Looking at it this way, was Lin Wan’s offer to help him get a Fire Qilin quite preferential treatment?

After all, the Fire Qilin’s market price was 888 yuan…

But Chen Sha quickly shook his head, dispelling this ridiculous thought from his mind.

What 888-yuan Fire Qilin? This was just a bunch of code in a game; how could anyone spend money on it?

If no one bought it, wouldn’t the Fire Qilin be worthless?

Yes, as long as no one bought the Fire Qilin, wouldn’t this just be a very fair game…

Chen Sha truly couldn’t figure out this game’s approach. He had seen FPS games like “Counter-Strike” with no in-app purchases that only sold copies, and he had also seen FPS games like “Bullet Hole” that were free but had various tiers of in-app purchases, allowing players to spend incrementally.

But he had never seen anything like “Sea Fortress.”

Curiosity drove Chen Sha to exit the store and continue exploring the game’s other modes.

“The competitive mode has many new gameplay options, ghost mode, and bio-hazard mode? I don’t think I’ve seen these before.”

“Holy crap, there’s even a story mode??”

When he saw the ghost mode and bio-hazard mode, Chen Sha was pleasantly surprised but not too shocked.

After all, for a competitive FPS game, making some gameplay innovations wasn’t unusual.

But when he saw the story mode, Chen Sha was stunned.

Because neither “Counter-Strike” nor other domestic FPS game developers had created story modes!

Making a story in an FPS game was quite a thankless task, and domestic developers basically couldn’t handle it!

Some major foreign titles did have stories, but those productions often had huge investments and weren’t in the same category as regular FPS games!

Tianhua Studio had polished “Bullet Hole” for so long, striving for excellence in all aspects, yet they hadn’t added a story mode.

Because Zhou Muyan felt that, first, it wasn’t necessary, and second, he wasn’t confident!

If even Tianhua Studio’s “Bullet Hole” didn’t dare to create a story mode, how had this relatively unknown “Sea Fortress” managed to do so?

This piqued Chen Sha’s interest.

Instead of immediately closing the game as he had planned, he decided to casually try the story mode to see what it was like.

And he had prepared himself to be bored and fed garbage.

……

……

Entering the story mode.

Black screen.

A slightly prolonged black screen.

Chen Sha almost thought the game had a bug, but soon, sound came through his headphones.

“Already dead?”

“Don’t know, might still have a breath left. But infected with the G virus, he’s as good as dead.”

“Just dump him here.”

The voice was authentic English, but fortunately, there were subtitles on the black screen.

In the pitch darkness, the screen seemed to shake once, representing the half-unconscious protagonist being thrown down.

After that, footsteps gradually receded into the distance.

The screen remained black, but there seemed to be a faint glimmer of light, just like the vision a normal person might have when closing their eyes during daytime—light passing through the eyelids, perceived by the eyes.

More sounds echoed in Chen Sha’s headphones.

There was heavy breathing and low moaning, most likely from the protagonist.

There were rustling sounds, unknown things crawling or staggering around;

There were muffled noises from throats, like pulling on a tattered bellows—that was the standard zombie growl, though it only came from a distance once in a while.

Soon, two arcs appeared on the screen, with a blurry vision between them—this was simulating the effect of the protagonist trying to open his eyes.

After several blinks, the protagonist’s vision returned to normal, and Chen Sha could see the clear game visuals.

The first thing that caught his eye was a hand, a pale hand with bulging veins—a dead person’s hand!

Both the protagonist and Chen Sha were startled.

The protagonist struggled to get up but then saw an even more terrifying scene: where he was lying wasn’t a soft bed but a small mountain of corpses!

These corpses were in various states of death; some were bloody and mangled, too gruesome to look at, enough to make one vomit up last night’s dinner;

Some were relatively intact, with no visible injuries, just pale skin and protruding veins;

Others had begun to rot or had grown strange flesh tissues, undergoing terrifying mutations!

A large amount of fresh blood had dried and coagulated; these corpses seemed to have become entangled, impossible to separate again.

And now, the protagonist was about to become one of them!

The protagonist was at the edge of the corpse pile, clearly the people who had brought him here didn’t want to venture deeper, so they just casually threw him and hastily left.

After a spell of dizziness, the protagonist rolled off the corpse pile onto level ground, and after catching his breath again, he regained some strength and managed to stand up with difficulty.

At this point, Chen Sha found that he had gained control of the protagonist, as well as the freedom to move the camera view and walk.

Very simple prompt information appeared on the screen: moving the mouse could observe the surroundings, and using the WASD keys allowed for forward, backward, left, and right movement.

These were all basic operations for FPS games, but considering that some people might be playing this type of game for the first time, “Sea Fortress” still carefully provided guidance, completely in line with foreign AAA productions.

In the first-person perspective, Chen Sha had fully immersed himself in the role of the game.

The surrounding light was dim, but he could still vaguely make out that the protagonist was inside a building with a military base style.

There were originally several chairs, a large conference table, and a few computers typical of a military base, but they had all been abandoned, casually thrown aside, also piled with many corpses.

And when looking at the largest pile of corpses, Chen Sha couldn’t be sure if he was seeing things, but he seemed to notice an outstretched arm from the corpse pile, struggling to move slightly…

This scene made Chen Sha a bit unnerved, and he began to look for an exit.

There were three exits, all with green lights above them, one of which had the word “EXIT” written on it. The room’s lighting hadn’t been turned on; the protagonist could vaguely see the surrounding scene entirely thanks to the light emitted by these exit signs.

Chen Sha controlled the protagonist to walk toward the nearest door.

The protagonist didn’t walk fast, and occasionally his vision would become a bit blurry. His right hand swung with his walk, but his left hand pressed against his lower abdomen, clearly indicating some physical discomfort.

Arriving at the first door, he pushed hard, but it wouldn’t open, as if it were locked or blocked from the other side.

Then he came to the second door; this door had an access control system and required a special access card to open.

Chen Sha then controlled the protagonist, dragging his heavy steps back toward the corpse pile, walking toward the third door in the farthest corner.

From a distance, this door seemed to be slightly ajar, passable.

The surrounding environment seemed to become very still, with only the protagonist’s breathing and footsteps remaining.

Just then, a zombie suddenly lunged from the corpse pile, grabbing the protagonist’s right leg and biting down on it!

The protagonist let out a scream of agony, and a ring of blood-red appeared around the screen, indicating that the protagonist was under attack!