The year 4000.
WY Games released a full-immersion online game using brain-computer interfaces. To make the game realistic and give users a deeply immersive experience with a high degree of freedom, the developers implanted identity AI into every NPC and put the game's world in the hands of its central AI. The developers would not interfere manually.
After five years of wall-to-wall advertising under the slogan "A hundred billion over ten years, a new life, a new world," the game Desolate World finally opened its servers.
As a loyal WY Games cash cow, you have an SVIP account. You don't have to join your friends in a queue hundreds of thousands of people long. On launch day, you only have to wait behind a few thousand people before successfully getting into the game.
Once inside, you swiftly begin the beginner village quests, learn the tutorial, and get into the swing of things. As an WY Games cash cow of N years, you become one of the first "veteran players" to leave the beginner village. Next, you encounter your first beginner boss. You apply to join a party and fight it together. The boss isn't difficult, but your party has no healer. As a longtime cash cow, though, you've long since figured out the game developers' mechanics inside and out. You direct your teammates, and together you beat the boss. One teammate makes a careless mistake and fails to dodge the last big attack the boss unleashes before dying. He dies.
While you're auctioning off the boss's drops, you suddenly notice that the dead teammate can't bid. You urge him to try resurrecting, but his body turns into specks of light. The System announces: "Player has logged out."
You assume he got disconnected, but even after the System kicks him out of the party, he never comes back online.
You figure he was unlucky enough to get disconnected in the overcrowded launch and couldn't get back in. You don't think much of it and continue leveling up.
As you progress through the game, you notice something strange: whenever a player dies, they disconnect, and none of the disconnected players ever return.
At first, you assume it's just a game bug. You decide to ask on the forum, but when you open it, the page is awash in red. A prominent red headline in bold letters fills the homepage:
"Never die. Never die. Never die."
You realize something is terribly wrong and try to log out immediately. You open the menu, only to find the exit game option grayed out and unavailable.
Buddhism speaks of the six realms of reincarnation. All living beings reap karmic consequences for the good and bad deeds they commit, and after death, they are sent to one of six destinations according to their actions in life. These are known as the six realms.
Now, humanity has created a seventh realm beyond the six, with its own hands.
Theme: Life cannot be defined.
