Digital Homestead

The globally renowned metaverse platform, The Frontier, has turned the whole world into a playground. Players everywhere put on VR headsets: some make virtual sculptures in parks, some design virtual clothes at home, and some sell virtual novels in bookstores...

Li Nuo, a doctoral student in fine arts, only wanted to find the most remote plot of land and quietly grow some crops. Every day, she rode her bike to Lakeside Park, crouched on the grass to dig with her motion controller, then stood by the lake and cast her motion rod to fish. Her friends list was empty, and her entire world stretched just fifty steps, from her vegetable patch to the lakeshore.

Then one day, she tried to build a frame for her tomatoes. She waved her motion controller around for ages, but the virtual bamboo poles kept wobbling and falling over. Across the lake, in the construction zone, a silver-haired man put down his motion hammer and came over to crouch beside her field. He showed her how to hold the controller and where to put her strength. In no time, he had built the frame. His name was Chen Xing, and he was an architect. He usually built tree houses across the lake, standing on scaffolding each morning to measure the angle of the sun before getting to work.

After meeting him, Li Nuo's life grew even more exciting. She began following Chen Xing to build houses in other places, clearing land around them to grow vegetables.

With their VR headsets on, he was her exploration partner. With them off, he was the person she made plans with for their next destination. Their adventures had only just begun, starting from that vegetable patch in Lakeside Park.