Chapter 120 Chapter 120

End of backtracking.

Xia Meng and Luo Xunfei opened their eyes at the same time.

The afternoon sun shines in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, making the room warm.

The two of them sat stiffly facing each other on the sofa.

Their eyes met, and they were speechless for a moment.

After staring at each other quietly for several minutes, they both slowly raised their hands and held their foreheads.

Then they sighed in unison.

Xia Meng: "Hey..."

Luo Xunfei: "...Ah."

Xia Meng raised her eyes silently: "Why are you sighing?"

Luo Xunfei said silently, "...I just felt that I was too young at the time. How could I agree to help you so easily? If I had known then how much hardship I would have to endure in order to make you remember me, I might not have agreed."

Xia Meng looked at him speechlessly: "What do you mean by 'disagree'... I haven't yet complained about your poor efficiency."

Speaking of this, Xia Meng couldn't help but complain.

She felt that Luo Xunfei was seriously ill.

Or is it abnormal brain circuitry?

They are clearly friendly forces, why do you have to treat them like villains?

He used Cui Yang's "illness" to drag a lot of people into it, got tangled up with Herman, and was mysterious and half-hearted...

He even nearly died at the hands of Herman.

You know, in the universe, everyone except her is really dead when they die!

Oh my God!

How could someone get into so many inexplicable troubles?!

As a result, when mentioning this, Luo Xunfei was also full of grievances.

He looked up at the ceiling with despair and muttered, "Can you blame me for this? You don't know how long I've been looking for you... At first I didn't remember anything, and it took me more than ten years to regain my memory and remember why I came here. Later, I spent another ten years looking for you. No one knows your origins, so I could only wait for you outside the original orphanage. I waited for years, only to realize that you didn't even go..."

Xia Meng: “…”

Luo Xunfei's expression was blank as he continued, "That's when I realized that in this world, the paths of many people have changed. Not just mine, but yours as well. That means... you could appear anywhere, become anyone, even your name, appearance, and gender could change. You might even cease to be a guide."

Xia Meng: “…”

Luo Xunfei: "So, I can only use Herman's hand to find you. Use the intelligence network of the Black Tower headquarters to find you."

Xia Meng said speechlessly: "Why do you have to find him? Go find Wang Xiangyi, go find Zhou Qi! Aren't you Zhou Qi's cousin?!"

Luo Xunfei took a deep breath and finally broke down. "...Do you think I don't want to? Your trajectory has changed, and mine has changed too! You, the damn Wanxiang, threw me to England. I have British citizenship, but I have nothing to do with my cousin. I went to the Beijing Tower to find him, why would he trust me and help me?! And you! Because of the Wanxiang mechanism, I can't tell you everything directly. I can only collect fragments of your memory bit by bit through backtracking. I can only collect a few fragments at a time. If I want you to remember everything completely, I can only desperately find various opportunities, and I have to remind you and hint at you. Do I have it easy?!"

Now that things had come to this, he simply poured out all the bitterness he had been feeling over the years.

Xia Meng: “……………………”

She gave him a sympathetic look.

Thinking about it this way, he was indeed quite helpless and it was not easy.

While trying to find people in various ways, he also had to deal with Hermann.

In the end, I finally found her and had to compete with her in a battle of wits and courage.

She thought for a moment and said, "I have another question."

Luo Xunfei: "What?"

Xia Meng: "Cui Yang."

She looked at Luo Xunfei: "Is Cui Yang's prediction true, or are you just trying to be mysterious?"

As her memory returned, she also remembered Cui Yang.

She had met Cui Yang before.

When she first started her internship at the Black Tower, she didn't have many opportunities to come into contact with major cases, so she often followed Li Zhou to solve some minor family cases.

Cui Yang was sent to a special school because of his autism, and later awakened to become a sentinel.

When he first awakened, he couldn't control his predictive ability and always behaved strangely, causing quite a stir in the school.

Some people even mistakenly believed that the school was haunted.

Xia Meng and Li Zhou had just received the mission at that time, and they even thought that they were going to be sent to catch ghosts.

Later, he was brought back to the Black Tower and given to Luo Xunfei for a reconsideration. After the truth came to light, the Black Tower sent him to a training institution under its jurisdiction.

From primary school to high school, all teachers and facilities are available, specifically responsible for helping young sentinels adapt to their new identities as humans and providing them with targeted training.

There are both full-time and part-time programs. You can live there for a long time and go to school as a normal student, or you can go to interest-based tutoring classes on weekends or in the evenings.

Some of the Shao*xiang students who came out of there were admitted to Shaoxiang University, and after graduation they went to work in Heita.

Some people also choose to return to ordinary human society.

Compared to the welfare home, it was a paradise-like place.

Cui Yang was sent there.

It is said that he has adapted well.

Xia Meng didn't expect that Luo Xunfei would drag him into this plan.

Luo Xunfei lowered his eyes and said, "Because we are not sure whether this plan will succeed, his prediction is very important."

Xia Meng asked: "Then what exactly is his prophecy?"

Those three paintings of his?

She still remembers the details of the painting.

It seems to refer to the contents of his mental picture?

Wait, that's not right.

The third painting depicts a more abstract scene.

There are the sun, moon and stars in the sky, all things are reviving on the earth, but there are also millions of corpses lying dead.

Light and shadow intersect, life and death blend.

That painting is the reason why Luo Xunfei is looking for him?

"No," Luo Xunfei said, "Those three paintings are just guides for me. What I want to see is the prophecy that truly points to the outcome. I want to know whether we can finally get out of here. And how to get out."

After all... before he followed Li Zhou in, there was still an unsolved problem waiting for them.

How do I get out of here?

Li Zhou wanted to take her away, and the only way was to kill her.

But killing her will cause the world of Vientiane to shatter and collapse.

Then Xia Meng's efforts to drag everyone in here would have been meaningless.

Luo Xunfei knew what Xia Meng would do.

The reason she asked him for help was to wake her up and kick Li Zhou out of Wanxiang.

but……

He still had some selfish thoughts.

He still couldn't help but hope that they could find a glimmer of possibility out of this life-or-death predicament.

Luo Xunfei raised his eyes and asked softly, "Do you still remember the bet we made in the Mushroom Forest?"

Xia Meng raised her eyebrows: "You said Cui Yang predicted that I would kill the Spade King?"

Luo Xunfei: "That's right."

Xia Meng: "Is that true?"

Luo Xunfei: "It's true."

Xia Meng tilted her head and smiled: "So, I won the bet?"

It was the King of Hearts that she chose to kill.

Luo Xunfei looked at her deeply. "When you asked me for help, you thought this day would come, didn't you? In order to drive him out of the world, you chose to kill him. So, it seems that you haven't won either."

The smile on Xia Meng's lips froze.

So, is the choice before them now the true nature of this gamble?

Luo Xunfei stared into her eyes and asked slowly, "So who will you choose this time?"

It is to kill Li Zhou and send him out of here.

Or... let him destroy this place and bring her back to the real world?

Luo Xunfei guessed Xia Meng's thoughts and chuckled, "Or maybe... this world is so good, you would rather stay here together?"

Xia Meng lowered her eyes.

yes.

This is the world of Vientiane.

I see.

No wonder she is so different from others. She shows no signs of awakening even in her twenties.

No wonder she could hear the voices of many people in this world for no reason.

No wonder she and Lao Wang get along so well for some unknown reason.

No wonder she awakened on the day she met Li Zhou.

No wonder...she fell in love with him.

No wonder Hermann was so obsessed with her for no reason.

This world is indeed wonderful.

It was as if nature was making up for her past shortcomings.

She didn't want to be bound and restricted by the identity of an S-level guide anymore, so she became an ordinary B-level guide.

She envied Li Zhou for having a captain like Wang Xiangyi who was both her teacher and father, so Old Wang became her master, with whom she could never break up even after quarreling every day.

She wanted to be free and at ease, so her personality became more lively and optimistic than before, and she was not bound by anyone or anything.

She… wanted to be with him without any scruples, so the moment he proposed to her, she readily agreed.

Everything is beautiful.

Love is beautiful, and the world is beautiful.

How can anyone bear to destroy it?

Xia Meng raised her eyes hesitantly: "If it were you, what would you choose?"

Luo Xunfei answered very straightforwardly: "I don't know. I'm not you, so I can't make choices for you. How about changing the question? For example, if you choose to stay here, will I stay too?"

Luo Xunfei thought for a second and said, "'Reality' is always a complex concept in psychology. It involves an individual's self-perception and objective perception of the world. You've lived here for too long and have become integrated into this world, both psychologically and socially. But I'm different. From the moment I regained my memory after entering here, I knew I didn't belong here. With this understanding, I'm no longer a part of this world. For me, no matter how real everything is, it's still not real."

Luo Xunfei: "So...what are you going to do?"

Xia Meng raised her eyes.

Luo Xunfei: "Are you sending me away alone, or are you sending me and Li Zhou away together? As long as Li Zhou doesn't remember everything, he can stay here with you forever. Isn't that a beautiful thing to think about?"

"There is a fourth way." She suddenly spoke with great calmness.

Luo Xunfei was stunned, with a look of disbelief in his eyes.

"A fourth way? How is that possible?"

For a moment, countless possibilities flashed through his mind.

No, it's impossible.

He has deduced this scenario countless times over the years.

How could there really be a perfect way to break the deadlock?

Xia Meng took a deep breath.

She just came up with the idea.

If she was the same girl before she opened up the world of Vientiane, she would have probably made up her mind to perish with everyone in the world of Vientiane.

But now she doesn't think so.

The experiences of the past few months... no, it should be said that the past twenty years of life in Vientiane have given her new insights.

She said slowly, "I opened the Vientiane to pull all the berserk Sentinels and infected Guides into this world. To protect the people in reality from harm."

Luo Xunfei listened carefully: "Then?"

Xia Meng said, "If... I can rescue all these people one by one and restore all the sentinels on the verge of frenzy to normal, does that mean... I can bring them back to reality?"

As he said this, Xia Meng thought of many people.

She thought of Huo Qingyu who was trapped on the stage, Awu who was trapped in the human body factory, Lin Fei who was lost in the sea of ​​sunflowers, Emil who was trapped in the coffin... and many, many others.

Luo Xunfei opened his eyes gradually.

Rescue everyone...all of them?

He looked at her in astonishment, feeling that she was daydreaming.

“Do you know how much work this is?”

"Every time you save someone, you have to delve into their mental landscape, identify the root cause bit by bit, and then channel and purify it."

"Do you know how widespread Herman's influence was back then? Do you know how many Sentinels were implicated? At the time, there were over 100 million registered Sentinels worldwide. How long will you be able to save them? How long can you possibly be able to save them?"

Even if there is one a day, the queue will last forever.

One hundred million people...

Xia Meng coughed and felt a mouthful of old blood stuck in her throat.

It was a bad idea.

She really didn't expect there would be so many people.

Luo Xunfei sighed.

He knew that the little girl was just daydreaming.

How is this possible?

Absolutely impossible.

"Possibly."

A voice suddenly sounded.

Xia Meng and Luo Xunfei looked in the direction of the voice and saw Li Zhou standing at the door of the room with a pale face.

He didn't know when he woke up, nor how long he had been standing there listening.

He held onto the door frame and looked at Xia Meng intently.

That look was so deep that it seemed to have traveled through a very long period of time and space and finally fell on her.

"Even if it takes ten years, a hundred years, or even ten thousand years, I will be with you."