After AFK for five years, I returned to be number one in the entire server.

May sunlight streamed through the window and onto the floor. Lin stood in front of the desk drawer, which was filled with a jumble of random things.

Fifteen days until the National College Entrance Examination (Gaokao).

The homeroom teacher said that we need to adjust our mindset during this period and balance work and rest.

Lin also felt that tidying up the room and going through old things was a good way to balance work and rest, at least better than staring blankly at a simulated perm.

His fingertips touched something hard. He pulled it out and found it was an old cell phone, a model from 2041.

He found the matching charging cable, and the phone slowly turned on, revealing a cluttered array of apps on the home screen.

He swiped around a couple of times and saw several games that had long been discontinued. Finally, his gaze settled on a green icon.

The Chronicles of the Grasslands.

Lin stared at it for a few seconds.

He remembered that this was a game he downloaded from a forum five years ago. The game developer was probably a newcomer to the industry, and there weren't many players.

The game was quite fun at first; he could fight monsters, level up, and develop his power. He would stay up until midnight every day playing it in bed.

Later, he received a reward called "AI Fully Automated Management," where all the tasks in the game were handled by AI, and he only needed to log in to collect crops each day.

Perhaps because he was too bored, he logged in less and less often until he changed his phone and completely forgot about the game.

"Lin Ye!"

His mother's voice came from downstairs, crashing into his ears through the hallway and stairs.

"Change your clothes and come downstairs. Your uncle is treating. It's 6:30 at Tianhe Building. Don't dawdle!"

Lin followed his parents to the road. His mother walked ahead, glancing back at him as she went: "Couldn't you pick out something better?"

"It's not like I'm going for a job interview."

"Su Nian is here too. Look at her, she's always so neat and tidy."

Su Nian is the daughter of her cousin Su Jianguo. She was born in the same month and year as him, only eleven days younger.

She attends the best high school in the city, consistently ranking in the top five, and her goal is to get into a 985 university—that's a sure thing.

Lin had only met her a few times, usually on holidays, Chinese New Year, or at elders' birthday banquets.

They could only exchange a few words each time they met, but her name permeated his daily life like air.

"Su Nian has once again ranked in the top five of her grade in the mock exam."

"Your cousin said that Niannian is still attending competition tutoring sessions on weekends."

Every time he hears this name, he feels tired and powerless.

When they arrived at Tianhelou, Su Jianguo and his family were already sitting in a private room.

My uncle has a loud voice. When he saw Lin Ye's parents, he stood up to greet them, and my aunt greeted them with a smile.

Su Nian sat next to her aunt. It had been more than half a year since she last saw her. Her features had matured a bit, her skin was very fair, and her hair was tied in a ponytail.

She has the kind of face that makes it hard to look away without needing to dress up.

Lin sat down with his parents, and the dishes were served one after another. The adults started chatting animatedly.

They started by talking about work, then moved on to prices, and then inevitably started talking about their children.

"How's Niannian doing lately?" Lin's mother asked.

"It was alright," my uncle waved his hand modestly, "I was in the top five in the grade in the last mock exam, so I performed as expected."

"Top five..." Lin Ye's mother sighed, glancing at Lin Ye before quickly looking away.

Lin also picked up a piece of braised pork without looking up.

There was a television hanging on the wall of the private room, the volume was not loud, just enough to serve as background noise.

Lin casually looked up and saw a program playing on the screen called "Player Ranking".

This show has high viewership ratings, and it does a weekly analysis of the "Star Abyss" rankings, analyzing changes in player rankings. Its style is somewhere between sports events and entertainment gossip.

The screen is currently playing back news footage from this week; it's aerial footage.

A commercial airliner trailing black smoke is crashing into the city. Below are densely packed residential buildings. The location is marked in the lower right corner of the image: Fengcheng Residential Area.

The camera shifts, showing residents screaming and people running; the vertical screen footage shot on a mobile phone is shaky.

Then the footage stopped; the passenger plane was suspended in mid-air, with hundreds of tons of steel only about twenty meters away from the tallest residential building.

The camera switched back to an aerial shot and moved down, revealing a person standing on a building in the distance, but their face was not clearly visible.

The man raised one hand towards the passenger plane, his posture casual, as if he were holding something not too heavy.

A few seconds later, the passenger plane began to descend slowly, as if it were being gently placed on the ground.

"This is the YK-Loss flight accident that happened in Fengcheng this Tuesday," the male host said in a relatively calm tone, but clearly suppressing some kind of emotion. "One engine failed, hydraulic system malfunctioned, 137 passengers on board, without intervention, this plane would have crashed directly into a residential area."

"The interferer is a registered player, ranked 217th on the leaderboard, Chengchang." The female host looked at the information in her hand. "He is an official player stationed in Fengcheng. After receiving the notification, he arrived at the scene within minutes."

My uncle suddenly spoke up, his voice drowning out the television: "One person catching a plane, can you believe it?"

"That's terrifying," my aunt shook her head. "And this is only in the top two hundred."

"If you can get picked up at the airport in the 200th place, how impressive must the people at the front of the line be?" Uncle clicked his tongue.

"But you know..." Uncle said, lowering his voice as if he had suddenly remembered something, "You know Liu Kun, the son of the Liu family, right?"

"Liu Kun?" Lin Ye's father thought for a moment, "The one with terrible grades?"

"Yes, that's him. He couldn't even finish high school." Uncle picked up his teacup and took a sip. "But two years ago, somehow, he was selected by Star Abyss and became a player. You know that policy the country came up with a couple of years ago? Special recruitment for players."

"Special admission?" Lin's mother became interested.

"It's like players go to the local assessment office, pass the Queen Mother of the West's ability evaluation, and if they meet the standards, they can be specially admitted to university." Uncle leaned back in his chair, tapping the table with his finger. "Liu Kun passed directly and was specially admitted to a Double First-Class university. You know what, someone with the worst grades went straight to a top university."

Lin felt his mother glance at him again, saying nothing, but her gaze was full of disappointment.

Lin could only remain silent, looking out the window at the poster for "Star Abyss".

In 2046, if you randomly ask someone who doesn't play games if they know about "Star Abyss", they will definitely know it.

Because it changed the world.

Four years ago, players chosen by Star Abyss awakened supernatural powers in reality.

No one can explain the principle behind it, but it just happened, and from then on, human society had a new group that was above ordinary people.

The Queen Mother of the West, a national-level artificial intelligence, is a super AI existing in every citizen's mobile phone and terminal, serving as everyone's life assistant.

At the same time, it is also responsible for monitoring the data of all players in the country and maintaining a public leaderboard that ranks players based on their overall abilities.

Due to privacy laws, the leaderboard only displays players' nicknames and not their real identities.

Those names are like beings from another world to ordinary people; you know they exist, but you have no connection with them.

Lin is just an ordinary person, eighteen years old, with a decent but unremarkable appearance, and his grades have fluctuated around the second-tier university cutoff line for many years. He doesn't cause trouble and is unremarkable.

His presence was roughly equivalent to the clock hanging in the back of the classroom; it was always there, but apart from his mother, no one paid any special attention to it.

Across from her, Su Nian was eating quietly, occasionally answering questions from her elders.

Her quietness was different from his; her quietness was confident, while his was simply that he had nothing to say.

I got home around 8:30.

Lin returned to her room, closed the door, and collapsed onto the bed.

His mind was in a mess, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what he was thinking about.

Su Nian's name, Liu Kun's special recruitment, and the passenger plane on TV.

He turned to the side and saw the old cell phone still charging on the table.

He unlocked the screen and, out of boredom, opened one of the apps he had used before.

When it came to those games, many of them were offline and couldn't be opened.

His finger finally stopped on a green icon: a grassland, a flag.

This is the game called "Grassland Chronicles". He clicked on it, the screen turned white, and a green grassland loaded.

Just like five years ago, flags are waving, white clouds hang low, and the picture is so rough that it looks like a product of the last era.

A line of small text appeared at the bottom:

Connecting to the server...

Lin was also taken aback.

Can it still connect?

This little game has been around for five years, and the server is still running?

He stared at the line of text for a few seconds. Had the connection taken a while? He expected a "connection failed" message to pop up.

But no, the spinning animation stopped, and the connection was successful.

Then a pop-up window appears, with gray background and black text, like a webpage pop-up window from ten years ago:

"An update has been detected. Update now?"

He muttered to himself, somewhat surprised, "He really isn't dead..."

He clicked "Confirm," and the progress bar started moving.

Thirty percent.

Sixty percent.

hundred percent.

The screen lit up again. The grassland was gone, the flag was gone, replaced by a deep, endless black void.

The eerie light drifted slowly through the void, like stars sunk to the bottom of the deep sea, and two words appeared in the center of the image.

Star Abyss.

Next, there's a version number.

v14.2.1

Lin Ye's fingers froze at the edge of the screen.

Automatic login in progress...

login successful.

"Welcome back, Makino."

"You have been offline for 1826 days."

The text lingered for a moment, then reappeared.

"The AI ​​management system continues to run while you are offline."

"A total of 4217861 strategic decisions have been implemented."

"The territory has undergone seven major expansions."

"Defended against 29617 external intrusions."

"Initiated 8035 conquest campaigns proactively."

"Accumulated rare resources..."

Lines of data scrolled by, and finally a prompt appeared on the screen:

Starting with version 2.0, Star Abyss no longer runs as an application. This login session is the final session on the app; the client will automatically uninstall after the session ends.

Have fun playing the game.

Two seconds later, the phone automatically exited the game, and the game icon disappeared as well.

Just as Lin was somewhat lost in thought, his phone suddenly vibrated.

The Queen Mother of the West's calm voice came from the old phone: "Hello, Lin Ye, you logged into 'Star Abyss' at 20:41 today. Your player identity has been confirmed, and your comprehensive data has been synchronized to the domestic player public ranking list."

At the same time, in Jingzhou.

In a dimly lit live-streaming room, a young man with long hair is giving a weekly analysis of the rankings in front of the camera.

The holographic screen behind him displays a real-time ranking list, with the top name being "Abyss Overlord," who has held the number one spot for nearly two years.

The comments scrolled by quickly, with some discussing the gap between first and second place, and others speculating whether the ranking would change after "Chengchang" finished catching the plane.

The young man, holding his coffee, said, "Judging from the overall ratings, it's unlikely that the Abyss Overlord will become number one in the short term..."

He suddenly stopped, his coffee cup hovering in mid-air.

On the holographic screen, the name at the top of the leaderboard has changed.

The title "Lord of the Abyss" has disappeared, replaced by two words.

Makino.

The young man stared at the screen without saying a word, and within a fraction of a second, the comments section went from normal discussion to a screen full of question marks and exclamation marks.

"??????"

"What's going on???"

"who???"

"Where's the Abyss Overlord?! Is this some kind of bug??"

He put down his coffee cup and operated another screen. Two minutes later, he tried to maintain his professionalism: "Ladies and gentlemen... the number one spot on the leaderboard has just changed. 'Abyss Overlord' has been replaced. The new number one is... 'Muye'."

He looked at the data on the screen, his expression very unnatural.

"This name has no known guild affiliation, no battle record, and has not appeared in any program, any event, or any news article."

The comments section is completely out of control.

"It's not a bug. I just checked with the Queen Mother of the West, and the data is accurate!!"

"Who is Makino? Does anyone know him?"

"I don't know him."

"I don't know him."

Besides netizens, military and political leaders and top players from all over the world also inquired about the situation from the Queen Mother of the West, and the only answer they received was four words.

"The data is accurate."