Chapter 001 | Fang Chen

[AN: The first chapter is a prologue to give understanding of the situation. Although it might seem too much for a moment, I assure you every character making appearance in this chapter is important and relevant. Please don't skip.]

...

Beijing is home to so many people from many places with its uniqueness that you never feel like a foreigner.

Having to wake up at seven and take the metro every morning, reach there with all these commuters, see every possible face humanity has to offer, and realize that you're just the same as everyone is an amazingly positive thought.

But today wasn't such a day for him.

He was more focused on his phone screen, or rather, the email displayed on it.

...

[Subject: Termination of Employment]

It is our unfortunate duty to inform you that your employment with XianTech stands terminated from December 12th 2022.

As per your contract, you shall not be part or deserving of any of the profits made by the company, and all your work will be deemed the company's property henceforth.

This stringent action was deemed necessary. I wish you success in your future endeavours.

Regards,

Fang Chen

CEO, XianTech Inc.

…

It is unfortunate how hard it is to tell who has your back and who has it long enough just to stab you in it.

At thirty years of age, he was now unemployed.

The future was bleak, and a sense of emptiness engulfed his heart.

Maybe the one silver lining in his current situation is that no one else was dependent on him anymore. His mom, who had taken care of him before he opened his eyes for the first time, had passed away about two years ago.

His wife, the high school sweetheart who had always been his pillar of support, died in a tragic plane crash about a year ago. And with her, their pet dog, Buck.

He never met his dad. His mom said he once went out to buy milk and never returned.

However, even after losing everything, what he did have was a dream and years of hard work to make it a reality.

A dream to create the most immersive martial arts (wuxia) game anyone has ever played.

Being a martial arts web novel fan, he always wanted to create a game that breakthroughs this genre's limitations, drowning the stereotypes people have against it.

And that's what he did.

After graduating from college at 23, he put all his focus on developing a martial arts game, and the next seven years went into turning this dream of his into a reality.

But he wasn't alone. With him were two more people and a dog.

His wife was the second person. Her superpower was being good at coding.

The dog was, of course, Buck. Buck was a mixed breed and had been his companion for more than a decade. He was the 'First Player' of the Game.

He didn't know how old Buck was, but the dog never quite seemed to get tired, which sounds like a pretty good superpower. So the dog became the spirit animal of the small group.

And the last person was Fang Chen. The same person who had fired him from the company through the email.

Fang Chen's superpower was being rich.

And thus, the latter was also the investor in the game. In fact, Fang Chen was the one who encouraged him to work on the game.

But the latter had a few conditions: Firstly, he would be the only one working on the plotline. The other two can only give suggestions, which Fang Chen may choose to ignore.

Of course, upon hearing about this condition, the couple didn't like it. After all, one of the reasons they wanted to create the game was that they wanted to be a part of the story creation.

But Fang Chen insisted on it and even indirectly threatened to take back his investment. In the end, they finally found common ground based on a deal that if Fang Chen allows them to add a character of their own, they will agree to his condition.

It sounds like they got the short end of the stick, but it was quite the opposite.

And over the next few years, 'he' added a new character in the game based on Fang Chen and with the same name.

The in-game Fang Chen was also a rich cultivator hailing from a prominent background. And as the game progressed, he would become the common enemy of all the eight playable characters.

At first, this character was supposed to die at the end, every single time, because that's how it usually goes: The villain is defeated.

But later, Fang Chen insisted that they should go a different route and make the in-game Fang Chen an invincible antagonist with only one way to kill in all ten thousand routes. For the rest of 9999 times, in-game Fang Chen will survive.

The other two instantly rejected the proposal because that would affect the game balance, but Fang Chen ignored their words and did what he was good at: throwing tantrums and threatening to stop investing.

In the end, the couple relented to this request too. However, they knew it would be a big gamble because if the character is too overpowered, the players might lose their interest.

Another reason why they weren't very keen on making the in-game Fang Chen overpowered was that he wasn't the final boss of the game.

As for who the final boss was, Fang Chen never revealed it. However, he said he would code the later part by himself, and that would be his contribution. And also said he has good use of in-game Fang Chen at the end of the game.

But now, none of this matters anymore.

Fang Chen had fired him and now would reap all the benefits of their hard work.

'Why does this keep happening to me…'

'He' sighed.

One year ago, when he had lost his wife, he had almost quit, but Fang Chen had encouraged him to finish it by saying that was what she would have wanted.

He knew Fang Chen was playing a cheap trick, but maybe that was what he wanted to hear, and Fang Chen's words struck the right chord.

But now, with everything gone, he only felt frustration.

'But why did he fire me?'

This was the most stinging unanswered question right now.

Fang Chen may have been rich and arrogant, but he was never hostile toward them. Yet, out of nowhere, Fang Chen fired the person who had been his friend for almost a decade.

'He isn't even picking up the call. Is he doing all this for money? Fame?'

But these two things were something Fang Chen needed the least.

'Is this some sort of petty play?'

'I can't even go to court... his family is very influential...'

'Is there anything I can- wait...there is one thing he could do to force Fang Chen to contact him.'

'Maybe I still have access to the server?'

A thought immediately flashed in his mind.

His hands impulsively moved, and his body jolted into action.

He immediately took out his laptop from his bag.

As the Project Head of the Game, he had complete control over the server…well, at least he had it before he saw the email.

But now, he wasn't sure.

Not to mention him, an employee who can delete the whole game data, even if he was just a security guard, the company would have deleted the credentials before sending the email.

A convulsing feeling rose in his heart as he typed his login and password to the server.

[Login Failed]

[Error 404: User does not exist]

He sighed and leaned back in his seat.

'Hope can make a person ignorant.'

There was no other way.

He had indeed lost access to the server, and the only way to get his hands on the game was by physically visiting the office, which definitely wasn't possible because Fang Chen would never allow him to do that.

'If only she were here….'

He sighed.

Fang Chen would have talked to her, and they could have sorted things out. But that was now out of the question.

'What would she do in this situation?' He questioned himself while thinking of his wife.

Just then, a thought flashed in his mind.

Instantly his fingers moved, and he began typing different login credentials.

His wife's login credentials.

Voila!~

[Login Successful]

[Welcome to the World Of Martial Arts, Wu Zeqing (Admin)]

As soon as he read the name, he felt the world had come to a halt.

He took a deep breath and began to work. Now was not the time to reminisce.

His eyes went to the left-bottom corner of the screen.

[✎]

A small pencil icon.

When he saw the symbol, a smile appeared on his face.

The icon meant he could edit anything in the game.

As he clicked, a plan formed in his head with only one goal: Make Fang Chen regret sending the email and force him to contact him.

And to do that, he was going to edit the invincible Fang Chen character in the game.

But before that, he needed to create a copy of the data. Lucky for him, only Wu Zeqing had this privilege because she was the leading data analyst.

'Now that I have downloaded the data, this will be a good bargaining chip.'

As soon as the downloading finished, he didn't waste any time editing the character data on the server.

He changed Fang Chen from a super powerful mid-level boss into a measly nobody. First, he took away the powerful background, and then he took away the most critical thing Fang Chen had: his loyal servant.

Killing the loyal servant was the only way to defeat Fang Chen as per the original plotline, but now, the loyal servant wouldn't even exist.

A few seconds later…

[Changes Successful. Implementation completed in (sec): 60… 59… 58…]

Now that character editing was in progress, there was another thing he could do: deleting the 'Logs', which held the record of all changes made on the server. This could save him a lot from legal troubles if he got into any.

Thus, he didn't waste any time deleting them.

[Do you wish to delete the logs? Delete data will not be recovered.]

[Yes] [No]

'Let's see how long it takes for the call.'

He chose 'Yes.'

…

Zzzzzz——!!!

Just then, the roof lights in his metro compartment flashed, and everyone in the metro raised their heads from their phones and looked up and around, confusion written all over their faces.

Boom-!

A sudden loud sound resounded, and the metro began to shake.

His laptop slipped from his hand, and before he could catch it, the metro came to a screeching halt, slamming him to the side thanks to Newton's 1st Law of motion.

"Ugh…"

In the next moment, as he regained his composure, loud cries of panic and fear echoed in his ears, but that didn't faze him because what he cared most about right now was his laptop.

As soon as he looked down, his body froze.

Because he saw a big footprint on the screen of his laptop, someone had stepped on it due to the sudden jerk.

'Well, fuck.'

The screen also had cracks, and he could see the countdown still going on in one corner of the screen.

[Changes Successful. Implementation completed in (sec): 51… 50… 49…]

He immediately picked it up and held it close to his heart.

No matter what happens, he must see the end of the countdown.

Just then-

-BOOM!!!

Another explosion shook the tunnel, and a light flashed from the engine side of the metro. When everyone turned or leaned forward to see what happened - they saw an incoming tsunami of fire - engulfing anyone and anything that came in its path.

He gulped and instantly, like everyone else, ran towards the other end of the metro.

Because he couldn't close the laptop, he had to keep it above his head.

[Changes Successful. Implementation completed in (sec): 30… 29… 28…]

He had just taken a few steps when somebody pushed him, and he fell to the ground.

The fall was too hard, and some people even stomped on him.

He instantly recoiled and folded himself, protecting the laptop.

Death was inevitable, but he didn't have any regret, not like anyone would miss him anyway.

He forced himself to stand up and then sat down on the side seat of the metro, waiting for the fiery death to engulf him.

His laptop was still stuck to his chest.

He moved it in front of his face to look at the screen.

[Changes Successful. Implementation completed in (sec): 07… 06… 05…]

-bam!

Suddenly, someone had unknowingly pushed the laptop out of his grasp, and it flew to his left.

It fell on the floor, and the screen died.

His face instantly paled.

'No!'

Despair surfaced on his face as he saw the laptop screen die.

But before he could reach out for the laptop, he was engulfed in the yellow-red tsunami of fire.

…

After an unknown amount of time later, when the rescue team came over and began to look for any survivors, one of the firemen noticed a flash near a burnt body.

He picked up the object, which turned out to be a half-burnt laptop. Surprisingly the screen was still flashing, even with a big footprint on the screen. Though, he couldn't quite understand what it was showing.

[𝗖𝗵-𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀—. 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝗺—𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽—]

[𝗧𝗿-𝗻𝘀𝗺𝗶𝗴𝗿—𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝘂-𝗰𝗲𝘀—𝘂𝗹]

[𝗧𝗼𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗥𝗲𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗱: 𝗙𝗼-𝗿]

The screen blipped a few times, and as it went blank, the laptop suddenly caught fire.

…

"Wake up! Young Master Fang Chen, wake up!"

He opened his eyes and found himself being pulled by a young boy out of what seemed to be rubble.

"Who…?"

He subconsciously asked.

"You!" The boy replied while gritting his teeth to pull the former out.

"I am not Fang Chen…." He replied.

"Hah! Did the explosion shock you? Of course, you're Fang Chen! Now get up! There's a fucking avalanche coming!"

"What…" He was still confused, "I am Fang Chen? No, my name is—!"