The Most Popular NPC in a Full-Dive Game

Xie Shuangxue knew he was an NPC in a game. The full-dive game "Gods and Demons" had been live for three years and was now the most popular game in the world. For its third anniversary, the game company Boundless Sea announced a version update, opening a new map, Cloudscape in a Dream, and giving all players a pre-release world quest: The Book of Dreaming. It would reveal a tangled past centered on the love affair between a Featherfolk princess and the former Demon Emperor. Xie Shuangxue appeared in this new story arc. He wasn’t the protagonist. At best, he was the fourth male lead, a pure plot device with a shallow, lowbrow character profile. An orphan adopted by the Featherfolk, he fell in love with the princess, turned dark when she rejected him, chose to betray her, and was finally strangled by her own hands. A thoroughly satisfying end. Xie Shuangxue: ...I don’t think this works. NPCs have minds of their own too. So players grinding through the quest met an NPC more interactive than any they’d seen before. At first, players thought Xie Shuangxue was all looks and no substance: gloomy, shallow, and utterly unremarkable. As the story slowly unfolded, they learned he had his reasons, that his love ran deep, that he’d endured hardship after hardship, and that he’d quietly done so much behind the scenes. Xie Shuangxue was such a complex person, yet at the final stage of the world quest, he suddenly understood everything. Smiling, he held his sword and took his own life. His black hair flew through the air in the snowy night, and his scarlet blood fell like cinnabar. He became the key that unlocked the new map. That day, players swarmed the official "Gods and Demons" account until it crashed. “Cruel, dark plot! Give us our A-Xue back!” “WCNM, you damn devs, how dare you kill Shuangxue!” “If Xie Shuangxue dies, don’t expect Boundless Sea to survive either [smile]” The game department, cursed out of their minds: ...Heavens above, this really wasn’t the story they originally planned! The "Gods and Demons" game department held an emergency meeting that night and urgently contacted Boundless Sea’s CEO. They say the CEO had an account in the game too. Over the phone, even the usually composed boss sounded different, his voice gritted with anger and threaded with some other emotion that was hard to describe. “He’s not dead.” “He fooled every last one of you.” A calculating, seductive, high-level green tea, universally adored bottom X A top who knows the other is a green tea but falls for him anyway Updates daily, usually at six in the evening, with occasional bonus chapters (I’ll do my best). Upcoming story, please bookmark "The Demon King Was Dumped and Became a Popular NPC" When Lan Xiao was surrounded on his wedding day by his master, who was also his betrothed, and the cultivators of the immortal sect, all while dressed in gorgeous wedding robes, he felt a little speechless. He had hidden the fact that he was the former Demon Emperor’s son and infiltrated the immortal realm as a spy, so he was admittedly somewhat in the wrong, but it hadn’t been his idea. If it weren’t for his need to protect the demons in his territory, he wouldn’t have let his older brother, who had always excluded and mistrusted him, threaten him into spying on Xie Chongyuan. Immortal Venerable Xie Chongyuan was far too powerful. Spying on him was practically a death sentence. Lan Xiao had gone to great lengths and worked at it for a century, eventually even getting into Xie Chongyuan’s bed, but still couldn’t bring himself to do the deed. ...All right, he hadn’t been able to go through with it. Mainly because Xie Chongyuan said he loved him and would always protect him. No one had said anything like that to him since his mother died. Xie Chongyuan sounded so sincere that Lan Xiao believed him. Looking back, he realized he’d been a bit of an idiot. The immortal and demonic factions were irreconcilable, so it was only to be expected that he’d be attacked by the immortal sect once his identity was exposed. Compared to the others from the immortal sect, Xie Chongyuan was even showing him some mercy. “Don’t kill him. I’ll take him away and strip him of his demon bones,” Xie Chongyuan said. “Lan Xiao can still be my cultivation partner.” But he didn’t understand that Lan Xiao wasn’t an ordinary demon. He absolutely couldn’t have his demon bones stripped away. Hearing those words, Lan Xiao let out a villain’s laugh and blew himself up on the spot, right in front of Xie Chongyuan. The Immortal Venerable was completely unprepared. His eyes nearly split with anguish as he tried to stop Lan Xiao, but all he could catch in his outstretched hands was a rain of blood. Many years later, Lan Xiao was reborn in the sparsely inhabited Dark Marsh Domain. He had lost almost all his demonic power and could barely maintain a human form, but somehow he became bound to a System. The System told him he could summon mighty heroes from another world. These great and evil heroes were tireless and omnipotent, the most terrifying beings under heaven. That sounded incredibly awesome! Lan Xiao immediately perked up and delivered an impassioned speech to the first twenty heroes he summoned. “My dear demons, it’s been proven that crooked methods won’t work. We must regroup and use our mighty power to conquer the whole world! And once I reclaim my strength, I’ll share all the spoils of victory with you!” The players standing in front of Lan Xiao looked at each other. “This furry little fox cub must be the game’s tutorial NPC. What’s it getting so fired up about?” “I can’t understand it. No idea what weird stuff it’s saying... And isn’t this a farming game?” “The game world’s a little bare, but the models are great. This engine technology is incredible, the visuals are so realistic.” In his fox form, Lan Xiao didn’t understand what the heroes were whispering about. He also couldn’t figure out why, after he told them to conquer new lands and rule the world, the heroes went off to farm and mine instead, busied themselves building things and gathering resources, and kept making strange noises at him like, “Hehehe, so cute, I want to pet him.” Never mind. No need to dwell on the little details. He would definitely regroup and become the greatest super Demon Emperor. No one could stop him. Things were looking excellent! Lan Xiao firmly believed this. Bonus scene: Another new post hit the hot list on the country’s biggest gaming forum today. “ "Paradise" devs, are you around? When are you going to fix Xie Chongyuan’s bug? How can a villain NPC be this crazy? I just went into a danger zone to steal some ore, and I don’t know what kind of formation he hit me with, but I almost died of fright.” “Same here. I don’t even want to talk about it. If "Paradise" didn’t have Lan Xiao’s popularity propping it up, this awful game would’ve shut down ages ago. Though I don’t think Xie Chongyuan is a bug. Check the latest backstory: his wife died, and he’s been crazy for ages.” “That guy, the villain everyone hates, had a wife?” “Check the lore analysis thread. He used to be the Immortal Venerable. OP probably ran into one of his formations for gathering fragments of his wife’s three souls and seven spirits. Be careful not to provoke him. Tsk, supposedly his wife was driven to suicide by him, and her soul was shattered completely.” “I don’t get it. Which unlucky person would date a lunatic like that?” A long time later, someone bumped the post back to the top. “AAAAH, you damn devs, come out and die! Why does baby Lan Xiao have a romance route?! And with Xie Chongyuan, that crazy asshole?! (￣口￣)!!” Theme: Defy fate and change your destiny