Scene One: The Gates of Castle

1.Lu Mingfei

Lu Mingfei helplessly typed "GG" (which stands for "Good Game", a gesture of acknowledging defeat in competitive gaming) on the screen, then switched out of the game. The last scene displayed was of twelve human cruisers focusing their impressive Yamato cannons and firing, turning his hive into a pool of blood.

He lost today's sixth game, with a win-loss ratio of 0 to 6. This time, he managed to hold on until 22 minutes and 23 seconds before being defeated, but he was ultimately defeated. His opponent had excellent micro-control and was using humans, whose machine gunners are a terrifying unit in this game. Their shooting speed is almost instantaneous; they fire as soon as they draw their guns and retreat as soon as they sheath them. Lu Mingfei's "puppies" couldn't keep up, being taken out one by one on the way.

In the public chat channel, his opponent was chatting animatedly, "You don't necessarily have to bring out tanks against Zergs. Top players hardly do. Just start spamming units. A massive mix of Marines and Medivacs to push forward, combining attack and elimination.Keep the pressure on their 'puppies' until they can't upgrade their speed, and they can only keep producing units to wear you down. Their Hydralisks can't form up? You win. Then, the cruiser formation takes the field, and that's overwhelming..."

Lu Mingfei could imagine the guy's smug expression. Lu Mingfei didn't make a sound, switched to QQ, and saw that the profile picture of the girl with the baseball cap was still gray, motionless. She wasn't online, and he had waited in vain again. He scratched his head, feeling a bit disappointed. Another profile picture, however, popped up; it was a rather smug-looking panda.

"You're pretty good at Zergs, bro. Let's try again next time!" The panda was the guy who had beaten him, "You were just lacking in micro-control. Your tactical awareness is good."

"Alright," said Lu Mingfei.

The panda logged off proudly, and Lu Mingfei stuck out his tongue at the screen. If his opponent had seen Lu Mingfei's control, he probably wouldn't be so smug and would only call him "weird" before leaving. Lu Mingfei didn't switch to a mouse; he used the red dot control on the old IBM laptop. Everyone knows how hard it is to play competitive games with a red dot controller, like trying to clean your ears with a rolling pin. But Lu Mingfei couldn't be bothered to emphasize to the guy that he was just bored and challenging himself with a high difficulty level because even he thought it was pretty pointless. After all, he thought it was boring himself, and if one day he could manage to play the entire channel with just the red dot controller, what else would he do to pass the time?

Why bother? Why bother indeed? Sometimes he would say this to himself. Always waiting, always watching an old game, but she rarely logged in.

"One box of discounted milk, half a pound of Guangdong sausage, and the new issue of 'Most Novel' that Mingsze wanted. Come back quickly after you buy them, and remove the celery from the table! Also, go to the post office to see if there are any letters from America! Still playing games? You don't care about your own business at all. If nobody recruits you, do you think you can get into a first-tier university? We've spent so much money on you, what's the use?" His aunt's voice thundered from next door.

Lu Mingfei felt his head buzz, and he hurriedly agreed, running out the door. The corridor was quiet, and he leaned against the door, listening to his aunt's endless complaints inside. The afternoon sunlight streamed in from the end of the corridor, warming his body. The corridor was filled with freshly hung white bedsheets, and the wind outside rustled the verdant leaves, creating a swishing sound.

It was spring again, and Lu Mingfei was eighteen years old.

He lived with his uncle and aunt, and had a cousin named Lu Mingsze, who attended the local prestigious private high school. Tuition was expensive, the teachers were stern, luxury cars were as common as water, and beautiful girls were as abundant as clouds. In three months and four days, he would have to take the college entrance examination. These days, the whole world seemed to be roaring in his ears, telling him that the end was near, and he should muster his fighting spirit, like a fierce rooster, and plunge into the mock exam papers, showing the determination to hang his head on the beams and stab his thighs with cones.

But the more pressure he faced, the lazier Lu Mingfei became. Besides playing the old game 'StarCraft', he would just lie in bed staring at the ceiling, showing no interest in his own future.

As a person who barely existed, his laziness was understandable.

Lu Mingfei hadn't seen his parents for over six years. The good news was that they were reportedly still alive and would write him letters every six months. The bad news was that each time, his mother would regretfully inform him that their plan to visit him was postponed again because "something new came up with the work." His parents were both archaeologists, busy with a major project that would shock the world once announced, similar to how Sven Hedin discovered the ancient city of Loulan. When Lu Mingfei was in junior high, he was proud to have such parents, read many books on archaeology, and eagerly discussed them with his friends on the way home from school. But soon he realized that the ones who should be proud were the brothers who had their parents pick them up after school. Whenever school was over, a group of students would stroll down the street casually, taking up almost half the road. Behind them, the sound of car horns would repeatedly ring out, and then someone in the group would immediately rein in their casual stride and obediently get into their family car and leave. The group gradually thinned out until usually only Lu Mingfei was left, still walking casually forward.

Brothers looking out from the car window would see Lu Mingfei's carefree figure kicking stones as he walked away, and they would feel very envious, envying his freedom to go anywhere he wanted, to shop in malls, buy food, or even play pool, since his family was lenient and never picked him up after school. But in reality, when Lu Mingfei was alone, he didn't go to malls or play pool. After getting bored in the internet cafe, he would go home, not enter the house but crawl through the iron railing to the roof, sit next to the buzzing air conditioner, and gaze at the city until the sun set.

Lu Mingfei felt like his parents were superheroes who would suddenly appear in front of him when the plane he was on crashed, safely landing it. If not for that, they were always busy with the world, not for him, Lu Mingfei. Superhero parents are great for bragging about, but in reality, it was almost as if they didn't exist. Lu Mingfei could barely remember his parents' faces, only occasionally when looking at old photos in his living room could he vaguely recall that man and woman, and their old house covered in ivy.

His uncle and aunt were more interested in the money his parents sent from abroad than in Lu Mingfei himself. Thanks to that money, Lu Mingfei could attend that private high school, and also thanks to that money, his uncle and aunt could buy a small-displacement BMW, his uncle could buy some well-faked designer goods, and his aunt could lose money at mahjong. Also, thanks to that money, his cousin Lu Mingsze had the nickname "Prince Mingsze" at school. Lu Mingsze attended the same high school as Lu Mingfei, had better grades, dressed more elegantly, and whenever there was a girl to pay for a meal, he would rush to pay. His uncle and aunt would even dress up specially to attend Lu Mingsze's parent-teacher meetings, making it seem like Mingsze was a child raised in a honey-filled jar, while Lu Mingfei was just "Lu Mingsze's brother."

Lu Mingfei wasn't too bothered by it, after all, he was someone who barely existed.

Even his parents didn't care about him, what higher expectations could he have of his uncle and aunt?

Lu Mingfei stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked at the ground with a tilted head as he walked downstairs. On the way, he stopped by the convenience store, bought the powdered milk and Guangdong sausages that his aunt wanted, then wandered over to the bookstall and bought a new issue of "Most Novel." His aunt thought Lu Mingsze was smart, fond of reading, and aspired to improve himself, and especially loved literature. From her perspective, Lu Mingsze reading "Most Novel" was "our Mingze studying." Every time the magazine released a new issue, his aunt knew before Lu Mingfei did, hurrying him to buy it, making the old newspaper vendor downstairs think Lu Mingfei was a melancholic child. But in reality, Lu Mingfei was quite cunning; he would finish reading the new issue of "Household Computers and Games" while leaning at the newspaper stall, then toss it back and openly criticize how "Household Games" was getting worse and worse, patting his butt and leaving.

Lu Mingfei was a bit mischievous. For example, he didn't like Lu Mingsze, but he always visited Mingsze's secret QQ space. Lu Mingsze, feeling sentimental after reading "Most Novel," picked the pen name "Lonely Boa" for himself, copied many sad sentences into his QQ space, and paired them with his own mobile phone selfies. Occasionally, he would upload some photos pretending to have cuts on his wrists with red ink, accompanied by poems that indicated that without love, one should die. Lu Mingfei knew his cousin was feeling lovesick at school and hadn't yet wooed the girl of his dreams, so he wanted to encounter some thunderbolt romance on QQ. So he applied for a new QQ account with the name "Sunset Marks" and paired it with a photo of a short-haired cute lolita, filled in the age as 16, the gender as female, and the personal signature as "Let your smile and sadness become marks of my life." Whenever Lu Mingsze was online at home, he would sneak into the internet cafe to chat with "Lonely Boa." After a few exchanges, Lu Mingsze probably thought this boa snake had finally found its food, and he was willing to let his smile and sadness become the marks of this girl's life, so he was very happy every day, singing the song "Li Ge" by Xie Yue, repeatedly asking to meet, wanting to start something grand. Lu Mingfei would always arrange to meet when his aunt was taking Lu Mingsze to learn piano, so Lu Mingsze would never see "Sunset Marks." When he was singing "Li Ge," he also sang with a slightly melancholic tune. This was the happiest thing that had happened to Lu Mingfei these days.

Lu Mingfei was just such a person, neither great nor particularly bad, living to eighteen without knowing where his future lay.

"Mingfei, they say you're going abroad to study, huh?" The newspaper vendor suddenly brought this up as Lu Mingfei was flipping through a free copy of "Household Games."

"Not really, just applied, who would want me?" Lu Mingfei replied nonchalantly.

"Studying abroad is good, and when you come back, you'll be a 'sea turtle' (a Chinese term for someone who returns from studying abroad), earning lots of money."

"I don't want to earn lots of money. If I can't get into college, I'll come help you run this stall, and you give me enough money to buy some PS2 discs, and that'll be enough."

"You're hopeless, making money at a stall is tough, it's because I'm old."

Lu Mingfei rolled his eyes to look at the sunlight casting shadows in the greenery overhead, "It's pretty nice, I can bask in the sun, daydream when no one's around, and even have passing beauties to look at."

This topic really depressed Lu Mingfei. He had indeed applied to universities in the United States, but not because he was so outstanding; everyone had different ways of evaluating his grades. His homeroom teacher sighed deeply when looking at his grades from the previous semester, saying, "Lu Mingfei, do you realize how much you've dragged down our class average?" His aunt told his uncle that Mingsze's good grades were due to the family genes, and looking at his family genes, it was clear they were not good! Only Lu Mingsze still comforted him a bit, but it was on QQ, where Lu Mingsze tactfully said to him, "Sunset, who cares about bad grades? Follow your own path; that's what someone like us should do! Anyway, in my eyes, you're a good girl!"

However, it was his aunt who had the clever idea to suggest studying abroad and pushed Lu Mingfei to fill out the application forms, even generously paying the application fees for each school. His aunt had her own logic; among Lu Mingfei's grades, only his English was decent, and he got lucky when taking the TOEFL with his English-mad classmate, scoring well. Given Lu Mingfei's grades, it was unlikely to get into a first-tier university, and now it was popular to forgo domestic exams and study abroad. Applying would be an attempt, and if he got lucky and received an admission notice from a U.S. university, it would account for his parents' sacrifices and the money they sent him every month. That way, his aunt would be relieved; she had already prepared the narrative that "only those who endure hardship can rise above others," and Lu Mingfei, if he truly went abroad successfully, should not be too delicate, always running back to China during winter and summer vacations. He should work part-time and study English there. In short, whatever he did, he should not let his aunt see him across the ocean. As for tuition, that was a minor matter; the money would come from the sheep's back, and he could ask his parents for more money in his letters. His aunt guessed that his parents, having made money abroad over the years, should have plenty of it, since she checked their remittance account, which was a Citi Bank custodial account. That account didn't require manual operation; as long as it was set up with the bank, checks would be sent out automatically every month. This way, Lu Mingfei's parents would have to deposit a large sum of money into that account once, with monthly scheduled payments.

Actually, Lu Mingfei knew his aunt had another idea. Although Lu Mingsze's grades were slightly better than Lu Mingfei's, they were not top-notch and couldn't get into prestigious schools like Tsinghua or Peking University, which his aunt often mentioned. If they could study abroad and waive the exams, it would also be a good idea, appearing to keep up with trends. But going to college was a lifelong commitment, and his aunt couldn't bear to see Lu Mingsze take such a risk. After much thought, she probably recalled some famous quote about "the arduous path must be paved with brave feet" and thought to use Lu Mingfei's bravery to pave the way for Mingsze. If he failed, it wouldn't matter; it would indicate that the path was impassable, and Lu Mingfei could take a year longer to take the college entrance exam with his cousin.

However, an arduous path is not paved with just courage; one also needs some skills. Lu Mingfei's skills were probably limited to playing "StarCraft," but unfortunately, there was no competitive gaming major in the United States. Lu Mingfei had already received several rejection letters, all starting with:

"Dear Applicant,

Thank you for your interest in our academy; however, we regret to inform you..."

His aunt was very upset about those application fees. She spent hundreds of dollars on application fees, only to receive these repeated thanks from those Americans, which made her unhappy with her role as a do-gooder. But Lu Mingfei remained calm and composed, showing an unusually peaceful attitude, only squeezing a sad expression out of habit when receiving each rejection letter to avoid disappointing his aunt.

He calculated the number of schools he had applied to, and there was only one that hadn't responded to him yet, and that was "University of Chicago," one of the top-ranked schools.

"Is there any mail for me?" Lu Mingfei peeked into the post office entrance and asked, pronouncing the English name, "Mingfei Lu."

"Yes, from America," the guard threw out a letter.

Lu Mingfei felt the envelope and knew it was probably another rejection letter; the ones that accepted you usually came with a thick stack of forms and brochures. Last year, a boy from their school who got accepted carried those papers arrogantly to the table and impatiently said in front of the envious gazes of the girls that there were so many materials, how could he possibly fill them all out? He asked his dad to get him a typewriter to tap them out!

Lu Mingfei tore open the envelope, and the letter was surprisingly written in Chinese:

"Dear Mr. Lu Mingfei,

Thank you for your interest in the University of Chicago. However, we regret to inform you that you did not meet the admissions criteria of the University of Chicago.

But we often say, there is always another choice.

Let me first introduce myself. The School of the Americas is a private university located in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. It is a sister school to the University of Chicago, and every year we jointly organize interscholastic competitions such as equestrianism, rowing, hot air ballooning, and swimming in Michigan. In addition, there is a broader range of academic exchanges.

We are honored to have received your application from the University of Chicago and, after a thorough evaluation of your resume and transcripts, we believe you meet the admission standards of our school. Therefore, we are pleased to extend an invitation to you. In addition, your outstanding performance in biology has attracted the attention of Professor Goodrian of our school. He wishes to allocate $36,000.00 annually from his research fund to you as a scholarship for your studies at our school. This scholarship would cover all your tuition and living expenses for four years of university.

Please contact Professor Goodrian as soon as possible upon receiving this letter. He is currently on an academic visit to China and would be very interested in meeting you.

If you decide to accept our invitation, please contact me via email for all travel and accommodation arrangements. We will arrange everything for you. I am Nora Louns, the secretary of the School of the Americas, and it is my pleasure to serve you.

Sincerely,

Nora"

Lu Mingfei put down the letter and stared blankly at the ceiling, thinking he had seen the exchange rate of the U.S. dollar to the Chinese yuan online; it was 6.83. So 36,000 dollars a year would be 245,880 yuan, enough to buy 61,470 pirated PS2 game discs, 8,196 World of Warcraft point cards, or 64 Nokia N96 phones that he had been eyeing for a long time. Most of his classmates in his class had phones, and Lu Mingsze also had one. His aunt said it was a reward for Lu Mingsze for coming in third in the class last semester, so she didn't buy one for Lu Mingfei.

He was a bit confused; the beginning of the letter was standard and seemed like a scam, but then it suddenly jumped from hell to heaven. Before that "but we often say, there is always another choice..." it was gloomy, but after that, it was bright and cheerful. Equestrianism, rowing, hot air ballooning, swimming, a prestigious private college, and a generous scholarship. The tone of the school secretary was as warm and gentle as a female guide in an international luxury brand store. Lu Mingfei didn't know what merit he had that he was offered such a scholarship. He even became suspicious that "Sunset Marks" might be exposed, and Lu Mingsze might be retaliating against him. Looking at the stamp on the envelope, however, it didn't seem fake; he could recognize the stamp of Illinois, USA.

He shook the envelope; besides the neatly printed letter, there was nothing else inside. He was convinced that this was a scam; the letter asked him to contact Professor Goodrian immediately, but there wasn't even a phone number given. Thinking this way, he felt a bit easier.

"Sign here," the guard threw out another slip.

"Do I have to sign for a letter?" Lu Mingfei asked, puzzled.

"You also have a package with it, you need to sign," the guard replied.

Lu Mingfei signed absentmindedly and received a large FEDEX envelope with something hard inside. He tore it open, and inside was a pure black N96 phone. He began to feel that he needed to calm down; his head buzzed as if there were countless bees flying in it. He picked up the phone, and to his surprise, it still had a good charge. In the contacts list, there was only one contact, "Professor Goodrian."