By the time his boss took Mu Ke away, Mu Sicheng had already been awakened.

He leaned lazily on the back of Bai Liu's chair, with the coat that Bai Liu had put on his shoulders being put on by Mu Sicheng. Originally, Mu Sicheng strongly tried to stop Bai Liu from participating in the game, but he soon discovered how determined Bai Liu was to participate in the competition. Considering Bai Liu's usual style, Mu Sicheng felt that Bai Liu's determination to participate in the competition was not something he could easily shake.

Mu Sicheng coldly watched Bai Liu trick Mu Ke onto the pirate ship, and fell asleep slowly. After he realized that he could not easily shake Bai Liu's mind, all Mu Sicheng could do was to tell Bai Liu seriously that he would not fool around with Bai Liu and participate in this extremely dangerous league.

However, the coat Bai Liu approved for him made Mu Sicheng's tone soften a lot when he spoke: "Why, did you trick that little beauty onto your pirate ship?"

"Your name is Mu Ke Little Beauty, are you gay?" Bai Liu glanced at Mu Sicheng, "Are you sexually attracted to Mu Ke?"

Mu Sicheng was choked for a moment: "I'm a straight man! I'm joking, don't you understand?!"

Bai Liu nodded casually: "I understand now. From your expression, do you have something to say to me?"

Before Mu Sicheng spoke, Bai Liu found a bench and sat opposite Mu Sicheng.

Bai Liu sat very comfortably and casually, but she couldn't help but bring a sense of oppression to Mu Sicheng, causing Mu Sicheng, who had been lazing around in Bai Liu's armchair like a boneless person, to sit up straight.

Bai Liu looked at Mu Sicheng calmly and said, "I guess you want to tell me that you will never participate in this e-sports competition with us."

"Can you give me a reason that can convince me?" Bai Liu leaned back on the desk and tapped the desk with his fingers. "Why don't you want to participate in this e-sports league?"

"The mortality rate is high, the risk is high, the number of people is uneven, and the number of copies is not enough." Bai Liu mentioned several problems in succession. He raised his eyes and looked at Mu Sicheng, "You can leave all these to me. You just need to be responsible for participating. Do you have any other concerns?"

Mu Sicheng was almost laughing at Bai Liu's calm and relaxed look.

If it was him before one copy, he might have been fooled by Bai Liu's appearance that he had everything under control, but now Mu Sicheng is no longer the same Mu Sicheng. After one copy, Mu Sicheng has a little understanding of Bai Liu's character - he is extremely gambling.

Even if the success rate is very low, as long as the benefits are high enough, Bai Liu is willing to give it a try.

"These are the main issues I'm worried about." Mu Sicheng spoke in a serious tone, which was rare. "Bai Liu, the league is really no joke. The player mortality rate is very high. You don't have to give up your real life for this game. Although this game can indeed bring a lot of things, with your strength you can slowly earn points, which is more secure. In addition to the game, you always have to make some retreats for real life..."

"Real life?" Bai Liu repeated this sentence softly with an ambiguous tone. He waited patiently for Mu Sicheng to finish his earnest words of persuasion before asking an irrelevant question: "Do you think this of the single-player game that Mu Ke cleared last time?"

Mu Sicheng was stunned. He didn't expect Bai Liu to suddenly mention this, but Bai Liu did talk about this with Mu Ke just now. Mu Sicheng was very sleepy at the time, but he still listened.

The game that Mu Ke completed in the last round was called "Leaving School Day", a single-player game with a Japanese-style campus background.

The game content was not what attracted Mu Sicheng's attention the most. What attracted Mu Sicheng's attention the most was——

——Mu Ke said that the school in the story had a prototype. It was a private high school where he studied in Japan. The school had been haunted by ghosts because a girl committed suicide by jumping off a building, and many students died one after another afterwards.

Except for him, everyone in the dormitory where Mu Ke lived died in various bizarre ways. This was also an important reason why Mu Ke confused the game and reality and came out injured - the background setting of the high school in the game and the high school he attended were exactly the same.

This is very similar to what Bai Liu and the others experienced - the prototype of "The Exploding Last Train" was an exploding last train that Bai Liu once accidentally got on.

Mu Sicheng was silent for two seconds: "I don't think it's possible that two consecutive games have prototypes in reality."

"Yes, I think so too."

"So I personally think there are three possible explanations for this." Bai Liu pulled out a piece of paper from his desk.

Bai Liu is used to writing down his thoughts when he has them, especially now that Bai Liu has confirmed that their memories can be tampered with at will to deceive people.

Because writing specific information would be muted, Bai Liu only wrote down some simple keywords. After writing it down, he held up the paper with his five fingers and turned it to show Mu Sicheng across the desk. Bai Liu explained in a calm tone:

"I tend to think that many of the games in this game have prototype events in real life, but some people know the prototypes and some don't. For example, you and I both know the prototype of the Mirror City bombing, because we are both in Mirror City, but it is obvious that Zhang Kui doesn't know it. For example, Mu Ke mentioned this haunted Japanese high school, he knows it, but you and I don't know it."

"But the question is, how are these real-life [prototypes] chosen for the game?"

Bai Liu wrote a [Scene Selection] on the paper:

"The first possibility is that the game randomly selects real-life scenes and events as prototypes to design a horror game. However, judging from the Mirror City bombing and the haunted Japanese high school, the game's selection is obviously biased. It will choose tragedies that are already horrific in nature to design the game. So this possibility is not high, pass."

Bai Liu wrote the words "Source of Inspiration" on the paper and continued:

"The second possibility is that the game will select tragedies and supernatural locations that the player has experienced as prototypes to design the game. You and I both know that games can delete people's memories, so is it possible that the game can also read the player's memory and take inspiration from the player's memory, and use the player's memory as a reference to construct the game."

"This makes it easy for players to get into horror games to a certain extent, and the scenes are more realistic. For example, the train scene setting in the last few minutes of the second copy is exactly the same as what I remember. This kind of reality that makes it difficult to distinguish between reality and illusion is actually very difficult to achieve."

Mu Sicheng crossed his arms in thought and tapped his other arm with his index finger: "I think the second possibility you mentioned is more reasonable in terms of inference. I tend to believe this one. What about the third possibility you mentioned?"

"No, but this possibility has a very big flaw, that is, the logic of the timeline is wrong." Bai Liu raised his eyes and looked directly at Mu Sicheng, "Do you remember when the game "Last Train to Explosion" we played existed?"

Mu Sicheng was startled. He recalled: "It seems like it's been a long time. It was there when I entered."

Bai Liu calmly reminded Mu Sicheng, "But the Mirror City bombing happened this year, which means that the game "The Last Train to Explosion" was earlier than "The Mirror City bombing". Before the bombing happened, this game based on the bombing had already existed. Mu Sicheng, do you understand what this means?"

Mu Sicheng's expression began to change. He seemed to realize something and slowly looked at Bai Liu. Bai Liu continued indifferently:

"This shows that we got the reference prototype wrong. It's not that The Last Train to Explosion referenced Mirror City Bombing." Bai Liu continued calmly, "It's that Mirror City Bombing referenced the game The Last Train to Explosion."

After saying this, Bai Liu wrote the four words "testing phase" on the paper.

Mu Sicheng looked at Bai Liu's calm eyes, and he felt as if a basin of ice water had been poured over his head. He stared stiffly at the four words Bai Liu had written on the paper, and waves of cold air came out from his back. Mu Sicheng's hands were shaking a little, as if he had been shocked to the extreme. He understood what Bai Liu meant, but this also made him look at the words Bai Liu had written on the paper on the table, and retorted in disbelief: "How is this possible?!"

To use an in-game term to describe Mu Sicheng's current condition is that his spirit value has fallen below the safety line.

Bai Liuyu said to Ping Ning: "At the end of the development of each game, a version will be released, called the public beta version. Simply put, it is a local public test and will not be open to all players."

"If we are satisfied with the response of some local players to a certain copy, we will put this game copy in the official game and make it public to everyone, which is the final official version of the game."

Bai Liu opened his eyelids and said, "The third possibility I guessed is that the game and the reality we live in are the public beta version and the official version of the same game respectively."

"The game is testing how we, the selected players, react to a certain dungeon. If the [system] is satisfied with our performance in this game dungeon, the corresponding game will be released to our reality and made public to everyone, becoming the official version."

"For example, when The Last Train to Japan was released into reality, it became The Mirror City Bombing, and when Leaving School was released into reality, it became the Japanese high school that Mu Ke attended before. In a nutshell, they are just two different forms of the same horror game."

"In other words." Bai Liu looked at Mu Sicheng with no emotion in his eyes, "Our world is not safe either. The official versions of those horror games in the system may be released at any time."

"If that's the case, then the meaning of the real life you're pursuing, Mu Sicheng, is no different from surviving in the game, so I don't think you need to refuse a competition for the sake of your so-called real life."

"Because the reality you live in is nothing more than a game competition that you can't see."