139: Chapter 139 Humanity is hopeless; the first thing someone does upon acquiring a virtual reality headset is think about erotica?

As Lu Li's words, "Follow me, ascend to godhood," fell, the live broadcast signal seemed to stutter for a moment, unable to bear the overload of information.

In the live broadcast room with hundreds of millions of viewers globally, the bullet comments vanished completely at that moment, falling into a suffocating vacuum that lasted for several seconds.

Immediately after, a shockwave swept across the globe.

"Holy sh*t!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Did I just see... was it all fake?! Was it all just images inside a Virtual Helmet?!"

"My mind is blown! The press conference, the speech, the chip demonstration just now, were they all done inside a Virtual Reality world?! Lu Li himself didn't move at all from start to finish?!"

"Liar! Guanghui Technology is the biggest fraud of the century! It deceived the eyes of the whole world! But why... why is my whole body trembling?!"

"This is heaven-defying. If this Neural Mesh is real, I can't even imagine how awesome erotic games will be!"

"To the person above, I've already screenshotted this and sent it to your 23 followers!"

A burly blogger with the ID "Did you exercise today?" was live-streaming the Virtual Helmet debut to his fans while, in his own broadcast room, his eyes widened, and with all his might, he gave himself a fierce slap across the face.

With a crisp "slap," half of his face instantly turned red and swollen.

Yet, he seemed unable to feel the pain, roaring at the camera: "It hurts! It's real! I'm not dreaming! We... we are witnessing a miracle!"

At this moment, the boundary between reality and illusion was completely shattered.

Everyone understood that what Guanghui Technology had released was not just some VR device.

It was a key.

A key to a new world!

...

Dami Company headquarters.

Lei Jun stood up abruptly from his boss chair, his body leaning forward slightly due to extreme excitement, his hands supporting himself on the massive office desk as he stared fixedly at the blue ocean lighting up on the screen.

The color drained from his face, replaced by a complex expression mixed with shock, fanaticism, and helplessness.

"Neural... Mesh..."

He squeezed these four words out through gritted teeth, each word carrying the weight of a thousand pounds.

The executives standing beside him all looked ashen, as if their souls had been sucked away.

"Boss Lei... this... how is this possible? Our laboratory can't even achieve high-precision brainwave capture, how could they possibly directly... directly image into the brain?" a vice president's voice was dry and trembling.

Possible?

The facts were right before their eyes!

That was no special effect, no pre-recorded video; it was an irrefutable reality witnessed by hundreds of millions of people!

Lei Jun closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, only bitterness remained.

"Platform... he has redefined the platform..."

Phones? Computers?

In front of the Neural Mesh Virtual Reality Helmet, these would all become antiques of the last century.

The first thing he thought of was developing a series of products on this brand-new ecological platform.

But as soon as the thought arose, he extinguished it himself.

Develop?

With what would they develop?

They couldn't even touch the doorknob of this door! This was no longer a question of a technological generation gap; this was a dimensional crushing!

Give them twenty years, no, give them fifty years, and they still wouldn't be able to build this monster that connects to the nerves!

...

On the other side, Shenzhen.

The conference room on the top floor of the Tencent headquarters building was deathly silent.

Pony Ma still maintained his seated posture, but those usually calm eyes were now raging with storms.

The relaxed and easygoing expressions on Wang Xin and Li Hong's faces had long since vanished, replaced by identical shock and disbelief.

"Fake... this must be fake!" Wang Xin muttered to himself, as if trying to convince himself, "This isn't scientific! That Lu Li must have used some kind of holographic projection technology we don't know about, combined with pre-recorded videos, to put on a show!"

Pony Ma did not speak.

He knew better than anyone that it is easy to deceive one or two people, but deceiving hundreds of millions of eyes globally, under the live broadcast of dozens of mainstream media outlets across the country, was absolutely impossible.

He recalled Lu Li's reply refusing cooperation.

He recalled his own arrogant statement made "for the good of the users."

It turned out that in the other party's eyes, his social empire, which he prided himself on, had been a joke from the very beginning.

The other party never intended to play in his pond; they were here to create an ocean.

A bone-chilling coldness traveled from Pony Ma's spine all the way up to his crown.

...

Douyin headquarters.

CEO Zhang Yiming let out a long, long breath, his whole body looking as if he had just been fished out of water, his back soaked with cold sweat.

Relief.

Unparalleled relief.

Fortunately, he had chosen to cooperate with Lu Li at the first opportunity, without the slightest hesitation.

Although their Virtual Helmet version of Douyin hadn't been able to catch up with this public beta due to insufficient development, they had secured the first ticket!

"Meeting! All department heads, immediately! Right now! Come to the conference room for an emergency meeting!"

Zhang Yiming grabbed the internal phone, his voice slightly distorted by excitement.

"From today on, all of the company's strategic focus will shift to the Virtual Helmet platform! I want you to spare no cost, spare no price, and get our product made as fast as possible!"

"Half a month."

"I'm only giving you half a month."

"In half a month, I want to see Dai Guliang K dancing in front of me in the Virtual Helmet world, see Liu Yuning singing 'Speaking Truth' in front of me, and face Feng Timo, watching her sing 'Buddhist Girl'!!"

He had stood on the same front as Lu Li this time, and he had bet correctly!

This was not just the next outlet after mobile phones.

This was the next era of human civilization!

...

The screen cut back to the exhibition center scene.

The consciousness of ten thousand public beta players had already broken free from the shackles of their bodies and descended into a brand-new dimension.

They found themselves standing on a lush green meadow, the soft texture under their feet, with the fragrance of grass and soil lingering at the tips of their noses.

Not far away, a clear stream was gurgling, the sound of water pleasant to the ear.

In the distance were continuous snow-capped mountains and dense forests, and overhead was a blue sky as clear as if washed.

Beside them, there was also an exquisite wooden house.

"It's real... all of this is real..."

A young girl reached out her hand, catching a leaf falling with the wind; the clear veins of the leaf and its rough texture were all fed back to her brain with incomparable realism through the nerve endings in her fingertips.

"Glug glug..."

One guy could no longer wait and lay down by the stream, burying his head in the cool creek water, feeling the pleasure of the water washing over his skin; as he drank, he even sucked a small fish into his mouth, then coughed endlessly with a flushed face.

Even more extreme, a player with the ID "Shennong Tastes a Hundred Herbs" squatted down directly, grabbed a handful of grass, and stuffed it into his mouth, chewing while shouting incoherently: "Brothers, it tastes like grass, a bit sweet! Exactly the same as the real thing!"

Everyone had gone crazy.

They ran, jumped, and rolled in this initial "desktop world," like a group of children who had regained their freedom.

Just then, Lu Li's gentle and magnetic voice seemed to come from the horizon, echoing clearly in everyone's mind.

"Welcome to 'Magic'."

"This is the initial lobby, and also your new home."

"Now, choose your new world."

"Your first-person or third-person perspective will be displayed to the audience all over the world in the form of a live broadcast."

As soon as the words fell, in the sky, huge holographic icons slowly emerged.

They were like space-time gates in the shape of vortexes.

As if they were space-time gates leading to different universes.

The minecraft block gate radiated the brilliance of creation.

The resident evil gate seeped dark red blood and the roars of zombies from its cracks.

In the vortex of perfect life, one could seemingly see scenes of drunken lights and mysteries.

And a huge space-time gate exuding an ancient, epic aura — world of warcraft.

Because videos of minecraft had already leaked during Lu Li's internal testing, although it was equally shocking, most thrill-seeking players were attracted by that brand-new name.

Nearly half of the players clicked on world of warcraft and resident evil without hesitation, and quite a few female users chose perfect life.

The corners of Lu Li's mouth lifted slightly.

perfect life was a game he had created, but he knew that once this game was mounted on the Virtual Reality platform, it couldn't not be popular!!

perfect life would be another Earth for humanity.

However, he preferred to live-stream world of warcraft first; that was the youth of an entire generation in his previous life.