I created the myth of the Great Old Ones.

Lu Ban contacted Li Zijian to arrange for the website and TV station to book prime time slots on the TV station to broadcast scenes of players fighting the giant monster as promotional material.

The announcement of the third batch of player recruitment and the live stream caused a global sensation.

Almost every newspaper related to entertainment carried this story on its front page, and various self-media, public accounts, talk shows, and all media outlets were discussing "The Cage."

According to information revealed by players, this grand expedition should be the largest player action since the game began testing.

The previous monster attack was only experienced by closed beta testers, and no visual data was leaked. Other casual testers were furious.

This time, having an official live stream is absolutely fantastic!

Some might ask, don't these players want to participate in the test themselves?

Aside from not being selected, sometimes players genuinely prefer watching others play games to playing them themselves.

On one hand, I'm bad at the game and suffer terribly while playing, but I feel a sense of satisfaction watching others play smoothly and solo bosses. On the other hand, I feel a sense of schadenfreude when I see others playing the same places and suffering the same pain.

Another group of players simply don't have enough time to enjoy the game. They bought the game through their own efforts, so why should they spend time playing it?

Moreover, according to closed beta testers, the game is extremely hardcore, with controls that are no different from real life. Many players are just paying lip service to the game and are quite satisfied with watching other people's live streams.

Zhou Changqing works in a construction group's department.

This group of civil engineers is studying the requirements given by Zhou Changqing.

Because the materials in the Night Kingdom are different from those in reality, existing calculation formulas cannot be directly applied and must be modified.

This task is impossible for ordinary people to do, so it can only be handed over to computers. Therefore, Zhou Changqing brought out the data and had his colleagues input it into the program to complete the simulation.

night.

Zhou Changqing's colleague, Zhu Wei, was staring at his computer in the office, looking at the results in the simulation software.

This software has many uses, one of which is to input a building model, confirm the materials, and finally check whether it can remain stable under various conditions.

In normal use, only extreme natural disasters such as typhoons and earthquakes will be simulated.

But now, they also have to consider the impact of the demonic tide.

After all, in the real world, there's no such thing as a giant wolf that's tens of meters tall crashing headfirst into a house.

In order to test the fortress's resilience, they had to rewrite the program and create more scenarios.

Zhu Wei yawned. If there were no problems after this simulation, he planned to go home.

Everyone else in the department has already left work; there are hardly any people still working overtime in the entire building now.

While waiting for the results, Zhu Wei didn't rush to contribute his remaining value, but instead started flipping through the introductory book on magic.

The contents of the book were all transcribed by Zhou Changqing, and even the people in the department couldn't understand it.

Zhu Weiquan used it to pass the time.

He skipped the introductory section, which had already been studied and discussed, and went straight to the magic section.

As Zhu Wei watched, he felt something wriggling in his head.

It was like a voice whispering in my ear.

Normally, when he looks at this kind of content, he gets dizzy and his head feels like it's been hit a dozen times by a bell. But for some reason, tonight when he looks at this content, Zhu Wei feels that his mind is very clear, as if he was born knowing this content.

He quickly understood the structure of the first spell, and the sound that lingered in his ears became clearer and clearer. Although Zhu Wei could not understand the language, he could inexplicably understand its meaning.

It's telling Zhu Wei to give it a try.

Zhu Wei put down the book in a daze. He raised his hand and could feel some kind of power gathering at his fingertips.

The office lights flickered twice, and the windows rattled as a gust of wind blew from somewhere. Zhu Wei felt the whispers in his ears suddenly become very loud. The hoarse, continuous, and seductive voice seemed to be ringing in his mind, merging with his own inner thoughts.

Zhu Wei felt as if something was about to emerge from his hand.

At the same time, a figure slowly emerged behind Zhu Wei. The figure appeared to be a woman, full of youthful vitality.

The next moment, just as Zhu Wei was about to snap his fingers, a hand covered his hand and held it firmly.

Zhu Wei stared blankly to the side, his eyes vacant.

He saw a young girl holding his hand, and with her other hand in front of her pink lips, she raised a finger in a shushing gesture.

"Don't be too curious."

When that soft and alluring voice came, Zhu Wei's eyes glazed over, and he slowly nodded.

Immediately afterwards, the computer beeped, indicating that the simulation software had displayed its results.

Zhu Wei then came to his senses. He didn't know what he had been sitting there daydreaming about. He checked the simulation results, which were basically consistent with his previous predictions. He saved the data, turned off the computer, and prepared to go home.

Standing up, Zhu Wei realized he had stepped on something. Looking down, he saw it was the magic book.

He hurriedly picked up the book and glanced at the magical content inside.

I don't understand at all, and the headache is back again.

Zhu Wei put it away and quickly left the office.

Chapter 728 Self-Prosecution via Abdominal Dissection

Zheng Li, a medical student at Yannan University, is really looking forward to this live broadcast.

He filled out the questionnaire and applied for the test, but unfortunately he was not selected to become one of the lucky ones to enter the Kingdom of Night.

There's no other way but to watch it from the cloud.

However, [Morning Star] does not provide a live streaming interface, nor can it record or take photos in the game. Everything depends on the players' descriptions, which is not satisfying at all!

Even though these players were exclaiming "Holy crap!", "Awesome!", and "Invincible!" every day, Zheng Li didn't feel anything at all.

He had played The Conjuring and knew the level of realism that the virtual reality device could achieve, so he knew very well how fun the game could be in an open world like Night Kingdom.

This feeling is like watching someone else pick up delicious and expensive ingredients, but you can't see or smell the cooking process or the final product. You can only hear pale words like "add a little salt and bring to a boil over high heat," which is like scratching an itch through a boot, leaving you unbearably hungry.

Now at least Zheng Li can watch the live stream.

In fact, many people believe that live streaming was not Lu Ban's brilliant idea, but rather a last resort.

Because it's impossible to stream gameplay footage, the outside world has consistently criticized the completeness of "The Cage".

【The Night of the Summoning】achieved a perfect visual presentation within the scope of a mansion, while the Night Kingdom, according to players' descriptions, is much larger than a single house.

In this case, the amount of material and texture data is enormous.

The first version of World of Warcraft took thousands of people five years to develop. How long did this "cage" take to make?

It certainly wasn't five years ago, because five years ago, Lu Ban was still an unknown college student, the predecessor of Silent Games had just launched their first console, and Jiangcheng Industry had not yet entered the game industry. The entire industry could not possibly have the technological reserves related to virtual reality.

In the words of professionals, creativity is the least valuable trait in this industry.

For example, open world games are essentially games that put things that people can do in real life into the game. The closer the game is to reality and the more it imitates reality, the more open the game becomes. Add some fantasy and science fiction elements, and that becomes the underlying gameplay logic of the game.

However, achieving this requires technological reserves and accumulation.

The freedom of movement in character modeling, climbing, jumping, the physics engine for fire and water, the changes in light and shadow, and the swaying of the wind through the woods—all of these require a strong technical team to achieve.

Furthermore, the capabilities of game consoles themselves are also a limitation. If a supercomputer were used, many insane lines of code could be implemented, but with the limited configurations of players, developers would have to scrimp and save every bit of memory and squeeze every last drop of CPU to achieve the most perfect game implementation.

Therefore, while the industry recognizes Lu Ban's creativity and presentation, has the technology really reached that level?

They were skeptical.

This live stream is seen by many as Lu Ban disemboweling himself to prove whether he actually ate that bowl of noodles or not; the answer lies in the content of the live stream.

Of course, some people think that Lu Ban's decision not to open the live streaming interface and only to conduct official live streams suggests that he has something to hide.

This is a common practice in the gaming industry. The visuals at the press conference look amazing, but the actual gameplay demo is drastically downgraded. Every manufacturer has done this to some extent.

Before the live stream, Lu Ban also released a short teaser video.

Zheng Li quickly came across the video on Weibo.

The video content is very simple, showing players walking, building, and planting in the town. It's less than a minute long, the kind of video you can watch several times on a subway ride.

But this scene looks too real, doesn't it?

When Zheng Li played the game, although he thought the graphics were great, he also had a thought that these graphics were just his imagination and that the actual graphics he saw were slightly inferior, and that his brain had automatically modified them to look so beautiful.

But when he saw the trailer, he was surprised.

Is this a game?

Is this really footage from a game?

The lighting, the materials, the movements—are you sure this isn't real footage?

Zheng Li immediately scrolled down and saw that most people thought similarly to him, which put his mind at ease.

The last time he saw such realistic visuals was in a racing game. He once thought the production team had brought in real cars, and only in some details could he see traces of CG.

However, the material of metal is not comparable to that of human materials, and no matter how realistic the image is, it cannot be mistaken for the real thing.

Therefore, Zheng Li believed that Lu Ban must have hired someone to film a promotional video, using his proud special effects skills to make it look like a game.

Although some players posted on Weibo that this was the actual device and even posted photos of their own equipment as proof, the vast majority of people still believe it was a shill.

All the controversy points to the live stream. People are waiting for Lu Ban's live stream to see how good the game really is and whether it's as amazing as it's been hyped up.

Whether it's a mule or a horse, we'll find out by putting it to the test.

8 PM, prime time.

Zheng Li opened the official live stream room of Jiu Ri Video Network.

The live stream was packed with people. He switched between several lines before finally finding one that wasn't too laggy. Even so, the barrage of comments was so thick that without some filtering and blocking, it was impossible to see the angle of the screen. This level of density was probably only comparable to the national team qualifying for the World Cup.

The countdown on the screen, accompanied by concept art of the Night Kingdom, gradually builds up the anticipation.

At exactly 8 o'clock, the screen went black, and the live stream began.

Zheng Li blocked all the bullet comments to prevent them from obstructing his view, which caused the comment section on the right to keep scrolling, like hundreds of people driving a unicycle at the same time.

The first thing he saw was a forest.

The dark, deep forest, seemingly alive, immediately captured Zheng Li's attention. He didn't even notice that the comments that had been scrolling wildly across the screen stopped the moment the image appeared.

Although it was just an ordinary forest, it exuded a sense of oppression, like a tsunami crashing down. Zheng Li noticed comments being refreshed one after another around him.

[Friendly reminder: You can breathe now]