Part 2: The King, the Concubine, and the BGM of an Era
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The first thing to seize Ruby's senses was the music.
It wasn't the canned, generic background music that money could buy. It was a man's voice, clean and ethereal, like a disgruntled angel, recently cast out of heaven, humming a tune. And over this voice, a piano—the tone was absolutely, one-hundred-percent a Steinway—was splashing layers of accompaniment, brilliant and lonely, in a way that felt almost improvised.
The song was a rusty key, unlocking a forgotten chamber deep in Ruby's heart.
"Sign of the Times." Harry Styles.
It was CoCo.
The girl he'd had a crush on for three years, the reason he'd stumbled his way into the Arts Club, the one to whom he'd only dared to whisper a mental "goodbye" from across the Eurasian continent at graduation. He remembered her sharing a link to the song, her voice on WeChat tinged with the slight brag of having just arrived in Italy, full of wonder for another world: "Ruby, this song is huge right now! Harry Styles is killing it solo, all my friends here are listening to it!"
Back then, he'd felt the song was an expensive ticket to CoCo's vibrant, colorful world. He downloaded it, crammed it onto his cheap phone's pathetic memory card, and put it on a loop until he felt like he, too, could live in the same BGM, breathing the same air at the same frequency.
But now, in this steel behemoth floating like a black palace on the river, as the melody played again...
It was no longer a ticket.
It was a cold, gilded judgment.
"You can't bribe the door on your way to the sky..." "You look pretty good down here, but you ain't really good."
Every note was a sugar-coated bullet with a meticulously calculated trajectory, drilling its way, precisely and viciously, into his chest.
The stateroom wasn't decorated in the gaudy gold of the nouveau riche he'd expected. Instead, it was a quiet fusion of a high-end art gallery and a starship command bridge that he couldn't quite define. The walls were made of a matte material that seemed to absorb all light, hung with a few abstract paintings he didn't understand. The paint looked like it had been thrown onto the canvas by some violent emotion, then forcibly contained within the frame by a cold, unyielding rationality.
He felt his aesthetic sense—or rather, the barren aesthetic sense cultivated in a forty-square-meter convenience store—suffer an unprecedented, dimension-crushing blow.
In the center of the room, the midnight-red Steinway piano gleamed under the soft lights, rich like a vintage wine. A woman's back was to him, her posture as elegant as a sonnet.
Ruby recognized the instrument. The Arts Club's little prodigy, Liu Sisi, had dreamed of owning one, calling it the holy grail of pianos. She eventually saved up for a second-hand Pearl River, saying it was "good enough," but Ruby knew the difference between this and a Pearl River was the difference between a Lamborghini and a mobility scooter.
"I can't even bring myself to buy an extra pack of ten-cent spicy gluten snacks at my own store," he muttered to himself, as if explaining to the air. "What am I supposed to bribe heaven with? My collection of expired skins from Skybound Aces?"
He looked down at the cracking "GAME OVER" on his chest and the flip-flops on his feet, their soles nearly worn smooth. He felt like a delivery guy who had accidentally walked into a UN Security Council meeting.
"Excuse me," Ruby whispered, nudging the sword-straight elder beside him. "Are we... on the wrong set?"
The old man didn't speak, just shook his head slightly. A faint, almost compassionate smile seemed to flicker in his deep-set eyes.
The final chord of the piano faded, its resonance hanging in the air, leaving a vacuum-like silence that was almost painful.
A female voice, crisp like the clinking of ice in a crystal glass, drifted through the quiet.
"Sign of the Times. A fine choice, wouldn't you say?"
Ruby's head snapped up.
The woman at the piano had risen at some point and was now walking toward him, her bare feet, white as jade, silent on the thick Persian rug. She wore a simple cheongsam of moon-white silk with no extra adornments, her silvery hair pinned up high with a simple jade hairpin.
She was like a white camellia blooming silently in the moonlight—beautiful, pure, yet possessing a deadly, unapproachable aura.
"It's... nice," Ruby said, wringing his hands, his answer honest and clumsy. "But I feel like... the lyrics are scolding me. Telling me I'm not good enough."
The woman seemed surprised by this simple, artless answer. She stopped three paces from him. Then, a captivating smile curved her lips, a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.
"The door to the sky can't be bribed, of course," she paused, her gaze lingering for a second on his "GAME OVER" shirt, as if seeing some amusing paradox. "Just like this ship. It has the most expensive propulsion system in the world, but if it loses its course, it's nothing more than a very expensive coffin, floating on the sea."
Her gaze shifted to the elder beside him.
"As you say, Miss. For us, seeking the 'Sign of the Times' is more an investment in the future. This Black Pearl is both our known destination and our point of departure into the unknown."
A satisfied smile touched the woman's face. She looked back at Ruby and extended her right hand.
"Let's reintroduce ourselves. I am Gao Qiong, the project lead for Skybound Aces. This gentleman is Uncle Fu, the chief steward of the Gao family. And you..." her voice took on a playful tone, "you must be the 'Ruby' from the phone call, the one who kept setting off our backend alarms, correct?"
Her hand hung in the air, a bracelet of countless tiny silver plates forming an Ouroboros coiled around her wrist. In the light, the serpent seemed alive, its tongue flickering as it stared at him.
Ruby was terrified. Every cell in his body was screaming and scrambling. His pathetic social skills, evolved on Marin Street, had the structural integrity of a sandcastle in a tsunami.
A syllable he couldn't comprehend, a sound from some forgotten parallel universe, stumbled from his disobedient mouth, clumsy and loud.
"Ye... Yes, Your Grace."
The air solidified.
Time seemed to stop.
Even the silver serpent on her wrist seemed to freeze for a split second in shock.
"Ah—crap! No! Miss Gao! Director Gao! Your Majesty! I... I didn't mean it like that! I swear!" Ruby babbled, only one thought in his head: I need to die. Right here, right now.
It's over. Everything is over. This woman, Gao Qiong, would surely think he was a pervert, a hopeless psycho, and have the old man Uncle Fu throw him into the Oculus River to feed the crocodiles. He was already debating whether to dive out the window or just curl up on the floor and beg for mercy.
"Your Grace?"
Gao Qiong was stunned at first, a flicker of genuine bewilderment in her pale gray eyes. Then, she burst out laughing. The laugh was crisp and melodious, like wind chimes, shattering the frozen air and, along with it, Ruby's pathetic shred of dignity.
Beside them, Uncle Fu acted as if he hadn't heard the earth-shattering "Your Grace," his expression as tranquil as ever. This ultimate display of professionalism only made Ruby's shame burn hotter.
The profound humiliation was like a dull knife, slowly torturing his nerves.
"Mr. Ruby, please, have a seat," Uncle Fu broke the stalemate at the perfect moment, personally pulling out a velvet armchair for him. Ruby collapsed into it, feeling like he was sinking into a soft, unreal cloud.
"The young miss is fond of Darjeeling First Flush," Uncle Fu said, preparing the tea set while watching Ruby with a gentle gaze. "As for you, sir... perhaps you might try a 'Junshan Silver Needle'? It was a tribute tea during the Tang Dynasty, reserved for emperors. It requires the brewer to have a very clear state of mind; any stray thought will spoil the spirit of the brew."
Gao Qiong settled into a high-backed chair, crossing her legs and glancing at Uncle Fu with a hint of playful reproach. "Uncle Fu, don't always use these old imperial tales to intimidate our guests. Mr. Ruby is no emperor, and even if he was—"
She paused deliberately, studying Ruby's bewildered face with great interest.
"—that's ancient history, thousands of years old. Back when the Lingfeng Clan was in power, now that was true magnificence."
"Lingfeng Clan"?
What is that? A hidden faction from some Chinese RPG I haven't played? The name of a dynasty from a historical drama I missed? His family had been running convenience stores for three generations. The distance between them and "magnificence" was greater than the distance between him and CoCo. He was convinced this impossibly beautiful woman was playing some kind of rich-person role-playing game that was completely beyond his comprehension.
Ruby's face contorted into a "please-start-speaking-human-language" expression. "I mean, I go to conventions and cosplay sometimes... uh, mostly obscure characters nobody recognizes. But an emperor, the Lingfeng Clan? What's all this about? I thought we were here to talk about the game?"
He scratched his head awkwardly and added, "And... just a glass of water is fine for me, thanks. I... don't know anything about tea."
Gao Qiong shook her head, seemingly unsurprised by his reaction. "Very well. No history, then. Let's talk about what you do know." She lifted her own cup of tea, taking a delicate sip, a gesture as graceful as a sacred ritual.
"On the phone, I mentioned that your flight data was flagged as an 'anomaly'," she said, getting straight to the point.
"I remember!" Ruby nodded immediately, finally back on familiar ground. "You said the system triggered the highest-level alarm three times?"
"Correct. We've run over a million simulations of your flight data with our most advanced programs. Not one of them could replicate it." Gao Qiong's voice dropped, taking on a mesmerizing power. "In the game's second stage, 'The Flight,' your every ascent, every dive, every Cobra Maneuver using a thermal updraft... the data models all tell us the same thing."
She leaned forward, her gray eyes swirling like nebulae.
"Your maneuvers exceeded the laws of the game's physics engine. You weren't playing the game, Ruby. You were... speaking to its source code."
Ruby's heart skipped a beat. Vanity, like an ignited hydrogen balloon, began to lift him off the ground.
"Of course," she changed tack, her voice becoming clear and cold, "that's not a level one can reach through practice alone. We theorize that it stems from something inside you... something we call a 'Core Convergence'."
"Core Convergence?" As the words fell, Uncle Fu silently placed a glass of water, warmed to the perfect temperature, into Ruby's hand.
"Is that a new expansion? A new character class coming out?"
"No, Ruby. This is not a game." Gao Qiong's gaze became incredibly intense, so intense that Ruby felt every word she spoke next would be heavier than the ship itself. "Your Core Convergence is special, though you are unaware of it yourself. But that's not important. What's important is that tonight, we have a special gift for you."
Ruby instinctively knew this gift would not be a simple game skin or a limited-edition figurine.
"Ta-da!" Gao Qiong suddenly switched to an excited, childish tone, even giving him a playful wink. The abrupt change made her seem somewhat... unsettling. "We have prepared for you the ultimate, one-hundred-percent immersive Skybound Aces experience."
"One-hundred-percent... immersive?" Ruby's mouth formed an 'O'.
"That's right!" A brilliant smile spread across Gao Qiong's face. "Imagine it. Feeling the real wind, the real G-force. Just like you've done countless times at the start of every match."
Ruby's heart clenched.
He understood. It wasn't about his glorious moments on the 'Avalanche Peak' track, scraping against cliffsides and pulling off impossible maneuvers. It wasn't about the thrilling dogfights in the canyons.
It was about that mind-numbingly boring opening phase that he had grown so numb to in the virtual world, he could do it one-handed while eating instant noodles—
Stage One: The Drop.
In the game, that stage was a skippable opening cinematic, a loading bar. Its only purpose was to let you check out what flashy new parachute skins the other pay-to-win whales were showing off. He'd done it tens of thousands of times. The sensation was equivalent to gravity pulling you out of bed in the morning—which is to say, no sensation at all.
But now, they were going to play this "opening cinematic" for him in real life.
"Sky... skydiving?" The closest he'd ever come to that word was jumping from a second-story platform into a sandpit in elementary school. He'd sprained his ankle and been chased three blocks by his mother with a feather duster.
"No, no, no, I... I have a fear of heights!" The glass in his hand shook violently, water spilling onto the expensive rug, but he was past caring.
"Don't worry. Everything is under our absolute control." Gao Qiong's voice was as gentle as a hypnotist's, yet carried an undeniable power that felt encoded in her DNA. "The most professional instructors will be with you, and the safety measures are military-grade redundant. You don't need to think, you don't need to act. You just need to... feel."
Uncle Fu spoke up at the perfect moment, casting a holy light on the insane experience: "The young miss means that this is both a recognition and a coronation. Mr. Ruby, not every player gets the chance to imprint their virtual peak upon their real soul."
What damn honor, Ruby couldn't hear a word of it. The fear was real. But for a man crowned the "King of the Sky" in Skybound Aces to be afraid of heights in real life? That would be the joke of the year.
And that feeling of freedom in the game, of becoming one with the wind... what if... what if it wasn't just data simulated by a VR headset?
Fear and curiosity waged a fierce battle in his heart.
Finally, he heard himself say, in a voice that was almost a whisper:
"Sounds... pretty cool."
Gao Qiong smiled, satisfied. "You'll love it."
She stood, the hem of her moon-white cheongsam tracing a graceful arc.
"Uncle Fu, take our 'champion' to change into his 'royal robes'."