Very few people knew that Tang Shaoqing had been poached by Gu Qiyun because of hacking into the Xianxia Online backend.

As for that hacking… after conveniently making off with the hidden dungeon’s design plan, Tang Shaoqing had even very considerately fixed a few bugs for them.

That was how the later headhunting incident came about.

Everyone has their reckless youth, after all.

The one called Guji was his college roommate. His real name was Gu Ji, also from A University’s Computer Science department. Male, hobby: pretending to be a girl and going yingyingying.

When he’d grabbed the dungeon design plan back then, this one happened to be included. A quick glance revealed the trigger condition: Four players of different classes staying here together for 13 minutes and 14 seconds, with one and only one loli among them.

A truly bizarre setup.

He hadn’t planned on butting in originally. After all, he’d already joined Weiyun as an insider, which wouldn’t have been appropriate. But… since it just happened to trigger, it wasn’t really his fault, right?

Even though he did harbor a bit of selfish intent.

He’d heard this was a sweet, romance-focused dungeon storyline.

—

“A h-hidden dungeon?” Yu Guo was so shocked that her jaw dropped.

A hidden dungeon! A real one!! The first discovery on the entire server!! What was this protagonist’s halo feeling?!

“Why did a hidden dungeon trigger?” Porridge was excited too.

Even though none of “right timing, right place, right people” really applied to them, this kind of luck just showed up when it wanted to. There was no stopping it.

Tang Shaoqing glanced at the string of question marks Guji had sent and curled his lips into a smile. He closed his phone, packed up the materials he’d been selling, and followed the guiding arrow forward.

“No idea. Let’s take a look first.” He said, completely calm, without a flicker of guilt.

Although Yu He had only just started playing, seeing everyone’s reactions made it obvious how impressive this hidden dungeon was. He couldn’t help feeling a bit eager himself.

It was just that… Voice Changer seemed awfully familiar with the hidden dungeon. He was even going around buying some kind of bottles.

Outsiders might think they’d triggered some quest, but they hadn’t even started yet, ah.

Even though it felt strange, Yu He didn’t ask. He didn’t really want to talk to Voice Changer anymore anyway. It was like playing the lute to a cow.1Fig. Offering a treat to an unappreciative audience. Angry.jpg.

As for the dungeon… they’d take a look first.

The surroundings were pitch-black. Fireflies mingled with snow, dim and dreamlike, and only a small guiding arrow was visible.

“It’s pretty nice,” Yu He remarked.

“Nice? You can take screenshots.” Tang Shaoqing smiled and snapped several pictures in a row.

The kind where Porridge and Yu Guo were temporarily hidden.

[Player “Doting on He-jiang” wants to hug you]

[Player “Doting on He-jiang” wants to kiss you]

[Player “Doting on He-jiang” wants to carry you]

……

…Everyone else was waiting to see what would come of the hidden dungeon, and this guy was busy taking photos instead.

Yu He hurriedly controlled his character to dash far away, but the black-clad assassin immediately followed, sticking to him like gum. It was impossible to shake off.

Guoguo: Bro, just give in to him already

Daming Lake’s Xia Yuhe: ?

My dear sister.

As they walked on, an NPC suddenly appeared ahead: a squatting blond little girl. Her outfit had a distinctly foreign style, her bare feet exposed, with a small bell anklet tied around her ankle.

Sitting in the snow like that in this weather, who knew if she was cold or not?

Yu Guo, as the party leader, stepped forward to talk to the girl.

The girl stood up. She looked about seven or eight years old. On closer inspection, her clothes were torn, and her face smudged with dirt, but her pair of dark golden eyes shimmered brilliantly amid the scattered firefly light.

“Well? What did she say?” Porridge asked eagerly.

“She said she can’t remember who she is, and she can’t find her way home,” Yu Guo replied, somewhat bewildered.

After that, the little girl squatted back down. The guiding arrow shifted to a different direction, and some extra icons on the screen disappeared along with it. The once-noisy world chat and broadcast channels were gone as well. Thankfully, the party voice chat remained uninterrupted.

“What’s going on…”

“Probably something to do with the dungeon…?”

With no way back, the four of them followed the arrow and continued forward.

As they walked, Yu Guo, who was in front, suddenly vanished.

Porridge, right behind her, hurriedly stopped. In front of him was a massive cliff, like a split in the land. The steep cliff walls resembled the fangs of a monster, exuding a chilling menace in the faint glow of fireflies.

Yu He: “??”

“Holy shit… I fell… holy shit holy shit holy shit, hurry and come down too!” Yu Guo shouted frantically over voice chat.

Without a second word, the other three jumped down after her.

The descent wasn’t fast, as if they were being carried by the wind and fireflies.

“Switch the camera to look down. There’s a surprise,” Tang Shaoqing suddenly said.

Yu He switched the camera with a mix of skepticism and curiosity, only to be stunned by the dazzling spectacle that filled his vision.

Flowing fireflies drifted through the rift like the Milky Way, slowly streaming past, as if they had fallen into the night sky itself, stepping on stars as they ran toward the galaxy.

Yu He quickly hit Ctrl + PrtSc to grab a screenshot.

Now he finally understood why there were players who specialized in scenery. The environmental modeling was genuinely breathtaking. It was so immersive that it made you sink into it without realizing.

Tang Shaoqing smiled with curved eyes as he took plenty of photos of the falling bunny-eared loli, then, fully satisfied, saved them into a folder named “Brother.”

They finally reached the bottom. Not dying from the fall was nothing short of a miracle.

“…From that height, I thought even if we didn’t die, we’d be left at critical HP. And yet we’re totally fine,” Yu Guo said as she hurried over to the others.

Right. Games like this were notorious. One wrong step and you’d fall; one wrong step and you’d be sent straight back to the resurrection point…

“So, where is this place?”

“I just checked; there’s an invisible wall. Looks like all four of us have to come down for it to work,” Yu Guo said.

“Let’s walk around,” Porridge said after circling once, then headed toward the direction where the fireflies were surging.

They hadn’t gone far when a tattered scroll appeared on the ground.

[Ten-Thousand-Fathom Abyss: Where fireflies are born. Spiral upward, and in seven days, all turns to ash.]

Author’s Note:

It’s actually a copy of BE _(:з」∠)_

The setting about the fireflies is something I totally made up. There’s no real basis for it.

It’s late at night, and I got hungry, so I pulled out my little cream puffs qvq even though my teeth hurt a lot…