"A Wei, why are you crying? Didn't you say you'd conquer every qipao-clad wife in this game?"
Thirty million viewers in the livestream watched the "Love Appraisal Master" kneel in the scorched ruins of Jinling, clutching a qipao torn into bandages and crying like a child who had lost their home.
Nearby, Iron Fist said nothing, gripping half a bloodstained changshan. The Wing Chun master who had once sent a Japanese ronin stumbling back with a single step left him only one instruction: "If you can't beat them, shield them with your body."
The ASMR streamer Cotton Candy unfolded a crumpled note with trembling hands. "If I die (though I won't die), please give the Chang'e sugar figure to Teacher Shen and tell her I really like her."
That night, eight billion people on Blue Star typed the same question into search bars: What exactly happened in Jinling in 1937?
In the Blue Star year 2247, peace had lasted for two hundred years, and the entertainment market was packed with suggestive content and pay-to-win games.
"War," "one's homeland," and "sacrifice" had long since become dead words no one recognized.
Chen Jin, a transmigrator cast out by the capitalists, awakened the "Civilization's Kindling" System in the pouring rain.
He priced his game at one yuan and launched a "period-style romance game."
Ten miles of Qinhuai River, beautiful women in qipaos, and tender heartbeats beneath oil-paper umbrellas.
The horny gamers flocked in, swooning over the sweet romance.
No one paid attention to the newsboy shouting that war had broken out in the north. Across the river, bamboo swords at a Japanese martial arts school fell in the same rhythm, while the photo studio owner turned around and hid the negatives in a secret compartment.
Until that winter, when the city gates fell.
"The more you love them, the more it will hurt when you lose them."
[System Alert: This is not one person's story. It is the memory of a city.]
