Zhang Ailing once said: “People live in the world to endure loneliness and long-term emptiness until they become habits.” And in this long wait and patience, we did a lot of things, as if to give an excuse for emptiness. And in this digital and virtual era, the game world has become the best place for all this-a place where you can temporarily forget loneliness and escape reality.

The first recharge reset of “Honkai Impact 3: Star Railway” came quietly against this background. It’s like giving those pioneers who are lost between virtuality and reality a fresh “beginning”, an opportunity to experience fatigue, doubt, and silence. But is this reset really a real “beginning”? Or is it just another transaction of lust, another kind of unfillable void?

The first reset: an agreement about escape and desire
When I first heard about this “recharge reset”, I was a little dazed. What is a reset? Is it the kind of opportunity to return to the starting point immediately after making a mistake? Is the reward after reset an illusory fantasy or a gamble to satisfy desires?

For some people, reset is a kind of redemption – a chance to start over. It’s like putting all your troubles, fatigue, and even loss into the virtual currency that symbolizes hope. But it’s like a fantasy marriage, full of flowers and vows on the surface, but there is no real connection behind it. Every time you invest a bit of money and time, those seemingly insignificant “rewards” will eventually become worthless after your repeated recharge resets. They are like a piece of glass that breaks with a slight touch, but the sound is more real than anything in reality.

Those self-evident loneliness
Who can explain why the virtual world attracts us so much? Perhaps it’s because it’s flawless, a place without too many constraints. There, you won’t be laughed at, despised, or have to face the loneliness that lingers all the time. Everything you do in this world is for instant satisfaction and a short-lived warmth. You deposit again and again, hoping to find your lost comfort and self-esteem from that “dream”-like reward. You hope to get a reward, and hope that everything can become perfect at the moment of pressing the button.

But in the end, you find that it is just a lonely carnival. Only you know how empty your heart is, so you throw yourself into this virtual world again and again. Those rewards and honors are just a poison for you to get rid of loneliness. They make you temporarily forget your lonely heart and the loneliness that no one understands. However, when these virtual satisfactions dissipate, you still find yourself standing in the same place, embracing those loneliness that cannot be placed.

Deposit and virtual transactions
I never believe in the “perfect transactions” given in the virtual world. They are like a silent contract, with countless unspeakable secrets buried behind them. Every deposit and every exchange is a transaction. But what is the meaning of that transaction? Behind it is money, time, desire, and endless desire. You gradually lose yourself under the pile of gold coins until you forget what you were pursuing in the first place.

If there were no such deposit rewards, would everything be simpler? However, as Zhang Ailing said: people’s hearts are full of desires for love, wealth, power, etc. This desire is like air, permeating every place, making the world hypocritical and empty. Aren’t the recharges and rewards in the game an amplification and interpretation of these desires? Every time we recharge, every time we refresh, we seem to be trading with ourselves, and the chips of that transaction are our emptiness and loneliness.

Reset in the game, cannot be reset in life
You may find that you can reset in the game, get rewards again, and meet challenges again. But what about life? Every mistake in life cannot be “reset”, you can never go back to that life node, all choices, all misses, are like a brand deeply engraved in your life. You can get virtual rewards from recharging again and again, but you can’t get real satisfaction from it. You can only face an unfillable void forever, and every choice in life makes you realize more clearly that you can’t escape or reset.

The final truth: What are we pursuing?
When you keep recharging and resetting in this virtual world, what are you pursuing in the end? Is it the character upgrade in the game, or the joy at a certain moment? But when all the stored rewards are exhausted, what do you have left? Yes, rewards can indeed give you short-term satisfaction, but how long can it last? As Zhang Ailing once said: “The farthest distance in the world is from the stranger passing by you to the person in your heart.” Are you lost in this virtual world for yourself, or are you escaping from the real you?

And what we desire most may not be rewards, or perhaps not money transactions. What we really desire is a kind of peace from the bottom of our hearts, a courage to reconcile with ourselves. And this courage will only gradually become clear when you go through the wind and rain and loneliness in reality.

Conclusion: Finding oneself through “reset”
Therefore, although “Honkai Impact 3rd” offers the temptation of “first deposit reward”, it cannot change the loneliness and emptiness in your heart. Resetting the virtual world cannot change the inevitable in your life. What we really need is a true “self-reset” – a courage to face loneliness and emptiness. And this kind of courage is what everyone should pursue most.