Chapter 117 Mark
The two of them hadn't slept well for several days, and when they opened their eyes it was almost one in the afternoon.
The first few minutes after waking up are the stupidest time of the day for Zhang Lian.
He stood up and sat on the bed, with his robe lazily half-pulled off, revealing a large area of skin with barely noticeable scars.
Zhang Lian stared at the golden spot of sunlight falling on the quilt outside. His messy hair was sticking out all over the place. His eyes opened and closed, and he looked lazy, as if he was about to fall asleep again.
It was unknown how much time had passed before he realized what was going on.
Why are the people around me gone?
He became sober instantly. Zhang Lian just raised his head when Li Ziyue came in with a cup of hot water.
Zhang Lian reached out and embraced Li Zi, and rubbed his lower abdomen affectionately through his clothes.
Li Ziyue lowered her head to smooth down her curled black hair.
Zhang Lian is very well-behaved when he sleeps. He stays in the same position when he wakes up, but his hair is always messy, which is magical.
Zhang Lian used to take care of his hair himself, but he stopped caring about it after sleeping with Li Ziyue. Li Ziyue didn't help him smooth out the sticky hair, so he just let it remain messy.
The two of them had brunch at the same time, and Li Ziyue checked Zhang Lian's injuries again. Zhang Lian recovered quickly, and now there were only faint scars left on inconspicuous places on his body.
Zhang Lian would stay in the training room from 2pm to 12am, so Li Ziyue took advantage of this time to go to the strange container he saw yesterday.
The degree of mechanization in this world is much higher than Li Ziyue had imagined. Li Ziyue held a piece of emerald green leaf that had just fallen from the branch next to him in his hand and frowned slightly.
He pressed the petiole of the leaf and heard a very slight "click" sound. Countless tiny thorns appeared on the edge of the originally soft leaf.
Li Ziyue quickly slid the leaf across the tree trunk, using very little force, but a scratch was left on the trunk.
The inside of the scratched tree trunk is filled with wires of various colors.
Li Ziyue pursed her lips and took back the leaves.
There are many similar things along the way. No matter how vivid the "life" is, Li Ziyue can always find the mechanical gears behind it.
Even the air seemed to be filled with the sound of gears turning.
This virtual world is unimaginably vast, with detailed divisions of areas managed by different players.
The players have distinct personal characteristics and are responsible for unique areas. This area happens to be in the hands of Li Liu, an animal enthusiast. Wherever Li Ziyue looks, there are almost all strange creatures.
Most creatures have died, but machine gears allow them to survive in another way.
Leading the way for him was a paradise parrot that became extinct only in the 20th century. Its wings were crimson on both sides, its forehead was slightly beige, and the back of its neck was emerald green.
Although the parrot is small in size, it has bright colors. With it leading the way, Li Ziyue quickly found the same position as yesterday.
When I got closer to Li Ziyue, I realized that this was a street with no end in sight, and both sides of the street were filled with car containers filled with broken tires.
Unlike normal streets, this side has a small space but a large population, and is as crowded as a refugee zone hit by war.
This place does not belong to any player. It is a gray area under the jurisdiction of the system. When the "time is right", the system will treat the people here as special resources and distribute them equally to other areas.
Countless people gathered like a dense ant colony, living against the dark walls.
Regardless of gender, age or status, everyone had an expression of haggardness and despair on their faces. They were thin and most of them stood expressionless beside the giant containers. They seemed to have been too frightened, and their eyes were dazed and unable to focus. A few of them held the nutrient solution in their hands and struggled to drink it into themselves.
Occasionally, a few half-man-tall stuffed bears would walk by. They would lean against the distraught children and use their soft fur to comfort and soothe them.
Li Ziyue passed by some staff members wearing special uniforms. There was a black crow image pasted behind them. Li Ziyue narrowed his eyes slightly, thinking that he seemed to have seen this logo somewhere.
Just as I was thinking about it, I met someone head-on.
Wu Tian was squatting on the ground, facing the boy who was holding a teddy bear. His expression was unusually gentle, completely different from the previous academic confrontation with Class A.
"The destruction of the virtual world is only temporary. If you are willing, you are welcome to come to my virtual world," Wu Tian took out a candy from his pocket and put it in the child's hand. "It's not too late to leave when you have accumulated enough points."
Li Ziyue gently brought his eyebrows together.
Wu Tian likes to use sweet words to gain the trust of new players. When the other party starts to rely on him like a family member, Wu Tian will turn around and use them as his own human "points library". When he needs points, he will cruelly abandon them.
There was another person standing behind Wu Tian, who could be considered an "old friend" of Li Ziyue. He was He Jianshan, who had previously had a conflict with Li Ziyue in "Snowstorm Villa".
He Jianshan's body was stiff and his lips were stretched tight. He stared at the squatting Wu Tian and the frightened child, and clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides.
He Jianshan became a captive of Wu Tian's emotions. Now Wu Tian even wanted him to see with his own eyes how the boy gradually became who he is today.
This is a provocative test of obedience. If He Jianshan shows any rebellious intentions, Wu Tian will get rid of him without hesitation.
What Li Ziyue has felt most deeply in recent years is that one should not meddle in other people's business. Everyone has his own destiny. For the boy in front of him, for He Jianshan, and even for Wu Tian, all of this is the trajectory that fate has already determined.
After communicating for a long time without any results, Wu Tian stood up and stretched to loosen up his stiff body. At this moment, Li Ziyue saw a crow mark on Wu Tian's collarbone.
What does the crow represent? Is it related to this virtual world?
Li Ziyue cast his gaze over again without leaving a trace, but someone next to him blocked his gaze.
Zhang Xingzhi gave him a "long time no see" smile.
He seemed to have lived in this virtual world for many years and gave Li Ziyue a general description of the situation here.
There are two types of people in this area, one is the players who have just lost the virtual world, and the other is the new residents who were transferred to the world by the system due to the expansion of the virtual world.
Usually both types of people will go through a period of memory clearing, and they will gradually forget the pain they suffered in the past. The former will have an urgent desire to build a virtual world on their own, and the latter will continue to be brainwashed, suggesting that they are in a complete and real world, and a childhood memory that never happened will emerge in their minds.
Finally, these two groups of people will be completely integrated into the infinite flow dungeon and virtual world.
Zhang Xingzhi was helping a newly transferred resident with his wrist injury. He stood up and walked to Li Ziyue, and said in a voice that only the two of them could hear, "Do you think these people are familiar?"
Li Ziyue was silent for a while: "Where do the residents of the virtual world come from?"
At first, Li Ziyue thought that the residents were randomly generated by the system in order to make the virtual world where the players lived more realistic. However, when he accidentally saw the "perfect birth" of the residents in his world, everything changed.
The system pursues the optimal solution. There is no need to first weaken a "virtual body" and then brainwash it, and finally integrate it into the world.
There is a reason behind this that Li Ziyue is not sure of - since he is from another world, are these residents also from the same world?
Is everyone here a living being?
Zhang Xingzhi glanced at him sideways and said seriously, "The system has never thought of hiding anything. It has already put the concepts of 'virtual world' and 'real world' in front of you."
"All residents of the virtual world come from the world you once lived in, which is the 'real world'." Zhang Xingzhi said calmly, "The reason why the system brainwashed them is very simple. Since they have changed to a new world, they must continue to survive according to the rules of that world, otherwise the world will be in chaos."
Li Ziyue paused and said, "…Why does the system do this?"
"When an ecosystem is on the verge of collapse, animals will migrate to another place suitable for survival." Zhang Xingzhi seemed to be answering a question that was irrelevant.
Li Ziyue turned his eyes away.
Zhang Xingzhi looked at him in silence, and suddenly said, "In fact, you already have the answer in your heart, don't you?"
Li Ziyue lowered his eyelashes.
"So what is this virtual world?" Li Ziyue asked, "A temporary shelter for players?"
"Before this world existed, players would have their points reset to zero or be eliminated from a dungeon and would eventually have no choice but to die."
Zhang Xingzhi picked up a few machine parts that had been wetted by water and had turned red with rust from a corner: "When resources are limited, people are eager to scavenge usable parts from scrapped machines. These parts can be reassembled to form a new machine."
"Based on this, you can think of this as a place to 'repair' players in order to facilitate secondary use of them."
"How straightforward." Li Ziyue exhaled.
Zhang Xingzhi pulled the corner of his mouth and said: "The dungeon is much more cruel than here, there is no need to say nice things to cover it up."
"So what about the energy that keeps this world running?"
The higher the degree of mechanization, the greater the dependence on energy. However, Li Ziyue did not find any facilities such as energy converters. The whole world seemed to be built in mid-air, and there was no foundation supporting it below. People always worried whether the world would collapse in the next second.
Zhang Xingzhi sighed: "...points."
"?"
Zhang Xingzhi called the soldier robot that Li Ziyue had seen before to clean up the iron tools scattered on the ground: "Energy is mostly monopolized by the system. They only allow this world to produce a small amount of energy independently. The majority of energy requires players to exchange points with them."
“The more mechanization there is here, the more system-dependent this world becomes.”
Zhang Xingzhi said: "Everyone knows this, but it cannot stop the increasing reliance on machines. High efficiency and high benefits are the core pursuits of production. We cannot deny that in some areas, the cost of training machines is much lower than that of manual labor. When there is a conflict of interest, people can easily be abandoned because of their own 'expensiveness'."
"In that case, the copy can also be made by robots..."
"No," Zhang Xingzhi interrupted him, "As a player, your goal is to gain points. It's normal to think this way, but if you are a spectator."
“Is it more interesting to watch robots fighting each other whose results can be predicted by simple algorithms, or to watch real people facing life-and-death crises, with all the uncertainties of greed, lies, betrayal, etc.?”
Li Ziyue fell silent again.
Zhang Xingzhi shrugged his shoulders: "Don't be so pessimistic. In fact, the idea when this world was first built was very simple. It wanted to create a second 'ideal home' that could accommodate all players."
"But things are not peaceful here now," Li Ziyue looked at the rusty parts in Zhang Xingzhi's hand. "Most of the machines that are still running here are coated with protective coatings. It is rare to see a machine rusted by water. If I am right, it should be a scrapped machine that has mutated recently?"
Zhang Xingzhi was a little surprised: "Have you encountered a mutated robot?"
Li Ziyue’s mind flashed back to the half-face robot that he saw yesterday "crying" at him, and he nodded slowly.
"That's true," Zhang Xingzhi said, "When machines first mutate, they can only imitate human behavior. Advanced ones can lie, but these are easy to solve. If machines lie, just let them tell the difference."
"But there have been three unusual changes recently," he said with a serious expression. "If the previous ones were just minor incidents with surging waves, the three unusual changes are like raging mountain torrents."
"The machines that have undergone the third mutation have developed a desire to reproduce. To put it simply, computers want to give birth to computers," Zhang Xingzhi paused for two seconds. "It sounds ridiculous, but it is true. When a species has a desire to reproduce, it will also develop a sense of territory. This is no longer a simple question of whether machines will take over human jobs."
"As you can see, things have been a bit turbulent lately. It is expected that in the near future this virtual world will face a battle to determine whether it can continue."
“Who will become the master of this area at that time?”
Zhang Xingzhi bent down and picked up a brown bear that was lying on the ground in a daze due to lack of energy. Li Ziyue's eyes naturally swept over to him, and thanks to his high vantage point, Li Ziyue saw a small gray wolf icon printed on the back of Zhang Xingzhi's neck near the edge of his hair.
He frowned again.
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