Chapter 133: It Went Viral

Not to mention the anticipation that immediately stirred within A Smile That Topples Cities, the promotional video did not pause for even a moment.

Veteran players watched promotional videos with a different eye. At a single glance, they could tell that Xiao Jingxuan and Chu Luoxi were engaging in role-playing—in other words, cosplay. The clothing, jewelry, weapons, and equipment they wore should all have been items that actually existed within the game.

Chu Luoxi appeared in an immortal maiden’s attire, her face radiating holiness, nobility, and righteous majesty. Even the lightest glance from her carried a perfection so exquisite that it seemed impossible to profane.

By contrast, Xiao Jingxuan, clad in splendid equipment, exuded an alluring air of wickedness from head to toe. It was as though one’s soul were drawn in before one even realized it. His presence was utterly overbearing, like an evil emperor come back to life.

She cultivated the Dao; he was a demon. Good and evil could never stand together, and so began the most spectacular battle of all.

Brilliant spells and entrancing hand seals dazzled the eye. Although many players still did not know that every movement the two performed had been carefully designed according to their characters, they could not deny that the spectacle was a feast for the eyes.

They locked onto one another, dodged, and traded blows. Modern television and film had never offered anything so thrilling.

The opening clash left the audience completely spellbound. They had expected to continue watching the dazzling and profound magical battle, only to discover that the promotional short actually contained a story.

People always said that evil could never triumph over righteousness, yet the two figures in the video fought with such intensity that neither gained the upper hand. The audience, watching with wide eyes, clearly saw the demon cultivator abandon his resistance with his final move. Wickedness still smoldered in his eyes, but a deep affection suddenly burst forth from them, catching everyone off guard and leaving them shaken.

The magical weapon wielded by Chu Luoxi’s Dao cultivator pierced straight through the demon cultivator’s chest. Her normally cold expression turned blank as she watched his final, radiant smile of relief. Then a single crimson tear, like cinnabar, slowly traced a path down her fair cheek. The grief of that moment seized the audience’s hearts.

The entire promotional short defied convention. It contained no dialogue whatsoever; music alone built the atmosphere from beginning to end.

The screen faded to black, then brightened again. This appeared to be a second lifetime—or perhaps the audience hoped it was the second lifetime of the same pair. Yet fate was cruel: the man had become a Buddhist cultivator, while the woman was now a demon.

When Chu Luoxi appeared in a fox-inspired outfit, she was bewitchingly seductive to the extreme, yet possessed a pair of eyes as clear and pure as a baby’s. Countless unprepared viewers choked and sputtered. The men in particular suffered nosebleeds. Ahem—the height of summer was upon them, after all, and tempers ran hot.

Even A Smile That Topples Cities, who had always considered himself possessed of exceptional self-control, was not spared. He became one of the countless viewers to suffer an accident. Fortunately, he reacted quickly, realized something was wrong, and immediately covered his nose with one hand. Otherwise, the dinner before him would certainly have been ruined. Yet he suffered in another way: a mouthful of food lodged in his throat, leaving him coughing and choking until his eyes brimmed with tears and he was reduced to half a life.

The true culprit was that hateful short. It had actually given Chu Luoxi’s demon-cultivator costume a close-up: a twitch of the ears, a blink, and a wag of the tail. Those three movements were later acclaimed by countless viewers as her three ultimate killing techniques, and the impact they produced was utterly astonishing.

During the editing process, the original intention had simply been to showcase the meticulous craftsmanship and superior quality of Seeking the Dao. No one had expected that, combined with Chu Luoxi’s acting, the scene would cause countless “bloodshed incidents,” or that it would establish one of her most iconic looks.

In truth, costumes of this kind were not unique to other games. Some were even far more revealing than Chu Luoxi’s. But those featured virtual characters, and therefore lacked a certain sense of reality. People might admire and praise them, but they would not be struck so violently.

This was live-action cosplay—and by a beauty of such caliber at that. With Chu Luoxi’s performance executed to perfection, its destructive power rose exponentially. One only had to recall how the face of a certain grandmaster had remained dark for several days after filming that fox outfit.

The sudden brilliance Chu Luoxi unleashed completely overshadowed, for a time, the grandmaster Xiao’s own revolutionary costume: a jade-like bald monk.

The battle between demon and Buddha began. In the end, the Buddhist cultivator obtained the demon core, yet he stared at it in a daze for a long while before unexpectedly choosing to die in meditation.

The radiance of the Buddhist relic and demon core intertwined, violently cleaving open the space of the scene.

In the third lifetime, the woman became a demon, while the man cultivated the Dao. When they met again, they did not fight. It was as if the scene were meant to show that the three thousand great paths ultimately led to the same destination. Whether one followed the Dao, demonic cultivation, Buddhism, or妖kind, all could eventually attain the Dao. The man and woman, who had suffered tragedy through two lifetimes, finally attained enlightenment. When they turned back to meet one another’s gaze, that single glance became eternal.

This so-called third lifetime was actually included to give the short story an ending. It also displayed quite a few of the game’s true landscapes, each one breathtakingly beautiful. Even many people who did not play games found themselves itching to try it.

“Seeking the Dao” had only four major classes in total. The first two battles had nearly finished showcasing them. The third lifetime brought everything to a close…

Although the short contained no dialogue, every scene conveyed the essence of the game. Outsiders watched for spectacle, while insiders recognized the craft. Setting aside whether the game itself could live up to the promotional video, even if it reached only seventy or eighty percent of that standard, they would certainly keep playing.

Of course, in the eyes of experienced players, the story in the promotional video was secondary. After all, it had little to do with the actual game. They still found it moving, but what they cared about was different.

Ordinary viewers, however, were another matter. Compared with the splendor and magnificence of the visuals, the story was the true heart of the video. Despite the complete absence of dialogue—and even of any clear beginning or end—it still allowed the audience to understand what had happened and left their hearts shattered. Although the happy ending at the close gave them some comfort, it only made them itch to know more, far more intensely than after watching an ordinary television drama trailer.

They wanted to see more of what had happened. They wanted to hear the male and female leads speak. More than anything, they wanted to admire additional beautiful scenes and moving stories. For a time, the uproar was tremendous.

Rather than join in the commotion, A Smile That Topples Cities was far more eager to begin snatching up public-beta access codes. If things really were limited, as Gong Qilin had said, waiting any longer would mean missing his chance.

Although his guild valued entertainment above all else, it still had a ranking. If he could not enter the new game—or failed to establish a guild within it—what face would he have left as its leader?

The excitement was not limited to game players. Ordinary viewers could not remain calm either. They were all worked into a fever, and discussions about Seeking the Dao could be found everywhere.

There was no denying it: before its public beta had even begun, Seeking the Dao was already a sensation—far hotter than planned, by more than double. For a time, the Seeking the Dao development team was as busy as bees and as exhausted as dogs.

The final pre-release testing was only one concern. Many sharp-eyed advertisers had already come knocking, all of them seeking advertising space on the official Seeking the Dao website.

The advertisements shown while the promotional video buffered were especially coveted. Those few seconds alone sparked fierce competition, leaving the Seeking the Dao development team staring in stunned disbelief. When it came to advertising and promotion, they were far too far behind those people, who seemed capable of exploiting every opening.