September 5th, noon. The Palace Storm DLC went live right on schedule.

The promotional offer was genuinely attractive: 40% off top-ups, plus free playtime for existing players who brought in new ones. Within just thirty minutes of the update dropping, the number of Qihang gaming pods booting up across the country hit a staggering eight million units.

Previously, eight million concurrent users had only ever been reached during weekend evening peak hours. Hitting that same number on a Friday afternoon made one thing clear: the co-op mode hadn’t just brought back lapsed players. It had pulled in a massive wave of newcomers.

The forums filled up with first-timer posts almost immediately.

“My friend said she’d take me through the inner palace and we’d wreak havoc together. First time playing a holographic RPG ever — anything I should know going in?”

“My cousin wants me to play a prince and help his Crown Prince get crowned. What am I supposed to do? Really don’t want to be dead weight~”

“Long-distance couple here, both complete beginners. Planning to try the romance route together. Any suggestions on which characters to pick?”

The forum was buzzing all day with launch activity. Veteran players were jumping in enthusiastically to answer every newcomer’s question they could find.

One person even posted a recommendation: “New players, check out Blue Fish TV stream 8864 — the developers are doing a live co-op playthrough. Great way to learn the basics.”

Over at the Rongcheng Nanyang District, Building A, 20th-floor gaming center, Luo Hang and Xie Yunfan had already eaten lunch and climbed into their gaming pods, starting up their stream again.

The previous evening, they had saved their progress at the point where Princess Ning’an’s mother Consort Zhou had been elevated to First-Rank Consort, and the Imperial Consort’s father had been promoted to Minister of Revenue.

The moment they came online at noon, viewers who’d been waiting in the stream for exactly this poured in with greetings.

【Little Sailboat is so punctual~】

【I’ve been camped here waiting for you two — this is more exciting than watching a drama series!】

【Back when Journey to the West ran in-game, I followed that for six months straight, but the story was fixed. This variable storyline feels so much more alive】

【Waiting for the princess route ending】

Xie Yunfan opened his mic. “Hello everyone. The update is live, and co-op mode is available nationwide — grab a friend and give it a try.”

“And if you can’t find a suitable partner, you can open the co-op mode and let the system match you with someone.”

The audience was visibly pleased by this. Honestly, playing a role-playing game with real-life friends could sometimes get awkward. Getting matched with a stranger online meant you could just relax and play freely.

“Ready on my end,” Luo Hang said.

“Great. Let’s go in.”

Once inside the game, both of them appeared in the same location: the Princess’s manor. The Imperial Son-in-law had just returned from morning court, the Princess had just woken up, and the two of them were having breakfast together at home.

Xie Yunfan dismissed the surrounding palace maids and attendants, then asked, “Anything unusual happened at court today?”

“Nothing,” Luo Hang said. “Things have been calm lately.”

“Noble Consort Xiao and Noble Consort Shu have both been dealt with,” Xie Yunfan analyzed. “Consort De died of illness in the Cold Palace. That leaves only Consort Xian’s faction and the Empress’s.”

“Right. So what’s the plan?”

Xie Yunfan thought for a moment. “We court Consort Xian first, remove the Empress, and quietly maneuver Noble Lady Li into a stronger position.”

Noble Lady Li and Princess Ning’an’s mother, Consort Zhou, had grown up together since childhood. Their close bond was hardly a secret at this point.

“My mother and Noble Lady Li are deeply attached,” Xie Yunfan continued. “If we help Noble Lady Li rise, she won’t be suspicious of us. Her child is the Eighth Prince, the Emperor’s favorite, and he’s very young — easy to manage.”

Luo Hang followed the logic. “So we systematically neutralize every faction, maneuver the Emperor into naming the youngest prince as heir, and then position ourselves to control him. After that, we wait for the right moment to push for the throne?”

“That’s the most stable approach right now.”

“Understood. I’ll work on building ties with the Prime Minister’s bloc at court. We can coordinate from there.”

The viewers watching were already buzzing.

【My brain is growing again, I can feel it~】

【Princess Ning’an starts with basically no backing, and her mother has no influence either — using Noble Lady Li to get control of the Eighth Prince is clever thinking】

【Little Sailboat is operating on a different level】

【Go Princess go, the moment you take the throne, I’m topping up and buying in】

The plan was genuinely sound.

A princess couldn’t simply declare herself empress. The Emperor would never pass the throne to a daughter directly. But Noble Lady Li’s young son was only six years old. If the Emperor named him heir, then conveniently “fell gravely ill”… the child emperor would take the throne by imperial decree, and as his most trusted elder sister, Princess Ning’an could hold the reins of power from behind the scenes. Once enough court officials had been won over by the Princess and the Imperial Son-in-law, forcing the child emperor to abdicate would be the natural final step.

From that point, the two of them worked in seamless coordination.

With the Imperial Son-in-law’s father now serving as Minister of Revenue, Luo Hang cultivated relationships with officials across the ministries of Civil Affairs, Military Affairs, and Justice, carefully building influence throughout the bureaucracy.

He also made frequent visits to the Prime Minister’s residence. The Prime Minister was his former teacher, and with repeated contact, their affinity climbed past 200 points.

But just as Xie Yunfan and Luo Hang were preparing to move against the Empress and Crown Prince, the two of them somehow caught wind of the scheme in advance. They set a trap and sprung it perfectly, exposing the Princess and Son-in-law’s plan before it could be executed.

The Emperor had them both executed on charges of treason and seditious conspiracy.

In the moment before they were taken away to be quietly put to death, Xie Yunfan and Luo Hang looked at each other, completely at a loss.

The stream audience, meanwhile, was thoroughly entertained.

【Hahaha, dying together counts as a perfect bittersweet ending, doesn’t it?】

【Lighting a candle for you both. Burning some paper offerings too】

【Did the developer clear the game today? No, he crashed again】

System: Congratulations — you have achieved the B+ ending: “Together in Life and Death.”

Xie Yunfan didn’t know whether to laugh or be frustrated. “Let’s think this through. Who actually leaked the plan?”

Luo Hang was equally puzzled. “No more than five people knew. Just the two of us, your mother, my father, and the Prime Minister.”

Neither of their parents would ever betray them.

Both spoke at the same moment: “The Prime Minister?”

That made no sense on its face. The Prime Minister and the Son-in-law had a teacher-student relationship, and he’d clearly declared his support for their side. Why would he suddenly tip off the Crown Prince and Empress?

“We use a respawn,” Xie Yunfan said. “This time, we don’t tell the Prime Minister anything. I’ll work something out from inside the palace.”

After respawning, the two shifted their strategy entirely, working through the inner palace instead. They let Consort Xian and the Empress tear each other apart in an internal conflict until both sides had exhausted themselves.

When the Empress finally died, both of them noticed the Prime Minister quietly wiping tears in private.

A careful investigation of the Empress’s personal palace maids revealed the answer: the Prime Minister and the Empress had grown up together as childhood companions, and had been in love with each other in their youth. Every step of the Prime Minister’s career, the Empress had been supporting him from the shadows.

Xie Yunfan looked genuinely surprised. “There’s a whole hidden relationship there.”

No wonder the Prime Minister had sided with the Empress at the critical moment. This also meant players running the Crown Prince route could invest heavily in cultivating the Prime Minister right from the start.

With the Empress gone, only Consort Xian remained.

Xie Yunfan joined forces with Noble Lady Li and his own mother to bring Consort Xian down.

The inner palace was now left with just two favored consorts: Noble Lady Li had been elevated to Consort Li, and Consort Zhou had been raised to Imperial Noble Consort. Together, they whispered in the Emperor’s ear until he agreed to name the young Eighth Prince as Crown Prince.

Eighty percent of Xie Yunfan’s plan was now complete.

What remained was straightforward: keep the Eighth Prince manageable, let Luo Hang continue building goodwill among the court officials, and once the voices supporting them clearly outweighed any opposition, the Princess could pressure the child emperor into issuing a formal decree abdicating in her favor.

Time slipped by. By five in the afternoon, they’d been playing for five consecutive hours.

Both Xie Yunfan and Luo Hang were feeling fatigued. Holographic games drew on mental and physical energy in equal measure.

Neither of them logged off.

“We’re almost there,” Xie Yunfan said. “Let’s just push through to the ending.”

“Alright.”

The game continued. On the Mid-Autumn Festival, the newly enthroned child emperor hosted a family banquet. The surviving princesses, princes, and consorts all attended.

Xie Yunfan and Luo Hang were among them.

The palace banquet was lavish, the table spread with exquisite dishes. The gathering took place in the Imperial Garden, where they ate beneath the full moon and watched performances of song and dance.

Now Empress Dowager, after her son’s ascension, Consort Li raised her cup and smiled graciously at the Princess and Son-in-law. “Since His Majesty took the throne, you two have looked after him with such care. Let me offer you both a toast on this festive evening.”

Xie Yunfan and Luo Hang raised their cups together.

The moment they drank, everything went dark.

System: You have been poisoned by the Empress Dowager. Game over.

Both of them: “……”

“Why did she suddenly poison us?” Xie Yunfan said, genuinely taken aback.

Luo Hang frowned. “She probably sensed you were planning to seize power. She moved first to eliminate the threat before it materialized, clearing the path for her son.”

Xie Yunfan went quiet for a moment.

In other storylines, when players targeted Noble Lady Li, Consort Zhou would throw herself into danger without hesitation to protect her. The two women had grown up together, and their fierce loyalty to each other in the treacherous inner palace had moved quite a few players.

But the moment their interests directly conflicted…

Noble Lady Li hadn’t hesitated for a second before poisoning Consort Zhou’s daughter.

“It seems,” Xie Yunfan said slowly, “that in the imperial palace, no relationship is unconditionally reliable. She and my mother were like sisters. But the moment she realized I intended to force her son off the throne, she killed me without a second thought.”

The original plan had been a generous one: if the child emperor abdicated peacefully, the Princess would guarantee him and his mother a life of comfort and privilege.

But human greed has no natural ceiling.

Noble Lady Li had risen from a minor concubine to Empress Dowager. She didn’t feel gratitude for everything she’d gained through the Princess’s help. She simply wanted to hold power with both hands and never let go.

“Human nature is unpredictable,” Luo Hang said quietly.

Xie Yunfan gave a resigned smile. “It is. And we can never calculate an opponent’s intentions with perfect accuracy. That’s exactly what makes these intelligent NPCs so formidable.”

The viewers watching were left with complicated feelings.

Other games had boss enemies with powerful abilities, but no matter how devastating a boss’s attack was, there was always some way to dodge it. In this game, the most dangerous thing was the calculated scheming of intelligent NPCs, operating beneath the surface in ways that gave you no warning at all.

Going up against them was genuinely thrilling.

Xie Yunfan and Luo Hang had nearly been wiped out completely.

Fortunately, they still had one respawn available. They used it, returned to just before the Mid-Autumn banquet, and quietly swapped out the poisoned wine in their cups.

Consort Li’s poisoning attempt failed. The poison ended up killing her instead.

A month later, the child emperor voluntarily issued an abdication decree. Princess Ning’an formally ascended the throne, and the Imperial Son-in-law was named Imperial Consort.

System: Congratulations — you have achieved the S+ ending: “Legendary Female Emperor.”

System: Congratulations — you have achieved the S+ ending: “The Imperial Husband of the Ages.”

The audience erupted.

【These two are absolutely incredible】

【Little Sailboat pulled off the Princess route all the way to Empress. Unreal】

【My eyes have learned how to play. My brain hasn’t quite caught up~】

【Quick interview with President Luo — what does it feel like to be the Imperial Husband?】

Luo Hang spotted the comment and put on a mock-serious expression. “What does it feel like? Depends on whether the Female Emperor plans to take any consorts.”

Xie Yunfan played along. “I believe in monogamy. No consorts in the inner palace. One Imperial Husband is more than enough, especially when said husband has considerable talent and will be helping the Female Emperor manage court affairs.”

Luo Hang nodded. “Exactly. And speaking of which, let me officially tease our next Palace Storm DLC: the Governance arc. Players who’ve completed the game can continue into the ruling storyline. If you’ve achieved endings like Female Emperor and Imperial Husband, or Emperor and Empress, or Emperor and Prime Minister, you can govern together. Solo players can also access the Governance mode after ascending the throne. Stay tuned for the update.”

“Yunfan,” Luo Hang added, “you look tired. Time to log off.”

Xie Yunfan smiled and waved at the camera. “That’s it for today’s stream. We’ve walked through the Princess Ning’an and Top Scholar combination, but there’s so much more to explore. Go play and see what you find. Goodbye, everyone!”

“Goodbye,” Luo Hang said.

They logged off quickly. Too quickly, as it turned out, to catch a handful of small comments drifting past in the stream.

【Is anyone else kind of shipping them? Anyone?】

【Hehe. The Emperor and Imperial Consort rule together. I’m a little bit into it】

【Little Sailboat makes the games, Qihang provides the platform and operations… isn’t that basically “ruling the industry together” in real life?】

【I’m done. You’ve gotten to me, too.】

【Ships can be rare, but they can’t be cursed! Everyone, calm down!】

【These two are clearly just colleagues doing a promotional stream. They both seem so straightforward and professional — I genuinely cannot picture them dating.】

【Little Sailboat probably never imagined that doing one promotional co-op stream with President Luo would produce actual shippers, hahaha】

【What if we called this rarepair “Setting Sail”?】

【You’ve all gone far enough! Don’t scare Little Sailboat into abandoning the game】

---

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Up on the 20th floor gaming center, Xie Yunfan and Luo Hang disconnected from their pods at the same moment. Standing up and finding each other there, both of them smiled.

“Tired?” Luo Hang asked quietly.

“A bit,” Xie Yunfan admitted. “We’ve been at it since noon, so that’s nearly seven hours now. No wonder my head feels foggy.”

Holographic gaming connected directly to the brain’s neural pathways. Seven hours in the real world translated to years passing inside the game, and that level of sustained cognitive engagement was genuinely exhausting.

“At least the stream went well,” Luo Hang said. “I checked just now — the concurrent viewer count broke one million.”

“You had a hand in that too.” Xie Yunfan smiled. “The ending was intense. We nearly burned through all our respawn cards.”

“We came close to completely crashing out. Good thing you had the foresight to hold some back.” Luo Hang reached over and picked up his jacket from the hook beside the pod. “Come on. Let’s go eat.”

The company cafeteria had already closed for the evening.

Luo Hang simply drove Xie Yunfan out to find somewhere to eat. Xie Yunfan, a little worn out, settled into the passenger seat and leaned back without meaning to, falling asleep before long.

Half an hour later, Luo Hang woke him. “Yunfan. We’re here.”

Xie Yunfan blinked open his eyes. “I fell asleep?”

“You were tired.”

“How are you not tired?”

“Four hours of sleep is usually enough for me,” Luo Hang said. “I’ve been pulling late nights for long enough that I don’t really feel it anymore.”

Xie Yunfan looked at him with genuine concern. “Don’t push yourself like that. We’re in game development — the kind of people who work late constantly. If something happened to you…” He stopped himself. “Actually, don’t mind that. Just — please get some proper rest. Fix your sleep schedule, alright?”

Luo Hang’s mouth curved slightly. “I’ll try.”

His parents had told him the same thing for years. But coming from Xie Yunfan, it felt different somehow. Was this what it felt like to be looked after by a friend? There was a small, quiet warmth in it that he couldn’t quite account for.

The two of them walked into the restaurant together.

It was a private kitchen tucked away from the main streets, the courtyard planted thick with climbing roses in full bloom. The moment you stepped through the gate, the air carried a light, clean fragrance.

“I’ve lived in Rongcheng for years,” Xie Yunfan said, genuinely surprised. “I’ve never heard of this place. How did you find it?”

“I came here once for a business dinner a while back. The atmosphere is good, and the space is right for conversations that matter. I kept the address.”

He led Xie Yunfan to a private room and ordered several small dishes and a bowl of black chicken soup, slow-cooked for health.

After playing straight through from noon, Xie Yunfan was genuinely hungry.

The food arrived quickly. He picked up his chopsticks, took a bite, and said, “This is actually really good.”

“The head chef apparently spent years at a five-star hotel. The technique shows.”

Xie Yunfan tilted his head thoughtfully. “The taste simulation in holographic games still isn’t refined enough. It can’t replicate something like this with any real accuracy…”

Luo Hang gave him a patient look. “You have an occupational hazard. Eat first. Analyze later.”

Xie Yunfan laughed a little sheepishly and bent his head over his bowl in earnest. He ate the way some people do when they’re genuinely hungry, with a straightforward enjoyment that made it look good.

Luo Hang smiled to himself and quietly ladled him a bowl of soup.

Once they’d both eaten their fill, Xie Yunfan set down his chopsticks and picked up where he’d left off. “About the sensory system I mentioned earlier. Is it possible to gather more data on actual food, get the taste simulation closer to the real thing?”

“Technically, yes. It would take some time. You’re thinking about upgrading the holographic pod’s taste experience?”

“I might want to make a food game eventually. If you could take the taste simulation all the way, players could eat anything they wanted inside the game, every kind of food imaginable, without ever having to worry about gaining weight.”

He paused, eyes bright. “Don’t you think a game like that would have an enormous market?”

Luo Hang: “…………”

He genuinely marveled at Xie Yunfan sometimes. The man could sit down to dinner and produce a new game concept before finishing his first bowl of soup.

His mind was a constant source of ideas. And every time he talked about games, something in him seemed to light up from within.

Eating inside a holographic game with no risk of weight gain.

That was actually a compelling concept.

In the real world, a huge number of people were managing their weight or watching what they ate. Regional cuisine often lost something in translation when it traveled, and the recipes were adjusted to local tastes. If one game could bring together every culinary tradition in existence, players could experience the full breadth of the world’s food without leaving their homes.

That game would be made for people who love eating. The execution would be everything, but the foundation was solid.

“Yunfan,” Luo Hang said, with a directness he rarely applied to anything other than business decisions, “just keep bringing the ideas. Anything on the hardware and technical side, I’ll figure out.”

“Right now, Qihang has solved cloud data processing and two-player co-op,” Xie Yunfan said. “The next challenge is handling the data load for larger-scale multiplayer.”

Going from two players to many wasn’t a linear increase in complexity. Large-scale co-op also introduced entirely new demands on server stability.

“Our tech team is stress-testing the cloud servers right now,” Luo Hang said. “Current capacity tops out in the hundreds of concurrent users. Getting to large-scale multiplayer will require integrating quantum computing for the data processing.”

In Xie Yunfan’s previous life, even large-scale online games had hard limits on how many players a single server could hold. Push past those limits and the problems multiply: disconnections, lag spikes, ability effects that simply failed to render, bugs cascading on top of bugs.

This world’s technology was more advanced than the one he’d come from, but only by roughly a decade or so. Holographic gaming here was still in its early stages, nowhere near the point of millions of players sharing the same live server.

But that was fine. Every industry had to feel its way forward at the start. With his sense of game design and Luo Hang’s technical resources behind him, they could drive the entire holographic market forward, step by step.

“There’s no rush,” Xie Yunfan said. “We go one step at a time. The next game can be small-scale multiplayer. Once the data processing problem is solved, we scale up. There’s no shortage of material to work with.”

“Agreed.”

Luo Hang paused, then added, “One more thing. I’ve heard that DreamWing recently greenlit a new project. Role-playing, called City Home, is likely to launch before the end of the year. They’re incorporating intelligent NPCs.”

Xie Yunfan’s expression shifted slightly. “Can’t beat them, so join them? Interesting how quickly they moved once they saw our game take off.”

Competitors borrowing from each other was common in the industry. As long as they didn’t copy the game’s setting or NPC storylines and built their own world from scratch, there wasn’t much you could say about it.

If DreamWing had been building intelligent NPC role-playing games from the beginning, Xie Yunfan would have given them full credit.

But when Palace Storm launched, DreamWing had spent considerable energy pushing the narrative that “intelligent NPCs posed safety risks,” running a public opinion campaign that ultimately went nowhere. The moment the game proved itself a hit, they’d quietly reversed course and started developing the very thing they’d criticized.

That was… genuinely hard to comment on.

“Their CEO has never had much in the way of principles,” Luo Hang said quietly. “Willing to do whatever it takes to make money. That said, given DreamWing’s design team, whatever imitation they produce isn’t going to be a real threat. We don’t need to worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Xie Yunfan said, with complete composure. “It’s a pale imitation. If anything, having a worse version of the same thing out there might actually help us. Our game will look even better by comparison.”

Luo Hang let out a quiet laugh. Xie Yunfan’s equanimity had always struck him. Throughout everything, there had been no shortage of competitors trying to damage his reputation or bury his game, and he’d held his ground through all of it.

Now that Yangfan and Qihang were united, their position in the market was even harder to shake.

After dinner, they drove home together.

On the way back, Luo Hang’s phone rang. It was his head of network operations: “President Luo, good news: according to backend data, Qihang gaming pod activations hit over ten million during tonight’s peak hours.”

Xie Yunfan, hearing this, couldn’t help smiling.

Ten million during peak hours. Off-peak, somewhere between five and eight million. At an average of two hours per player, even after factoring in the promotional discounts, today’s revenue would comfortably clear a hundred million.

Make one game that genuinely succeeds, and you could just sit back and watch the numbers.

Luo Hang’s voice was noticeably lighter when he responded: “Good. Keep the cloud servers running smoothly. No lag in the co-op connections.”

“Understood!”

After the call ended, Luo Hang glanced sideways at Xie Yunfan. “The Governance DLC you mentioned in the stream today — what do you think about striking while the iron’s hot and launching it in early October?”

Xie Yunfan nodded without hesitation. “Fine by me. Governance in October, Faction War in November. That keeps the game’s momentum going all the way to the end of the year. Then over winter break, we can figure out what the next game will be.”

“Good.”

They exchanged a look, both satisfied. Palace Storm had found its footing. The player base was loyal, the revenue stream was healthy, and the development and operations teams could carry it forward from here without major intervention. As long as no one managed to tank the game’s reputation, things would be fine.

After that, the next game.

Yangfan Studio and Qihang had ended up bound together more or less by circumstance, but honestly, Xie Yunfan hadn’t seen another partner in the industry worth working with. Every other option, he’d looked at and found wanting.

Only Luo Hang shared his vision.

Finding someone who understood what you were trying to build, and wanted to build it with you — pushing holographic gaming into wider reach, refining the experience, maybe one day bringing about a genuine “holographic game era” — that was, Xie Yunfan thought, a rather good way to spend one’s time.