Shadowborne Ascension - Chapter 22: Virtual Realm

Lu Chen woke up to find himself participating in a live-streamed creative competition show!Contestants were tasked with creating works based on themes given by the show.When the theme ‘Countryside’ was announced, other participants quickly began crafting heartwarming rural stories, tales of pastoral love, and picturesque depictions of harmony and simplicity.Lu Chen decided to take the road less traveled—he wanted to blow the audience away!He chose ‘Operation Icebreaker’ as his inspiration.At first, the audience thought they were getting a story about rural development. But as the plot unfolded, something felt… off.A village of 20,000 people, every household with the same type of large pot, and a full-scale drug production operation?The internet exploded.[Countryside theme, and you’re writing about a drug-making village getting rich together?]The producers were in chaos.We said countryside! What’s this Taizhai nonsense?Lu Chen, unfazed, replied, “Director, rural anti-drug campaigns are a countryside theme. Now, are we sticking to the theme or not?”And thus, the Master of Sticking to the Theme was born.Given the theme Fishmonger, he wrote The Legend of Gao Qiqiang.

She is the legendary queen of mercenaries whose name daunts even the big shots in society. With an ancient jade pendant in her hand, she is great at almost everything, be it seeking the truth or the art of healing.

Underestimated, shoved aside, trampled on, and lied to!

The life of a typical nobody like Alix was not an easy one. Mocked for being a poor orphan with no history of his parents, the loneliness was his only kin and kith in the whole wide world filled with magic.

With little time left to live and limited expectations from life, everything suddenly took a quick turn when he was accepted in the royal academy of arcane and taken in as a student of the crown princess who turned him into something that he never imagined he would become.

The young boy discovered something amazing in the vast emptiness of his soul, when his life was in danger and he was at the end of the line, a true monster's powers were awakened in the midst of all the madness, the truth of the past came to light, the mysterious young man finally found a purpose to his life and vowed to bring destruction on those who took everything from him.

“I will kill anyone who stands in my way, you think I am weak? if I were you I would take a look in the mirror, I will show this world what true power looks like” Alix said as his eye glowed blue and red.

A kind girl falls in love with a vicious killer. Unhinged Yuri story set in Seoul.------“Like a prey waiting with a trap, I missed my predator.I missed her touch in the places I’ve never been touched.I wanted to hear her sing the songs that I’ve never heard.”------As the blood dripped off the knife she held firmly in her pale hand, I saw my reflection in the cold blade that had just taken the life of a man.I dreamed of magical moments like this every day.Something - someone to come and free me from the suffocating monotony of normalcy.She stormed into my life brandishing death, and in the moment of madness, my heart fluttered.Then she came to my place, uninvited. I treated her wounds and fed her. She slept on my couch like a cat. We started our lives together. Death bound us like the knot of tie I fixed for her as she left for work - to kill, kill, and to kill again.I spent countless nights sitting in darkness, on my couch hugging my knees, gripped with worry and excitement. I prayed for her safe return home, but I did not pray for the souls she’d be sending to hell.But she always returned, like a stray cat coming for food in the back alley behind a restaurant. I was the cook who put out the food for her, stroked her, and gave her shelter.A stray cat. A great feline predator. She was mine and mine alone.Together we laughed, alone I cried.Together we laughed, alone I cried.But I think we also loved.I think.------This is a dark and twisted psychological slice-of-life romantic comedy with a sprinkle of inspiration from the noir genre. If that doesn’t make sense, it’s because it doesn’t.