Chapter 158 The World of Extreme Evil

Xin returned to the Xin family home with a heavy heart.

The prison did not explicitly state whether their application to extract Luo Huayi's memories would be effective; it only allowed them to disperse temporarily and move freely.

Xin Xin felt extremely uneasy.

When she was first transferred from Uptown Prison to a mental prison, she thought the promised sentence reduction was within reach.

But the longer Xin Xin stayed here, the more numb and disoriented she felt.

The constant movement between the real world and the mental prison is a huge drain on the human body, but these low-class prisoners are merely expendable resources.

We can only cooperate.

They said that as long as you work in the mental prison for a certain number of years, you can get a reduced sentence and be released from prison, but in Xin Xin's eyes, that was just an unattainable lure.

She can no longer remember how long she worked in the mental prison, nor how many prisoners she helped interrogate have been released.

Yesterday, the prison disposed of another obsolete consumable item.

"His mental exhaustion has exceeded the reference threshold by 68%. He can no longer distinguish between reality and virtuality." The prison guard in charge of monitoring the prisoners' condition transmitted the data on the floating screen to the resource management department with a blank expression. "Prisoner No. 97, request mandatory disposal."

Uptown Prison quickly sent people to remove the prisoner's body from the mental prison.

In a world where everything is openly priced and tradable, even a corpse has some value.

Perhaps the parts are dismantled and sent to organ banks, providing cheap raw materials to manufacturers responsible for repairing human bodies, or perhaps...

"Xin Xin?" Sun Xinyue put down the dress she was holding when she saw her daughter return home looking lifeless. "Why do you look so pale? Were you bullied outside?"

"Did we run into Xin Que again...?"

Xin Xin's mind was in a daze, and she even thought of the confused state of prisoner No. 97 before his death.

He couldn't tell whether he was Prisoner Number 97 or a successful small business owner in the virtual world, and kept muttering incoherently about something like "mother" and "child"...

I can't think about it anymore.

Xin Xin looked at the woman in front of her, her face filled with barely concealed worry, and forced a smile. "No, it's just with..."

Xin paused for a moment, struggling to recall the character that should be mentioned in this passage.

"I went shopping with Ziyan, and I'm so tired." She explained with a smile why she was tired, then slowly walked up the stairs back to her room.

The room was furnished as usual.

Xin Xin sat on the edge of the bed, lost in thought for a long time. Suddenly, her gaze fell on the family photo displayed on the corner of the dressing table.

Have you ever displayed photos like this before?

Perhaps it was because her mental strain had increased too quickly recently, but Xin Xin felt that it was much more difficult for her to think about anything than usual.

Xin Xin got up, picked up the small photo frame, and examined it for a long time, turning it over and over.

The photo only shows Xin Fengcheng, Sun Xinyue, and their family of three; Xin Que, that troublesome woman, is not in the picture.

The middle-aged couple embraced Xin Xin in the center. Everyone seemed very happy when taking the photo, as the three of them smiled at the camera with their eyes narrowed into slits.

Xin slowly put the photo frame back in its original position.

The picture frame and the other decorations on the table match quite harmoniously.

All of them are in Rococo style, which suits her age...

She recalled how Sun Xinyue had carefully selected items when decorating her bedroom.

This picture frame must have been made by my mother.

wrong.

Where did she get a mother? Sun Xinyue is just a fake...

Dark clouds rolled in outside the window, making the normally well-lit bedroom appear much darker due to the eerie weather.

Xin Xin looked out the window at the tree branches and leaves being torn and ravaged by the gale, and her rusty brain slowly began to turn.

It's going to rain heavily.

...

"Honey, the weather's extreme today. Don't work overtime at the company, come home early." Sun Xinyue said to Xin Fengcheng while tidying up the clothes she had just bought.

But all I heard on the other end of the phone was an impatient man's voice.

It's unclear what Xin Fengcheng complained about, but Sun Xinyue finally hung up the phone with a sullen face, clutching the fabric of her dress tightly.

A dull thud came from upstairs as a door opened.

Sun Xinyue subconsciously looked up and saw that it was Xin Xin. The gloom on her face gradually disappeared. "Your father won't be home for dinner tonight. What would you like to eat, Xin Xin? I'll have Auntie prepare it for you."

Xin Xin's numb eyes flickered, and she forced a cold smile in response to Sun Xinyue, "I'll listen to Mom."

Sun Xinyue clearly didn't want to spoil Xin Xin's mood, so she thought about it seriously for a while, "Then—"

A piercing alarm suddenly sounded outside the floor-to-ceiling window.

Xin Xin was immediately triggered by the alarm, triggering her subconscious, stereotypical reaction. The smile on her face vanished, and she quickly ran downstairs, holding onto the handrail, and headed straight for the French windows.

"Why is there a global alert at this time...?"

When Xin Xin saw the dividing line used to delineate the cleanup area above the world, her pupils dilated suddenly. She then turned sharply and shouted at Sun Xinyue, "Get back to your room!!!"

Sun Xinyue was stunned by Xin Xin's shout.

"Xinxin," Sun Xinyue's face showed the bewilderment of a data program receiving unknown commands from its object, "What are you afraid of?"

Xin Xin's face was filled with unspeakable terror. She turned around abruptly and rushed towards Sun Xinyue on the sofa. With unprecedented strength, she grabbed Sun Xinyue and dragged her upstairs.

"There's no time to explain," Xin Xin said, using all her strength, "Hide right now—"

"Bang."

Xin Xin felt a sharp pain as she gripped Sun Xinyue's hand, as if her hand bones had been crushed out of thin air, forcing her to release her grip on Sun Xinyue's hand.

"Wait!" Her eyes widened, and she immediately rushed back to grab the woman who had fallen down the stairs. "Mom!!!"

A hand appeared out of thin air, and then Xin Xin saw the owner of that hand.

It is the clone of the City King.

The man's emotionless gaze swept over Xin Xin. "Prisoner No. 56, who is assisting in the interrogation, please do not interfere with our mission."

Sun Xinyue stared blankly at Xin Xin, then fell headfirst down the stairs.

The humanoid program does not have permission to see the true form of the middle-level AI manager.

In Sun Xinyue's eyes, the one who pushed her downstairs and tried to strangle her was just the invisible and formless air.

Xin Xin felt her mind was becoming increasingly muddled.

Perhaps her mental state had been damaged beyond the reference threshold, because the images that popped into her mind were not related to prison work training.

Instead, it was the way Sun Xinyue rushed up to protect Xin Xin as if her life depended on it when Xin Que was about to kill her.

In a flash, Xin Xin's stiff, numb body reacted before her chaotic mind.

"Bastard..." Xin Xin's expression was ferocious, her whole being exuding a desperate madness. She grabbed a vase from the corner of the stairs and charged at her clone, yelling, "Don't touch my mom!!!"

The clone, expressionless, turned around to dodge the vase Xin Xin swung at her, and raised his hand to forcibly retrieve the prisoner who was obstructing his work.

"The prisoner is out of control, immediately—"

The man froze in place.

The death that Xin Xin had anticipated had not yet arrived, and the arm that had been instinctively blocking her eyes slowly lowered.

With a cold expression, Xin Que pulled the Tang sword from the man's chest, then shoved the corpse, which was about to undergo self-repair, to the ground. She stepped on his waist, roughly broke the obstructing ribs with her bare hands, and with a swift stroke, ripped out his heart.