Chapter 120 The one who tied the bell must untie it (1/2)
After Li Xiaocan left, a beam of golden and silver light came in from the outer corridor, reflecting half of Li Ziyue's body.
The room is not very brightly lit, but is covered with a layer of tranquil light blue, like an untouchable mist that makes people feel like they are drowning in shallow waters.
I didn't know how to breathe, I didn't hear any sound, I just felt the blood rushing through my body.
It was difficult for Li Ziyue to describe the feeling. He just used his eyes to look, and the current appearance of the person in front of him and the figure in his memory gradually approached, overlapped, and then merged into one.
Huo Qianyun's eyes were red, and she stroked Li Ziyue's cheek with her trembling left hand, letting the human warmth wrap him gently.
He heard her say.
"You've grown taller, but...how come you've lost so much weight, Yueyue."
Li Ziyue was stunned, his throat choked with sobs.
He didn't answer, he didn't know how to answer.
Facing Huo Qianyun in front of him, his vigilant mind raised questions, but his emotional longing made him hesitate.
Beneath Li Ziyue's cold and calm appearance, he actually is a very timid person when it comes to emotions.
He had thought of thousands of ways of dying in the future, but rarely had the courage to think about an impossible reunion. As a result, he now felt so powerless that he couldn't even utter a word.
Li Ziyue didn't expect that the most real feeling in his heart on this day would be a mixture of various emotions.
The AI assistant in my brain is started again.
Li Ziyue seemed not to hear anything and just stared at the girl who was a head shorter than him in a daze.
He pulled the corners of his mouth with great difficulty, and the fingers hanging at his sides moved slightly.
My mood gradually sank to the bottom as the AI assistant reminded me, and my eyes, which were originally filled with tears, became dim and dull.
yes.
How is that possible.
The pain from the choking in the respiratory tract was replaced by unspeakable bitterness and sourness.
He lowered his head slightly, but his eyes still did not leave the person in front of him.
Still silent.
The face of the senior schoolmate was reflected in Li Ziyue's dark pupils, including her expression, demeanor, facial features... and the extremely subtle light red sniper mark between her eyebrows.
Li Xiaocan did not leave. He waited behind them for a long time.
Then there was an almost inaudible crisp sound.
"Bang."
The bullet mercilessly pierced Huo Qianyun's head. She widened her eyes in disbelief and fell straight back.
Li Ziyue closed his eyes impatiently, frowned, and clenched his hands into fists at his side, avoiding her questioning gaze.
His heart was beating fast. He heard the sound of human bodies colliding with hard objects only half a meter away from him, and his lower lip was bitten hard until it was colorless.
She is not a senior.
She is a fake person.
Li Ziyue's head was buzzing, as if a thin iron wire was inserted into his collarbone. The tip of the wire pierced his skin, penetrated into his flesh, and twisted around in his bones.
The AI assistant, which had returned to normal, sent Li Ziyue an identity detection reminder, telling him that the person in front of him was not an artificial intelligence, but a human being with complete life characteristics.
The senior student was indeed dead, so there was only one answer left for Li Ziyue.
[Li Ziyue] can freely cross dungeons, and other high-level pseudo-humans are no exception.
In less than a month, the "Advanced Pseudo-Human Copy" will be opened again, and the pseudo-human senior in front of me may be a reminder.
The sound of sniper rifles seemed like a signal for the start of a war. The large-scale invasion hidden under the second mutation struck again, and red lights warned of abnormalities around the room.
Half of the color was printed on half of his face, and Li Ziyue finally opened his eyes to look at the dead body on the ground.
There was a sharp pain at the corner of my eye, and when I blinked slightly, two lines of tears rolled down again.
He finally bent down and reached out to close the eyes of the fake man.
My fingertips accidentally touched a little bright red blood. It was warm, the same temperature as tears.
Li Ziyue stared at the bloodstain in a daze for a long time until Li Xiaocan called him.
"Let's go quickly. There may be a risk of collapse here," Li Xiaocan's voice was unusually hurried. "This is an unprecedented attack. More than half of the security systems in this area have been paralyzed. If we don't leave now, it may be too late."
The swallow above his head also stood straight, looking highly alert.
Then Li Xiaocan suddenly stopped all movements. His eye sockets shrank sharply, and he watched the position where Li Ziyue was in the room sinking downwards at a speed that ordinary people could hardly react to. The extremely hard material instantly cracked into dense spider web-like cracks, and the deepest part was torn into a huge abyss that could accommodate several people falling in at the same time.
Before Li Xiaocan's fingertips even touched the door, he saw Li Ziyue and the pseudo-man's corpse falling deep into the ground together.
"Bang!"
The security system forced the gate closed.
Li Xiaocan's face was so pale that it didn't have any color that a living person should have.
Fortunately, at this moment, he heard the sound of someone running from the other side of the corridor.
…
The dark underground is airtight. It is a vast area used to bury all waste products and household garbage. In its most humble way, the land swallows up the disgusting filth after human carnival.
The air seemed to be filled with a thick stench and fishy smell.
Sun Yuancheng vomited and walked painfully with a crutch he had picked up from somewhere.
After the class showdown, everyone else was teleported to above the main city area, but he, the unlucky guy, landed in the underground garbage dump at the beginning.
Not only is the living environment here terrible, the only people he has to chat with are a few broken-down machines, which occasionally go crazy and tell him some macabre jokes that scare him half to death.
Sun Yuancheng is tired, Sun Yuancheng hates others, Sun Yuancheng wants to die but can't bear to die.
Fortunately, he was very smart. Although the garbage dump was disgusting, it could be considered a treasure chest if rounded off.
Sun Yuancheng used the nearly scrapped mechanical parts here to revive some cute little machines that he liked, and recruited them as his own brothers, letting them follow him obediently when he had nothing to do.
In a few days, he will be trained to become a master of mechanics.
Sun Yuancheng had a dark face and patted the robot's head: "Don't twist it, the screws at the back haven't been tightened yet."
I don’t know when days like this will end.
Although his survival ability was almost at its maximum, he could not endure living in this dark place for a long time. Sun Yuancheng had thought about leaving, but after wandering around for a long time, he still could not find any way out.
This place is like the dark side that the city above is trying hard to cover up, vast and boundless, with no detectable boundaries.
Maybe God took pity on Sun Yuancheng, and the third round of mutations opened the connecting door between the city above and the garbage dump below. Li Ziyue followed the crack into the underground world.
He seemed to have lost consciousness, so Sun Yuancheng took him back to his temporary home and let Li Ziyue lie there safely.
Afraid that no one would take care of Li Ziyue when he woke up, he placed a few washed toy bears next to Li Ziyue's pillow. He transformed the entire room into a child's room.
There were deafening roars coming from above one after another, and some of the scrapped machines underground began to stir again. Sun Yuancheng had already become proficient in managing them, and he disciplined those machines like his grandsons, making them stand obediently in a row and not dare to speak.
During this time, Sun Yuancheng just quietly looked at the dark underground roof that seemed to have no end.
The darkness in the distance grew deeper, with occasional eerie flashes of red light, and the stiff and harsh friction and collision sounds of scrap metal never stopping.
Something was growing there. Occasionally, Sun Yuancheng could see its densely packed "tentacles", which looked like the Thousand-Armed Avalokitesvara dripping with blood.
It should have been two days before another person came into the underground area.
She looked tired and was wearing a light blue long skirt that reached her ankles. Her long hair was simply tied at the back of her neck with a thin dark red silk thread. There were subtle scars on both sides of her arms that were exposed outside the fabric.
Sun Yuancheng knew that she was looking for Li Ziyue, and even guessed that she was Li Ziyue’s senior schoolmate who died six years ago.
But he didn't expect that the first thing the senior sister that Li Ziyue particularly respected said when she saw him was -
"What kind of thatched hut is this? Why is it so shabby?"
"Ah? I've tried my best! You don't know how miserable it is for me to be here alone!"
It's usually Sun Yuancheng who drives others crazy, and it's rare that he leaves others dumbfounded.
The senior student was very familiar with this place and had maximum management authority over the underground area. In just half a day, Sun Yuancheng's residence was renovated and looked like a small villa that was very suitable for long-term residence.
Huo Qianyun stood in front of the door with her hands on her hips and her head raised, looking at her masterpiece with pride.
"Thank you, senior sister. You are so great," Sun Yuancheng sat in the middle of a small courtyard in front of the house, holding a cup of steaming green tea in his hand, sipping it comfortably, completely ignoring the garbage dump behind him, "From now on, I am not only your direct junior, but also your bag-carrying little brother."
Huo Qianyun patted Sun Yuancheng on the shoulder and praised him, "He who knows the current situation is a hero."
"Senior sister is so cultured!"
Sun Yuancheng was a master of mechanics one moment and a happy chef the next. With the cooking tools and food ingredients provided to him by Huo Qianyun, he was temporarily responsible for the three meals a day for the three of them.
Even though Li Ziyue was basically hanging on to his life on a glucose solution, his bowl and chopsticks were still placed on the table.
In Sun Yuancheng's words, "Don't worry about when my brother can eat. When he wakes up and sees a place reserved for him at the table, he will be happy."
Huo Qianyun's eyes lit up for a moment, and she was pleased to praise Sun Yuancheng again.
She often sat beside Li Ziyue's bed for half a day. When her eyes fell on Li Ziyue's face, her eyebrows and eyes became particularly soft.
Occasionally, Sun Yuancheng walked past the door and all he could hear was her whispers.
"Before I officially met you, I thought about my opening remarks for a long time."
"Talking about trivial matters in life? It doesn't sound like you are of much importance to me."
"You've grown taller? You've lost weight? I'm an artificial intelligence now. Don't underestimate my ability to obtain information. Although I haven't been by your side for the past six years, I have never stopped collecting news about you. I'm afraid you will find it strange that I'm opening this way."
"I was worried about this for a long time, and even worried that you would be disappointed in me."
She laughed softly and tilted her head slightly upwards to prevent the tears that were welling up in her eyes from rolling down.
"After all, you are 26 now, Yueyue."
Huo Qianyun spoke with abnormal pauses and hoarseness: "When we broke up, you were 20 and I was 24. Now you are 26 and I am still 24. It seems that I can no longer bear your calling me 'senior sister'."
She looked at the ceiling, watching the light emitting gentle yellow light gradually become blurred in her eyes, casting circles of light and shadow.
The fingers that Li Ziyue placed beside him seemed to move unconsciously for a moment.
"In fact, many people said that I spoiled you too much, that I treated you like a child, that I didn't let you do anything and didn't let you suffer any hardship."
"I argued that the copy was already suffering enough, Yueyue had just come in and we would still be with him for a long time, so why not let him have as many beautiful memories of being loved unconditionally as possible?"
"If someone has been living a difficult and cautious life before, all we need to do is try to increase the happiness and joy that he rarely gets, rather than forcing him to accept a cruel copy of life in advance."
"But those people said that without us, you wouldn't be able to achieve anything big, you would be quickly defeated by the dungeons, and you wouldn't be able to handle a sudden fall from a great height."
Huo Qianyun smiled at Li Ziyue, her eyes bright: "I said it's impossible, because we will give you unlimited love in a limited time, and love will be more powerful than the sarcasm you people have towards him."
"You really haven't been defeated," Huo Qianyun shrank her red nose, tears dripping onto the bed quilt without making any sound, the light blue quilt was dyed as dark as the deep sea, "You did very well, Yueyue, your seniors and I have never regretted loving you."
"You're doing better than anyone could imagine, really."
Li Ziyue's eyebrows trembled slightly.
"In the past few years, I saw you being bullied, insulted, and looked down upon in the video, and I hated myself."
"I don't hate how good I am to you, I just hate myself for not staying with you longer. If I had known..."
She bit her lip, her chest seemed to be pressed down by a thousand pounds of stone, making it difficult to breathe: "If I had known that you would suffer so much later, I would only love you more than I did then, Li Ziyue. I want you to remember that you deserve to be loved."
"You are a very lovely person. I have never seen anyone who smiles as well as you do. Your eyes bend into two small moons, your sharp fangs are visible at the corners of your mouth, and your cheeks are decorated with small dimples. I have never seen anyone who smiles more beautifully and sincerely than you."
Her slightly cool fingers covered Li Ziyue's smooth brows, and she smoothed down his sleep-messy black hair.
She saw the man lying on the bed with his eyelashes trembling uncontrollably, like the flapping of a butterfly's wings before taking off. Similarly, crystal clear drops of water rolled down from the corners of his eyes and fell into the palm of his toy bear that was pressed against the pillow.
"But I..." He spoke with great difficulty. His voice was so hoarse that it was almost inaudible. He was shaking all over. "But I..."
But I killed you.
If it weren't for me, if it weren't for me, you wouldn't die.
You are such good people.
You are such good people, but you died because of me. You loved me, but I was an ungrateful person who could never be tamed. If I really didn't have any evil thoughts in my heart at that time, if I was really as pure and innocent, and as sunny and positive as you imagined... you would not die.
"This is not your fault." Huo Qianyun looked at him with a smile.
“People are often willing to deliberately pursue strength and excellence, as if they would be unforgivable if they did not keep moving toward higher places.”
“However, allowing yourself to be weak is also a great thing. Allow yourself to have shortcomings, allow yourself to be jealous when you see others succeed, allow yourself to stop and breathe when you are tired, and allow yourself to protect yourself first when facing danger... The sun is important, but the moon is also indispensable. The word "human" is divided into two sides, and it is normal to have both positive and negative sides.”
Huo Qianyun finished this paragraph very naturally, as if she had already anticipated Li Ziyue's self-blame.
She tucked away the quilt that had fallen on the side of the bed for him. Her eyelashes drooped unconsciously and she seemed to want to say something but stopped herself.
Li Ziyue was stunned for a long time, his chest rising and falling violently with his breathing. He slowly curled up and fell to the side, his face completely hidden in the quilt, trapping himself and curling up into a ball.
"I'm sorry..." He just said this intermittently.
He kept apologizing, kept tearing open his chest, and kept blaming.
"I'm sorry... I'm... I'm sorry... I'm sorry..."
Then he felt that the hand that was exposed outside the quilt was gently held by Huo Qianyun.
His thumb was just touching her wrist, and the pulse there was particularly clear.
"Bang, bang, bang."
The mechanical heart and the human heart were in sync at that moment.
The liquid fell on the back of his hand, and the remaining temperature was very similar to the water stains in the corners of his eyes.
Li Ziyue recalled what Li Xiaocan had said before.
[“The warm, transparent liquid evaporated quietly in my hands. I could even feel its weight getting lighter. It was the sadness of a simulated person, but it overlapped with my emotions.”]
There was bitterness in his throat, and he felt the air around him gradually becoming thinner, and a moist and dry heat filled his body.
The faster my heartbeat, the 24-year-old senior's palms remained warm, no different from six years ago.
Mechanical life.
Electronic life.
Li Ziyue's eyes felt stinging and tears that were almost scalding rolled down his cheeks.
You are a bunch of data and I am a bunch of cells.
That's all.
He felt his hand being held again, and the senior's cheek was pressed against his palm.
"Yueyue," the voice came through the quilt with a vague and unreal feeling, "I know that the main reason that has supported you to this point is hatred. You hate the fake person who killed us, you hate this copy mechanism, you hate the virtual world that you can never leave, you hate that you have to bear such a fate... In the final analysis, you hate yourself."
"You made up your mind long ago that once you kill your fake person, you will end this, along with your life."
"But have you forgotten our love?" She said softly, "Yueyue, you will live again because of love. This love does not come from others, but from yourself."
"You will live and live better because you love yourself, Li Ziyue."
"Because love is greater than hate."
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