Chapter 125 Everyone Died Without Exception
Li Ziyue was trapped in a narrow road that seemed to have no end in sight. The light was very poor and he could only judge by the sound of his feet that there should be a lot of hard objects around.
Is it a machine again?
He kicked and hit something soft.
The corners of Li Ziyue's mouth twitched and he got goose bumps.
It feels like I kicked someone.
The deeper he went, the greater the chance of kicking something soft. The ground below seemed to have produced glue, making it increasingly difficult for him to take steps, so he simply stopped where he was and did not move.
If there had been no other strange smell in the air, he would have begun to wonder if he was in a pile of rotting corpses.
As soon as he stopped, he heard a "click" and a light from an unknown source suddenly lit up. Li Ziyue couldn't accept such a strong light for a moment and his eyes narrowed into thin lines.
Vaguely he could see red and flesh-colored things all around him, with an occasional bit of white. Li Ziyue's heart beat faster. He had seen many storms and waves in the dungeon, so he could guess what was around him.
It turned out to be a dead person.
Most of them had turned into white bones, with incomplete bodies, and only a few were intact. This allowed Li Ziyue to know who the dead people were.
They all have the same face - Li Ziyue's face.
A large number of corpses were piled up like garbage on both sides of the road. A half-rotten hand covered Li Ziyue's left calf, and a head with only one eye left rolled in the middle of the road. If Li Ziyue had taken another step forward, he would have stepped on the fragile human eyeball on the edge of the skull.
This is……
His breathing stagnated for a moment, and the air seemed to be filled with a layer of greasy and turbid air from a slaughterhouse. Li Ziyue's hands hanging by his side quietly clenched and relaxed, trying hard to suppress the nausea that was churning in his stomach.
He closed his eyes and focused on the blood flowing through his body and the beating of his heart, trying to reduce the mental impact of the scene before him.
This can't possibly be a normal space. It's probably a virtual scene simulation of a copy. Don't panic.
His heartbeat gradually returned to normal, and Li Ziyue belatedly realized that he was the only one who died.
As soon as I closed my eyes, I heard children talking around me.
"Hello."
"Li Ziyue."
“I’m watching you.”
The same voice and words had appeared in his dreams.
The more Li Zi wanted to open his eyes, he found that his body was out of control.
He fell into darkness again.
A cold hand grasped his left little finger.
"Who are you."
Li Ziyue felt that he had asked a question whose answer was obvious.
"Don't you already know that I am the third party in your eyes and the highest authority in the dungeon?" The child seemed to remember something. "You humans finally guessed my identity, but when you learned the truth, you thought my existence was cliché."
Li Ziyue: “…”
"You know you'll face the Advanced Pseudo-Human Dungeon next, and you also know that no one has cleared this dungeon yet," the child said softly, "You just came out of the most expansive virtual world created by you humans, and you've seen everything there. If you want to live in a mechanical world, I can help you restore order and prevent mechanical anomalies from happening again."
The conditions were very tempting, and Li Ziyue had almost no reason to refuse.
But there is no free lunch in the world. Even without mechanical mutations, the larger the world expands, the more points are needed for daily maintenance. In order to earn a few points, players still have to take the initiative to enter dangerous copies until death.
That world is a castle in the air that appears solid on the surface but is actually fragile. If a third party wants them to die, they will die. If they want them to live, they will linger on.
It's no different from my life now.
Li Ziyue shook his head.
"You can't save everyone," the child continued to tempt. "Even if you pass the Advanced Pseudo-Human Dungeon, you don't know what will happen. Do you want to gamble with everyone's future? What's more, you may not be able to pass this level."
Li Ziyue was silent for a long time, and suddenly laughed.
"Why do you always think of me as something great?" Li Ziyue said calmly, "Many people hated me when I was down and out, and begged me to save them when I was just starting to get better, and without any explanation, they put the burden of 'saving everyone' on my shoulders."
"I never said I wanted to save anyone. I didn't even plan to save myself," he said in a cold voice. "Am I rejecting you because I want to become great, want everyone to be grateful to me, want to create miracles, and prove that I am truly the strongest player?"
"That was what I wanted to do six years ago, but it's not what I'm pursuing now."
"I rejected you only for my own selfish reasons. I've said before that there is only one purpose that has kept me alive until now, and that is revenge. I can't really kill him unless I reach the Advanced Pseudo-Human Copy."
The child didn't say anything, but let go of the hand that was holding Li Ziyue.
"I like your decision, Li Ziyue," it said calmly, "The owners of the bones you are stepping on once made the same decision as you, and they all died without exception."
“Have been”? “Without exception”? “Dead”?
Li Ziyue frowned: "...what do you mean."
It just said: "You are not a newbie in the dungeon, you should know how to find the answer to the question on your own."
Based on the information currently available, there are two situations that are most likely to lead to this outcome.
One is the cycle, that is, Li Ziyue fell into the cycle he had experienced before in "Snowstorm Villa" without knowing it. The number of his deaths here means that he has experienced the same cycle many times.
However, where is the starting point of the loop, how to avoid the loop, is he the only one trapped in the loop or are all people in the loop, how is the loop constructed, are there small loops nested in the middle...
Countless questions remain unanswered. If he continues to follow the "circular" line of thought, he will only get the same ending as in "Snowstorm Manor" - self-shooting.
There is another possibility, that the person who died here was not him, but his pseudo-person.
The rules in "Advanced Pseudo-Human Copy" are dynamic and do not explicitly state whether a person will only produce one pseudo-human.
However, the "Advanced Pseudo-Human Copy" was not reopened until three months later. If the scene in front of us is really related to the "Advanced Pseudo-Human Copy"... it should appear in the later stage of the "Advanced Pseudo-Human Copy" instead of before the copy is opened.
Li Ziyue subconsciously had a horrifying guess in his mind - could it be that... he still hadn't really escaped from the "Advanced Pseudo-Human Instance" six years ago? !
No, it won't.
His hands were shaking, his breathing was quickening, and he tried his best to put this weird inference aside.
"This is a plan proposed by you humans. I don't want to interfere too much." It seemed not to notice Li Ziyue's abnormality and continued to talk to itself.
Li Ziyue felt more and more depressed, thinking of "Crow", "Gray Wolf" and "Turbulent Duck" behind the senior sister: "Humanity is divided into three factions? What plan did they propose to you?"
"The three plans represent the past, present, and future respectively."
Its cold fingertips touched Li Ziyue's forehead: "The 'present' has surrendered to the 'future'. You rejected the 'future', and you only have the shaky 'past' left to go."
past?
The plums get cooler as they get closer to your fingertips.
He remembered what Zhang Xingzhi had said to him before the final class showdown.
——"Do you know what test those people in Class A took? They took a test paper from a hundred years ago. This means that we are not from the same time and space as them."
——"That's not what I want to emphasize," Zhang Xingzhi said solemnly, "Think about it carefully. The two sides have spanned more than a hundred years of time and space, but neither the audience nor the host noticed it at all."
It seemed to laugh.
"But you humans usually arrange four options. Which one is correct?"
The chill gradually disappeared, the light around him dimmed, and Li Ziyue felt that his body had regained some strength.
"I have no hostility towards humans. I will only provide you with opportunities impartially and ask for a low, highly entertaining reward."
The lights went out again, the corpses around disappeared, and the world turned into nothingness.
"You will take one more multiple-choice test. I look forward to seeing you next time."
…
Another dream.
At six o'clock in the morning of early spring, a cool spring rain as fine as cow hair fell outside the window. A little sound of water flowed down the eaves of the window and blended into the four sides of the flower pots on the windowsill.
The window was opened to a gap the width of two fingers, and the moist and cool morning breeze came in through the gap, brushing across Li Ziyue's forehead, gradually making him more awake.
It has been almost a month since he left the mechanical virtual world. During this time, he has had the same dream over and over again, and he doesn't know whether it is a warning or a hint.
He rubbed his swollen temples, went to the living room to pour himself a glass of cold water, and sat on the sofa in a daze while drinking it.
Normally at this time he would have packed up and prepared to go to school. The reason he didn't move was not because Li Ziyue suddenly became tired of studying, but because he was unable to study normally.
His virtual world changed on its own without the permission of him as the sovereign.
The first was the fusion of worlds. Just like the mechanical world that his senior sister was in before, his world also underwent an inexplicable fusion. Sun Yuancheng, Zhang Xingzhi, Liu Yuche, and even Wu Tian, these four people now shared the same vast world with him.
The new world is so vast that it has no end, and other people will not experience inexplicable mental confusion. Everything is the same as the real world.
The role he played in school as a college entrance examination repeater with a deep hatred for his life also came to an end. The school disappeared, and he had no choice but to temporarily take refuge in Zhang Lian's house outside the school - thanks to Zhang Lian who almost emptied the points store in order to lower his scores, Zhang Lian had already earned countless currencies when the virtual world just changed.
Now he is a rare unemployed vagrant with free time, while Zhang Lian is an invisible rich man with at least nine zero deposits.
The disappearance of the school was not a big deal, but the thing that made Li Ziyue most confused and uneasy was that the entrance to the copy had also disappeared.
The player system, points system, etc. no longer responded. The previous struggle in the copy seemed like a very long and terrifying nightmare, and now I woke up from the dream.
But many questions remain.
If the mechanical virtual world represents the "future" plan conceived by humans, then what is the "present" plan?
He sorted out his thoughts: It is known that there are currently two worlds, the virtual world and the real world.
The players were once residents of the real world. After being selected by the real-world "school", they had their memories erased and were sent to the virtual world, where they then began the second half of their lives of passing through infinite dungeons.
Here lies the question: Why clear the player's memory?
This question already has a rough answer: players who pass the school's final selection and enter the virtual world all have the ability to "love" deep in their hearts, which means that they will work hard to go to dungeons and accumulate points in order to ensure the survival of other residents living in the virtual world.
On the one hand, erasing memories can make them feel from the bottom of their hearts that they are part of the virtual world, so that they can better integrate into the virtual world. On the other hand, it can also make players better obey the arrangements of the copy.
And who are the residents of the virtual world?
The answer has been revealed before - they are also people from the real world. They come to the virtual world of each player after their memories are erased and brainwashed, under the pretext of "looking for another safe haven."
The real world is obviously on the verge of collapse. In Li Ziyue's unclear memory, there is only long and cold winter.
Abnormally severe weather is the first hammer that rings the bell of destruction.
At this point, there is only one group of people left in the real world who are still struggling to hold on - the Zhang family who are unwilling to step into the infinite copy.
They kept experimenting in an attempt to obtain the strongest human body that could adapt to the harsh environment. They thought they could hold out until the day when the experiment produced stable results. However, the speed at which the environment deteriorated had far exceeded the level of technology they had mastered.
Immediately afterwards, Zhang Lian's "betrayal" tore apart the Zhang family's fragile persistence.
When the machines went crazy, a large number of people with the surname Zhang poured into the virtual world, which also meant that they abandoned the real world and joined the infinite flow player camp represented by the virtual world.
If the mechanical virtual world represents the "future" (crow) and the man surnamed Zhang represents the "present" (gray wolf), then the above speculation is consistent with what it said [the present has turned to the future].
Now all that remains is the "past" represented by the torrent duck.
During the entire thinking process, there was an extremely important camp that he never mentioned - the live broadcast room.
Li Ziyue had wanted to divide the three factions clearly before, but he was always confused. Now he finally figured out the reason for his distress.
Players and live broadcast rooms are connected through a system, and the system has many branches, some of which belong to the players and some to the live broadcast rooms. Trying to separate them completely will only lead to "a tangled mess", as they themselves are tangled vines.
The live broadcast room connects to the audience from a hundred years ago, and this is the final third option.
Only then did Li Ziyue figure out the series of changes that had taken place in the previous live broadcast room.
However, what exactly went wrong in the live broadcast room recently? Li Ziyue does not think that the last thing he saw on the Buddha statue was just a coincidence, it must have a meaning.
Putting aside the three speculations of "past", "present" and "future", there is still one most critical question - "Advanced Pseudo-Human Copy".
During this period, Li Ziyue tried his best to avoid thinking about this matter. He could not forget what the child said - ["The owners of the bones you are stepping on once made the same decision as you, and they all died without exception."]
Li Ziyue looked at his reflection in the water glass.
The man had a pair of dark pupils, drooping eyelashes, and a layer of dark gray shadow on his lower eyelids.
The whole face looked extremely unfamiliar, without a trace of smile.
I……
The person in the reflection bit his lower lip and closed his eyes with difficulty.
Did it really come out from the "Advanced Pseudo-Human Copy" six years ago?
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