Chapter 245: Prequel to Infinite Highway

"Captain, you are not confused by a stone, are you? You should at least verify its identity! Captain, wake up!"

Seeing that Li Yuan began to talk to Shitou in a low voice, more and more like he was coaxing a child, A Guang stretched out his hand to dissuade him, but was quickly pulled aside by Doctor Wu next to him.

"Li Yuan has a devil prop card that can test morality and sin. If you don't know how to use your brain, just say less."

Li Yuan had been carrying that stone since they were in the mall. There must be other secrets hidden in it. However, he also heard what the stone said just now.

Combined with some of the captain's previous strange behaviors, most people, except for the idiot A Guang, realized that this thing is alive and has very special properties.

Because A Guang talked too much, he was isolated in the corner of the room and guarded the prisoners with Dr. Wu.

Fan Xi has already asked about the date of coma for everyone, which is the day they entered the game.

She was going to start screening the files on the bottom of the ship to see if she could find all the files of the team members with the corresponding date. She had at least a dozen bookshelves.

It is filled with various files, so it must be a huge project.

Anne and Mo Wen in the captain's room were also looking at this side with curiosity. Li Yuan untied his backpack and took out the square, special-shaped stone sculpture.

"Captain, is the stone you brought back from the tunnel so special? It's actually alive. Have you tested its properties?"

Li Yuan hummed.

He had a black and white card in his hand, with white wings on one side and black wings on the other.

[Special Edition of Devil's Card: People are born with good and evil, but there is no absolute good or absolute evil. Use this card to detect the sin value and morality value of any living creature.]

[Please note that these two values ​​are changing in real time and are not static. Evil people can turn to good, and good people can also fall. Good and evil are only a matter of thought.]

Li Yuan had tested it with a card on the first day he carried the stone on his back. He didn't want to carry a bomb on his body. The result showed a shocking value of zero.

But since numbers can appear, it means that the stone is alive. Li Yuan has used this card to detect objects such as tables and benches before. This card will not show any values ​​on completely dead objects.

The value of zero may only appear in newborn babies.

Moreover, when the stone was sticking to Li Yuan, its moral value was rising slowly at a rate of 15 points a day, and its sin value was very slow, at a rate of one point a day. But when the orc players attacked before, its sin value rose rapidly, and now it has apparently exceeded its moral value.

By the time Li Yuan handed the stone to A Guang, he only spent a short while with A Guang, and both values ​​of the small stone increased by two points.

Li Yuan suddenly realized the importance of education, and there was a reason why Meng's mother moved three times.

We must carefully correct this gradually coming-to-life little thing before its evil value far exceeds its moral value.

He tried to slow down his tone:

"Listen less to what Guang said, learn less, and especially don't swear, understand?"

Shitou jumped twice on the spot: [But his words are so interesting. Also, what is a dirty word? ]

Li Yuan seldom talked to it before. Most of the time he would just pat the backpack to make the little stone quiet, or sometimes he would take the initiative to adjust the position of the backpack, just because he knew that the little stone was sleeping.

So, little Shitou still likes him very much. He is very considerate and knows how to take good care of Shitou!

Li Yuan suddenly discovered that in just a short while after he opened his backpack, the stone sculpture had become lifelike. Within the square outline, a noisy little doll seemed to be about to crawl out.

[Also, how did you make your previous games? How did you set the rules? Each one is so cool and interesting! ]

A Guang, who was far away, had already shrunk behind Dr. Wu's white coat, muttering to himself:

"Namo Amitabha, may God bless me. I am most afraid of this kind of weird moving thing!!!"

In the past, when he was in the mall, he would try his best to avoid all Chinese copies because he was afraid of this thing. When he used a camera to capture the faces of people in the water, A Guang was scared to death. It was only because of the love of his teammates that he did not scream.

Little Stone paused for a moment, apparently hearing the noise over there.

It suddenly turned its head towards Guang and immediately made a biting howl: [Coward! I’m just going to scare you!]

Aunt Huo and Annie couldn't help laughing.

Anne was sighing across the screen: "What a cute stone!"

Little Stone responded quickly: [I know cute is a good word! You are cute too! ]

Li Yuan sighed silently: "Let's put aside the question of teaching it to talk. I wonder if I can ask you a few questions?"

He held the sculpture in his hands.

Little Stone twisted a few times. Although it was a little stiff, it was much better than sleeping all the time: [Sure, I like talking to you humans, you are all very interesting! ]

Soon it muttered again: [But some guys are still annoying. ]

[The souls of those humans in animal form who attacked before were stinking. ]

Several people nearby immediately remembered Xiao Shitou's heroic act of breaking a tiger's arm.

Annie suddenly felt a little nervous, afraid that someone would ask some inappropriate questions, but Dr. Wu reacted quickly and covered A Guang's mouth.

A Guang: ? ?

No, what do you take me for?!

Obviously his teammates had already realized that this stone was not simple.

Li Yuan was frank: "I want to know what your relationship is with this infinite game. I'm talking about the infinite mall, even including this river crossing event, these games that allow lost souls to return to the real world."

He had noticed before that this stone knew a lot of information and was not restricted by any rules at all. It could hit anyone it wanted.

Maybe I added too many qualifiers. It took Little Stone a few seconds to react: [You are talking about this. This is something I provided energy to make!]

[That thing called a shopping mall has many layers inside, including the ship you have now. The raw materials are also provided by me! ]

Shi Tou shook his head proudly, but instead of receiving praise from others, he saw many shocked faces.

Annie was the first to react on the other side of the screen, and was almost the first to speak out: "You actually created this damn game!?"

Li Yuan frowned and made a gesture of pressing his palm down.

"Didn't you ask me what games are before? Did you make those small games in the store?"

In fact, Li Yuan doesn’t think so.

During the few days he carried the stone with him, he clearly felt that it was gradually coming alive and gaining humanity. At first, it couldn't even speak clearly.

The little stone jumped a little: [I didn't make the game. You humans made those. Most of the time I just provided energy, and you guys could do the work. But that was a long, long time ago.]

At that time it was still at the bottom of the river, and the thousands of souls in the water were like ice cubes floating in the water. They would slowly melt and gradually disappear, just like a drop of water disappearing in the water.

This scene seemed nothing special to Little Stone, until one day he discovered that some strange aquatic plants began to appear.

At first, there was only one stuck in the crevice of the stone, and then more and more of them appeared. After the water plants gathered together in large numbers, they actually started talking to each other. Their voices were so loud that they disturbed the small stone sleeping nearby.

To be precise, the stones can hear the inner voices of the water plants.

It is not an ordinary stone. It has been deposited here for thousands of years and has long formed a symbiotic relationship with the river. With the help of the memory of aquatic plants, it has seen many landscapes and stories that it has never seen before.

It knew the names of these aquatic plants and that they had a common group called humans.

The water plants should have gradually melted in the water like other souls, turning into piles of skill memories and various strange information anchors.

After death, people will float into the River Styx, and after being broken up again, they will be arranged and combined into new souls and enter reincarnation.

But these water plants are not completely dead, so they melt very slowly, not to mention that they are now hanging directly on the rocks.

Little Stone's boring life suddenly became interesting.

For the first time, it knew what humans were, what language, culture, family, and love were. But just like watching a movie for the first time, it wanted to watch the second one after watching the first one, but ended up watching it for too long.

[I made a wish at that time, hoping that these water plants would melt more slowly, but then I had a sudden idea and pushed them ashore]

The stones in the River Styx cannot directly resurrect the dead, but they can intercept souls that have not been completely shattered.

The water plants that came ashore quickly turned into people.

Some of them were in a daze after reaching the shore, just like they were still floating in the water.

Some people are more determined and gradually wake up the moment they reach the shore. They realize that they have reached the other side, on the brink of life and death.

[At that time, some people asked me if they could return to the real world. I said I didn’t know.]

But smart people know that this stone must be quite special.

They began to pray, reciting scriptures every day, and on the sandbar that appeared out of nowhere, they kowtowed every day, begging the stone to send them back.

But Little Stone couldn't do it either.

It is just a stone, and it doesn't even know where the real world is. It was born at the junction of death and reality, and it cannot reach the place it has only heard of.

[Although I don't know how to go back, the river of life and death flows in one direction. Perhaps if I go upstream, I can return to where I came from.]

So people tried to build boats, but due to lack of materials, they even planned to swim back.

But the first person who was about to go into the water melted the moment he touched the water.

[There are only dead people in the River of Life and Death. You are not completely dead yet. You will be completely dead after soaking in the water for a while.]

Shi Tou's words made most people despair.

Some of them even hope that they don't wake up in the first place.

Rather than wandering here in despair, it would be better to just float in the water in chaos and die.

These people, who felt that death was worse than wandering in despair, withered away day by day even though they had already reached the shore and had not touched the river water. Until one day, they turned into pieces of ice exposed to the sun, gradually melted, and slowly flowed back into the river.

But there is still a group of people who are extremely determined.

"My wife is still waiting for me. She just gave birth to a baby. I have to go back."

"After 18 years of studying hard, I finally got the admission letter from my ideal school! My life has just begun, and I have to go back!"

"And me!!! I was accepted as a doctoral candidate and my thesis was finally approved, but I suddenly died!!! I will crawl back to get my diploma!!"

Xiao Shitou didn't quite understand the mental state of these people.

However, as more and more people came to pray, Shi Tou found that he seemed different from before.

It seemed to be able to see some special spots of light inside the bodies of the water plants. One day, some glowing objects fell out of the bodies of those people who often kowtowed to it while discussing their plans to go home.

"Strange, how did my construction engineer's certificate come out?"

The humans who got the certificate created the first building in the sandbar.

That was the first time they saw hope of returning home.

However, the objects made by these people using their own skills will suffer the same fate as humans entering the river of life and death the moment they come into contact with water: they will just melt like foam.

Soon, those who did not have light spots on their bodies also began to talk and pray to the stones. They kowtowed and prayed, hoping that they could also have this ability. They no longer asked the stones to send them back, but prayed that they could still have a chance to save their own destiny.

Xiao Shitou actually doesn’t know what the principle is.

But the stronger a person's will is, the easier it is for these glowing things to fall out of their body.

These important parts of their lives, the instincts they once relied on for survival and their means of eating, actually came in handy in such an almost hellish place.

Build houses, make cars, and some people even build boats.

People are constantly awakening skills, some provide materials, and some provide techniques.

Unfortunately, shipbuilding continued to fail again and again.

No matter what material it is, it will melt when it enters water, it’s just a matter of how fast.

There is a doctor wearing glasses who can create many strange experimental equipment. One day, she asked Little Stone: "If we can build a ship with materials similar to yours, can we go back?"

[Well, should I be able to? I have seen some of the human memories, and watched you go from wearing animal skins and chasing wild beasts to later being able to build very tall houses. If we calculate by time, I have been running in the water for thousands or tens of thousands of years.]

Only small stones will not melt in water.

This finally gave others a little confidence.

But the little stone was still soaking in the water, unable to move. With people's prayers, it grew bigger and bigger and had stood up from the water, but it still couldn't turn into a boat.

Besides, it's a stone. Even if it can move a few steps, it will sink to the bottom and won't float!

Those humans began to mutter, talking about how the stones in the Styx were formed, comparative experiments on comprehensive materials for crossing the river, and the effect of willpower on the melting speed of materials for crossing the river, and other research and analysis of multiple variables...

Little Stone watched many memories of human life like watching a movie, but he really didn't understand what these nouns meant.

It only knew that the water plants that came ashore were very interesting, so it salvaged more and more of them and brought them to the shore.

Just like cultivating a city, watching them build a new, larger and larger building on the growing sandbar.

They also had disputes and chaos. Some people kept disappearing and melting away, while others stayed steadfastly.

Those who wanted to go home stayed where they were, constantly searching for ways. Amid more and more prayers, the little stone became more and more different from other stones in the river.

It can go ashore.

But jumping on it is not that fun. Some people initially thought of using it to cross the river, but it soon turned into a puddle of water.

[After all, this river is a part of me! Humph, if a wave hits me, I will go to sleep in the river. ]

Of course, Little Stone would not be bullied, but it was very curious about how those people who had done the research before were doing now.

Then it saw the group of first-generation people who were gradually declining, their bodies becoming increasingly transparent, and could no longer support themselves.

The doctor who studied materials was still persisting after seeing off several generations. He was a little surprised when he saw the stone sneaking ashore: "You came up too. I'm sorry, we haven't found a way until now. We have wasted the beach you specially built and the opportunity you gave us."

There is nothing to regret about the small stone.

[You don’t need to say sorry to me. The prayers you make every day are an equal exchange for me. Because of you, I can now go ashore and play. ]

The female researcher smiled. She seemed to have not felt so relaxed and had a conversation with anything in a long time.

She asked, "I have been studying science all my life, and I am using scientific methods to build a boat after coming to this place. Can I ask if we can make the same material as you? I mean, something that can keep us afloat on the River Styx without falling into the water."

Little Stone thought about it carefully for a long time.

[Should it be possible? ]

[It is because I was soaking in a river full of souls that I slowly woke up day by day. Maybe one day, the shore where you are can also become a river, and you can create your own stones in your own way.]

The researcher's eyes opened wider and wider, and her gradually transparent body solidified again, as if she had discovered a new direction and new hope.

"Human willpower can also create unique power. Yes, those who disappeared shortly after reaching the shore have lost hope."

"As long as we want to go back enough, we will definitely find a way to build our own stones and our own boats."

"You can't just shout slogans, you have to let the players constantly stimulate their awareness in a certain challenging environment."

"We need a special environment to make them realize that they can still go home. We need competition, despair, and hope..."

Including the female doctor, only a very small number of the first group of humans who landed on the shore were left, but they were all outstanding people with strong willpower.

Among them are programmers, philosophers, social psychologists, elderly workers, and ordinary students who love to read online novels.

They started an "infinite game plan" that day.

Build a building to collect all the lost souls, and stimulate them with survival games so that they will not disappear early. At the same time, use one game after another to select the best ones to make use of the fewest opportunities.

This incredible plan, which mixed elements of novels, games and theology, actually succeeded.

[The ship you are riding now was created piece by piece on top of the building using that method. It takes a long time to create just a small amount of material!]

Although it is still not as good as the small stones that have been deposited in the river for thousands of years, it is enough, enough for an adventurous attempt, enough for the most persevering and courageous people to embark on the way home.

As Little Stone was recounting the events of the past, the cabin was silent.

Everyone was so surprised by this sudden history that they were speechless.

Fan Xi, who was still in the archive room, suddenly spoke up silently: "...Then this is the archive of the record manual, written by those first-generation players?"

Little Stone thought for a moment and said, "That should be the case. I have never been involved in the internal management of the mall. I am only responsible for walking around and occasionally asking my younger brothers, the other stones in the river, to fish up the water plants and send them here."

"What about the original people who built this building?"

Li Yuan's voice sounded nearby.

Little Stone slowed down: [They have already merged with this building. I have said before that I did not build this game. I am only responsible for providing materials and energy. According to you humans, I am a shareholder and owner, and they are the builders.]

[Because they have become the brains of the final building during the construction process, they can no longer leave. I came out this time to find them on the one hand, and they also dragged me to see if the ship can go back.]

There is no better observer than Little Stone, and it will be fine even if the whole army is wiped out.

No wonder, the requirement to go downstairs to the first floor is to pick up a stone from the wall.

No wonder the shopping mall architecture is constantly improving, but the game hasn't made much progress. Li Yuan can hear a certain sense of age from Xiao Shitou's description just now.

The gaming industry and infinite novels have only grown gradually in recent years, and the number of people who enter a state of suspended animation for various reasons has been increasing with each passing year.

Li Yuan suddenly noticed another important point: "Isn't the shipbuilding game on the first floor? Why are the generated shipbuilding materials on the top of the building?"

If the material of the ship is the gathering of players' beliefs, then for the sake of convenience, shouldn't it be placed directly at the bottom of the first layer?

After all, when they went in, the materials were already scattered on the ground floor of the building. It was said that Qi Fan and his guys came down earlier, but their progress was slow. They spent a lot of time collecting materials on the first floor.

Little Stone jumped: [That’s because the top floor can get sunlight. The white light outside can…]

Before some special keywords were said, in the corner, A Guang and Doctor Wu, who had been stunned and slightly distracted, did not notice that three of the prisoners they were holding had raised their heads.

The three orcs had the same look in their eyes. They had been accumulating strength since just now, and had no interest in Xiao Shitou telling them these shocking secrets.

Doctor Wu didn't expect that even after using a large dose of anesthetic, these guys could still break free in an instant.

The three captives suddenly jumped up and rushed directly towards the direction of Stone.

Li Yuan didn't even react.

A large digital screen instantly appeared on his body, but before he could do anything, he discovered that the animals were heading to a more dangerous place.

not good--

All kinds of strange skill points burst out, and the three animals went crazy and smashed the door of the room. The dazzling white light shone directly into the cabin. Li Yuan only had time to grab a cleaning panel thrown out by Aunt Huo.

No, the player's skills are completely useless in front of this white light.

The blinding light, powerful enough to devour all life and death, shone into the cabin.

Li Yuan lost his vision almost instantly. The burning sensation was even stronger than the previous one caused by the random exposure to white light. He could not see anything, could not feel anything, and there was only a sharp tinnitus in his ears.

When Li Yuan felt that he was about to melt, he suddenly heard the sound of stone.

The voice seemed to ring directly in his mind.

[Wow, if you keep going like this you'll melt and flow into the river, which means you'll die completely. Do you want to make a deal with me?]

[You are a very qualified stone nanny! I really don't want you to die. ]

[I have wanted to be a human for a long time, but I heard the previous doctor talk about the law of conservation of power. Even if I continue to be revived, I will just be the same as now. I don’t want to be a hard stone anymore. I want to grow flesh and blood! If you give me half of your flesh, I will save you! ]

Li Yuan didn't know whether he had spoken or not, as he could no longer feel his tongue. But soon, the light around him dimmed, and the room began to behave like before, with the walls repairing themselves and blocking out the light from outside.

Only this time, the door was made of stone instead of the original wooden door.

At the same time, Li Yuan felt that his body was shrinking.

Soon, the house in front of him became taller and taller, and he gradually knelt on the ground, and his clothes no longer fit him.

As his vision slowly returned, he immediately realized what had happened.

Li Yuan raised his right hand and saw an unusually small hand that should not belong to an adult man but more like a child's hand.

He looked like he was less than 10 years old.

On the opposite side, a girl wearing clothes made of stone, with her hands on her hips and blinking her big eyes, was looking at him curiously.

"It's so strange. You're clearly split into two halves of my body, but why are you a boy and I'm a girl, and..."

Little Stone stretched out his hand and gestured: "Great, I'm taller than you!"

Li Yuan, who was still kneeling on the ground: ...