Chapter 153 Parallel
In two parallel time and space, the two people moved at the same time.
In front of Mu Yu, the ball of light shrank into a beam of light and disappeared, leaving only the two lines of rules in his mobile phone.
The page can be swiped away by swiping the screen upwards, but he couldn't find the corresponding app, and this strange page couldn't be closed.
Feeling a little uneasy, he looked back at the closed door and hesitated for a moment before putting his phone down and walking toward the front of the corridor.
It was past five o'clock at the Wenshan Club and even the waiters were nowhere to be seen.
Mu Yu did not choose to take the elevator, but went downstairs by stairs.
When he was almost reaching the second floor, a shadow flashed at the bottom of the stairs. He froze, his steps stopped for a second, and then he stepped down carefully.
He hid behind the side of the wall, stuck his head out and looked in the direction where the figure had just appeared.
…It was a monster.
He was nearly two meters tall, his white shirt was almost bursting from his bulging muscles, and his skin was dark blue.
This terrifying monster swaggered forward, as if it was inspecting its territory, but suddenly stopped and turned around as if it sensed something.
Mu Yu immediately retracted his head.
His heart was beating wildly in his chest. He looked down at the two lines of text on his phone, put it down abruptly, turned around and rushed back to the third floor.
What is that?
Is he dazzled?
He is just short-sighted, not suffering from schizophrenia and hallucinations, right? !
Mu Yu walked hurriedly in the corridor on the third floor, looking back from time to time, afraid that the monster had discovered him and followed him upstairs.
However, halfway through the journey, he suddenly stopped.
His chest heaving violently, his back covered in cold sweat, he looked at his phone for the third time, unable to convince himself that the two lines of text on it were a prank.
【Monsters】 and 【Players】.
The monster really appeared.
So, who are the players?
…
During this quiet moment, his thoughts were racing.
【During the game, please always keep the number of players. 】
How many players are there?
【Kill a monster and the game will close. 】
The only way to close the game is to kill the monster? Is there no other external means to interfere with this "game"?
What about calling the police?
He immediately dialed 110, but found that the page crashed as soon as he pressed the dial button. This happened every time he tried it several times.
He tried to send a message to his brother in the city, but it didn't work either. The message was preceded by red exclamation marks.
The process of sending messages to Hong Yang and Ye Sui was the same. Only the "?" sent to Lu Chongnian was successfully sent, and Lu Chongnian sent back a "?".
So, he could only contact Lu Chongnian?
Mu Yu pursed her lips…the uneasiness in her heart grew stronger.
Do you want to go down the mountain and ask for help?
Do you want to ask Lu Chongnian and everyone else to go together?
When my thoughts reached this point, they suddenly stopped.
…No, no, that’s not right.
The situation was too strange. It was not a good idea to knock on someone else's door at this moment. He'd better go downstairs and take a look...
Mu Yu looked at the end of the corridor with mixed feelings.
At this moment, he didn't know what he was about to face.
But instinct made him make the choice.
He turned decisively and headed back towards the stairs.
"I just sent it by mistake. I meant to say that the restaurant was a bit crowded and I was going to get something and be back soon. Please don't come down."
Soon, the message received a reply.
"Only five?"
"Everyone woke up a little early today. Can you boil a pot of water for me?"
"good."
"If someone knocks on the door, don't open it..."
"Why?"
"What do you think...I will tell Yan Shaowen that I will wash the sheets myself."
"[Laughs] Together."
Mu Yu came to the first floor and raised his head.
All eyes in the hall were focused on him at this moment.
Everywhere he looked, there were monsters. They stared at him with shock and fear in their eyes.
Mu Yu lowered his hands.
It feels like it’s come true.
So, what is this?
What a ridiculous morning.
Why does it feel like he is the monster?
*
At the same time, in another time and space, Lu Chongnian heard a noise coming from a room after the light ball converged and disappeared. He quickly went to the terrace and thought with his eyes lowered.
[1. Players and monsters are locked. Please keep the number of players constant during the game.]
【2. Kill a monster and the game will close. 】
This is an extremely simple and crude initial game.
His intuition told him that the thief had not made any changes to the rules of the game yet.
He shouldn't be able to change it.
Firstly, if "He" can drastically change the established game content after time goes back, then "going back to the past" will have no advantage at all for their players, and the Guardian will not hint at them to make this move.
Furthermore, why did the Thief give such a simple game when he first came to this world?
There are many problems in these two game rules. It's like a rough semi-finished product, but He just threw it out like that, as if He was just eager to get an ending that He defined as "player failure."
Is it because only when the player fails in the first game can He become proficient?
Lu Zhongnian turned his eyes and looked at the black moon in the sky.
The Demon Moon was the gateway through which He brought the First Game to humanity.
And only after winning this tempting game can He run rampant in this world?
Therefore, this is the moment when He is most restrained by His Guardian.
The success or failure of him and Mu Yu as humans will determine whether the copy game can continue to appear in this world.
Lu Chongnian clearly remembered what happened in the first reincarnation.
That morning, he received Mu Yu's message, boiled water in room 305, and then sat down and waited patiently.
During this time, he faintly heard some noise coming from downstairs, but he didn't pay too much attention to it.
Time passed minute by minute, and Mu Yu still didn't come back. A trip to a restaurant shouldn't take that long, and Mu Yu didn't reply to any of the messages he sent to her later.
He finally realized something was wrong.
When he stood up, came to the door and opened it——
He saw a tall monster standing outside.
…
Lu Zhongnian did not lie.
That was all he knew about the initial incident.
At that time, the monster was holding a vacuum cleaner in its hand and seemed to be cleaning the floor. When it saw him, it was even more shocked than him. It fell to the ground with a scream, then jumped up and pounced on him.
He threw the monster to the ground - the monster looked huge, but it didn't seem to take much effort to subdue it - at that moment, he seemed to feel a gaze.
But when he looked up toward the end of the corridor, he saw nothing.
Then the memory was broken.
No matter how he recalled it, what followed that scene was him waking up in the dormitory of Lian University, thinking that it was a perfectly normal second day, and thinking about how to reconnect with Mu Yu.
Part of his chat history with Mu Yu disappeared, and part of his memory disappeared.
He had no idea how Mu Yu got into trouble that morning, but now he seemed to know -
[Players and monsters are locked]
Lu Zhongnian was very sure that the monster in the corridor at that time was not a real monster.
Having been through so many copies, the monsters have all kinds of strange shapes, but no monster has ever shown that kind of frightened reaction when seeing humans.
They are products of the copy and are very aware that they are in a copy.
That kind of unexpected reaction only occurs when humans face monsters.
So, he suspected that in his eyes the other party was a monster, and in the other party's eyes, he was also a monster.
Only in this way does it make sense.
The monster was wearing the uniform of a waiter at Wenshan Club and holding a vacuum cleaner in its hand. Lu Zhongnian's sudden opening of the door was not something it expected. It was just doing its job.
How many people in the entire club at that time became such characters, and how many were like him and Mu Yu?
——The two of them were still able to communicate normally at the time, which should mean that they were in the same camp.
And in the two camps, which side is the player and which side is the monster?
The predetermined ending already tells the answer.
Mu Yu died and the initial game was closed.
Copies continue to appear in this world, implying that the players in the original game have lost the game.
So, in the previous reincarnation, Mu Yu was a monster and a player.
The same goes for him.
In the end, Mu Yu obviously did not seek help from his companions - if there were three or four people in the same camp with him, Mu Yu would not have made such a stupid choice, unless he was sure at that time that Lu Chongnian was the only one in the same camp with him.
Just the two of them.
The sky was getting brighter, but the temperature Lu Chongnian felt was getting lower and lower.
He picked up his phone and looked down at the two rules on the screen again.
Now, everything has returned to the origin that Mu Yu had experienced before -
No matter which of them dies, the game will just shut down and the "number of players is reduced", which means that the rules have been violated and the player has failed.
So, what does it mean to be a “win”?
How do they complete this initial game?
Lu Chongnian suddenly noticed that the cursor was flashing after the period in the second line of rules.
Can I enter rules?
He opened the keyboard, pressed Enter, and the cursor jumped smoothly to the next line.
He narrowed his eyes.
Time stands still at this moment.
…
"Always keep the number of players during the game" - Why don't the rules clearly indicate the number of players?
Why let them guess? Are he and Mu Yu really the only real players?
“Kill a monster and the game will close” - the player himself is the monster. If the game can only be closed by killing the monster, then closing the game will inevitably mean the player’s failure. If the logic of this game is really such a closed loop, then what is the point of continuing to input rules?
Also, in this game, what kind of character gets to make the rules?
In past copies, players could only follow the rules, and He was the one who made the rules.
Now, players have the right to make rules, so what is His identity?
He touched the ball of light, and the rules appeared on his mobile phone. Is there anyone else besides him who can see these two rules at this moment?
If not - then who is he playing against at this moment?
Lu Chongnian's eyes turned slightly.
Is it Him?
Is He in on this game too?
Is He the real other party in this game?
I see……
...Whether it was him, Mu Yu, or everyone else in this club, they might have all been locked in as players in this game.
They are both players and monsters. No matter if he and Mu Yu kill them or they kill him and Mu Yu, this game will end the way He wants.
This is how He induced it. When he saw the monster in the last reincarnation, he had an instinct to attack it, just as the monster pounced on him without thinking even though it was afraid.
He is inducing mankind to divide into two camps and inducing the two camps to fight each other.
However, they have always ignored Him who is hiding in the shadows.
He is also a player and a monster.
They could choose to kill Him.
As long as He dies, what does it matter if the player fails? Who will create the copy? The copy maker himself no longer exists.
Games can fail, players can fail——
But humanity can prevail.
With a slight sound, Lu Chongnian came back to his senses.
Mu Yu in room 305 opened the sliding door and walked out to the balcony.
Lu Zhongnian took a step back and retreated into the shadows.
He looked at Mu Yu's back deeply, then lowered his head and typed some text on his mobile phone.
The first rule of humanity.
[3. All players must be in the dungeon map and have entities that can be killed.]
The cursor was still blinking, prompting him to continue inputting. Apparently, both players could write down two rules in each round.
[4. Once all players die, they are truly dead and there will be no reversal.]
Creatures in higher dimensions must also be bound by the rules, and their lives will be restricted by the rules.
The cursor flashed twice after the period and disappeared, as if to mean that the rule had taken effect.
In an instant, a huge weight pressed down on Lu Chongnian!
The world seemed to shake at this moment, and Lu Zhongnian's pupils suddenly contracted.
He froze in place, his limbs and bones were filled with a powerful force, his body was unable to move, as if he had become a container, and injected into the container was a powerful soul from another dimension.
Next door, Mu Yu saw the black crescent moon in the sky and retreated back to the room in panic.
On the terrace, Lu Chongnian twisted his body hard and stepped into the shadows. He held onto the wall, breathing heavily, with veins bulging on his arms and neck.
——He missed a step.
The stealer descended upon him.
*
The morning sun shines on the mountains.
The fog gradually dissipated.
The golden light made the sky clear and bright; the clouds and the eerie black moon in the sky gradually disappeared completely.
In a mountain under the clear sky, in a building in the mountain, time and space intersect here.
Mu Yu was pushed to the ground and something flew over and hit his head.
He raised his hand in a trance and touched it, and his fingers were covered with sticky blood.
He couldn't understand what the people surrounding him were saying. It seemed like a language from another world, but he could clearly see the shape of their lips.
"Monsters", "Call the police", "Kill him" - these are clearly human beings, people in the club.
——Everyone has become a monster, and he is also a monster in everyone's eyes.
What about Hong Yang and the others? He couldn't contact them. At this moment, were they also in a different camp from him?
When a knife stabbed at him, he turned around and fled upstairs in embarrassment!
…
Lu Zhongnian walked back with heavy steps.
In front of him, the elevator floor numbers were rising, and he didn't know whether it would stop at the third floor - he turned around, staggered into the bathroom and closed the door.
With his hands on the sink, his vision was severely doubled and his body seemed to be controlled by that powerful force.
His eyes quickly fixed on a gooseneck vase in the corner. He reached out and grabbed it, then smashed it with a swing of his arm!
The flowers fell, water spilled all over the ground, and the glass fragments cut his hand, leaving a long, sharp piece of glass in his hand.
Lu Chongnian grabbed it without hesitation and stabbed it towards his chest!
…
Mu Yu fled all the way upstairs, with the monsters following him.
Why?
Why is this happening?
The rules are on his phone and he is clearly the “player”.
The only person he could contact was Lu Chongnian, so at this moment only Lu Chongnian was in the same camp as him?
They are both players and monsters, and the only way to end it all... is to kill a monster?
Who to kill?
Him or Lu Chongnian?
What a joke.
A heavy object flew from behind and hit Mu Yu on the shoulder. He fell on the stairs and felt a dull pain in his shoulder.
He gritted his teeth, pushed himself up against the ground, and continued to run upwards!
…When the “monsters” die, the number of “players” will decrease.
If the second rule is met, the first rule will be violated.
What will happen then?
Do you really want to do this?
Do you really want to play such a big joke?
What a joke, what a joke, what a joke—
…
Lu Chongnian pulled out the glass and blood gushed out from his chest.
He leaned his back against the wall and slid to the ground, feeling the strength in his body rapidly draining away along with his body temperature.
— lost into the air.
He escaped.
Lu Zhongnian breathed heavily, his hands clenched. He threw away the broken glass and picked up the phone with difficulty.
No matter how he clicked, the cursor did not reappear.
The thief did not continue writing the rules, as if he knew there was no need to continue writing - he was bound to lose this game.
…
The moment Mu Yu stepped onto the third floor and saw the scene in front of him, he knew that he was bound to lose this game.
Lu Zhongnian was in the corridor, knocking a monster to the ground.
——Everything is true and there is no way to escape it. In this game, they are the only two people in the same camp.
If he wants to end everything, either he or Lu Chongnian will die.
In this very short second, many thoughts actually flashed through his mind.
For example, those two game rules are too strange, and it seems that there are some loopholes.
For example, are those monsters that are chasing him relentlessly really ordinary people?
After all, he only concluded that he was a monster from their reactions and lip movements, but what if they were actually monsters?
Could it be that everyone in the club at this moment is both a player and a monster?
But none of these thoughts remained.
Because, if we wait one more second, there will inevitably be casualties in this chaotic scene.
No matter how many players there are at the scene, their languages are blocked and they cannot communicate. Both sides are filled with the urge to attack each other and cannot suppress it. One of them must die in order to end this absurd "game" that cannot be achieved by human power as soon as possible.
The noises of the monsters behind him became more intense, as if they had discovered Lu Zhongnian's presence. At this moment, Mu Yu let out a long breath.
All the oxygen was exhaled out of the chest.
He took a step back calmly.
He retreated to the corner and disappeared from Lu Zhongnian's sight.
He retreated to the blade that was stretched out from behind him - allowing his body to be pierced from behind.
…
Lu Chongnian probably didn’t see him in the end, right?
Hope he didn't see it.
Hope he gets out of here alive.
*
The quiet bathroom was filled with a strong smell of blood.
In these last few moments, Lu Zhongnian was still calmly thinking about what to do next.
What else can he do for Mu Yu.
The initial game was already a failure for the second time, but this time they got a lot of clues. As long as they could do it again, the outcome of the game would definitely be different.
The question is, how can we make it all happen again for the third time?
The props for traveling back in time were obtained from a vending machine, but both the props and the vending machine were created by Him.
After this initial game ends and His power grows stronger again, will everything develop exactly the same as in the previous reincarnation?
The essence of this question is actually - will He be trapped by the props He created?
Lu Chongnian doesn't think so.
Time has gone back, and the ending of the original game has been rewritten to a certain extent.
It used to end with Mu Yu's death, but this time it was him who died. Even if the subsequent copies will come in exactly the same order, the lineup of players participating in the copy will change, and the details will definitely change as well.
These changes will inevitably be controlled by Him.
If He wants to prevent time from going back again, the first thing He has to do is to change the items in the vending machine, or simply erase the devil coins and the settings of the vending machine, so that they have no way to go back to the past.
Lu Chongnian thought quickly.
——So, in this case, do they still have a way to get rid of Him?
If time goes forward and never looks back, will there be a moment in the future when His power will be suppressed to the greatest extent again, and at that time He will become a person in the game again?
His eyes dimmed.
It's entirely possible, isn't it?
During the previous four months, the power of the Thieves and the Guardians had been constantly changing, and they were always in conflict.
Thinking of this, he picked up the phone again.
My consciousness was already very blurry and my body felt like it was filled with lead, making it difficult to move.
He edited the following passage as clearly as possible:
[Mu Yu, I hope that when you see this text, you don’t think about what happened first, but remember this text...]
As the words were typed one by one, his consciousness gradually left his body.
Will Mu Yu be involved in the copy like him?
In fact, I don’t want that to happen.
But it should be difficult to avoid.
No matter what, he believed that with these clues in his hands, he would be able to end everything.
only--
[Also, I’m sorry. ]
After the last word was typed, Lu Zhongnian's eyes slowly lost focus.
…
It was very quiet in the bathroom.
Drops of water fell from somewhere, making a slight dripping sound.
Time gradually solidifies here, just like the breath that gradually stops flowing.
In this quiet moment.
Something strange happened.
A black crack appeared in front of his fingertips.
The crack appeared silently, but was accompanied by a strange aura that spread quietly.
Lu Zhongnian's remaining consciousness was suddenly awakened, his eyes turned, and his gaze fell on the crack.
What is …?
He raised his hand with difficulty and reached into the gap.
On the invisible other side, the fingertips touched nothing but cold air.
However, as his hand continued to reach forward, a metal wall seemed to form around his hand in the darkness.
This is an extremely narrow metal passage, this is...
Lu Zhongnian suddenly felt a warm hand and his eyelashes trembled slightly.
This hand is...
...Is this a...time tunnel?
Thin meteor-shaped beams of light began to form around his wrist, moving in a chaotic and disorderly manner. The shape of the black crack was also constantly changing and was extremely unstable.
...Is it a bug left by the time and space props?
Where does this crack lead to?
In the darkness, the hand shrank back as if frightened.
Lu Zhongnian's breathing became rapid.
He cheered himself up, quickly copied all the words originally edited in the memo, sent it to Mu Yu, then handed the phone into the gap and stuffed it into that hand.
The hand seemed to realize something and quickly dropped the phone and tried to grab him. He held the hand tightly and then let go.
sorry.
Also, victory is a must.
…
…
They continued to fall in the path of light.
Chaotic images flooded into their bodies, and all the lost time returned to them.
Mu Yu returned to that deep corridor in his memory.
He walked forward step by step, but he didn't know where he was going.
There was a corner ahead, and the closer he got to the corner, the more difficult it became for him to breathe.
In his memory, his cell phone vibrated with a buzz and he received a message from Lu Chongnian.
After reading the entire paragraph, he was very confused.
What are the stealers and keepers? And what are the rules?
What did Lu Chongnian want him to do?
Why should I say "sorry" to him?
He raised his head and continued to move forward in a daze.
Until he reached the corner, he turned his head with a pale face and looked towards the end of the corner.
The bathroom door was closed, leaving only a gap.
A strong smell of blood wafted out from the crack.
In the light channel, Mu Yu blinked slowly, watching himself in that scene walk stiffly to the bathroom door, push it open, and freeze in place.
Lu Zhongnian was lying in a pool of blood.
It was a scene he would never forget.
His body trembled violently, his heart tightened instantly, and every reaction of his body seemed to be engraved into his bones - he threw himself to Lu Chongnian, but couldn't even utter a word.
Everything after that was chaotic and dark.
He tried to call the emergency number, but found that the page crashed again and again. It seemed that there was a mysterious force blocking his contact with the outside world.
He wanted to pick up Lu Chongnian, but he couldn't. In his collapse, he found a black crack floating in the air. He put his hand into the crack and touched another hand to his horror.
——The hand handed him a mobile phone and a pair of scissors.
The phone was clearly his own, because even the phone case was exactly the same. The screen was fixed on the memo page with some words written on it, telling him that the other person was his future self, Mu Yu. He knew that Lu Chongnian at the other end of the time tunnel was already dead at this moment, but there was still a chance.
Notice the shooting stars around that crack?
Are they gradually coming together into a small camera shape?
He had experienced all of this before, and he had seen this halo in this bathroom before, so now, in order for the past to successfully lead to the future, please do as he says.
——Please hold it first.
In his memory, he held the halo with trembling hands.
The halo fragments that seemed to be left over from the props that Lu Chongnian had used pulled him into an alternate dimension.
There, everything in the human world turned into a movie, but there was an obvious strange node in the middle of the progress bar.
Mu Yu understood everything there.
Lu Chongnian turned back time, but for him, a higher-dimensional creature, the movie continued to move forward.
The strange node in the middle of the progress bar is exactly the moment when Lu Chongnian returns to the past.
Before this point, it was everything the world experienced after his death in the previous reincarnation.
After this point, Lu Chongnian returned to this morning and started his second reincarnation.
The pair of scissors in his hand were given to him by his future self to cut the progress bar.
The progress bar can no longer be pulled back manually, and the only thing they can do is cut it off.
This pair of scissors was obtained from a vending machine in the first reincarnation. After its attributes were fully upgraded, it possessed a function that the thief should later regret: "it can cut all tangible and intangible objects in the universe."
Following the instructions from his future self, he aimed at the node in the middle of the progress bar in that space and cut it.
The progress bar split into two, floating in the darkness, changing position, and becoming two parallel lines.
The shorter one continues to extend forward, and it will lead to the future.
The longer one is the past that is imprisoned in time. It reaches the end, just like a player set to play in a loop, and starts again from the beginning.
So, the two progress bars began to move forward in parallel.
Two parallel worlds were born.
…
At the end of the light path is darkness.
They all fell into darkness, as if falling into a deep lake, falling into an endless dream.
Then, that morning.
They woke up in the third reincarnation.
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