Chapter 477: Do We Also Live on Stars?

Boss Fang suddenly noticed something odd about the way these people were looking at him. Why did they all seem so... strange?

"What are you all staring at me for?" Boss Fang touched his own cheek. "Is there a flower on my face?"

Everyone: "..."

"Pfft! Trash boss!" Mu Qing muttered, turning away to play his game—the classic type who can't win but can only yap.

The others, who had been eager to watch the boss get schooled, now looked awkward. This wasn't even close to the same level. Boss Fang had clearly elevated every strategy and the coordinated interplay between all unit types to an incredibly high standard, while his opponent was still stuck on the basics of troop deployment.

"Impressive!" Zong Wu said, as if discovering a new continent. He hadn't expected the young boss to possess such strategic insight.

In reality, losing the main base in a standard campaign would already count as defeat. But here, the player commands all officers. If the main commander dies, you can just switch to another base's commander. Even if a secondary base commander falls, there might be a space station commander to take over. It's never just one person, which is why the game can continue.

"How is the boss so good at this too..." Jiang Xiaoyue stared with wide, curious eyes at the screen. "Boss, what did you just use? How was it so powerful?"

She had clearly seen, besides the mothership group that had deployed troops, there were many other types of ships parked at the enemy base. Yet with one shot from Boss Fang, they were all gone, leaving a terrifyingly massive crater on the ground.

"That weapon just now was incredible!" Li Lanruo seemed still shaken. Gu Tingyun had switched to first-person perspective earlier, and the sheer destructive power that annihilated everything in an instant, along with the mushroom cloud rising in the distance, was utterly breathtaking. "These humans look so weak, so how can they wield such terrifying magical artifacts? How are these artifacts even made?"

Not just formidable—unspeakably so. If it were the gods, that was one thing, but even humans were this powerful?

Everyone turned to look at the boss on this question.

"Uh..." Boss Fang winced. As for how these things are made... I'm just an internet cafe owner. How am I supposed to explain that to you?

"Come on! Let's go study it in the game!" Tang Yu said.

...

At this time, most other shops were still focused on single-player campaigns. There was no QQ group for StarCraft yet, but its Tieba page had already been created. Most of the pioneers in the shop would, during lulls in combat in the single-player campaigns, open the forum and browse.

Not every player rushed to try the new game. A large number in the shop still stuck to old favorites. Only a few who liked to try new things or followed the boss gave StarCraft a try.

But since the shop's player base was growing, the number of StarCraft players was not small.

Take veteran players like Su Tianji and Li Haoran, for instance. Also, from the Banbiancheng shop, there was Duan Yue, the master alchemist who once oversaw the forging of the Heavenly Mirror. Among the disciples of the Nanhua Sect, some were playing Sword of Immortals, but others were playing this new game.

Even Nalan Hongwu, a loyal old-timer of Diablo and Sword of Immortals, who always played those two games, was drawn by the Blizzard brand to give StarCraft a try.

At that moment, Nalan Hongwu had just finished a single-player campaign as Raynor and clicked open the forum for a look.

He was immediately startled. The StarCraft forum had just been created, yet the number of replies had already reached several thousand?

"Does anyone know where StarCraft actually takes place?" He quickly spotted a highly popular post.

Clicking in, he saw a post by a user named "Sprite," likely a girl's ID. It contained many screenshots. One glance showed an endless starfield, with a massive black ship spanning the screen, full of metallic texture, suspended in space. Above it was a dark red planet.

It sailed silently through the void like an island, followed by many strange little bats.

Ning Bi was watching her own post. It was a discussion thread, and many had already replied below.

"Is this a screenshot from the game?"

"It looks like the starfield from the opening scene!"

"Did you see below? There's no land! The land is above and to the side of this ship, that red ball."

"This land is actually round?" The cultivators from Jiuhua and Banbiancheng shops had never even left the Lianhuang Sea, so naturally, they didn't know the shape of their own world.

"..."

Nalan Hongwu scrolled through the screenshots. The ship was flying toward the nearby red sphere, getting closer, and the land in front grew larger until it finally became a vast, boundless earth.

Then he saw another reply: "I keep hearing them talk about planets. Are these people living on stars?"

Nalan Hongwu fell into thought.

"Boss, are the people in StarCraft actually living on stars? (mischievous grin)" Ning Bi, holding a cup of milk tea, looked like she had discovered a new continent. She sent a QQ message to Boss Fang. "Don't stars usually shine? Why don't the stars they live on shine?"

"Ah...?" Boss Fang stared at this message, as if looking at a kid who hadn't even graduated elementary school back in his old world. "How can you be so naive..."

The moment he sent that reply, another QQ icon jumped.

Nalan Hongwu: "(grinning) Boss, are the people in StarCraft really living on stars?"

Nalan Mingxue: "(starfield screenshot) It feels like these people are living on stars, but... is that what stars really look like?"

Someone even @Boss Fang in the sightseeing group.

Boss Fang: "..."

He suddenly felt it wasn't just Ning Bi who was naive; it seemed this whole group was just as innocent.

And they were all acting like curious little kids.

Jiang Xiaoyue: "Hey...? Why is everyone talking about stars and people living on stars?"

Mu Qing: "Feels so amazing, living on stars? Won't they fall off?"

Boss Fang's face darkened. This is amazing?

Boss Fang: "Have you never thought..."

He rephrased: "Maybe, I mean maybe, have you never thought... that the ground beneath your own feet might also be a star?"

"Impossible!" Jiang Xiaoyue, sitting right next to Boss Fang, muttered. "The boss is lying again."

Though Boss Fang's words stirred a wave of discussion, they were quickly refuted by many.

Yue Bai: "If we live on a star too, then this girl must be a fairy? (roaring laughter)"

Ning Bi: "I don't know if they're really in the sky, but I envy them anyway."

Su Tianji, eating instant noodles while sending a QQ message: "(starfield screenshot) So beautiful!"

Mu Donglai: "Truly beautiful, even more so than watching the stars from an observatory tower."

"..."

They had never seen the true face of their own world, nor knew what lay beyond the sky. Perhaps that was why the scenery beyond the void was beyond their imagination.