“System notification: Welcome to Echoes of the Abyss. Your immersive apocalyptic survival game has been activated.”
“Warning: This game involves an extremely high level of psychological stress. If you experience symptoms such as cognitive confusion, a loss of reality, or hearing indistinct whispers, please log out immediately and contact the psychological support center. Enjoy your game, assuming you can still enjoy it.”
Chen Mo finished reading the last line of the crimson disclaimer and clicked “Confirm” without hesitation. The screen went dark, then slowly lit up again, revealing a new line of text:
“Connecting to neural interface... First login detected... Generating character...”
“Generation complete. Welcome, Pioneer.”
Viscous darkness swallowed his vision, and a moment later, a sensation of weightlessness seized him. There were no dazzling effects or rousing music, only a quiet pressure, like sinking beneath the deep sea, pressing in from all sides. Time passed. Perhaps a few seconds, perhaps several centuries. Chen Mo's feet touched the “ground,” if that damp, yielding surface, pulsing with some kind of organic rhythm, could be called ground.
The darkness receded, and the sight before him made him hold his breath.
He stood at the edge of a towering “cliff,” woven from some kind of pale bone and writhing flesh. Below lay a bottomless abyss, shrouded in a thin, phosphorescent mist. Hanging in the sky were not the sun and moon, but several enormous, slowly pulsing dark-red “organs,” casting
[Laughing] I usually don't comment casually, and the novels I comment on are all okay.