A Virtual Idol Enters a Boy Band Audition

The night before a boy band survival show started filming, a popular contestant had a scandal. With nothing left to lose, the production team grabbed some random amateur to fill in.

When the news broke, countless hate posts appeared:

[Where did Jiang Xingcan come from? What a nobody. Is there no entry bar for survival shows? Any washed-up loser can get on now?]

[Haha, just waiting for Jiang Xingcan to get sacrificed in the first round!]

But during the first-stage performance recording...

Under the spotlights, Jiang Xingcan stepped into the center of the stage.

With the face of a god descending from heaven and the corners of his eyes slightly raised, he effortlessly sent countless fans of pretty faces tumbling head over heels with a single wink.

The music started. His original song-and-dance performance flowed seamlessly, earning praise from every judge. Then he improvised a rap for the extra challenge, setting the whole venue on fire!

The other contestants looked ashen. ...Wasn't he supposed to be a disposable extra sacrificed in the first round? He's clearly a max-level veteran slaughtering everyone in the beginner village!!!

.

Jiang Xingcan, the hottest virtual idol in the two-dimensional world, opened his eyes to find himself at a three-dimensional survival-show audition, turned into a trainee who was supposed to be sacrificed from the start.

The director patted his shoulder. "Don't be nervous. You'll be eliminated in the first round anyway."

He looked silently toward the first-stage performances.

The other contestants sang off-key, faked their vocals, slacked off, and shamelessly played for sympathy. Hardly any of them took their performances seriously.

Then he lowered his head and thought of the "respect the fans" and "love the stage" values etched into his original code. He asked the director softly:

"Um... could I take it just a little seriously?"

Later...

Fans: "Who dares eliminate Can Can? We'll work ourselves to the bone and get him into the center position!"

Rival survival shows: "Please sacrifice him already! Our judges' seats are waiting for him!"

Idol agencies: "With talent like that, why go on a survival show? Sign with us, and you'll be a top-tier star within two years!"

-Xingcan: a dazzling journey to stardom.

-Weibo: @SanwuIsTheCuteParthhh

-Next up: an ensemble-cast novel, "Infinite Survival, but It's the Animal Kingdom." Please add it to your reading list~

Blurb: Other people enter an infinite survival game to explore haunted houses, kill bosses, and solve rule-based horror mysteries.

But when Pei Yan opens a stage, he has to be a wildebeest, a hyena, or... a polar bear?

In the year 3033, Earth was wiped clean and rebooted.

[System Alert: Welcome, players, to the infinite game, Extinction. Find a species that has gone extinct because of you, take on its role, and survive.]

Whatever you drove to extinction, you become.

As stage after stage opens, the System assigns each player a role card, reshuffling the ecological niches according to the food chain.

The other players fight like mad over role cards for apex predators, hoping to improve their chances of survival.

Pei Yan is the only one who picks the role most likely to get him killed in every stage.

The game begins, and all players obey the laws of survival: eat, or be eaten.

Pei Yan refuses.

On the third day as a wildebeest, countless apex hunters crouch along the migration route, baring their claws and fangs.

Pei Yan crosses the river over the bodies of his herd, then lifts a lion on the tips of his horns.

After drawing the role of a low-ranking cleaner in a hyena pack, he gets punished by his own kind for stealing food above his station and can only fill his belly with carrion.

Pei Yan crushes the leader's skull with a savage bite, then leads the starving hyenas toward the grasslands ruled by apex hunters...

Other players scrape by in the stages.

Pei Yan kills his way through the food chain in every one.

From a mile beneath the sea to the summit of Mount Everest.

From the Ice Age to the extinction of species.

Pei Yan retraces the path laid by countless corpses, traveling back through time.

And connects to the evolution of species that belongs to him alone.

Theme: Keep a positive and optimistic outlook.