Chapter 134 The Past 2

That night Ling Changye drove Xia Bai back home again. When he got home, the lights in the living room were on, but his parents had gone back to their bedroom.

Xia Bai walked very quietly, but he had a stupid teammate. When Erwa was happy, his voice was much louder than usual. "You're back! It's been a long time!"

The door to my parents' bedroom opened.

Xia Bai: “…”

Jiang Qingfeng said, "Even Erwa feels like it's been a long time. It's been almost four hours. Where have you been?"

"Only more than three hours, less than three and a half." Xia Bai corrected, and then said: "It takes two hours to watch a movie."

"That's right, how can it be a long time?" Jiang Yitong said, she looked at Xia Bai: "It just so happens that we have something to tell you."

Xia Bai seemed to realize something, "Are you going back?"

"Yes." Jiang Yitong said, "We need to confirm with you before we go back. You won't be playing games these days, right?"

"We won't be going these days." Xia Bai said, "Originally we were supposed to go once a week, but this time after we got out of Dahui No. 2 Middle School, the director granted us a two-week vacation."

At the same time, the school also gave several students from Xia Dahui No. 2 Middle School a one-week vacation, so Xia Bai was able to continue staying here.

In fact, he should go back with his parents and prepare for class, but he has other things to do, and it is more convenient to stay in Dahui City.

"Mom and Dad, you guys go back first. Don't worry, I'll just help with other things. I won't be playing games this week."

Hearing him say this, Jiang Yitong and Jiang Qingfeng felt relieved. They did have a lot of things to do, so after saying goodbye to Xia Bai that night, they flew back to Bac Ninh City early the next morning.

Xia Bai and Erwa were the only two people left in this big house.

After sending their parents away, the two of them lay on the bed basking in the sun with nothing to do. Xia Bai asked Erwa about his recent gaming experience.

Erwa said: "That's amazing!"

Xia Bai: "How powerful is it? Let me see."

Then Xia Bai saw that dense roots had grown under Erwa's feet, and clusters of branches had grown on his fingers. The branches grew longer and longer, and finally reached the roof.

"It can still grow." Erwa explained first, "It can't damage the building."

After expressing that he was capable of more than that, the branches began to grow leaves and flowers.

The two of them lay under a huge, lush tree that looked like something out of a fairy tale.

The white petals slowly fell, and Xia Bai smelled the refreshing, vigorous scent of nature. The vigorous vitality in the scent dispelled the dizziness and fatigue that remained in Xia Bai's head.

Xia Bai caught a petal and suddenly had an idea, "Can I eat it?"

Sister Xue Mu drank Erwa's blood and became more and more normal. Erwa was the owner of the strongest physical skills among the players, and he was also a natural person. His body was affected by the skills and he gradually gained natural power. He felt that these small petals also had it.

Even if it can't cure diseases, it should be able to refresh the mind and relieve fatigue. At least it's better than tea, right?

Erwa’s ears turned red, and little flowers popped out from them.

He is no longer the Erwa of the past. The Erwa of the past would only lower his head with red ears, but the Erwa of now would run out with red ears, bring Xia Bai a cup of scented tea made with his own flowers, and look at Xia Bai happily and expectantly.

Xia Bai sighed: "This is so thoughtful. Erwa has really grown up."

A small flower on Erwa’s head began to shake again and turned into a dandelion.

Xia Bai lowered his head and drank slowly. After drinking half a cup, he felt very comfortable and refreshed. There was a slight aftertaste of sweetness and a faint floral scent, but instead a clearer scent of grass and trees. It tasted better than tea.

"Erwa." He looked at the child and said, "You are truly nature's darling, a miracle that grew up in the fields."

Erwa looked at him with sparkling eyes, climbed onto the bed and hugged his legs.

"Has the assault team assigned you any game tasks in the past two days?" Xia Bai asked him.

Erwa nodded.

Xia Bai: "I'll take you there when the time comes and wait for you to come out of the game."

The second child started rolling around.

There are not many games coming to Dahui City these days, but there are still many games left over from the past that have not been completed. Most of these are handled by the assault team, and Erwa is the one who has been assigned the most games.

After he was able to use the skills, the Game Management Bureau let him play as many games as possible to practice using the skills. If he was not a skilled gamer, the Game Management Bureau would definitely sue him for child labor abuse.

Erwa was going to go to a game in Dahui City two days later, and Xia Bai sent him there as promised.

This game takes place in a villa in Dahui City, one of the richest areas in Dahui City.

Now that the game has been opened to the public, many people in the community know that this villa has been brought into the game, and players have been warmly welcomed when they went there.

Erwa leaned against the car window and looked out. Xia Bai consciously told him, "If this game is not cleared, it will be dangerous to approach this villa, and the housing prices in the entire community will be negatively affected. On the contrary, if this villa is cleared, it will become one of the safest places. The possibility of the entire community being affected by the game is very low. It is already a wealthy area, and with the added security attribute, the housing prices will be very scary."

There are two problems with Erwa. One is that he didn’t know how to use his skills before, and the other is, in summary, he is too young.

He is too young, has never been to school, can hardly read, and has no basic understanding of society, which is very disadvantageous for him to complete the game.

To solve the problem of learning to read, the Tourism Management Bureau specially hired a teacher for him. As for his understanding of society, it is also an ongoing process. The previous task force takes turns to take the child to different places to understand the basic operating mechanism of this society.

When Xia Bai was taking care of Erwa, he always paid attention to this issue and talked to him a lot. He found that Erwa was actually much more profound than his peers.

Erwa nodded, "It's a pity that the captain can't buy this community anymore."

Xia Bai: “…”

After Erwa and other players entered the game, Xia Bai got out of the car and walked towards the red villa.

The people at the Game Management Bureau knew him, and before the game was made public, the Game Management Bureau's cordon at the game's landing site did not intercept players, only ordinary people, so they did not stop Xia Bai from approaching.

Xia Bai walked to the back of the villa and shouted in his mind: [System, are you there? ]

When he first entered the game of Dahui No. 2 Middle School, he tried to talk to the system, but the system seemed inconvenient to talk to him. He asked when it would be convenient, and the system told him to talk to him near the place where the game landed, but not in the game.

Xia Bai stayed in Dahui City just to talk to the system. He had a lot to learn. After returning to Jiangqi City, there might not be a game that would allow him to quickly connect with the system.

[Hello, Xia Bai, the corpse collector.] The system's voice appeared in his mind, louder than before in the game. Not sure if it was Xia Bai's illusion, but he also heard a little happiness.

Xia Bai was also a little happy to be able to contact it, [Is it convenient for you to talk to me now? ]

System: [Convenient.]

Xia Bai: [You were hiding it before, were you afraid that the game would find out? ]

System: [You call it a game, but we used to call it the master system.]

Xia Bai: [“We”?]

The system's voice was a little low, [Now I am the only one left, they have all disappeared. ]

Xia Bai: [It's another system. During the previous internal testing, each player had a system. After those players died, their systems disappeared. I was the only player left alive, so you are the only player with a system left? ]

[You are still so smart.] said the system.

Xia Bai: [Can you tell me what happened before and what the game is all about? ]

The system said: [I can’t refuse you. ]

Because it is part of Xia Bai.

Its number is 017, because Xia Bai is the 17th player selected by the game to participate in the internal test. There are 99 players in the internal test, so there are 99 player systems.

These players are carefully selected by the game, that is, the main system. They have their own characteristics, different ages, and different identities. Some are very smart, some have unique experiences, some are very successful, and there are also ordinary people who serve as the control group of the research.

At the beginning, 017 didn’t know what kind of existence it was. The main system said that it was a system and its responsibility was to assist players in playing games.

Yes, 017 remembers it very clearly. At that time, the main system called it "assistants". It created them to help players pass the game at the beginning.

The 99 Players System follows 99 players on their gaming journey.

Later, 017 discovered that the player systems that were originally ignorant and emotionless were becoming more and more individual. Some systems were gentle and considerate, some were funny and humorous, some loved to tell dirty jokes and were rude, and some were as cold as ice.

Same with the players they follow.

The ignorant systems follow the players like children follow their parents. They may not realize that they have become like their parents. The general system said that humans always ignore their ability to imitate. There is another imitation in the nature of humans that humans have not discovered.

These systems are also like this.

Later, 017 found out that they were originally part of the players. When the main system drew the beta players into the game, it copied some of their data and turned them into the player system.

Xia Bai didn't understand, [Why does the game do this? ]

017 said: [Because it wants to make a set of controls, it wants to see what the same data, system and people will look like after a series of dangerous experiences. ]

Xia Bai: [It seems to be very curious about humans. ]

017: [Yes, it is very curious. It is observing and understanding humans. It now thinks it understands humans very well, and many of the games it designs are mocking humans.]

Xia Bai: [Why is this happening? What exactly is this game? Didn't it want to kill humans in the first place?]

【These three questions can be answered together. 】

017 said: [Initially, the main system was just a game system that could transcend time and space and had no emotions. It stayed in this world due to lack of energy and became interested in the humans here.]

[Initially, it just wanted to understand humans through games and bring human reports back to its world.]

No wonder, in many games, Xia Bai can feel that the games are not actually about killing people, but are just testing human nature.

[However, the way it replenishes its energy is to absorb the resentment of humans. Gradually, it is corroded by too much resentment and also has "resentment" and "hatred". It is no longer the emotionless game system. It begins to become irrational and has human resentment and hatred towards humans.]

[This is also why many game protagonists have prototypes. The prototypes are all people who died with resentment in the real world. Because it absorbs their resentment, it not only knows their experiences, but also possesses their resentment, so it returns these to humans more fiercely, and becomes the current game. ]

[When you complete the game, you are understanding them. You can say that you feel their grievances, and you are also alleviating their grievances. By resolving their grievances, you are taking back the energy of the main system, and the mini-game will dissipate due to insufficient energy.]

Xia Bai: [Why do the local mini-maps decrease after we complete a large game? ]

017 said: [In a city, there are two ways for games to descend. One is like Quanguang City, where many small games descend first. These small games are formed by energy and will consume the energy of the main system. At the same time, if there are many deaths in this game, or if it is not cleared, it can absorb more resentment and replenish more energy. With more energy, it can form a larger game, which is the Quanguang City Orthopedic Game. ]

[The other type is Dahui City, which first condenses the energy into a large game, Dahui No. 2 Middle School. There are hundreds or thousands of people in the large game, so it can collect more energy. If the game is not cleared, it can use the game field as an energy absorption field to continuously absorb energy. This energy can be used to open small games all over Dahui City.]

Xia Bai: [The main theme is energy conservation, which is very scientific. The world technology of the main system must be very advanced. ]

017: [……]

017: [In addition to games, it also promotes the generation of energy in your real world. The birth of player associations such as the Holy Tour Guild is manipulated by the main system, and there are also more and more people committing suicide in recent years. ]

Xia Bai understood the logic here. The people in the Shengyou Guild were rampant and even crazy because of the game. Sometimes they would screen humans for the game, that is, kill the so-called stupid players at will. The more deaths, the more resentment, and the game could absorb more energy.

The same is true for those who are led to commit suicide.

[Games have come to this world, and this world also has a gaming bureau. 】

017 said: [The existence of the Game Management Bureau has greatly restricted the replenishment of the main system's energy. Due to insufficient energy, the main system has begun to adopt other methods that violate the rules it originally established. I don't know the details, but I only know that it is probably still guiding players to kill each other, but it is more detailed and goes deep into the hearts of specific players. You have to be careful.]

Xia Bai nodded, thanked him, and asked about what he was curious about at first: [Is the game like this during the internal test? What happened to us? ]

[At the beginning of the game beta, there were more special games, which is what you call special maps. At that time, there were no games, so there was no map. There were more special games and fewer ordinary games because the main system did not have that much energy at that time, that is, it had not been corroded by resentment. It absorbed less resentment, so there were fewer stories. ]

So, at that time, the main system said that they were assisting players in playing the game. They hoped that players could complete the game and did not want the players to die.

So, at that time, the main system gave all 99 players skills, including powerful skills like Xia Bai.

At present, no one, including Xia Bai himself, knows how powerful his skills are, because they don’t know that the essence of skills is the energy condensed from the main system. Xia Bai can collect skills, which means he is gathering the energy of the game.

At that time, the main system had not yet been eroded by resentment. Only by being free of emotions could it achieve the ultimate rationality and fairness. It did not want to kill people. In order to better observe humans, it was not stingy in sharing its energy with humans for a confrontation.

At the same time, it followed the local customs and imitated the human way of respecting the old and loving the young. At that time, Xia Bai was the youngest player. He was too young and dumb when he entered the game, as if he had no soul. The main system made him feel human sympathy and gave the most powerful skills, which were dangerous to him, to little Xia Bai.

017: [Because the original purpose of the main system was not to kill people, the 99 of you went through a long period of hardship but did not die, about a year, during which time your relationship became better and better, and you established a deep bond in the midst of danger.]

017, who has always been with Xia Bai, felt it the most.

Xia Bai is the youngest of all the players. Other players protect him, care about him, and treat him as their younger brother, son, and grandson in the game.

Little Xiabai also started to speak slowly from being silent at first, and later on he would speak actively, laugh happily, and respond to their feelings.

Seeing his smile, the main system wrote in the human observation report at that time: "Human love is a wonderful thing, a very powerful ability, which can make a person learn to laugh, change many things, and stimulate great potential."

017: [Later, the main system was corroded by resentment, and there was "resentment" and "hatred". Beta test players began to die one after another, and some players' systems disappeared one after another. ]

That was a time that 017 didn't want to recall.

Xia Bai's skills finally began to play a real role.

Every time a player died, he picked one up.

There are fewer and fewer players standing in front of him, and more and more players following behind him. No matter whether in front or behind, they are players he cannot abandon and people he cannot lose.

Xia Bai: [They are all dead, and I am the only one left. Is the last game so difficult? Why am I the only one who cleared it? ]

017 didn't say anything.

Xia Bai asked again: [Why am I the only one who cleared the level? ]

017 Unable to Reject Xia Bai: [Because you know the nature of the game, the operating mechanism of the game, and the nature of your skills. ]

Xia Bai's eyelashes trembled suddenly.

He suddenly thought of the scene that appeared in his mind when he faced the eyes of the Sea God on Blue Tea Island.

He saw Ling Changye's father and the president of the Holy Travel Guild. They asked him, "Xiaobai, are you living well? Are you happy in the rest of your life that you have bought with our lives?"

Xia Bai slid down the wall of the villa and sat on the ground, covering his head with his hands.

They knew that skills were also the energy of the game, so in the desperate situation, they gave him all the skills, which gave him a lot of energy, allowing him to break through the desperate levels and finally complete the game.

How to give him the skills?

Just give him the body.

Just die.

When he first went to the General Administration of Game Management, Yang Yi’s instrument detected that the game energy in his body exceeded the limit, and those were the traces left by their lives.

017's voice was filled with anxiety, "If it's not like this, you're all going to die in that game, so why not let one person get out alive?"

[They wanted someone to go out and tell the world about the existence of the game. They wanted to return to their hometown, and you did it. You brought them all home.]

Xia Bai looked up, [All?]

017: [You brought all 99 players home. But you couldn't hold on any longer. The five people who had walked to the last level with you stayed by your side. The players who died earlier collapsed when you left the game, and they were also left in other parts of the world, just like the president of the Saint Tour Guild.]

017 will always remember that scene.

At that time, Xia Bai seemed to have lost his mind, and his body could not hold on, so he could not fully display his skills. His soul skills could not control so many corpses. Fortunately, he still had a cinnabar pen that could control corpses.

He kept drawing talismans, and the whole city was covered in blood, and his cinnabar pen was also covered in blood.

The city is crumbling.

It asked him: [Are you leaving? ]

The twelve-year-old boy seemed not to hear it, and perhaps he could not hear it. When the game completely collapsed, he was still waving the cinnabar pen, but by then he could no longer draw anything.

He left. They all left. The game closed beta was over.

And it hasn't said goodbye to its owner properly yet.

It was six years later when we met again and he entered the game.

He completed a game with great success and deserved a game reward, but when he was scanning souls, he alerted the main system.

It knew it, too, and by then he had forgotten it.

It knew that it was the main system that erased his memory. It also knew that the main system did not want him to know his past and would not let him recognize its master.

Therefore, it could only pretend to be in the game and say, "Welcome, Xia Bai the corpse collector." and "Congratulations, Xia Bai the corpse collector." every time he entered or left the game, hoping that the master would recognize it, but also worried about being discovered by the main system.

The player system is the product of the rationality and fairness of the main system before it was eroded by resentment, and it is an existence that the current main system hates.

Other player systems disappeared with the death of the beta players, because they are all part of the players and depend on the players for their existence.

Only it still exists. Over the years, it has been curled up in a small corner cautiously without any sense of existence, persisting and consuming all the time.

It knows that the wish of those beta test players, which is also the wish of its owner, is to bring news of the game out and tell their world.

The main system erased its owner's memory, preventing him from transmitting it out.

It couldn't spread the message. As a part of its master, a part of the little master, it had to fulfill its master's wish and pass on the useful news.

[Master, the game, the extra-large game will...will descend upon the city with the deepest resentment.]

If the main system had not been eroded by human resentment, it would have found that all player systems had grown into the same existence as the players. There was no better, and no deviation.