Name: [Blessing] (Full-Dive Game)
Author: Yu Heng

Synopsis

# Cover source: CAT.zv

The brand-new full-dive game [Blessing] is now accepting closed beta applicants!

“Go to hell, [Blessing].”

On April 1, seventeen-year-old Wu Guanling holds a black umbrella and presides over her mother’s funeral. She picks up her mother’s phone and the game design department head’s ID badge from [Nicolas] Breeding Co., Ltd., then looks up at the staff in black suits standing in the rain.

“Congratulations, Ms. Wu. The gods have bestowed their [Blessing] upon you.”

*

In Federation Year 3047, it has been a thousand years since the alien gods began cooperating with humanity. Steel has replaced flesh, technology has changed people’s lives, and the class divide is severe. The lives of commoners are worth less than grass. The rulers and the gods wager on how much longer these lucky “ants” will live.

The countdown to a frenzy of wealth and desire has begun.

In the game, indescribable gods devour human reason and souls. They whisper and sneer. But they never expected Wu Guanling to toss her hearing aids onto the ground and crush them underfoot, then raise her greatsword and point it at their gaping mouths.

“Sorry, I can’t hear you.”

Flesh-and-blood technology, cybernetic ascension. To see the gods, abandon your spirit and flesh. --[Blessing]

*

There are 7,777 closed beta players. From discarded heirs of powerful families and heaven-blessed geniuses to ordinary people, they all go to great lengths to earn the gods’ [Blessing]. But one oddball stays outside all three factions, gathers a group of “broken” people, and carves out a different path: “godslaying.”

A greatsword shatters the stars. The person leading the charge covers her blood-soaked right ear and smiles more brilliantly than the stars.

“The right ear blocks out the gods’ whispers. The left hears humanity’s prayers.”

“I bestow my own [Blessing].”

# Reader’s guide:

The setting is fictional. Please don’t take it as a reflection of reality. My take on cyberpunk is a hodgepodge of mythology.

A slow burn, not a hot-blooded story. The heroine isn’t perfect and has major character flaws.

Theme: Hearing is believing, seeing is knowing.