I might have been playing a fake cultivation game.

The game launched successfully, and the black screen reappeared.

The message remains the same: Character creation is in progress and is expected to take 72 hours. Please wait patiently.

The countdown below shows that there are only two hours left.

"Two hours or so? Okay, I'll wait..." Zhou Yunshen thought to himself.

He got up, took a shower in the bathroom, made himself a bowl of instant noodles, and then played a few rounds of King of Glory with Li Wang.

"Li Wang, you're no good. You die so many times playing jungle," Zhou Yunshen said.

"That bastard on the other side has such a foul mouth, it's driving me crazy. I just want to kill him once, but I can't kill him even once. It's disgusting. Forget it, you're better at the game than me, so you can play jungle next time, and I'll support you." Li Wang's voice came from the phone.

Zhou Yunshen glanced at the time and said, "Never mind, it's getting late. Let's do it tomorrow."

"Alright then, you can quit, I'll play a few more rounds," said Li Wang's voice.

After exiting the King of Glory tournament, Zhou Yunshen scrolled to the last page of his phone's home screen and clicked on the game icon for Xuan Yuan Invasion.

After clicking in, it's still that black screen, and the countdown at the bottom shows only a dozen seconds left.

Zhou Yunshen waited patiently.

A dozen seconds passed quickly, and the game interface underwent a noticeable change, transforming from pure black into an ancient gray door.

A line of golden text appeared on the screen: Player, welcome to the Xuan Yuan World.

"Finally, I'm in the game!" Zhou Yunshen's spirits lifted.

Under his gaze, and with a series of clicking sounds, the gray door on the phone screen slowly opened.

A character appeared on the screen.

This was a young man who looked to be around twenty years old. He was rather thin and stood in front of a low, dilapidated house. He was wearing patched gray clothes, carrying a basket on his back, and holding a knife that resembled a sickle in his hand.

Zhou Yunshen swiped his hand across the screen a few times, and the young man on the screen changed his position, showing his side and back to Zhou Yunshen.

Zhou Yunshen then tried to magnify the details of the characters.

A moment later, Zhou Yunshen showed a surprised expression and clicked his tongue, saying, "The character model is very detailed, with clear textures, just like the real thing. The surrounding environment is also very realistic."

The modeling is so detailed that it rivals that of big-budget PC games.

This was the first time Zhou Yunshen had ever seen such detailed graphics in a mobile game.

Is this really a small game of only a hundred or two megabytes? How can it possibly have such graphics?

Zhou Yunshen was shocked.

After the initial shock, he quickly found a plausible explanation.

"A game can achieve this by storing the vast majority of its data on a cloud server, with all data processing done on the server, and the mobile app only needing to launch the game."

Once he understood this, the shock on Zhou Yunshen's face faded considerably.

He began to try controlling the characters on the screen.

He discovered that the game's controls were very similar to those of popular games like Madoka Magica and Honkai Impact 3rd.

This control method is quite simple to learn.

After Zhou Yunshen performed a series of actions, he opened the character's attribute panel.

Name: Zhou Erzhu.

Age: 20 years old.

Cultivation aptitude: Unassessed.

Cultivation level: None.

Status: Recovering from a serious illness, slightly hungry.

"This character's name is a bit old-fashioned. I wonder if we could change it."

"Oh right, I haven't set up my account and password yet, how come I'm logged into the game directly? They've even assigned me a character?"

Just as Zhou Yunshen was checking the character interface, a voice rang out: "Erzhu, what are you standing here for? Everyone is waiting for you."

Zhou Yunshen rotated the screen and saw a similarly thin young man, wearing the same patched gray clothes, carrying a basket on his back, and holding a sickle-like knife, walking towards them along a stone path.

After the young man walked over, he said again, "Hurry up and leave, or Captain Chen will start scolding you."

Zhou Yunshen listened to the young man's words and searched for the dialogue box on the screen.

"Damn it... why can't I find the chat box?" Zhou Yunshen couldn't find the chat box and couldn't help but mutter a complaint under his breath.

"What dialog box?" The young man in the picture looked at Zhou Yunshen with some confusion and asked.

Zhou Yunshen was stunned when he heard this.

In this game, are the NPCs actually able to be interacted with directly?

Is this game really that intelligent?

Seeing that Zhou Yun Shen remained silent, the young man in the picture said, "Alright, stop talking nonsense here and let's go."

"Okay, I'll go, you lead the way," Zhou Yunshen replied.

The young man in the video says, "Lead the way? What way? There's only one road out of the village. Erzhu, you're talking nonsense today. Have you had a fever these past few days and damaged your brain?"

Seeing that Zhou Yun Shen remained silent, the young man shook his head and walked along the stone path towards the edge of the village.

Zhou Yunshen quickly followed, his heart filled with indescribable shock.

The NPCs in this game are incredibly intelligent; their tone of voice and expressions are almost indistinguishable from real people.

Even if you said it was played by a real person, Zhou Yunshen wouldn't have the slightest doubt.

To be honest, Zhou Yunshen was actually a little sleepy before he opened the game.

But now, after being repeatedly amazed by this game, Zhou Yunshen was no longer sleepy at all.

Soon, Zhou Yunshen controlled his character and followed the young man to an open space outside the village.

At this moment, in the real world it was already past midnight, but in this game world the sun had just risen, and Zhou Yunshen could even hear some birds chirping and insects buzzing in the game.

There were already more than a dozen people standing in the open space.

Most of these people were dressed the same as the character controlled by Zhou Yunshen. Their heights varied, but they all looked very young, with some even being thirteen or fourteen-year-old boys.

The leader was a man who looked to be around thirty years old. He was wearing an animal skin coat and was a head taller than the character controlled by Zhou Yunshen. He had a square face, a burly build, and sharp eyes.

This burly man with a square face carried not a basket on his back, but a bow and arrow, and held not a sickle in his hand, but a long sword that emitted a cold light.

"Captain Chen," the young man who brought Zhou Yunshen called out, his voice carrying a hint of awe.

"Captain Chen." Zhou Yunshen, sitting on the bed, thought for a moment and called out to his phone screen.

In the real world, it is perfectly normal for people to have conversations and exchanges.

But when he does this kind of thing in a game, and interacts with NPCs in the game in the same way, he always feels a little strange.

"Has artificial intelligence evolved to this level already? It's only 2026, and these NPCs in the game already feel just like real people. What will it be like in the future?" Zhou Yunshen sighed inwardly.