The next day, ten o'clock in the morning.
On the homepage of the country's largest holographic danmaku site, a black-and-white icon appeared without a sound in the new-game recommendation slot.
It was Kiana Kaslana making a playful "biu" at the camera.
White hair, blue eyes—cute to the absolute extreme.
No warm-up, no press releases from the major media outlets, just a few dry characters: "Honkai Impact 3rd: First Teaser PV."
The gaming UP-loader "Old Blackie" was idly trawling his stream for material to riff on. He clicked the video open.
"Brothers, today let's see what kind of garbage project one of our domestic little workshops has cooked up this time—miHoYo? Never even heard of them."
The progress bar began to move.
The screen went dark.
Then came the howling of wind at high altitude.
A white-haired girl leapt down from above the clouds, without any parachute.
A string of blue data streams flashed across her goggles.
Below, on the sea of clouds, a massive warship broke through the waves.
The cola can in Old Blackie's hand froze in midair.
The scene shifted; the metal deck of the warship reflected the blinding sunlight.
A massive heavy mecha constructed itself out of thin air, the metallic clash of meshing gears exploding through the speakers.
A grey-haired girl sat on the mecha's shoulder, the blue glow of the charging cannon muzzle instantly lighting up the entire screen.
The stream's originally sparse danmaku came to a brief pause.
"Clang—"
The music's rhythm suddenly soared.
Valkyries wove through the hordes of Honkai Beasts; gunfire, flashing blades, and the roar of heavy cannons intertwined, light-and-shadow particles dancing madly across the screen.
The progress bar reached its final second.
White text on a black background slammed into the very center of the screen.
[Permanently free on all platforms, completely free to download, no pay-to-play.]
Old Blackie sprayed a mouthful of cola straight onto his keyboard.
In that instant, the danmaku erupted.
[Holy shit?!]
[Free? This lighting, this modeling, this physics engine—and you're telling me it's free to play?!]
[Holy shit, this camerawork?!]
[Who's that white-haired girl dropping out of the sky?! Three seconds—I want all her info!]
[The texture on that mecha is insane! But... is this really a mobile game?]
[Is the boss running a charity? Or does he have a goldmine at home with nowhere to spend it?]
The shock lasted only a few minutes.
Soon, the veterans who'd been hanging around the gaming scene for years caught on, and the wind began to shift sharply.
[Pack it up, it's the old CG money-grab scam.]
[Using pre-rendered PC CG as a gimmick, scamming a few rounds of first-purchases, then running off with the money. We've seen plenty of these little workshops.]
[Free, huh?! If they can cram this into a phone, I'll eat my screen on the spot!]
In less than half a day, the boards of every major forum were flooded with the words "Honkai Impact 3rd."
The competitors clearly couldn't sit still either.
Large numbers of accounts of unknown origin began steering the narrative across all the major platforms.
"Exposing the Shell Company miHoYo: The Dead End of CG Fraud"
"Industry Insider Reveals: No Phone Currently Exists That Can Run Real-Time Lighting at That Level"
With the help of anonymous paid trolls, public opinion swiftly slid toward the opposite extreme.
On every gaming forum and social platform, countless "rational, neutral, objective" types sporting big-influencer titles popped up.
"A rational analysis: miHoYo, this newly founded little company, simply can't produce optimization tech at this level."
"Fake at a glance. This is absolutely a promotional scam made with film-grade CG. Cram graphics like this into a phone? Even the world's top tech giants can't do it—who do these people think they are?"
"Clownish grandstanding. Using 'free' as a gimmick to farm traffic, and what they'll actually serve up is bound to be a few crudely textured card images. Everyone, move along."
In the arena of public opinion, naysaying, mockery, and conspiracy theories wove together into a black-red quagmire.
The overwhelming tide of negativity nearly drowned this newborn studio entirely on its very first day.
The top floor of the Arc City Tower, miHoYo Studio.
Nuwa sat in her computer chair, the cold light from the screen reflecting on her face.
She glared at the comments refreshing at lightning speed in the backend, her eyes rimmed red.
The hand gripping her mouse was trembling.
With a "clack," the mouse was slammed hard onto the desk, and the limited-edition Homu figurine beside it toppled over from the shock.
"I'm so furious! I'm so furious!" Nuwa suddenly snatched up the plush cushion on her desk and pounded it hard twice. "These people don't look at the animation transitions, don't look at the lighting renders—they just sit there bashing it with their eyes closed! How many all-nighters did we pull to polish those models, and they actually call it fake CG!"
She looked over at Su Yu, seated in the boss's chair.
"Boss, we have to put out a statement to clear this up! Throw the screenshots of our live development code right in their faces!"
Su Yu was holding a tub of beef noodles.
Kevin had just made it for him.
This savior of a former civilization, now the nominal CEO, was sitting across from Su Yu at this very moment, likewise holding a tub of instant noodles.
The two of them slurped their noodles in oddly perfect sync.
Su Yu swallowed his noodles and pulled over a tissue to wipe his mouth.
He didn't even glance at the negative reviews, just pointed his chopsticks at the blazing sun outside the window.
"What's the rush? It's only the first day."
He turned his head and exchanged a glance with Kevin.
Expressionless, Kevin lifted a chopstickful of noodles and nodded, not even bothering to speak.
Su Yu leaned back against the sofa, his fingers lightly tapping the armrest.
"Those people cursing us are actually already doing our promotion for us. The traffic pool's already been stirred up, and now all eyes are on us."
He picked up the noodle broth and took a sip.
"Let the bullets fly a little longer."
The second day.
On the gaming forums, the discussion about miHoYo's "shell-company fraud" had already built up into towers thousands of replies tall.
The clamor of public condemnation was still raucous.
But at three in the afternoon, a single post detonated across the entire web without any warning.
No lengthy essays, no hoarse-voiced rebuttals.
Just a single photo.
The photo showed a phone screen, and on it was none other than the Honkai Impact 3rd Valkyrie standby interface.
And beside the phone, a hand rested casually.
That hand was elegantly proportioned, painted with pink nail polish, a limited-edition bracelet hanging from the wrist.
The poster: Miss Pink Elf ♪.
The caption was just a single playful smiley emoji, plus one line: "Oh my, who is this adorable girl? I'd love to get to know her~ @miHoYo Studio"
In the first five minutes after the post went up, the comment section had only a few question marks.
The internet froze for two seconds.
Then, the servers exploded.
[Is that Aimen?!]
[Elysia is shilling for this no-name game?]
[What no-name?! Any sponsorship my Ellie takes on is absolutely top-tier! Hurry up and pre-register!]
[Calm down, you up there—she's definitely been kidnapped by capital! Elysia, if you're being forced into this, just blink!]
The haters and Miss Pink Elf's fanatical fans went straight to war in the comments.
The game's search index quintupled within half an hour.
The third day.
The flames of war were still spreading when an even bigger bombshell card slammed onto the table.
Eden's officially verified account released an extremely brief announcement.
[Every original soundtrack piece for Honkai Impact 3rd was personally composed by me. I look forward to meeting you all in that world.]
If Elysia stepping in was like dropping a big stone, then Eden's announcement was like detonating a nuke outright.
That was Eden!
The world's number-one superstar!
Her fans spanned every corner of the globe.
Even if she casually hummed a tune on the street, millions of fans would revere it as gospel.
In this world, there were only Eden's fans, and twisted Eden fans.
If even a top-tier heavyweight like her was willing to score this game, what kind of confidence stood behind it?
Countless music fans and diehards who hadn't cared about the game at all swarmed into that lonely PV video like a passing plague of locusts.
The whole tone of the danmaku changed completely.
[Lord Eden! I'm here for the music!]
[My mom asked why I'm watching a game trailer on my knees—I said because it's Lord Eden's divine revelation.]
[Goddess Eden doing the soundtrack?! What's the story behind this game?!]
[Even if the inside is just a mosaic-censored lump of pixels, I'm still going to listen to Eden's BGM!]
[What kind of divine company is miHoYo? Able to recruit both Elysia and Eden at once? Are they really not some super-conglomerate's front?!]
[Badass—all I can say is miHoYo is badass!]
The shift in the wind often happens in a single instant.
The fourth day.
Under the bombardment of two consecutive waves of top-tier traffic, the voices of the trolls who'd started steering the narrative were completely drowned out.
People's attention was finally forced back to the PV itself.
That keyboard-spraying UP-loader, Old Blackie, dropped a dedicated forty-minute frame-by-frame analysis video.
"Brothers, I didn't sleep a wink last night. I downloaded this video and watched it slowed down ten times."
"Look at this aerial-drop animation—this is absolutely not pre-made skeletal animation! This is real-time physics collision computation!"
Old Blackie circled the details on the screen in red.
"And this light refraction."
"Everyone, look at the reflection on Project Bunny's metal surface—it reflects the surrounding buildings in real time as the lighting environment changes!"
"What does that prove? This isn't CG at all! This is something genuinely running on an engine!"
"And what's more, I've found that the Valkyrie movements shown in this game are absolutely all captured with high-precision motion-capture equipment! These leg techniques couldn't be pulled off without twenty years of martial arts foundation!"
The wind of public opinion reversed completely.
More and more tech geeks joined the analysis army, picking clean every detail hidden within milliseconds of the PV.
A sense of awe began to spread rapidly through the player community.
If this really was live in-game graphics.
If a game like this really could be played for free.
This was simply a dimensional-reduction strike against all the AAA studios still selling crude-graphics single-player games for tens of dollars!!
The fifth day.
At the moment anticipation was pulled to its very peak, miHoYo's official account dropped a second video.
The title was just four characters.
"Live Gameplay Demo"
No editing, no post-production rendering—the footage began directly on a phone-screen recording interface.
A finger slid across the virtual joystick on the screen.
The white-haired girl ran through a technologically advanced corridor. Encountered a Honkai Beast. Attacking, dodging.
"Hmmm—"
Ultimate evasion triggered.
The colors of the entire world instantly inverted into a film negative, time forcibly slowing to a crawl.
Purple lightning burst across the blade, a branch attack flicking the monster into the air.
Finally came the ultimate's settlement.
Gorgeous special effects filled the entire screen, while the frame-rate monitor in the upper-left corner stayed nailed firmly to the number 60 fps.
No frame drops, no stutters, smooth as silk.
Five seconds after the video went up, the danmaku site crashed completely.
The screen went black for a full three seconds.
When the picture lit up again, the danmaku filling the screen was already so dense that the video itself could no longer be seen.
[I'm sorry, I was wrong! miHoYo is my daddy!]
[This is a goddamn mobile game?! Has technology really developed this far already?!]
[I'm the guy who ate his keyboard yesterday! I'm still getting my stomach pumped at the hospital—nurse, pre-register for me!]
[Where's the pre-registration link?! Serve it up already!]
[Where do I download?! Give me the link! My wallet is already aching with thirst!]
And that wasn't all.
At the same time, every major comic platform launched a frenzy of recommendations—the once-wildly-popular comic The Three-Year Sakura was getting follow-up chapters.
Teacher Painted World × editor Moonlit Sea's Roaring Fishy Cat, joining hands with miHoYo to build the Honkai Impact 3rd IP universe!
The brand-new chapter, The Third Eruption, is now live on all major platforms!
In the promo video Nuwa released at the same time, the danmaku was already going wild.
[Holy shit! There's a new comic by Fishy Cat and Teacher Painted World to read again!]
[So that Honkai Impact 3rd causing all this uproar was already building an IP universe months ago?]
[This Fishy Cat is straight-up official miHoYo staff, right?! Damn, Teacher Painted World was shilling for miHoYo this early?!]
[Elysia, Eden, and Teacher Painted World too... what kind of dream lineup is this?]
[That's not all! Did you know Sister Nuwa has also put down roots at miHoYo now?! That ultra-high-quality teaser PV is her masterpiece!]
[Damn! Could it be... the mobile game market is about to undergo a complete upheaval?!]
[I can't take it anymore, brothers—I'm downloading Honkai Impact 3rd right now!!]
[If I can't play Honkai Impact 3rd, I feel like I'm going to lose something beautiful!!]
Only, the players wailing at this moment had no idea yet that even if they did get to play Honkai Impact 3rd, they would still lose something beautiful.
But that's a story for later.
At the same time.
In the Arc City Tower, inside Hack Bunny's little nest.
The moment the Honkai Impact 3rd pre-registration page officially opened, the backend servers of the Little TV danmaku site let out a wail of being overwhelmed.
The load rate instantly spiked into the red.
On the six holographic screens hanging before Bronie, the data curve representing server traffic was surging upward at a nearly vertical angle, smashing straight through the first warning red line.
But for her, a top-tier hacker who roamed the underworld at will, that was nothing.
The backup plan had long since been prepared—this was the depth of a top-tier hacker.
Bronie's hands rested on the keyboard.
"Tap."
The enter key came down.
Three sets of backup server interfaces were instantly opened.
The load-balancing commands raced along the network cables, forcibly stabilizing the pre-registration page that had been on the verge of collapse.
"Pop."
A pink bubble swelled at her lips, then burst.
Bronie stared at the wildly climbing pre-registration numbers on the screen and drew a breath.
"BOSS oh BOSS, this game of yours is blowing up into an absolute mess."
Five days.
A mere one hundred and twenty hours.
From utter obscurity to being condemned by the masses.
From being condemned by the masses to anticipated across the entire web.
With raw, head-on technical strength, the whole city's revelry had been thoroughly ignited.
A textbook traffic-driving battle had come to a perfect close.
And in a stream under the ID "Moonlit Sea's Roaring Fishy Cat" (Su Yu's streaming account), which had been dark for many days, a huge crowd of viewers suddenly came flooding in.
[Holy shit holy shit holy shit holy shit?!]
[Brother Su, are you serious? You're goddamn serious?!]
[I thought the Honkai Impact 3rd you said you were making with your Little Junior Sister last time was a someday-in-our-lifetimes thing! And you're telling me it's been less than two months and you've already cranked out a PV?!]
[I'm the one who said last time I wanted to invest in Brother Su's studio—I really jumped the gun, fam! Both Elysia and Eden are shilling for you, Brother Su—come on, tell us, are you some top-tier rich second-gen?!]
[Rich second-gen? Could a rich second-gen recruit Eden? You've probably lost your mind, brother!]
[Holy shit, brothers, did you know I've got insider info?]
[? Go on, elaborate.]
[miHoYo's started recruiting now too, with offices on the top floor of the Arc City Tower—guess whose hands the deed to that top floor is in?]
[Who?]
[Brother Su!]
[Fuck you, Brother Su! You're a goddamn animal! Before, you were eating instant noodles in a rental every day, calling yourself a bottom-tier small-time streamer—if I hadn't seen you were handsome and decent at the game, I'd never have boarded your captain tier even if it killed me!]
[And now you're telling me you not only have a beautiful, kind-hearted Little Junior Sister, but also a whole floor of a top-tier office building?!]
[Give me back all these years of feelings! Brother Su, what are you going to use to repay what you owe me?!]
[Ahem, actually, I think Brother Su's partner criteria don't really need to be set so rigidly—let me introduce myself, I'm male—]
[666! And how about taking a stroll down the street with me?]
Su Yu's account gained a million followers overnight, and was still growing at a downright terrifying speed.
Anyone could tell that a mighty, surging storm—set off by Su Yu and miHoYo—had thoroughly swept across the entire internet.
Sirin sat on the single-seat sofa beside him, clutching a Homu cushion, her golden eyes coldly sweeping over the numbers jumping on the screen.
"Humans—truly a cheap species so easily seduced by illusory colors." Sirin gave a cold snort, but her toes, curling slightly from excitement, betrayed the turbulence within her heart.
Su Yu turned his head, looking at the Herrscher of the Void, who was currently in some sort of "disguise mode."
"No, Sirin."
Su Yu's voice was steady; his fingertip lightly flicked the cap of his iced black tea, producing a crisp sound.
"They're not being seduced. They're offering their first tribute to the heroic epic about to descend—the epic that belongs to them."
He raised his iced black tea, offering a distant toast to the tens of thousands of Captains about to step into the "Abyss."
"Welcome to Honkai Impact 3rd, my dear players."
____
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