When Zhao Yuan clicked on her new team profile, she felt as though she had crossed an invisible threshold into an entirely new world.
The standard, utilitarian layout of her primary shelter interface vanished, replaced by an intricate digital landscape dominated by deep, regal accents of violet and purple-stained white. Even the system font had transformed, rendering every word in sharp, electric blue light.
The first thing displayed proudly at the top of the screen was the team name: World.
It felt like such an extraordinarily strange, almost arrogant name to assign to a team. Situated directly beside the bold lettering, its official team emblem stood with quiet majesty—a glowing, meticulously detailed holographic globe spinning slowly on its axis.
Moving her eyes past the emblem, she checked the next line of data:
[Total Members: 999+]
Zhao Yuan blinked, tilting her head slightly. She had never seen this vague, truncated form of counting used in a high-tier system interface before. Though the odd numerical display bothered her analytical mind, she suppressed her curiosity and dragged her gaze down to the next entry on the dashboard.
[Team Ranking: 1 / 666,780]
That staggering statistic was the very first thing to truly impress her. To stand at the absolute pinnacle of over six hundred thousand registered shelter teams across the network was no small feat. Eager to see who was helming such an juggernaut, she scrolled down to the leadership panel.
[Team Leader: Qiao Yuan]
The small profile picture displayed beside his name seemed strangely familiar, making her brows furrow in a tight frown as she tried to pinch the screen to zoom in. After realizing that zooming in on the thumbnail was completely pointless, she gave up and moved down to inspect the general roster.
Having just read that the total membership exceeded nine hundred and ninety-nine, she honestly did not know what she had expected to see. But as the page loaded, showing only two distinct names on the main roster, she was utterly shocked. She stared in disbelief at her own handle listed directly beneath the team leader's name.
Wondering if her eyes were playing tricks on her or if she was genuinely losing her mind, Zhao Yuan leaned closer to the glowing terminal, studying the crisp, high-definition portrait of herself displayed in her profile slot. No matter how much she tried to drag her finger across the display, any further scrolling proved useless; the member list had come to an absolute, definite end.
Her brain felt as though it were short-circuiting as she stared at the contradictory team information with a heavy, bewildered frown. Spotting a tiny, glowing information icon sitting just below the summary box, she tapped it with the pad of her finger.
[Notice: Teams are formed by at least one Custodian, who holds the authority to set strict criteria to filter out unqualified applicants. Joining a team is paramount for Custodians, as higher-tier affiliations grant access to vast, restricted cross-dimensional resources unavailable to lower-ranked or independent operatives.] > [A Custodian is strictly permitted to join only one team upon selecting their official Custodial Assistant. The total member count displayed on a team profile incorporates all active, registered Assistants serving beneath the primary members.]
Reading through the technical explanation, a sudden realization hit her. If the member count was listed as over nine hundred and ninety-nine while there were only two actual Custodians on the roster, her team leader had to possess thousands of registered assistants under his personal command—a stark, mind-boggling contrast to her solitary one.
[Notice: Team Rankings are calculated dynamically based on the cumulative tally of successful high-tier tasks and world-clearing missions completed by its registered members.]
Which meant her enigmatic team leader was an absolute monster of an operative, considering the fact that his essentially one-man team had comfortably held the global number-one ranking long before she had ever accepted the invitation to join.
Zhao Yuan couldn't help but navigate back to his avatar, her eyes fixing on the man's mesmerizing gaze as a faint, subconscious smile touched her lips. She wondered just how impossibly skilled he truly was.
Far across the vast network interface, watching her through the synchronized portal monitor, Qiao Lu saw her staring at his portrait with such intense, uncharacteristic infatuation. He couldn't help but let out a soft, low chuckle, a brilliant smile breaking across his features. It was a sight so rare that the monitoring system beside him visibly shivered, genuinely questioning if the fabric of the universe was coming to an end. The very air in his grand command suite seemed to fill with soft, imaginary pink bubbles as he quietly watched Zhao Yuan reach out and tap onto his personal profile.
The portrait expanded across her entire display screen, making Zhao Yuan's heart skip a chaotic beat at the sight of his sensuous, breathtaking smile. No teeth were in view, but she could already imagine how dazzling they would be when he smiled fully. The previous thumbnail, which had only shown a hazy, shadowed outline of his face, was now crystal clear.
She swallowed hard, her throat feeling suddenly dry as she stared at his soft, crimson lips, which fit perfectly with his sharp, regal facial features. Even after years of seeing and liking countless celebrities in the pre-apocalypse world, she had never witnessed a sight so captivating. She found herself lingering on the page, completely spellbound.
It took her nearly an hour to snap out of her daze and finally go through his listed stats:
[System Registration: Cycle 1, Day 85] > [Level: 20,000] > [Maps Completed: 4,000] > [Personal Global Rank: 1] > [Affiliation: World]
Every piece of data on his profile was so astronomically high, so overwhelmingly superior, that it felt almost blinding to read.
Then, her eyes caught something at the bottom of the display: a small, glowing message icon.
Her finger seemed to freeze mid-air, hovering a mere millimeter above the glass.
Should I actually send him a message? a small, hesitant voice whispered in her mind as she stared at the private chat prompt, a burning heat creeping up her cheeks and flooding her neck.
Seconds ticked away into heavy silence. She sat motionless in her chair, staring intently at the icon before her finger finally pressed down against the glass.
Looking at the newly opened, cream-and-peach-colored private chat interface, she froze up all over again, her mind racing as she contemplated what on earth she could possibly say to the world's top-ranked player.
Across the dimensional link, Qiao Lu could feel his own heart beating in rhythm with the ticking digital clock on his console as he waited, watching her cursor hover over the text bar.
Brrrrr!
The sharp, jarring chime of the scheduled meal-time alarm echoed loudly through her quarters, startling both of them simultaneously.
Jolting out of her trance, Zhao Yuan quickly exited the chat window, cleared her screen, and pushed herself up from the desk. Meanwhile, far across the link, the primary system felt both deeply aggrieved and utterly guilty as it cowered under the cold, disappointed glare of its fuming boss.
Leaving her private room, Zhao Yuan brushed off the lingering embarrassment, focusing her mind as she headed back into the main restaurant for another exhausting round of service. Thinking of the official Custodial Assistant she would be receiving tomorrow, she moved along quickly, wanting nothing more than for this final day of short-staffed suffering to end as fast as possible.
Out in the dining hall, the customers felt deeply conflicted as they slowly ate their meals, their minds heavy with the mandatory work assignments they had received on their wall terminals. Even though the vast majority of them desperately wanted to question the custodian about their new chores and titles, they couldn't utter a word; an invisible system silence silenced anyone who attempted to cause a disruption inside the restaurant.
As they finished their food, many residents left the dining hall feeling dejected, loitering outside in the square in hopes that the custodian would come out after the service window closed. But even after sitting on the park benches for hours, Zhao Yuan never emerged, eventually forcing them to give up and return to their hostel blocks.
Late that evening, when Zhao Yuan finally logged back onto her system console, she did not return to the team interface or open the chat panel. Instead, she typed a direct query into the basic administrative terminal.
"When is my assistant arriving tomorrow?"
Reading the inquiry, the system wisely chose to pretend it didn't see its boss glaring murderously from the background monitor, sending back a swift, robotic response.
[Notice: Scheduled arrival time is precisely 06:00 AM.]
Feeling satisfied with the prompt answer, Zhao Yuan logged off and turned to her bed, leaving a certain system to suffer the quiet wrath of its master.
Yet, even though she appeared entirely calm on the surface, her mind was anything but peaceful. The breathtaking image of her team leader was burned into her mind, flashing behind her eyelids every time she closed her eyes.
That night, not a single person inside the vast compound slept soundly, tossing and turning in their beds until the first rays of dawn broke over the horizon.