an unknown amount of monsters only based on your hearing? Do you think that you can maneuver around this foreign environment and avoid being cornered while completely in the dark? If you can do it, Laozi will cut off my head and send it to you!]<br/>[Buying Soy Sauce: Calm down. I was just saying that since the streamer is currently playing a female character and has a "voice changer" on, who can say that the person behind them is actually Smoke Without Fire? Even the in-game account is different!]<br/>[Smoke It Up: Does that even make sense? Even though the in-game account is different, the stream is still from Fire's Liv stream account.]<br/>[LoliLover: Does that mean every streamer who decides to play an avatar of the opposite gender and have a voice changer on is masquerading as someone else? Don't you think that your brain hole is a little too big? This isn't the place to write fanfiction!]<br/>[Buying Soy Sauce: Then Fire's account could have been hacked.]<br/>[Fire's #1 Fan: What the hell are you guys talking about, it's obviously my son! Look at that movement he just used! It's his signature 'Infinite'!]<br/>[Neutral All The Way: Everyone, whether the streamer is Fire or not, there's no way they're going to get out of this situation alive.]<br/>Ignoring the war brewing in the chat, even as he struggled, Zhang Yin skillfully dodged and weaved his way between the monsters' attacks. As a veteran pro gamer, he was calm even in this dire situation and carefully calculated his next move.<br/>By his estimations, around 4-6 monsters were chasing after him. Additionally, if he was level 1, these monsters should all be level 10 or above.<br/>Zhang Yin tsked.<br/>Isn't this tutorial stage a little too unreasonable?<br/>In addition to spawning in almost complete darkness, no explanation was given to the player and he was immediately required to fight against multiple opponents who were many times stronger than himself.<br/>The game didn't even tell him how to use his character's powers and he couldn't activate them no matter what he tried, so he couldn't fight back unless he wanted to die.<br/>Not that he had the choice to begin with.<br/>Zhang Yin glanced to another screen that was in the corner of his vision.<br/>[You are currently within the [Black Abyss Prison]. Due to special environmental effects, all external energy related racial and normal skills are temporarily sealed.]<br/>[You are currently within the [Black Abyss Prison]. Due to special environmental effects, your character will lose 5 health points per second for as long as you are in contact with a surface.]<br/>The good thing was, even if that was what the screen said, he had gotten a little lucky and rolled a character from the Phoenix Clan, whatever that was. Members of the Phoenix Clan are born with [Fire Resistance], so the actual damage he takes is around 1 HP per second.<br/>However, even though his passive skill helped him immensely, his Level 1 character didn't have a lot of HP to begin with. It has already been more than a minute since he spawned here and he had around 30 HP left. This meant that he only had around 30 seconds left before dying.<br/>'I can't go on like this.'<br/>Was he just going to die? No way, if that happened and people knew that he died within 2 minutes of playing a game, he would never hear the end of it.<br/>Just when Zhang Yin was desperately wracking his brain to think of a solution, his sensitive ears suddenly picked up sounds of chimes.<br/>The sound was faint and the source was fairly far away, so Zhang Yin focused his senses.<br/>Blinking, he smirked and started to run in the direction of the sound when he heard it again. <br/>He quickly thought of a plan and taunted his viewers.<br/>"Hey, didn't you guys laugh at me and doubt me? Then let's bet that I'll be able to survive and also kill these monsters. If I die, I'll do a face reveal, but if I win, you all have to send a meteorite."<br/>Hearing Zhang Yin's bold declaration, his viewers reacted instantly.<br/>[Fire's #1 Fan: Don't pretend that you didn't smirk! I'm not betting!]<br/>[Old Hand: Heh, think you can trick me? No bet. You better try harder to hide your smirk next time.]<br/>[Buying Soy Sauce: Bet. If you do all those and also remain uninjured, I'll send you a supernova.]<br/>[Bloodfallen: Oh! Oh! Someone's fallen into my son's trap! Just don't regret it and go back on your word!]<br/>Smiling at the commotion in the chat, Zhang Yin split his attention between manipulating the battle in the direction of the chains and dodging the monsters' attacks.</p>