“Honkai Impact 3rd: Sky Railway”, the name of a virtual world, sounds both strange and familiar. It is like a mirror, reflecting the desires and emptiness of each player, forcing us to face the most reluctant part of our hearts. For many people, the reset of the first recharge reward in 2025 is not just a consumption behavior in the virtual world. It symbolizes a deeper psychological pursuit, such as the desire for the future, the pursuit of vanity, and even the escape from the gap that cannot be filled in real life.
I have always felt that the greatest pain in life is the pursuit of “illusion”. Those seemingly abundant virtual rewards are like floating clouds in the sky, beautiful but not real. Whenever the “first recharge” reward is reset, the anxiety of players is aroused, and they invest money and time in an attempt to grasp the happiness that seems to be within reach. And what can this happiness bring us? Can it really fill the emptiness in our hearts? Are we also unconsciously burying ourselves in this endless consumption?
Every reset seems to make us start from scratch and find our direction again in this virtual starry sky. However, every beginning will eventually come to an end. When can we stop this meaningless pursuit? This time, it seems to be just like everything in the past, it is still a temporary temptation in the virtual world. You spend and get rewards, but you are still empty and helpless, as if every penny is reminding you that happiness has never been so far away.
This reminds me of a question that often bothers me-why do people always pursue illusions? The reset mechanism in “Honkai Impact 3: Sky Railway” actually allows players to invest repeatedly through this design. Behind the seemingly “reward”, we are just trapped in an invisible net. Every time the player recharges, he not only provides support for the characters in the game, but also supplements a certain need in his heart. We are eager to obtain those virtual props that make us seem less ordinary, and we are eager to have more Menghua fragments to prove our value in this virtual world. But the question is, can such value really bring us spiritual satisfaction?
Everyone has an unfillable hole in their heart, and the virtual world just provides a space to temporarily fill this hole. You may get a huge number of rewards from it, or even get resources that other players can’t match, but all of this is just to satisfy a superficial need, and the real spiritual emptiness still exists. That feeling of emptiness still lurks in every detail of your daily life. When you walk out of the virtual world and return to real life, you will find that you are still lost and still can’t find your true meaning.
I once talked to a friend about the phenomenon of people consuming in the virtual world. He told me, “I don’t spend money for items, but for some kind of inner satisfaction.” This is an answer that I can’t forget for a long time. In the virtual world, people pay a lot of time and money to get more rewards, but what can these things get in exchange? A powerful character, or a game that is about to end? Or does it give us a so-called “perfect life” that allows us to temporarily forget the bitterness and helplessness in reality?
In any case, consumption in the virtual world cannot be separated from real life after all. By depositing in the game, we get more rewards. It seems that we are getting more material things, but this is actually like a compensation for things that we can’t have in life. You may get some external glory, but you can never satisfy your deep inner needs. Just like we treat the deposit rewards in the virtual world, each of us has a “reward hole” in our hearts that can never be filled.
However, I must admit that in this process, I have also developed an obsession with the rewards in the virtual world. Every time the deposit reward is reset, I always feel a strange attraction, as if I am also participating in a game, striving for that short-term sense of superiority. You will feel that you have gained some advantages and surpassed those players who have no deposit, and this sense of transcendence gives you a temporary sense of accomplishment. This psychological satisfaction may be the most addictive part.
But just like the reset in “Honkai Impact: Star Dome Railway”, everything will always have a new beginning. Every time the deposit reward is reset, you will walk into this trap again, and at the end of this trap, nothing will be left except the money and time you paid. You may get more rewards, but how much real value can these rewards bring to you?
So, I want to say that the virtual world’s stored value reward reset is at best a short-term satisfaction, and it does not change the emptiness deep in our hearts. What we are chasing is not just those rewards, but a sense of emptiness that we don’t want to face. Have you ever thought about what you can get from it when you finish this consumption and stop? Perhaps you can find that the most unfillable emptiness in this world is not how much you consume, but the desire in your heart that can never be satisfied.