Netherworld: Reborn in 2007 as an Online Game Launches

On March 15, 2007, the open beta of Fantasy Era began.

In Dorm 502 at Jilin University in Changchun, Xu Hu woke from a dream about working overtime at a design institute. The moment he opened his eyes, he was back ten years in the past.

In his previous life, he had played from the open beta until the servers shut down, a full ten years. He remembered every hidden quest, every purple item drop, and every dungeon mechanic. But he also remembered how he and his brothers spent three years trying and failing to get the first server-wide clear, and how they came up just short in the league finals. He had regretted it for the rest of his life.

This time, he had returned with ten years of memories.

Four male architecture students squeezed in front of a beat-up computer and started a small guild on the Northeast China Netcom One server: Netherworld Under Heaven. No whales, no big shots. They started by fighting gray-haired wild boars. Wipe, review, wipe again, until the moment they scored the server's first clear of the Purple Gear Catacombs. The entire YY channel exploded.

Before long, more and more people joined. College students from Shenyang, top students from Harbin, sailors from Qingdao, nurses from Huludao... Strangers from all over the country went from battling together in the game to meeting in real life.

Xu Hu knew when every update would arrive, where every hidden quest was, and who would become a master player in the future. He found them ahead of time.

Graduation, starting businesses, building families, industry downturns, everyone going their separate ways. The game went through version after version, but YY channel 88xxxx11 stayed lit forever.

Twelve years passed. Every year, it was still the same people, still the same words: The totem of youth never grows old.

This isn't one person's online gaming story. It's about a reborn young man using ten years of memories to make up for every regret, and leading a group of brothers and sisters to write a battle cry to each other with their entire youth.