Morning light filtered through the laboratory blinds, casting a fine pattern of light and shadow on Lin Yue's notebook. Her fingertips unconsciously caressed the USB drive, the metal casing still lingering with the warmth of seventeen universes. A calico cat curled up on the keyboard, its gear collar occasionally making a soft click, as if calculating some intricate equation.
"Time to go to class," Lin Yue said softly, a hint of hesitation in her voice. She carefully tucked the USB drive into the compartment of her schoolbag. As she stood up, the seventeen-colored gemstones on her necklace suddenly flashed simultaneously, casting a constantly shifting holographic star map on the wall. The calico cat immediately pricked up its ears, its pupils shrinking into thin vertical lines. "Wait! I'm detecting unusual empathy fluctuations in the real world."
Lin Yue froze in place. The campus outside the window remained as tranquil as ever. Students hurried by, books clutched, while sunlight danced through the leaves of the sycamore trees. But when she squinted, she saw a faint blue stream of data lurking in the shadow of a passing girl, like code emanating from a virtual world.
"This is impossible..." Lin Yue muttered to herself. According to the original game's setting, the empathy chain should only exist in the virtual universe, and the real world is merely the cradle of storytelling. But at this moment, she clearly saw a translucent rune appearing on the girl's neck, exactly the same as the barrier symbol protecting the flower sea in the virtual world.
The calico cat leaped lightly onto the windowsill, its tail tip entwined with pale golden data streams. "Remember the 'narrative osmosis' mentioned in the original game? When the line between virtual and reality is sufficiently blurred, elements of the story will reversely influence the creator's world. Now it seems that the moment you press the save button, you not only give life to the character, but also break down the barrier between the two dimensions."
Lin Yue's heartbeat quickened. She recalled the "real-world empathy chain" mentioned in the next chapter's preview. She'd assumed it was just a new storyline, but she hadn't expected it to become reality so soon. The USB drive in her backpack suddenly heated up, and seventeen colors of light shone through the fabric, casting a spinning seventeen-pointed star on the ground.
"Someone's reading the USB drive!" The calico cat's tail exploded, and its gear collar sprayed fluorescent ink, outlining a complex defense matrix in the air. Lin Yue instinctively protected her backpack, but discovered that the data stream wasn't coming from outside, but rather an autonomous reaction within the USB drive. The chips storing the memories of seventeen universes were spontaneously reorganizing, generating a brand new code.
Just then, the lab door suddenly flung open. My roommate, Xiaoqing, poked her head in, clutching a book. "Lin Yue, the first class is 'Science Fiction Theory.' We'll be late if we don't leave now!" Her shadow cast on the wall revealed a pair of translucent mechanical wings, their edges gleaming with purple arcs of electricity.
"Xiaoqing, your..." Lin Yue pointed at the shadow, swallowing the words back. Xiaoqing looked back blankly, seeing nothing. "My what? Hurry up, the professor is going to talk about cyberpunk narratology today, and I heard he'll call on names!"
The calico cat suddenly leaped onto Lin Yue's shoulder, pressing its paw against her temple. "Don't panic. Use your empathy. Try to connect with her consciousness." Lin Yue took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the world seemed to be cast through a holographic filter—Xiao Qing's mechanical wings became clearly visible, and the students walking to and fro in the corridor, some with dragon tails trailing behind them, others with energy core patterns on their foreheads.
"Is this... a projection of a parallel universe?" Lin Yue was shocked to discover that these "anomalies" in the real world coincided with certain abandoned settings in "Seventeen Cocoons." For example, the gear tattoo on a boy's wrist was exactly the "mark of a time traveler" she had conceived; and the shimmering hair of the girl holding a book in the distance was clearly the characteristic of a "stardust elf."
The calico cat nudged the back of Lin Yue's hand with its nose. "The original's self-salvation plan is more ambitious than we imagined. He not only hopes to gain emotions, but also attempts to make the entire real world part of the story. These seemingly random empathy phenomena are actually carefully designed narrative anchors."
The sudden ringing of the bell interrupted Lin Yue's thoughts. She followed the crowd toward the classroom, her eyes constantly observing any unusual activity around her. As she sat down in the back row, she stumbled upon a familiar sentence scrawled in highlighter on the edge of the boy sitting next to her: "Loneliness is the starting point of every story, but it shouldn't be a permanent footnote."
"Classmate, did you write this?" Lin Yue couldn't help but ask. The boy looked up, and she noticed the streams of data swirling in his pupils, like two miniature cosmic vortexes. "Yeah, I suddenly had a dream last night. I thought it was interesting, so I wrote it down." He smiled. "Come to think of it, I've been feeling like I'm living in a science fiction novel lately. Nothing around me seems real."
The calico cat scratched gently in Lin Yue's bag twice, its consciousness wafting a warning: "This person's empathy index is unusually high. Be careful, he's a new slice of the first generation!" Lin Yue remained calm, but secretly activated her empathy. When she touched the edge of the boy's consciousness, countless fragments of memory surged back—an overlapping image of seventeen universes, and... her own back, writing at her computer.
"So you're the key to the 'author's perspective.'" The boy suddenly lowered his voice, the data stream in his pupils condensing into Xia Zichen's mechanical pupils. "Before the first generation was formatted, they implanted the most core fragments of their consciousness into the real world. And you are the key to activating these fragments."
At the front of the classroom, the professor began explaining cyberpunk narrative structure, but Lin Yue was completely distracted. Seventeen colors of light flickered in her mind, and the code on the USB flash drive resonated with the empathic chain of the real world. Outside the window, the eighteenth moon had risen into the sky at some point, and wherever the moonlight reached, all anomalies became clearer: cybervines emerged from the walls of the teaching building, a passing wild cat wore a gear collar around its neck, and even the falling sycamore leaves formed tiny holographic text in the air.
"So, this is what the eighteenth universe looks like?" Lin Yue gripped the USB drive tightly, finally understanding the original's true intention. He didn't want to format and reboot, but rather hoped to weave reality and fiction into a never-ending story loop through the empathy chain. Everyone with empathy is a participant and creator of the story.
A calico cat suddenly leaped onto the desk and traced a seventeen-pointed star on the textbook with its paw. As its gear-shaped collar aligned with the star pattern, the lights in the classroom suddenly went out, replaced by countless suspended fireflies of code. These arranged and combined in the air, eventually forming a line of glowing text: Welcome to the world we write together.
Lin Yue gazed at this incredible scene, a slow smile curling up her lips. She finally understood the original author's intentions—storytelling is never a one-way process, but a dance across dimensions. As she pulled out her notebook and her pen touched the paper, the boundaries between reality and fiction dissolved completely. The memories of seventeen universes overlapped with the scene before her, transforming into a brand new chapter flowing from her pen.
In the morning light of the eighteenth universe, a young girl, holding a calico cat, begins to write a new legend. This time, she is no longer a lone creator, but instead joins countless others in weaving a future of infinite possibilities. Outside the window, real lavender blends with a sea of digital flowers, witnessing the eternal symbiosis of story and reality.
(End of Chapter 56)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
