Clicking on the time at the bottom right corner of the computer screen, the system's calendar popped up, showing it was already Sunday. Bai Zhongqi couldn't help but let out a long, lazy sigh, talking to himself, "This Thanksgiving holiday really is short. Feels like I haven't done anything, and it's already ending."
Now 25 years old, Bai Zhongqi lives in San Francisco, United States—an average North American international student. After finishing his undergraduate studies in his home country, he moved to the University of San Francisco (USF) across the ocean to scrape together a master's degree in economics.
Bai Zhongqi is quite laid back, indulgent in his laziness, and even lacks any particular grand ambitions. Going abroad was even arranged by his family; it was during the summer before his junior year of college that his mother told him that having a master's degree from abroad would give him a competitive edge in job hunting back home.
Without much desire to join the workforce so promptly, Bai Zhongqi earnestly took the TOEFL and GRE, packed up two large suitcases—even including pots and pans stuffed in by his mother—and made his way to San Francisco.
At first glance, Bai Zhongqi might seem like the typical 'mama's boy,' but that wasn't actually the case. Beneath his slackened and seemingly kind and pure exterior, he was a person with firm convictions. This young man, who was already in the latter half of his twenties, was precociously mature, so much so that he lacked interest in the realities of life.
To him, society was like a sticky web where, no matter how much he struggled, he couldn't break free. Self-satisfied successful people, the disgruntled low rungs of society—in the somewhat indifferent eyes of Bai Zhongqi, there was no difference between them. The times had never changed because of these people's actions, and the saddest part was being no different from them.
Acquiring a fancy diploma, leveraging his family's modest connections, he could become a small-time civil servant or secure a permanent position in an enterprise or public institution. In his mother's eyes, his life would be stable, and to others, it would seem prestigious.
As for what her son truly wanted, his mother would think that he was still young, not understanding the experience of those who had gone before. Rather than letting him suffer setbacks for years, it was better to pave a glorious path for him early on.
After all this resignation, what did Bai Zhongqi actually like?
Stars, the ocean, anything seemingly boundless and full of endless potential—those were his favorites. As a child, he loved astronomy; while his classmates were spending fifty cents on instant noodles with flashy cartoon character cards, he saved up ten yuan to buy what the so-called planetarium touted as nebula photographs.
During his middle school years, Bai Zhongqi began to develop a passion for the military, loved navy models, and was immersed in military-related games.
After moving abroad, Bai Zhongqi experienced much more freedom. While many international students found it troublesome to leave behind a familiar system and to deal with setting up phone plans, installing Wi-Fi, and managing all sorts of visa documents, these things did not stress Bai Zhongqi.
He was a very organized person, with a clear-minded approach to tasks that seemed completely perplexing to others, he could disentangle the complexities and complete them thoroughly. With his somewhat controlling mother out of the picture, Bai Zhongqi was free to enjoy many things he liked.
For instance, he could display several navy warship and Gundam models at home, or squat in front of the computer playing some rather time-consuming and effort-intensive strategy games.
Unlike many of his classmates who were passionate about eSports games, Bai Zhongqi, who preferred a slower pace and sought a more immersive ownership experience, loved certain strategy management games.
He couldn't resist Paradox Interactive's major titles, held a preference for the Civilization series, and even in RTS games, he could accumulate a massive number of units, arranging them for aesthetics rather than quickly completing missions.
"Didn't write the thesis over the break, I'll probably have to crank it out the day before it's due. Anyway, I'm not in the mood to write that thing right now, better to play some games," Bai Zhongqi thought, pursing his lips and scratching around his mouth and chin with his fingers, then clicked open an icon on the desktop that resembled the stars and the sea.
This game was Bai Zhongqi's favorite for some time, named "Galaxy Domination Guide." Coming across this game was entirely by chance; Bai Zhongqi found this indie game in a not particularly famous gaming forum's Star Battle section, available for free download with hardly any replies. Curious because it took up a sizeable amount of hard disk space, Bai Zhongqi downloaded the game.
Once the game was downloaded and installed, Bai Zhongqi opened it and was initially somewhat disappointed because the graphics were not as expected. Nevertheless, considering it was an indie game, it wouldn't support ultra-high-quality graphics with a powerful game engine. But soon after, Bai Zhongqi was hooked.
This game, under its mediocre graphics, had incredible core content: it was an interstellar warfare strategy game about developing technology, managing star regions, assembling interstellar fleets, and ultimately dominating the galaxy and the universe.
The controls were simple and intuitive, but the game offered an almost infinite universe, detailed and accurate technology entries, and a plethora of interesting spontaneous events. Thus, this game completely took over almost all of Bai Zhongqi's free time.
In the beginning, Bai Zhongqi set the game difficulty to the lowest, named his dynasty "Iridium Star United Empire," chose a golden three-pronged lightning bolt as the emblem, and started his exploration of the universe within the game.
Due to his good luck, the Iridium Star United Empire's stellar system and its surroundings had rich resources, as well as rivals that were neither too strong nor too weak, allowing the United Empire to develop quickly.