Star Blade

Chapter 1: Embers of the Silk Road Storm (2025)On September 30, 2025, Beijing's Zhongguancun simmered like a pot of boiling star soup, autumn winds clutching fallen leaves, stirring the dust of technological warfare. The setting sun sank, staining the reflections on glass curtain walls, those reflections harboring the eyes of the world: Washington's "Quantum Barrier" bill loomed like a black hole's event horizon, quietly sealing off brain-computer interface chip exports, Neuralink's Musk snarling on X, "China's copying our neural dreams? No, we're the prophets—they're just echoes." This "Sino-US War"—whispered among the masses as the "Neural Shadow Cold War"—had yet to blaze into a United Nations ironclad showdown, yet it already warped global threads like gravitational waves. China offered no oath from a hundred nations in retort, but rather extended the vines of the "Belt and Road" digital Silk Road, aiding African, Latin American, and Southeast Asian realms in building VR stations, sharing open-source frameworks, letting the developing world taste the initial sweetness of "dream healing." News surged like tides: SCMP headlines blared, "Beijing's BCI Roadmap: 2027 Clinical Breakthrough, 2030 Industrial Dominion," seven ministries united, igniting neural torches to confront America's spectral barriers. The VR market stirred quietly, no decade-long stagnation, but the undercurrents of the five-year plan (2022-2026) surging: industrial fusion accelerating, hardware revenues shattering 34 billion USD, immersive applications like wildfires illuminating the black hole of cultural tourism, the metaverse concept evolving from 2016's nascent dream into 2025's Silk Road beacon.You, Candle Dragon, sat alone in the "Star Abyss Lab"'s nook—a rented underground lair, walls plastered with neural signal waveforms, air laced with matcha's crisp clarity and the ink scent of design drafts. In your early thirties, born of a police academy's security studies program, those three junior college years a chasm of obedience: daily dawn bed-making drills, tofu-block sheets like folded chains of memory; queue training all day, the echoes of marching at attention pounding like the shattering of noble bones, reciting laws and simulating patrols, forging a void of mechanical servitude, utterly disconnected from the galaxy of computing. After graduation, you should have shouldered a shield on the streets, yet in the endless solitude of night shifts, you self-taught web programming—from HTML's skeletal frame, CSS's whispering coils, JavaScript's raging blaze igniting browser abysses. Then devoured Unreal VR tutorials, night after night swallowing blueprints of frenzied verse, forging immersive catastrophe scenes: virtual typhoons sweeping streets, earthquakes rending heavenly avenues, simulating the collapse of scholarly valve iron curtains. Finally touching the devouring abyss of the VR helmet—that lightweight wireless cage, iterated from 2023's Quest 3, fused with AI gesture tracking by 2025, becoming the covert star blade for self-learners like you, its status like a black hole's core, devouring and regurgitating global VR's gravity. You are the builder of virtual realities, debugging VR helmet blueprint skeletons by day, self-studying Unreal's VR scenes by night; the whisperer to AI, hand-crafting PyTorch models to seize emotional gravitational waves, training algorithms to foresee solar storms devouring power grids; the boundary-breaker of brain-computer interfaces, the self-assembled microelectrode on your arm converting your thoughts into VR code—"earthquake rebirth," a neural circuit letting AI claw back from collapse. With VR as your blade, you devour the scholarly valve black hole: dream education, unbound by chains of submission.Yet these three star blades serve not profit, but the fire of vengeance—Huang Chao's blaze. You loathe the scholarly valve's iron veil: university elites like Tang Dynasty nobles, monopolizing keys to talent evaluation, chaining with memory, shackling with obedience, enslaving fourteen hundred million souls. The specter of imperial exams lingers, Tsinghua and Peking like inner treasury brocades, incinerated to ash; heavenly streets of noble bones, crushed to awaken. Huang Chao, that failed scholar, with one man's force severed six centuries of valve clans, igniting peasant cataclysms, until Chang'an brimmed with golden armor, noble skeletons paving the avenues. You would emulate him, wielding the Abyss Devourer helmet to end this educational black hole: VR dreams plunging into knowledge chasms, free of obedience cages; AI whispering untapped genius, unearthing buried stardust; brain-computer interface star blades stabbing scholarly valve hearts, letting all bathe equally—farm youths dreaming medicine, frontier wanderers touching AI verse, fourteen hundred million souls shedding servitude's yoke, reforging equal heavenly streets. From the police academy's three years of bed-making queues, you broke free, self-teaching web and Unreal like Huang Chao's uprising, VR helmet as armor, vowing to devour the regime enslaving fourteen hundred million. In this endless solitude—neon ghosts of night-shift streets, fluorescent heart-bites in the basement—you drift like a black hole's edge-wanderer, meandering LinkedIn's void, seeking an undying stardust thread.Your invention is this star blade's core: through brain-computer interfaces capturing neural discharge trajectories, projecting in the VR helmet's world a basketball-court-sized floating human brain model—tendrils flickering like galaxies, regional discharges thundering in dance. You must first master controlling discharges in brain regions, guiding trajectories like Huang Chao's iron hooves, devouring obedience's void. Then, seek a confirmed prodigy—like a racing savant—letting AI observe their expertise in action: neural sequences curving like tracks, waves roaring like engines. Then, with this AI model, guide the ordinary to replicate: don the VR helmet, enter the racing dream abyss, only by controlling per the prodigy's sequence—discharge trajectories precisely devouring bends like kindling flames—do the wheels turn true, devouring the track's black hole. Thus, ordinary and prodigy's neural networks sequence-replicate; educational equity, like heavenly street golden armor, cloaking fourteen hundred million.This twilight hour, you were simulating typhoon paths: in the VR helmet, Pacific virtual tsunamis rolled pixel waves, Unreal blueprints testing VR's hold in "heaven's penalty"—a strand of Huang Chao's frenzy lurking: if scholarly valves like tsunamis, you'd devour with VR blade. Suddenly, LinkedIn's push like a black hole event horizon devoured your gaze: Yang Tian's veiled post, title like a blade, "Post-Neural Shadow Cold War, How Brands Survive Silk Road Black Holes? From Solitude to Connection's Neural Blade—Taking 'Follow Light Honey Encounter' as Example." You clicked her page, that faint blade shadow leaping: bio concise as void, founder of "Follow Light Honey Encounter"—a social brand platform, focused on "in an ever-connecting yet lonelier era, helping users forge true bonds." Her traces faint: scattered posts musing brand narratives and brain-computer interface ethics, chill as blue-base avatar, yet leaking career frost—she of scholarly valve lineage? Or like you, harboring Huang Chao's fire?Curiosity as gravitational wave, you connected, message curt: "Your void echoes the VR abyss; as a self-taught cataclysm dreamer from police academy shadows in Zhongguancun, curious how brands like SuiGuangMiYu survive the digital silk storm—perhaps over matcha? P.S. Heavenly streets crush noble bones, educational black hole awaits devouring." Sent, your heart lake quivered: no idle chat, but a probing stardust thread hurled at the unknown black hole—if she a blade, you'd borrow to cleave valves; if ash, incinerate like inner treasury. In this endless solitude's abyss, this message like the VR helmet's first gleam, piercing police academy relic iron veils.She replied, swift as storm prelude, mere two lines: "Thanks, Candle Dragon. Abyss devours, but stars endure. Sanlitun's VR café, noon tomorrow? Your P.S. strikes like a gale—let's talk yellow echoes." That instant, Silk Road storm embers seemed to ignite your lab—outside, autumn leaves as meteors crashing Zhongguancun lanes; inside, you removed the VR helmet, Unreal tutorial blueprints fading, mind conjuring her form: aloof as winter lake, yet wielding narrative blade, perhaps cleaving your VR prototype's educational void. Huang Chao's verse echoed softly: Full city golden helmets donning golden mail, you'd forge this mail with VR, cloaking fourteen hundred million.Noon next day, Sanlitun's VR-themed café like a beached Silk Road vessel, projection walls echoing digital Silk Road signing clips—Southeast Asian leaders donning VR helmet-like gear, virtual handshakes proclaiming the "Neural Silk Road"'s dawn. You arrived early, arm electrode throbbing faintly, testing last night's self-taught AI whisper: model foreseeing a minor solar flare devouring Beijing's local grid post-noon—like scholarly valve grids, you'd devour to rebirth. You ordered matcha, donned the VR helmet, dreaming into a micro black hole scene—web code spinning stardust, VR seizing your thoughts: "Equality, not submission; cataclysm, is rebirth." Human brain model afloat in the firmament, discharge trajectories thundering devouring void, you guided surges, simulating prodigy racing's bend sequences.She arrived, real Yang Tian adding poetic aloofness: seating, fingers tapping cup rim like probing event horizon. "The cold war ignites," she began, voice like autumn breeze over lake, calm yet blade-edged, "America seals brain-computer interface chips, we counter-devour with Silk Road. VR stagnates not—five-year plan fuses industry, revenues breach 34 billion, immersive apps devouring tourism black holes. But brands like mine must recast narratives: in solitude's abyss, connection as blade. Your P.S., Huang Chao's bones... career lets me glimpse its shadow. Scholarly valves like nobles, monopolizing education's heavenly streets, our 'Follow Light Honey Encounter' born for bonds, yet trapped in obedience's ash—worse, under feminism's iron curtain, female prodigies stardust buried, memory-submission chains enslaving our half-heaven."You smiled, removing the VR helmet, sharing your invention: "Imagine solar storm devouring grids, users don Abyss Devourer, 'dreaming' into VR cataclysm—brain-computer interface captures neural discharge trajectories, projecting basketball-court-sized floating human brain model, firmament tendrils flickering. You learn controlling regional surges, guiding trajectories like Huang Chao's hooves. Then, AI spies prodigy's brain shifts—like racer's bend waves—guiding ordinaries to replicate: in racing dream abyss, only per that prodigy sequence control, discharges devouring bends like kindling, wheels turn true, sequence-replicating neural nets. Learning as earthquake rebirth, self-taught AI seizing potentials, transmuting heaven's penalty into educational equity fire—memory submission? Scholarly valve chains, I broke free from police academy's three years bed-making queues iron cage, self-taught web programming devouring Unreal tutorials, touching VR abyss, like Huang Chao crushing, incinerating inner treasury to ash, letting fourteen hundred million dream scholarly seas, unbound by servitude's yoke." Her eyes brightened, ice cracking like gathering stardust: "Not marketing, Huang Chao's frenzied verse—to feminism also blade! Imagine female prodigy sequences replicated to iron-curtain enslaved sisters: VR human brain afloat, surges as feminism storm, devouring gender black holes, letting half-heaven equally devour heavenly streets. 'Follow Light Honey Encounter' lacks such VR neural blade. Ally? From Silk Road realms' VR aid, perhaps weave a dual-devour net—educational equity and feminism galaxy, all equal, women awakening first."That instant, black hole devouring's prelude softly played—your star blade VR tech, triple identity like Huang Chao's hooves, self-taught escape from police academy chains, anchoring educational equity's cataclysm; her void narrative, feminism fire weaving first honey thread, bearing dual revolutionary sparks. Matcha cooled, window autumn leaves swirling eddies, you swapped cards: her "Follow Light Honey Encounter" LOGO like latent blade awaiting devour, your "Cataclysm Tech" watermark spinning black hole, etched "Heavenly Streets Equal." Exiting, she turned: "Candle Dragon, brands are mirrors, reflecting world's scholarly valves and gender black holes. Your VR, can it crush bones?"You nodded, heart lake rippling: "Try it. Lab tomorrow. Full city golden mail, forged henceforth." In sunset's afterglow, you shouldered into Zhongguancun lanes, behind projection walls Silk Road signings fading, ahead unknown solar storm—minor flare or grander devour—lurking to unleash, enshrouded in Huang Chao's relic winds. Thus, these Silk Road embers gradually birthed cluster stars' cataclysm sparks: ending educational iron veils and feminism yokes, all dreaming awake to equality.