137: Chapter 137 Anti-Gravity Engine

Earth.

Huaxia, inside a street-side breakfast shop packed with diners.

The air was thick with the steam and aroma of cooking food.

Praise Ming Shen, dressed in a tracksuit, sat at a clean plastic table.

He held a dry, almost saltless chicken breast whole-wheat sandwich, took a large expressionless bite, and chewed vigorously.

Though the thing tasted as bland as chewing wax, its advantage was being healthy enough to sustain his high-intensity thinking in reality.

"To be honest, this texture isn't even as good as the Ork hind-leg meat in the game."

Ming Shen swallowed the dry chicken and gave a very objective evaluation.

Then, he pulled out his phone and skillfully opened the Bihu app, intending to browse the daily hot list while eating breakfast.

The headlines on the hot list were a diverse, eye-catching mix:

[The UN hearing regarding the Chairman of GW Games has officially begun; what exactly is Warhammer OL?]

[Fully automated unmanned ground combat vehicles appear on the Ermao battlefield; military experts: this may completely change the rules of future warfare!]

[What would happen if all human waste was dumped into the ocean every day?]

[Old Ma's latest Starship may launch at the end of the month; industry insiders express concern about its future.] [I raped a sheep before nearly dying in the wild and then survived; does that count as an emergency necessity?] [How should Erlang Shen do eye exercises?] [Is the geographical location of the Heavenly Court in the stratosphere or the troposphere?]

Looking at this screen full of bizarre, wild topics that seemed to come from open-skulled imaginations, Ming Shen's mouth couldn't help but twitch.

"This damn real-world internet is more surreal than the world of Warhammer. Looking around, the Orks and demons in the Warhammer world seem more normal."

Just as Ming Shen was frantically complaining to his phone...

A young girl wearing an exquisite Lolita dress and a lace headband, carrying a steamer of soup dumplings and a cup of soy milk, walked to the table opposite Ming Shen.

The girl had a very youthful aura, and her large eyes were blinking.

She looked at the breakfast shop where every seat was taken and pointed somewhat timidly at the empty seat across from Ming Shen:

"Hello, Uncle, is anyone sitting here?"

Ming Shen looked up at the girl.

He was only in his twenties, in the prime of his youth; being called 'Uncle' by such a little slip of a girl was somewhat hard to accept.

He rolled his eyes irritably and retorted casually, "Who are you calling a damn Uncle? No one's here, sit down."

The girl froze for a moment.

A hint of confusion flashed in her clear eyes, but she still nodded obediently, thanked him, and sat down:

"Oh, thank you, Uncle Damn."

*Cough, cough, cough—!*

The mouthful of plain water Ming Shen had just sipped sprayed right out, nearly choking him to death.

He stared wide-eyed at the girl opposite him, who had already pulled out her phone and was munching on a large meat bun without any psychological burden, leaving him caught between laughter and tears.

Are the brain circuits of young people nowadays really this linear?

Ming Shen shook his head, too lazy to argue with the little girl, and lowered his head to continue looking at his phone.

Suddenly, a special follow notification popped up at the top of his screen.

Upon opening it, it turned out to be a massive update announcement just released by the official warhammer 40k ol website!

[warhammer 40k ol v0.40 Epic Update! Simultaneous release of the new expansion: "Towards the Stars"!] [The update contents are as follows:]

[1. Space maps are officially open! New factions, cultures, and landscapes await your exploration.]

[2. Simultaneous launch of various new space vehicles, individual Power Armor, and multiple types of heavy mecha equipment.] [3. Faction main storyline update; multiple mission branches unlocked simultaneously.]

[4. Optimized NPC behavior logic engine to make their reactions more consistent with real-world interaction patterns.]

[5. Points Mall massive update! More advanced equipment, industrial components, and various rare materials are now available.]

[6. New Legion base permissions opened: including 'Coastal City Northern Waste Treatment Plant', 'Tieling Town Coastal Depression', and 'Southern Swamp Warship Wreckage'.]

[7. Town Management System officially launched! Players are permitted to use points to buy land, open factories, or establish interstellar trading companies in major settlements.]

[8. Fixed various known bugs.]

[A Word from the Planner:]

"Good morning, friends! Thanks to everyone's bloody battles, the previous expansion to defend Coastal City has concluded perfectly. The new expansion is now released, and our game's closed beta progress has officially reached a brand new stage."

"From the update notes above, I believe everyone has seen it. That's right, after sacrificing a vast amount of hair from our artists, programmers, and modelers, we have expanded the game map by hundreds of times! The vast physical universe is now officially open to players!"

"Now, everyone's childhood dream of being an astronaut can finally be realized in the game. And you definitely won't get a slap across the face from your grandfather anymore! (Laughs)"

"Along with this, conflicts between various interstellar civilizations will become more intense. Many major events in the background lore are occurring, and players will have the chance to participate directly, using your hands to change those destined tragic endings."

"Additionally, the campaign reward points everyone earned in the last expansion have been fully calculated. Before the servers go offline today, we will open a large-scale mystery box gacha pool in the game! The draw is divided into Solo Mode and Legion Mode. Individuals have a chance to obtain top-tier equipment and various vehicles; Legions have a chance to directly draw regional development rights!"

"Finally, given everyone's enthusiasm for the game, we will once again open 100,000 new player closed beta slots! Everyone is welcome to actively pre-register!"

Looking at this long new announcement, Ming Shen's expression remained very calm.

As a researcher in reality, Ming Shen knew much more inside information than ordinary players.

He knew very well that this wasn't some holographic game at all, but likely a Close Encounter of the Third Kind spanning dimensions.

What the high-dimensional alien civilization actually wanted was currently unknown to the higher-ups.

But these 100,000 newly released closed beta slots would absolutely trigger a terrifying, bloodless slaughter in the real world.

Countless capital and power classes with deep backgrounds would use any means necessary to seize these slots.

Just as Ming Shen was secretly pondering...

The Lolita girl sitting opposite him, looking at her phone screen, suddenly jumped up in excitement!

"Yay! Fantastic! I can finally go to space!"

The girl's excited scream instantly drew strange looks from all the diners in the breakfast shop.

Only then did the girl realize she had lost her composure.

She saw the expressions of the people around her, looking at her as if she were a lunatic.

She let out an "Ah," her face flushing bright red with shame.

She apologized repeatedly: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I've disturbed everyone."

Then, she quickly shrank back into her chair, her head lowered as she continued to deal with the bun in her hand, her face still red.

Ming Shen's eyes widened slightly, and a strange sense of novelty—like an unexpected offline meeting with an internet friend—suddenly surged in his heart.

This little slip of a girl was actually also a closed beta player of Warhammer OL?

Ming Shen finished the last of his sandwich in a few bites and stood up to leave.

As he passed by the girl, he shamelessly used his peripheral vision to steal a quick glance at her phone screen.

He saw the girl rapidly typing a reply under the announcement post on the game's official forum.

And the avatar of the forum account she was logged into was actually several Ork Boyz with tusks and bulging muscles.

And the player ID clearly read three characters: [Gugu Eagle].

"Gugu Eagle?"

Ming Shen walked out of the breakfast shop and rubbed his chin.

"That name, why does it look a bit familiar?"

...

Outpost Planet 586.

Fire Seed Shelter, underground hibernation zone.

Accompanied by a low hiss of releasing air pressure, the door of the hibernation pod slowly opened.

After the great battle, the various warbands had all withdrawn from the front lines to their respective bases to recuperate.

Black Tiger A-Fu, the Legion Commander of the Hand of God who had turned into a withered corpse during the battle to slay the god, finally came back online after a long 24-hour resurrection cooldown.

He climbed out of the hibernation pod, got dressed, and took the elevator to the surface camp.

At the edge of the plaza was a row of brand-new equipment recovery lockers.

Since players frequently died on the battlefield, and running from the spawn point back to the front lines to retrieve equipment from their corpses was often a time-consuming and laborious ordeal.

Consequently, some quick-witted life-skill players had directly formed a Body-Recovery Squad.

They specialized in roaming the edges of the battlefield to haul back the equipment left behind by fallen players, storing it in recovery lockers for only a small fee of errand points.

As soon as this service was launched, it received a warm welcome from all the players on the server.

A Fu swiped his fingerprint at the recovery locker and retrieved his PV and that Power Axe which had cleaved through a demigod's force field.

He organized his gear and checked the time.

There was still more than half a day before the server-wide mystery box draw in the evening; he intended to find a place to first distribute the points to the brothers in his warband.

Just as he turned around, A Fu saw several players gathered around a strangely shaped vehicle, gesturing and commenting.

Curious, A Fu approached.

He saw Why Panic When I Have Flash and Miracle Walker skillfully jumping onto an open-top off-road vehicle whose chassis had no wheels and was suspended completely half a meter off the ground.

Just as Flash was about to start the car, he turned and saw A Fu walking over.

"Yo! A Fu! You're resurrected!"

Flash grinned and winked at him.

"Old Qi and I are planning to go have some fun in Shahe Town and check out the newly opened commercial street. What do you say? Want us to take you along to broaden your horizons?"

Looking at Flash's flamboyant expression, A Fu naturally knew what their so-called 'fun' entailed.

The current Shahe Town was being rebuilt from the ruins, and various entertainment venues opened by the natives were popping up like bamboo shoots after rain.

As an old hand with moral integrity, although A Fu said he was interested in such places, his body was very honest.

However, going to Shahe Town to take a look wasn't bad.

He heard that the changes there over the past month had been earth-shattering.

Moreover, it was the hometown of the NPC Bailey.

"Let's go! I'll hitch a ride!" A Fu flipped directly into the back seat.

Flash stomped on the starter pedal.

There was no roar of an internal combustion engine, only a low hum of electric current.

The hovercar shot straight out across the wilderness ground with a steady yet terrifying speed!

"Holy shit!"

Feeling the acceleration pinning him back, A Fu tightly gripped the door handle.

"What kind of black tech is this? It doesn't even have wheels?!"

Sitting in the passenger seat, Miracle Walker turned back to explain:

"This car is a prototype hand-crafted in the workshop by the gearhead Kane and a few players who studied mechanical engineering. The chassis is fitted with simple Anti-Gravity Engine coils. Not only is it fast, but it completely ignores the bumpy terrain of the wasteland. Pretty badass, right?"

The group sped along, and in just over ten minutes, they crossed the vast wilderness and arrived at Shahe Town in the south.

By now, Shahe Town had long since transformed.

The wasteland outside the city, which was originally full of industrial slag, had now been cultivated into neat farmland.

Large patches of lush green Jinkela No. 1 super wheat swayed in the wind, growing vigorously.

Many natives were carrying iron buckets, scattering some blackish powder at the roots of the wheat in the fields.

A Fu leaned out to take a look:

"I remember the manual for these super seeds said they were radiation-resistant and drought-resistant, and didn't need specific fertilizer, right?"

"That's where you're wrong."

Flash explained with a smile while parking the car at the city gate.

"The NPC villagers here are quite shrewd. They figured out a local method themselves. They drag back the corpses that are heavily mutated by radiation, burn them into charcoal, and then grind them into powder to scatter in the fields as fertilizer. I'm telling you, this Ork ash fertilizer is surprisingly effective; the wheat yield has directly doubled!"

Miracle Walker looked at the civilians working in the fields, his tone carrying a hint of incredible sentiment:

"To be honest, sometimes I even feel like the NPCs in this game are made too much like living people. They truly think like humans, research like humans, and give their all just to survive. The AI calculation power behind this is simply unimaginable."

Hearing Miracle Walker's words, Bailey's face, covered in tears and dirt, suddenly flashed through A Fu's mind, and an inexplicable wave of annoyance rose in his heart.

The three entered the city and walked onto the streets of Shahe Town.

Familiar with the way, they came to a three-story small office building newly built of red bricks in the town center.

This was the office of the newly appointed Archon of Shahe Town, Governor Jia Mei.

"We'll go up first to see our old friend and pay our respects to the NPC official. Want to come?" Flash asked A Fu.

"To see that Governor Jia Mei, right? Let's go, I'll take a look too."

The three went up to the second floor and pushed open the wooden door with the 'Archon's Office' sign hanging on it.

Governor Jia Mei was nowhere to be seen in the room.

Behind the large desk sat only a woman wearing clean, gray cloth clothes.

She was looking down, holding a cup of water, her mood appearing very low.

With just one glance at that slightly frail back, A Fu instantly recognized the woman.

"Bailey?" A Fu called out tentatively.

Hearing that familiar voice...

The woman sitting behind the desk jerked her head up.

When she clearly saw the tall, unharmed man standing at the door, her eyes, which were originally red, instantly rounded, and the cup in her hand fell to the floor.

"A... A Fu?!"