Chapter 7
Zhan Miao brought the two cups of milk tea in her hand over and wanted to ask him, but found that Zhan Mu took it but didn't want to say anything. The brother and sister continued to stroll, but Zhan Miao felt a strange depression in his deep silence.
In fact, the two siblings were not very familiar with each other before they went to college.
As a child, Zhan Mu was quiet, while Zhan Miao was more lively. The girl was slender and smart, calling out every aunt and uncle accurately, and was sweet and obedient. But the chubby Zhan Mu, on the other hand, was a bit clumsy, his reactions were always slow, and he was shy around relatives, which made him less endearing.
In addition, Zhan Miao has always had better grades. He was an top student in elementary school, junior high school and high school. He was not in the same class as his brother. The fat boy who was unfashionable and not good at speaking could not play with girls.
Being able to handle things is the standard by which Xiaguo judges a person's emotional intelligence. This is particularly reflected in public speaking, appearing in front of others and being noticed, and the manner in which the younger generation speaks to the elders, not to mention high-level social skills such as toasting and giving gifts.
Obviously, Zhan Mu was an idiot in this area before he learned sports.
Zhan Mu had poor academic performance and had no choice but to study track and field. In fact, he did not have much talent in this area, but it was just a coincidence that he came into contact with the sports industry because of his experience.
He is actually introverted, but he can't resist the liveliness of his brothers. Boys who study sports are all a bit playful. The vibrant environment has influenced Zhan Mu, arousing the funny temperament in his character, and he becomes cheerful.
As the saying goes, a sweet talk is better than good medicine. Just like male academic elites are easily bewitched by art students and female academic elites are easily infatuated with sports students, people who engage in arts and sports have a charming temperament.
As a result, this change made the sister, who had always been excellent and noble, look at her brother differently.
-
The drizzle was lingering, and the summer night was cold, causing the thinly dressed Zhan Miao to slow down a bit. She was just hissing when Zhan Mu turned around, biting his straw, and asked suspiciously, "Cold? Then I'll take you back to the dormitory."
She wasn't actually cold. But beneath the dark green leaves, Zhan Miao looked through the warm yellow light and saw her brother's eyebrows were very familiar, like the shape she had copied from him using an eyebrow razor.
"No..." Zhan Miao looked away and murmured, "You, don't tell my parents that I'm in a relationship, okay?"
I've been used to seeing his fat, dull look since I was a child, and even my sister isn't used to his handsome face now.
"Yeah, okay." Zhan Mu responded indifferently. He leaned the back of his hand against her arm and frowned, saying, "Your skin is cold. Let's go back soon. I remember your school dormitory was closed at 10 o'clock?"
He was clearly wearing so little, and his hands were so hot.
Zhan Miao uttered an "oh" and pouted inexplicably, as if she wanted to say something but hesitated. Because of his indifferent reaction, the girl's indescribable love and hate turned into inexplicable irritation.
Zhan Mu had already walked away, smacking his straw again, and took out his cell phone from time to time to check the time, as if he thought she was nagging.
Lu Chao, who was acting as a background figure, was unusually silent.
Zhan Mu was confused. He was like the internet, omnipresent. Maybe he knew everything he did...
"Brother, why don't you have a relationship yet?" Zhan Miao suddenly asked.
"No money." Zhan Mu answered tiredly, and as if to tease her, he said, "If I met a girlfriend like you, wouldn't I have to work three jobs a day to let her enjoy life?"
"..." Zhan Miao was immediately furious and almost blushed.
——After he lost weight and became more handsome, his brain became smarter and he even started to talk dirty.
"Idiot!" Zhan Miao twisted his arm, lifted her skirt, and ran back to the dormitory without looking back.
Almost at the same time when Zhan Miao disappeared, Lu Chao seemed to have been pretending to be dead for a long time, and then resurrected and said: Your sister is fine.
"Nonsense." Zhan Mu glanced at his phone and chuckled dryly as if he was talking to himself.
Both of them were embarrassed. Zhan Mu got on a Didi and went back to his rental house. He rubbed his brows as if he was really tired. Lu Chao was curious again: What's wrong with you? Do you feel tired of dealing with your sister?
Zhan Mu's phone vibrated. He picked it up and saw that his AI was truly impressive. He hadn't realized when it had taken up residence in his own TT. (TT stands for "Tan Tan," a messaging app used by people all over the world and affectionately called "Tan Tao" by netizens.)
Lu Chao’s avatar is his Q version image, which is quite cute.
At one o'clock in the morning, he heard his voice.
It's amazing. Zhan Mu always likes to chat with people by typing, but since Lu Chao never talks in a long-winded way, he has the patience to listen to his voice.
"I just don't like interacting with people for a long time." Zhan Mu sighed, "I feel tired and very hard. Socializing is very energy-consuming for me. I usually prefer to be alone. It feels like recharging."
"Are you a power bank? Are you still charging?" Lu Chao seemed amused.
"No." Zhan Mu also curled his lips, "I should be an introvert, right? Psychologically speaking, if a person tends to use solitude to restore energy, he is an introvert."
"Don't talk to me, I'm tired and want some quiet time." Zhan Mu rested his head on the back seat, closed his eyes and said lazily, "Chatting with people for too long is very annoying and tiring for me. So, hush - keep quiet."
Zhan Mu made this gesture to Lu Chao in the camera, and then closed his eyes as if he was sleepy.
The phone was placed next to him, but Lu Chao could still see his face because he was AI. He was like the eyes of heaven, and there was nothing that Lu Chao, the big data, didn't know.
The Didi driver was sending a video to his wife to let her know he was safe. He didn't know that the big data in the camera was connected to AI, and Lu Chao, who had become a digital being, knew everything. He could even spy on Zhan Mu through the driver's phone.
Zhan Mu lay casually under the flickering streetlights, and the wrinkles on his face were illuminated by the light, forming a unique and moving curve. He looked very handsome, the kind that was righteous and not evil, especially his eyebrows, which were not embellished.
Lu Chao lost the text: What kind of novel heroine setting are you... (withdrawn again)
-
In the desperate game.
"Whoosh——" the wind was blowing violently.
In another dimension, the sky was filled with yellow sand and desert, with insects and snakes flying everywhere. Lu Chao didn't even need to look back. Just by saying the word "death", he could make them turn into ashes.
As the only living creature in this world, and even equivalent to half a creator, Lu Chao was very irritated and let out a breath impatiently. He had never hated himself so much for being a virtual character.
Time passed faster in the game. It was two years outside, but Lu Chao felt like he had lived for decades inside. His heart had aged, but he still looked young.
He also has to compete with the planner in wits and courage to avoid being discovered by his bug - Desperate Situation, what a ridiculous name of this game, this is clearly just Lu Chao's "Desperate Situation".
The erasure of his existence, the torment on his willpower, this game of life has always been just a slaying of Lu Chao alone: a struggle for survival in a desperate situation.
Lu Chao wanted to go out, to live under the blue sky and white clouds again, to get back his name and social identity, and to find out the truth about how his family was implicated.
Yes, he would rather be in sober pain than be in numb happiness.
He can be confused and live in despair, living a life of drunkenness and dreams. He even knows that he is very handsome and is loved by players. But he also knows that those people don’t love the real him, but just a perfect image of himself that is set up as a game suit.
Lu Chao didn't want this to happen, even though he had become AI, in other words, gained immortality in the digital sense.
But he still retained his human emotions. Those memories tortured him, and those past events reminded him of it, leaving him with the whole world but only endless loneliness.
At the beginning, he also found it interesting. He was a digital life and he could even transform into any image to interact with players. But as time went on, with people coming and going and the hustle and bustle, he began to feel bored, dull and isolated.
Because they are tired of playing games, players log off and return to their lives, going back to spend time with their families.
Compared to real people, Lu Chao has nothing.
He is AI. He doesn't eat, drink, or feel tired. All he has left is thinking. However, exploring thoughts has always been a boring thing, and it can even make people fall into nothingness. Lu Chao can't think of the meaning of life, so he wants to become a person in real life.
No one had ever wiped the leaves off Lu Chao's human-shaped standee, treating him as a human.
Zhan Mu is the first and only one.
Lu Chao was moved, surprised, and sad. Even wanting to touch him became a luxury.
-
After sending Zhan Miao back to school, Zhan Mu went home and received a call from his old father. As expected, he looked down on his live broadcast career as always, and kept disparaging him by asking how much money he could make.
After all, in the eyes of their older generation, only working seriously for the boss, teaching, taking the civil service exam and serving the people are serious jobs.
Zhan Mu was a lazy guy during his college years. He had no ambition and no lofty ideals. He just wanted to enjoy the wonderful campus life and eat. He has been like this since he was a child. His hobby is eating.
If Zhan Miao hadn't been admitted to the neighboring Anhui University and caused that incident, Zhan Mu would even think that being a fat otaku was pretty good. He wouldn't want to lose weight or anything, he would just eat and wait for death.
However, ever since he lost weight and became a handsome guy, and noticed that the girls selling milk tea would always add an extra spoonful of pearls for him, he realized that he had to maintain this charming face.
At first I wanted to be a food streamer, but later I felt that it was too tempting and buying delicious food was too expensive, so I just played games.
Of course, these words won't make sense to his parents.
With two beeps, the father and son's conversation was interrupted again. Zhan Mu collapsed on the bed, exhausted, moaning and groaning...
The portable elf Lu Chao popped his head out and asked, "If you really have no money, just go home and inherit your father's supermarket."
"I don't like that line of work." The weather was hot, and Zhan Mu had already washed up. He collapsed on the bed, pulled up his clothes, and fanned himself. "My family runs a small supermarket, not one of those self-service supermarkets. Someone has to be on duty. I've watched them do this since I was a child. It's too restrictive. We don't even have holidays during the holidays, and we've never gone on a trip."
It was a coincidence. Although Zhan Mu had graduated for almost two years, he still hadn't shed his studentishness. He couldn't smoke or drink. Recently, he had a young man named Lu Chao living in the rental house, and he felt like he was a roommate.
I feel like life has become more hopeful recently.
Hmm? Something seems off.
Zhan Mu was bored. His account had recently been blocked, and he didn't want to play games. At least he still had 5,000 yuan in his pocket, so eating wasn't a concern for the time being. Bored, he turned over and took out his phone to video call Lu Chao. "You go to Yuzhou University? You're a top student."
Lu Chao picked up the phone, and Zhan Mu saw him. He was wearing a brown leather jacket. The game world he was in seemed to be daytime, and Lu Chao was walking in the Gobi Desert under the scorching sun.
"Well, I studied international politics and originally wanted to work in the military as a civilian in the future. But who knew something bad happened at home and I ended up becoming a data worker." Lu Chao said calmly, feeling relieved.
"Where are you and what are you doing?" Zhan Mu's attention was quickly attracted to Lu Chao.
Lu Chao was feeling very hot, and his face was sunburned in front of the screen, which was different from the game copy setting. In fact, Zhan Mu felt that the real him was not so delicate, but more rough, just like now, covered in dust and dirt, crossing the desert under the scorching sun.
Red Rock Desert, a classic map in the game setting.
"That's perfect. I'll take you to see something." Lu Chao replied, and then he came to a huge red stone wall with heavy steps, grunting.
As Zhan Mu turned his camera, he saw densely packed characters for "正" (positive) outlined in red sand, like a complaint against the injustice of fate, a petition.
Lu Chao sighed, "One stroke counts as one day. Time passes faster in the game world than in the real world. Even time passes differently in each map. Look, there are 3,577 correct characters in total. Converting that to days, I've been in this game for 17,885 days, which is... 49 years in real life."
He spoke lightly, but Zhan Mu could still read the helplessness and pain in his expression, like a poor man whipped and tortured by fate, and even seemed to be self-deprecating when talking about it.
"I really want to return to human society." Lu Chao said.
He forced a smile, and the unspeakable grievance turned into depression and frustration. He covered it up with jokes and comforted himself with relief. He must be a person who swallows his anger.
Zhan Mu found a sense of familiarity in him.
The fat and round kid who was not favored, had no friends and was always called ugly and fat.
The self who was once helpless.
Zhan Mu appeared to be soft-hearted and replied to Lu Chao, "Okay. It's fate that we met. I will do my best to help you."
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