Chapter 19: Night Raid!

The night was deep, and through the dim moonlight, details were blurred at a distance. It wasn't until she walked right up to the "person" that Xiao Mo realized—that was no person at all.

Good heavens, it was a black bear standing upright, mimicking a human posture with its paws raised!

She had long heard that bears were as cruel as they were clever, capable of posing as humans in the twilight to lure people in for a feast. She never imagined it could be true!

Terrified, Xiao Mo felt her hair stand on end. She turned to flee, intending to scream for help, but the beast was not merely adept at mimicking humans.

In a blur, the black bear, which had been behind her, lunged forward in a flash. Before she could call out or activate a skill to fight back, it opened its massive jaws and swallowed her head whole.

Xiao Mo’s vision went black. Amidst a wave of excruciating pain, she found herself standing at the resurrection point, staring blankly at the countdown.

【World Channel: Xiao Mo @All: Wake up! Get up now! There’s a bear, ahhhhhh!】

In the game, the "mention all" function on the World Channel could only be used once per player per day, and every player would hear a system notification sound when it was triggered. After discovering this feature, the players had agreed to use it only in emergencies. Normally, they just chatted on the channel while working, as they wouldn't miss any messages anyway.

Therefore, an "@All" meant something serious had happened.

In an instant, all the players scrambled up, rubbing their sleepy eyes. "Who triggered the World Channel by mistake?"

"I'm so sleepy. If there's nothing important, we’re going to beat you back to the resurrection point one by one!"

One player was unlucky enough to be splashed with blood; waking up to the smell of raw, warm liquid on their face, they panicked, "What the hell? What happened?"

A white figure drifted over gracefully. Su Qingyue frowned; she had only just fallen asleep before waking up to build the game's official website in the background. After hearing a player complain about how crude the site was, she felt it needed the prestige befitting the world's first holographic game. She was exhausted—she wasn't exactly a web designer, and she was on the verge of a breakdown!

Just as she finally finished and prepared to sleep, she heard the players’ frantic shrieking and the notification from the World Channel.

The players were still shouting in confusion, completely unaware of what was happening in the deep dark. A bear? What bear? Where? Did Xiao Mo have a nightmare? They couldn't see anything at all!

Su Qingyue, at least, was a former Nascent Soul cultivator. With a single glance, she quickly locked onto the black bear hidden behind a towering tree.

"It’s over there! Everyone, scatter!" she shouted.

The players stirred and quickly swarmed toward it.

Su Qingyue: "???" She was bewildered. *I said scatter! Not go and fight it!*

Before she could say anything more, she watched as the players swarmed the beast at light speed, only to have their health bars emptied at light speed, sending them right back to the resurrection point.

"It’s a demonic beast! Don't go near it!" Su Qingyue's expression shifted as she sensed the demonic energy in the air.

A peak Qi-Refining stage demonic beast—the players were only level ten or so. How could they possibly defeat a beast equivalent to level 19? Theoretically, a hundred players might bridge the level gap, but there weren't a hundred players here. Some had logged off, and others were at the resurrection point. Furthermore, not all of them were combat-oriented; some were just there to cultivate and weren't skilled at fighting.

Given this, they stood no chance of killing it. Fortunately, she was still here.

Suppressing a yawn and smoothing back her bangs, which had been ruffled by the night wind, Su Qingyue pulled out the round fan she had used to cool herself during the day. A blue-white light flickered at her fingertips. She flicked her wrist, tossed the fan, caught it as it returned to her hand, and turned away while yawning again. "Done. Sleep time."

The nearby players: "???" Was she joking? Didn't she just say it was a demonic beast? That was it? Were they playing house?

The players were stunned. She just tossed a fan? What did that mean? They didn't understand.

Then, they saw the giant bear, meters away from Su Qingyue, suddenly freeze. The massive creature that had just wiped out a dozen of them with a single swipe stood as if petrified.

What happened? Everyone walked over to investigate, and halfway there, a gust of wind blew past.

With a loud "boom," the black bear collapsed, slamming into the ground and creating a massive crater. When the players crowded around, they saw only scattered chunks of bear meat and, seemingly, four paws that had been carved off with precision.

They looked silently at the meat, then turned to look at Su Qingyue’s retreating figure. "Holy crap, I knew she was a badass, but this is too much!"

"I’m certain that if she hit me once, I’d be on my knees begging her not to let me die!"

"Did you see that? Her strength is insane! I have a feeling that even when we reach the Foundation Establishment stage, we won't be that powerful..."

Su Qingyue, having finished her display of dominance, drifted back to her tent to continue sleeping. *Don’t mention it,* she thought; cross-level challenges were just basic operations for a genius sword cultivator like her.

There would be plenty of such situations in the future. She was already annoyed by having to work in the middle of the night, and this damn bear had ruined her sleep—it was the perfect punching bag. Besides, it had dared to hurt her players! Biting off a girl's head? Su Qingyue was incredibly protective of her own.

Moreover, she quite liked Xiao Mo. The girl was a bit of a goof, but she knew her limits—unlike the troublemaker "Doudou Tian Tian Kai Xin"—and she was lively, cute, and compassionate. Who wouldn't be furious when someone was killed by a beast right under their nose?

The system suddenly chimed in: "By the way, Host, the backend just detected that the game's popularity in the 2040 real world has surged several times over. The number of applications for the next internal test has reached 300,000 and is still growing."

"?" Su Qingyue asked. "The reason?"

"A clumsy player who had to wait a long time to respawn posted two short videos."

"That’s normal. When players see it's not a scam and that it's truly the world's first holographic game, they’ll naturally fall into the trap."

Su Qingyue sat in her tent meditating. Since the players arrived, she and the system had gained a massive amount of points. After splitting them 50/50, the remaining points were enough to heal all her injuries. There was even some left over.

However... she sighed, sinking her consciousness into her Dantian. Where her Golden Core used to be, there was only a terrifying, pitch-black void. Fortunately, the spiritual meridians that had been shattered and tangled were now whole again, which didn't hinder her use of spiritual power.

Su Qingyue stared at the void, recalling the nightmare of the Xuantian Sect hall from a few days ago, where she had been as helpless as a fish on a cutting board.

What did it matter if she was a Golden Core cultivator at sixteen? Without the strength to back up her talent, an orphaned girl was nothing.

The system consoled her: "It's alright, Host. The players love the game. At this rate, in another two or three days, you'll have enough points to reshape your Golden Core!"

"Good. One day, I will go back, and then I will make them return everything they owe me, piece by piece."

The system replied: "For sure! The players will help you beat them into a pulp!"

"I look forward to it."

Those people at the Xuantian Sect—all of them were sycophants who looked down on the weak—and those elders who bullied an orphan. They weren't like that when her clan and parents were around. She remembered every single one of them.