So Resilient

An hour and a half passed.

Shen Yan could no longer laugh.

It was goddamn painful.

The level design of Getting Over It was meticulous.

At first glance, it seemed unremarkable, but every segment had some angle deliberately designed to torment the player.

Extending the arm too far wouldn’t work, nor would keeping it too short.

Swinging too hard was a mistake, and moving the hammer too fast was just as bad…

In short, the slightest misstep would send the player tumbling back to the starting point.

Thanks to the deliberately sadistic control scheme, mistakes were practically inevitable, and mastering the mechanics wasn’t something that could be done quickly.

What’s worse, as the altitude increased, the illusion’s difficulty ramped up.

For example, Shen Yan’s hammer would suddenly become lighter or heavier, catching him completely off guard.

Later on, it might even grow or shrink in size—now that was just cruel.

Lu Ze called this "training reflexes."

As a result, the livestream’s atmosphere grew increasingly bizarre.

“Agh!”

“No…”

“Don’t!!!”

“Agh!!!”

…

The sounds he made began to resemble a certain infamous figure from Lu Ze’s past life.

The chat was flooded with sympathy.

[Shen, just give up…]

[This is too hard, too brutal…]

[What kind of sadist is this Lu Ze guy? Is he really from the righteous path?]

[Someone investigate him!]

…

“No… I’m fine!”

Shen Yan forced a smile.

He had no choice.

With so many people watching, he had to keep going, no matter how much it hurt.

The burdens of being an idol were heavy indeed.

By now, he had reached the Celestial Abyss Mountain section—

or, as it was known in the original game, Orange Mountain.

The sheer vertical cliffs meant that even the slightest miscalculation would send him plummeting.

Every step required meticulous angle adjustments, lest he slip and fall.

“I should hook here…”

The moment he swung, the hammer suddenly became much lighter.

The unexpected shift in weight made his swing far too forceful.

With a whoosh, Shen Yan was flung backward.

Luckily, he had fallen here enough times to control his landing, barely managing to crash onto a small floating pavilion.

Two more jumps, and he’d be back at Celestial Abyss Mountain.

“That was close…”

He let out a shaky breath.

Then, the cursed random weight system struck again—

His hammer abruptly became heavier.

Much heavier.

Shen Yan was already standing on the pavilion’s narrow, winding, and treacherously slippery steps.

The sudden weight yanked him downward, and before he could react—

Whoosh!

He slipped right off.

“???”

Panic seized him.

He flailed wildly, desperately trying to hook onto something—anything—midair.

But it was hopeless.

This spot was too precise.

Once you fell, it was a chain reaction of disaster.

“AAAAAAHHHH—!!!”

A scream unlike any before tore from Shen Yan’s throat.

Meanwhile, in another room outside the illusion, Lu Ze grinned like never before.

Shen Yan’s arms flailed uselessly as countless steps, pavilions, trees, and rocks blurred past him, rising upward in his vision.

He didn’t even get to hear the full line of “Come home often, come home often…”

Everything happened so fast.

“No… NO!!!”

His eyes widened in sheer terror and despair.

This feeling…

He had experienced it before.

Yes, in It Takes Four, more than once.

But for some reason,

in Getting Over It, the despair of starting from zero was so much worse.

THUD!

Shen Yan slammed into the ground.

Dazed, he looked around.

He was back.

Back in the painfully familiar valley.

A wave of desolation surged through him, and he roared in fury:

“GAIA—!!!!”

……

Outside the illusion.

“Ohoho, still holding on?”

Lu Ze clicked his tongue in amusement.

Most people would’ve rage-quit after falling from Orange Mountain, sliding all the way back to the starting point.

Yet this guy was already gearing up for another climb.

Truly, the Dao Heart of a righteous sect’s holy son was unshakable.

But the torture of being trapped in this "jar prison" was far worse than playing with a mouse on a computer.

After all, Lu Ze hadn’t just designed the mechanics—he’d also added special modifiers to encourage unexpected disasters.

The goal? Pure suffering.

Unlike It Takes Four, he hadn’t even included a death sequence upon failure.

Why?

Because death distracted from the frustration of failure.

“I failed, so I died.”

That was a natural conclusion.

Players would treat death as the punishment for failure, lessening the sting of defeat.

But keeping them alive? That was different.

So Lu Ze deliberately omitted death—just to maximize Shen Yan’s meltdown.

A few dozen or hundred points of demonic energy were nothing compared to system upgrades.

If the climb represented the "wealth" accumulated in-game, then falling was the process of watching that wealth slip away.

And the cruelest part?

Players had to witness every bit of their hard-earned progress vanish before their eyes.

That was psychological warfare.

Of course, It Takes Four had a similar design, but nowhere near as brutal.

Because in that game, players had three teammates.

First, the banter between friends softened the blow.

Second, knowing others were suffering alongside you made it easier to bear.

And most importantly—players could always blame their teammates.

But Getting Over It?

No distractions. No scapegoats.

Just pure, unfiltered despair.

“Hmm? Still going?”

Seeing the determination in Shen Yan’s eyes, Lu Ze raised an eyebrow.

He knew the guy was running on fumes.

The mission progress bar had already hit 80%.

One more big push, and even Shen Yan would crack.

And thinking about the snow mountain map beyond Celestial Abyss Mountain made Lu Ze grin even wider.

There, he had prepared a special trap just for Shen Yan.