POV: Tian Fei
Location: Shanghai City
Time: Late afternoon
Dear reader assuming you were asked to define everyone you knew in two words what words would you use?
Most people would go for words like good and bad, bright and gloomy, mean and kind or even righteous and evil. However if you take an objective look at the world in general, you will easily realize that life as a whole is only interested in classifying people as either winners or losers.
The winners are the ones who have it all. They are the smart geniuses in the schools, the good looking celebrities in the magazines, the wealthy businessmen on the paper or the charming politicians on the television. These are the men whose names can get you into exclusive places, whose phone calls can brighten up your week and whose signature can change your entire life. It goes without saying that such people are sort after every where they go and they usually have no problems getting anything or anyone they want.
The loser on the other hand are the ones who seem to have life itself stacked against them. They may be as smart or good-looking as the winners (or even smarter in some cases) but often times they lack the money and connections needed to make something out of those skills. This makes them ignored by the society, avoided everywhere and eventually forced to work as lab monkeys for ungrateful bastards who usually do nothing except to steal their credit just to make ends meet.
The thing is that whereas most people are usually not sure of which side of the spectrum they fall, our guy in question was pretty sure that if loser had a rock bottom he broke through it three years ago.
First of all I want you to imagine stepping into the shoes of an young man called Tian Fei. You are a thirty years old man who graduated the international institute for technology in Beijing at the tender age of fifteen where you were given full honors after you emerged top of your class. You then landed a job in a highly reputable company and within a few years you were promoted to the IT manager of all its communications. You then married my childhood sweetheart and together you both had a son. However soon after your promotion, the company's general manager was caught embezzling funds and in order to save himself he shamelessly threw you under the bus. The sad thing was that, since the manager had a strong background the company could not act against him so they pinned the whole blame on you. That meant that you became the scapegoat whose face was plastered all over the news while the real culprit was secretly let off with a wrist slap. You then tried looking for another job but when you have bad publicity like that you quickly learn that the amount of excuses people can give for not accepting you are endless. Having no other choice you applied for the army and I was accepted into the 16th infantry battalion. It went well at first and you were quite good at training but on my very first deployment you quickly drew the attention of a beautiful woman named Ma Chi and the contempt of an insecure young man Chu Zan who happened to be son of your direct supervisor.
As anyone could probably guess, Chu Zan whose father was a high ranking general quickly thought you had a thing with Ma Chi whom he liked who so he quickly set you up with a sucied mission which cost your legs, framed you for insurbordination and got you kicked out of it. As if that was not enough they even went as far as spreading rumors that you tried to rape Ma Chi and this made your wife and child to leave with another man before you could get home.
This made you started abusing alcohol with the little money you had and you developed a habit of slashing away your problems in the latest strategy game conquror's online. It was one of these video game marathon in your messy, booze stinking apartment that you received a very strange call.
---- Tien Fei: If you are selling something man, I am not buying.
---- Caller: (calmly) not even if it is something that is guaranteed to catch your interest
---- Tien Fei: (yells) take a hike a******
You then tried to end the call but believe it or not the call refuse to end despite your best effort.
---- Caller: a pity and here I thought I was talking to a fellow soldier.
Your mood immediately switched upon hearing those words due to all the painful memories it brought.
---- Tien Fei: are you with Chu Zan? Did he send you to me?
------ Caller: I am not with your old enemy my friend, you have nothing to fear from me.
------ Tien Fei: then who the hell are you and why did you hack my phone?
----- Caller: To put it simply I am a man of vision, a man of technology and an active gamer much like yourself. I am also a man who works for a company that believes in sponsoring down and out individuals who lack connections but make up for it in sheer ambition and ability.
----- Tien Fei: okay but what on earth does that have to do with me?
----- Caller: We have spent much in making a creation that will revolutionise the concept of gaming but unfortunately we do not have anyone brave enough to test it. That is why we are willing to offer you a chance to be amongst the first beta testers of world conquers online.
------ Tien Fei: I'm not interested.
You then tried to turn off the phone this time but it wouldn't turn off.
----- Caller: really? This is quite surprising because I have felt that a man in your situation would have been very appreciated of this gesture.
------ Tien Fei: (sneers) Why? Because it can solve my problems?
----- Caller: Because it can help you redefine your fate Mr Tien Fei. Think about it did you lose in life because you lacked talent? Did you lose because you failed at what you do? No my friend you lost because your world operates on obscure and unfair rules that give no quarter to those on the wrong side of it. However I am offering you a second chance to start anew. A chance to fight on a field that is not dominated by these damned rules. To grow an entire civilization by your own effort and most importantly to be part of something far greater than yourself. Now you can choose to reject my invitation and continue with your life as it has been but we both know that you are already at rock bottom anyways. So what's wrong with going a little lower?
The caller then hung up the phone and 3 minutes later a delivery man walked into your doors and gave you a box which had an ash coloured book with a keyhole in the cover and a smaller box inside. When you opened the smaller box, it had a golden key that you quickly guessed was supposed to go into the keyhole in the cover. You figured that since you were ready to die anyways there was no harm in indulging the developers of this game so you took a glass of water, plugged the key into the keyhole and turned it clockwise with a smile. The book simply turned blood red but aside from that it did not do anything else so you simply tossed it on the desk and ignored it.
What you did not know at that time was that later that night while you were sound asleep the first page of the hell you unlocked opened and drew in your soul like a butcher drawing a pig to the slaughterhouse.
The mysterious book and the golden key, who else would it drag into its trap?