Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 1160: Chapter 1058 “Veteran” Parachute Jumper_1 Chapter 1160: Chapter 1058 “Veteran” Parachute Jumper_1 “First step, power up.”

Xu Shenghan scans the complex equipment before him, finds a large red button, and presses hard.

The display in front of him and rows of buttons light up one after another.

“Next, cabin detachment…

let me find it, let me find it.”

As a loud noise rings non-stop in his ears and the escape pod constantly shakes, Xu Shenghan swiftly flips through pages of the manual with his index finger.

Luckily, the manual contains plenty of illustrations, which prevent him from getting completely confused.

“I found it, I found it.”

One hand holds the manual, and the other hand searches for buttons.

Fortunately, each button has Chinese markings on it, which reduces the difficulty for him substantially.

Overseas players will find the game really challenging only when they reach this point—

Daxia players only need to compare the diagrams in the manual to the buttons in front of them, while the overseas players have to cross-reference [diagram]-[diagram translation]-[button]-[button translation].

There are many buttons, to begin with, and the addition of System’s translation layer makes things even more confusing.

When the escape pod shakes, the buttons and translations shake too, making it even more head-spinning.

—Of course, there are exceptions.

Players like Turner who have passed the Chinese Proficiency Test due to Pacific Rim have it relatively easy.

They can play normally even with the translation turned off.

[Activate cabin detachment procedure]—[Start countdown]—[Switch to manual]—[Detach manually]—[Extend operation handle]—[Drive escape pod away].

An experienced astronaut can complete this process within a minute.

However, it took Xu Shenghan, who was playing this for the first time, a full 5 minutes to understand the instructions.

While operating the attitude control engine to emit propulsion gas, propelling the escape pod away from the Tiangong Space Station, the countdown on his wrist only had 2 minutes left.

Xu Shenghan could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

But then the escape pod made a sudden jerk while still in flight!

Xu Shenghan, who had hurriedly skipped fastening his safety belt, was instantly propelled from his seat.

He crashed head-first into the control panel!

With a loud bang, he shattered a display screen on the spot.

The skull, one of the hardest bones in the body, came out relatively unscathed except for a large bump and a tremendous amount of pain.

But the escape pod was in a dire condition!

While he was still clutching his head and wincing in pain, he saw the rapidly approaching Tiangong Space Station outside the porthole.

“?!”

He hastily pushed his control panel to sit back on the chair, reaching out to grab the handle.

However, another violent collision followed, flinging him out once again.

The solar panels of the escape pod instantly broke apart.

The entire escape pod was shot away, only to be pulled back by the sturdy parachute rope!

“Bang!”

The second collision.

Followed by a third, a fourth…

Inside the escape pod, Xu Shenghan felt as if he had fallen into a whirlpool washing machine.

He was being tossed around furiously, using his own bones to test the durability of the equipment in the escape pod.

He felt as if his bones were broken, his skull was cracked, and his blood had been transformed into small droplets floating inside the escape pod.

The lights in several devices that were originally on had gone out.

Instead, previously unlit warning lights began flashing red, and alarms were ringing incessantly.

“Bang!”

After another solid collision, Xu Shenghan’s vision went black…

When he regained his sight, he was in the state of consciousness following perma-death.

Several seconds of silence later, he solemnly advised his live-streamer community:

“Guys, always fasten your seatbelt before you drive!”

Of course, after respawning, he didn’t immediately fasten his seatbelt.

Instead, he pulled out a red “Emergency Failure Troubleshooting Manual” and looked for instructions on how to uninstall the parachute.

Even though the countdown only had 7 minutes left, he couldn’t proceed without uninstalling the parachute…

*

Meanwhile, William had successfully removed the parachute on his end.

However, he wasn’t in a hurry to get back into the cabin.

Instead, he was hovering outside the space station, carefully coiling up the opened parachute for recovery.

Luckily, although the parachute was tangled up in many places, there wasn’t a single tear.

It could be recycled completely!

No rushing into how to use it, William went back to the escape pod with a large bundle of parachutes.

After closing the hatch, he hurriedly started flipping through the manual.

“Parachuting is a bit tricky if you want to get it right the first time.”

“So we need to start the escape pod, go to a relatively safe position to establish a checkpoint.

This way, if we fail, we can repeatedly attempt the challenge.”

However, as a lover of extreme sports, his safety awareness is much stronger than Xu Shenghan.

The first thing he did when he got in was to buckle his safety belt, giving it a hard tug to make sure he was securely strapped to the seat.

Even if spaceflying isn’t the same as driving on Earth, it wasn’t difficult to simply push the escape pod away from the space station and slightly closer to Earth.

He successfully moved the escape pod away from the debris before the countdown reached zero.

The rest of the work was simple – put on the spacesuit, securely fasten the parachute rope to the spacesuit, then grab the parachute, exit the compartment, and when it feels about right, make the jump!

It’s all straightforward and brutal!

William didn’t overthink it, and none of the viewers objected.

They were all –

“Go, go, go!”

“Yes, yes, yes!”

“Charge, charge, charge!”

It was only when he really jumped that the viewers began to laugh uncontrollably.

Seeing the screen filled with “hahaha” comments, William was a bit puzzled:

“What’s up?”

A viewer sent a conspicuous message:

[Anchor, what was your maximum falling speed when you parachuted in the past?]

William blinked his eyes: “Before the parachute is opened, 50 something meters per second?

What’s up?”

The viewer continued to ask: [Do you know what is the world record for parachuting speed on earth?]

William recalled, “I remember, there was a tough guy from Austria who parachuted from the stratosphere and came back alive.

His fastest falling speed reached supersonic, exceeding 340 meters per second.”

As expected from a professional extreme sports superstar, William answered a question that the majority of the viewers couldn’t answer after some thought.

However, he was still oblivious to any potential issues.

Until the same viewer asked via a conspicuous message for the third time –

[One last question: Do you know what your current velocity is?]

“???” William was momentarily stunned.

His first reaction was: Didn’t I just start falling from a stationary state?

Now it is…

2 meters per second?

But he quickly realized –

That’s not right!

He felt motionless and slow because he was with the space station and escape pod in the same inertial system.

But considering his plan to parachute back to Earth, he should use the Earth as the reference to calculate his speed!

“Using the Earth as a reference, what is my speed?”

William just asked himself absentmindedly, but viewers instantly gave the answer:

[7680 meters!

Per second!]

After feeling like this wasn’t enough, they added: [Approximately 23 Mach.]

“!!!” William widened his eyes in shock, “Mach??”

“23 times the speed of sound?!”

“Why are you mentioning this now?!”

The viewers couldn’t hold back anymore:

“Hahaha, you were the one who wanted to jump, who can you blame?”

“If we had told you earlier, what if you didn’t want to jump?”

“It’s just 23 times the speed of sound, right?

Any athlete can handle it, let alone you, as a professional you should be able to deal with it without a problem!”

“The world record was set in Austria, William, aren’t you envious?

Your chance to steal that glory is right in front of you!”

…

“I…” Williams’s scalp tingled, “Is this really a chance?”

“By the time I land, wouldn’t I be just ashes?!”