New Age Of Glory

After a long battle, Li Haoxuan finally managed to beat Han Wenqing. Even so, Li Haoxuan felt that something was wrong near the end of their match. Near the end, he clearly felt that as if he could perceive things better. Everything felt slower, and he could react very easily. The sensation left him dumfounded now that everything has ended.

"God Han, earlier… what happened?" Li Haoxuan asked. He still felt things he experienced earlier were unreal.

"You're asking me?" Han Wenqing looked at Li Haoxuan who only nods his head and stared at him with expectant eyes, hoping that he could come with an explanation. "I believe you should know it yourself. I do not know what happened earlier, it was as if you were possessed."

"Hmm…" Li Haoxuan started to ponder as he looked down on his hand. 'Possessed' might be the closest explanation that they can accept at this moment.

Han Wenqing stared at Li Haoxuan for a while before he cleared his throat. "You should prepare yourself. Your next opponent will arrive soon. I wish you luck."

After saying that, Han Wenqing left. Li Haoxuan was alone in the arena for a while before the system announcement rang in his ear.

[System Announcement: New Challenger has arrived. Entering 45 seconds of preparation phase.]

Li Haoxuan looked up to see who his next opponent is only to see that it was Ye Xiu.

Li Haoxuan: "…"

"What's wrong? You looked as if you've just eaten a bad meal," Ye Xiu had an amused expression when he saw Li Haoxuan's reaction to his arrival.

"Not a bad meal, but a bad luck. God Ye, does it have to be you?" Li Haoxuan asked, his eyes were silently pleading at Ye Xiu, seemingly to say: 'Please tell me it's not, ah!'

"Why can't it be me? Xiao Xuan, don't worry. As your master, I won't be too cruel to end your streak now. I only wish to confirm something," Ye Xiu said as he looked over at Li Haoxuan in a relaxed manner.

"What is it that you want to confirm…?" Li Haoxuan asked in an uneasy manner.

"We will both find out soon."

The countdown enters the last ten seconds and Li Haoxuan once again calmed himself down. His expression turned serious as he prepared to meet his opponent. Regardless of who it was, he really needed to win this last match so he had long prepared for the worst.

The countdown reaches zero and Ye Xiu smiled at Li Haoxuan before he gestured towards the boy. "Come."

Outside the game, the staff were looking at the EEG Data of Li Haoxuan's brain activities. Earlier, it had suddenly became erratic that they were afraid that something had gone wrong.

At first, they checked the rest of the system to see that everything was still green, which means something happened to Li Haoxuan in the game. They were just about to force Li Haoxuan out of the game when it suddenly returned to normal.

"Actually, why did it suddenly turn erratic?" one of the staff wondered out loud.

"That is exactly what we want to find out. But unless we ask him directly what he experienced, we won't know," answered another staff.

They printed out that segment where Li Haoxuan's brain activity was the most active and compared it with the live transmission of Li Haoxuan's brain activity on their monitor. The waves were normal and they still couldn't find anything wrong with it.

"Did the system mess up earlier…?"

"That is impossible. We checked it earlier and found nothing was wrong…"

The staff continued to discuss the anomaly while Li Wenyan stared at his youngest son with a worried expression. He wasn't around when Li Haoxuan's brain activity went haywire because he was taking a quick smoke break. If he had been around, he would be the one to immediately pull his son out.

"If you're that worried, we can stop the system for your son," the project manager said to Li Wenyan.

Li Wenyan looked at him, then back to his son before his eyes went down to the paper in his hand. On it was the printed data of Li Haoxuan's brain activity from before. "I am worried. But after looking at this properly, I noticed the familiar pattern."

"Familiar pattern?"

"En. Long ago, I was part of an experiment where we did a research on the brain activity between two Mixed Martial Artist fighter. At the time, one of the fighters was losing, then suddenly, he seemed to have experienced adrenaline rush. His reading then, was almost similar to this," Li Wenyan informed the project head.

"So… is it alright to assume that it is safe? That nothing is wrong?" the project head asked.

"There should not be anything wrong. When Haoxuan comes out later, we can ask him what happened. He must've experienced something exhilarating to actua—"

"Mr. Li!! Come here, it happened again!!"

Li Wenyan couldn't finish when the staff monitoring Li Haoxuan's data called him. He looked at his son, then rushed over to see the monitor. "Let me see. Before this, how was the reading?"

"Normal! There wasn't anything suspicious!"

"We'll continue to monitor, if it persists for more than five minutes, immediately stop the system for Haoxuan and pull him out," Li Wenyan said as he clenched his fists. He had to control himself from directly stopping the system.

"Mr. Li… are you sure?"

Li Wenyan did not answer and simply kept his eyes glued on the monitor. The erratic brain activity continued for a solid three minutes before it slowed down then returning to normal. Just as they are about to let out a sigh of relief, another unexpected thing happened.

Li Haoxuan's reading which had just returned to normal became more and more stable. Then, they slowly became farther apart and Li Wenyan finally realized that something was wrong.

He has two assumptions. One, Li Haoxuan's brain activity had reached the rate where they cannot measure with their machine. The second one made him feel extreme fear. Li Haoxuan's brain might have stopped functioning.

"Stop the system!"

"On it!" the staffs around them were quick to react. They went to their own computer and began to enter series of codes to stop the system but before the final string of codes was entered, Li Haoxuan's brain activity once again returned to normal.

This time, it continues to stay normal which made everyone let out a heavy sigh of relief.

"Mr. Li… should we still pull him out?" the staff asked.

"Pull him ou—"

"Li Haoxuan logged out of the game! He should be up in a bit," another staff announced and every eyes in the room went to Li Haoxuan's side.

Sure enough, the boy returned to reality and removed the headgear off him. When Li Haoxuan saw that he was being stared at, he was confused.

"I… is there anything wrong? Why does everyone look worried?" Li Haoxuan asked.

"Ah'Xuan…" Li Wenyan quickly went to his son's side and held his hand. "What happened earlier in the game?"

"Hmm? I was just doing some PK as usual. You know that I can't access the next dungeon until I finished the challenge, and earlier, I finally managed to clear the first part of the arena challenge!" Li Haoxuan announced proudly.

Back in the game, Ye Xiu was indeed greeted with the defeat sign and his private message inbox was flooded with new messages, no doubt courtesy of a certain former Blue Rain member.

He decided to selectively ignore them and went to send a message to Han Wenqing. "The thing you told me earlier, it seems like it is true. Xiao Xuan seems to be performing even better if he was put into a more precarious state."

Not long after, Han Wenqing's reply came.

[Han Wenqing: Did he consciously let that happen or was he unaware of it happening?]

"It seemed that he is unaware of it. It is almost time for lunch. We will discuss more of this later," Ye Xiu sends his reply before he left the arena and logged out of the game.