Chapter 2: Actually I’m a Male Model
Huaixu refers to the summer season, also another name for the fourth month in the lunar calendar.
Chu Huaixu’s birthday fell on the first day of the fourth lunar month, hence the name.
He was currently playing a game called Borrowed Sword.
It was 2045 now, and as a young person born after 2020, in this era of ever-advancing technology, all he needed to do was stick that wired patch onto his temple, close his eyes, and he’d be plunged into a hyper-realistic game world.
In these days, novels about transmigration had become outdated, because the phenomenon of world-hopping was no longer rare.
For many people, these kinds of games were basically equivalent to transmigration.
The difference was that real-world laws still applied, and each game had its own rules to restrict player behavior.
In some games with high freedom, you could even marry and have children with NPCs or other players, ensuring every step was fully realized.
As gaming evolved to this stage, the “paid-to-play” industry had undergone a certain transformation.
Early paid-to-play services might’ve just involved playing together and chatting via voice.
At most it skirted the edge—maybe some flirtatious talk or a few moans.
Anything beyond that required real-world meetups.
But by 2045, games were so realistic you truly felt present. With high degrees of freedom, paid-to-play began to resemble male and female models clocking in to work in-game.
Or you could even say it resembled what years ago became popular as... local tour guides?
Except now the “tour” was in a game world.
Chu Huaixu was one such top-tier paid-to-play model.
He floated among female guild leaders, consistently earning five‑star ratings, sometimes even getting pampered—and that took skill.
Fortunately, he stayed on the up and up, using his talents for work and diligently modeling in-game.
Had he done the same in real life, he’d be labeled a gold-digging scoundrel.
Right now, he was bored and decided to try his luck by “opening” a new account in Borrowed Sword.
The game adopted the blind-box concept from large gambling companies, so game accounts had a similar “random‑luck” nature.
Every account had to be purchased.
After “opening” it, what kind of starting scenario you’d get, which newbie village you’d appear in, what initial quests you’d receive... it was all unknown.
Although the game maintained balance at the start and didn’t hand out overpowered beginnings, preferences varied among players.
Besides, the game had launched five years ago, so veteran players knew the best openings—and some were more desirable.
For guilds with deep pockets, buying already opened accounts was more efficient than rolling blind-boxes for establishment.
Thus, some new accounts could be resold for profit, and “opening” accounts gradually became a trend.
Chu Huaixu had a habit: every month at the start, he would “open” three new accounts.
He had good luck and made a bit of money doing it.
More importantly, he had steady clients among female guild admins—prime account buyers. One treated him like a treasure and offered prices above market value.
And today’s account should fetch a good price.
Because as soon as he logged in, he was being chased by a stubbled man and carried a large amount of silver notes—clear signs of a “main‑line intensive” character.
“Early main‑line quests are obvious, and many guilds love to buy these accounts,” Chu Huaixu knew well.
Yet who could’ve expected that today, immediately after logging in, he encountered a problem.
—He couldn’t log out!
“That makes no sense.” Chu Huaixu was baffled.
He’d played Borrowed Sword for so long and knew how stable the game was.
Everything in Borrowed Sword was top-notch—the experience was stellar, and it was one of the highest‑reputation games.
How high? Even the “planner’s mother” was still honored by many players.
Unlike other games, no matter how many moms the planner had, it wasn't enough for players to hate them.
This was the first time Chu Huaixu had encountered such a serious issue: he couldn’t quit the game.
Worse, many game functions seemed unusable.
Even basic functions.
For example, he couldn’t listen to music while playing.
“The brightness toggle still works.”
Earlier, he swiped up with two fingers and the world in his eyes brightened—a brightness adjustment.
“But why did the pain‑sensitivity dial disappear too?” Chu Huaixu muttered in frustration.
He pinched himself hard and winced in pain.
“No way! That’s definitely 100% pain!” he realized in shock.
In Borrowed Sword, the maximum adjustable pain sensitivity was only 8%.
Most players set it very low. Only those with certain tastes would raise it higher.
Many even pocketed it near zero.
Given the game’s freedom—mentioned before, complete with marriage and childbirth—players could actually achieve “painless childbirth.”
“But this amount of pain is too weird.” Chu Huaixu frowned.
The game’s pain cap was 8%—this exceeded all logic.
He looked at the corpse of the stubbled man on the ground and gasped.
“So if I’d slipped before and got slashed, wouldn’t the pain have exploded?”
“If this bug existed, how many players would quit?” Chu Huaixu could easily imagine.
He checked all his game functions and found he could use very few.
He couldn’t even contact AI customer support.
Mind you, that AI had been trained by him for a long time, shaped to his preferences.
Even more bizarrely, he could still check the in-game time—he knew the Borrowed Sword timeline had arrived at Xuanli 1997.
But now, checking “time” showed Xuanli 1990!
“This is freaking ridiculous!”
“Is the game crashing?”
Rain pounded as Chu Huaixu stood beneath his oil-paper umbrella on the forest path, increasingly unsettled.
After consuming many novels, anime, and films, he considered himself well-versed in gaming scenarios...
“Could it be I’ve actually transmigrated into Borrowed Sword?”
He opened his “character panel” to view his basic info.
Then he noticed something was wrong in the template section.
His template was marked not as “Player” but... “NPC”!
In that moment, Chu Huaixu felt like the sky had fallen.
“Damn it! I worked so hard to cozy up to wealthy guild ladies, applied so much care being a model, earned second place on the Borrowed Sword top-paid list, and I haven’t even spent the saved money!”
“I had a session booked tonight with Sister Yun.”
“This light‑voiced mature beauty, married and separated from her husband (‘married–semi‑widow’ status), messaged me at midnight yesterday about gaming tomorrow night—obvious upsell!”
Chu Huaixu couldn’t help bowing his head: “Shit!”
...
The sound of the night rain irritated him.
Under the oil-paper umbrella, Chu Huaixu grew even more irritable.
He walked to the stubbled man’s corpse and slowly crouched beside it.
—Then he lifted his hand and slapped it!