Chapter 155 The one who tied the bell must untie it (2/2)
"So annoying, Li Ziyue."
A familiar voice sounded beside him.
The man grabbed his wrist from behind and lifted it slightly. The bullet deviated from its trajectory and hit the other side of the wall.
He said slowly: "The copy has been tempting you, tempting you to lose your mind, tempting you to lose the distinction between the cycle and reality, tempting you to shoot yourself. You finally reach the last step, what if you really shoot yourself."
He chuckled: "Then everything I did before will be in vain."
Then, while Li Ziyue was still not able to react, Li Ziyue moved his fingers slightly and transferred the gun from Li Ziyue's hand to his own hand. The gun spun in his palm and then suddenly stopped. He pointed the gun at the person in front of him without hesitation.
"I'm better at killing people."
There was a hint of sad self-mockery in his words.
"Bang!"
The gun went off, but it was not the normal sound of a bullet leaving the gun, but rather a crisp sound like a mirror breaking.
At this point, all the scenes in front of Li Ziyue were broken into tiny pieces, and each piece recorded all the copies he had passed through, including his occasional glory and painful self-struggle.
All of them gathered into long silk ribbons as bright as the Milky Way. They gently wrapped around Li Ziyue and wiped away all the pain in his body.
Li Ziyue finally returned to the starting point where he had talked with "it".
All around was a mixture of red flesh and white bones. Countless bodies of "Li Ziyue" fell to the ground, forming a small hill in the front. On the hill sat a silent man with his head bowed.
That was another self——[Li Ziyue].
"So..." Li Ziyue muttered to himself, "From this moment on, I have already been in the Advanced Pseudo-Human Dungeon."
[Li Ziyue] turned a deaf ear to him and just stared at the rotting head at his feet and said, "Li Ziyue."
"I'm going to die." His tone was so soft, so soft that the words seemed to melt in the wind in an instant, so soft that the words were as ordinary as "good morning, good night".
"I'll soon be one of those corpses, too."
Li Ziyue looked up suddenly, and the moment he saw [Li Ziyue], he was suddenly stunned.
"you……"
He looked in disbelief at Li Ziyue's right hand which was beginning to become transparent.
There was originally a gun held there, but because his limbs had become transparent, Li Ziyue no longer had the strength to hold the gun, and the gun fell to the ground and got stuck in the edge of the corpse below.
"Why did you..." Li Ziyue's voice trembled, "Why did you save me..."
"Don't be so conceited, Li Ziyue." Although Li Ziyue's face turned pale, he couldn't help but snorted coldly, "I didn't intend to save you, I just..."
Just what.
He didn't say anything else, but just looked at Li Ziyue with his rosy peach blossom eyes.
He tried hard to force a smile that looked indifferent.
But her lips turned white from biting her teeth while trying to hold back tears.
[Li Ziyue]'s eyes seemed to be filled with the thin frost that formed between the grass and trees on a winter morning.
He looked directly at Li Ziyue: "I didn't save you."
"I have hated you from the beginning to the end. I want you dead more than anyone else."
Li Ziyue's eyes became complicated.
He could hear his own slow and heavy heartbeat, and unbearable emotions surging in his chest, all of which made it hard for him to breathe.
"Look here," [Li Ziyue] said in a hoarse voice, "there are many 'I's' here, not many 'you's'. Do you understand, Li Ziyue?"
"I knew my ending from the beginning," Li Ziyue said slowly, "I was your 20 years old. I am just an insignificant fragment in the long river of your life."
"I don't want to say that I was born from you, and I don't want to admit that I am a copy of you at a certain period of time. This seems to be admitting... as long as you don't die, countless versions of me can be born."
[Li Ziyue] choked up and said, "I am not unique. Anyone can replace me, and anyone can abandon me."
His right leg has begun to turn transparent.
"So in these six years I have been looking for the difference between you and me. I want to prove that I am an independent individual and I am not you."
"But what did I find...I only found malice."
He smiled self-deprecatingly: "Yes. The biggest difference between you and me is that I have too much malice in my body, and the little bit of kindness that I chose to let you leave the copy alive... is just what I stole from you."
"I don't know when it started... maybe it started when I killed someone... living became a torture for me."
"I have your kindness, but I have done too many evil things. I am being consumed by guilt and will never be able to rest in peace."
Li Ziyue could feel more clearly than anyone else the heavy pain suppressed in Li Ziyue. These emotions of self-struggle, self-deprecation, and self-loathing tightly gripped Li Ziyue's heart.
He didn't even have the energy to look up.
Tears wet his palms.
"That's why I hate you, Li Ziyue. I hate you more than anyone else."
"I hate your evil thoughts, I hate your hypocrisy, I hate that you can stand up after being suppressed like this... I hate your hatred for me even more..."
[Li Ziyue] said word by word: "I have suffered no less than you in the past six years, Li Ziyue."
Two lines of unstoppable tears rolled down his cheeks.
He was desperate.
The eyes that should have shown a smile were now filled with loneliness and hysterical heaviness.
"Because the one who really killed them was not you, but me."
Li Ziyue looked deeply at [Li Ziyue] who was high up.
[Li Ziyue] Most of the time he seems to look down on everyone. He mocks Li Ziyue, disrespects the rules, and speaks coldly to Zhang Xingzhi and others.
Li Ziyue had never seen him cry.
As far as I can remember, I was the most carefree when I was 20 years old. The youthfulness in him was still there, and he got the most proud first place in the standings. With a folding fan in his hand and the support of senior schoolmates, Li Ziyue became a figure who could call the wind and rain in the dungeon. No matter where he was, everyone would treat him like a god.
He is like this.
It's so painful now.
Li Ziyue quickly turned his face away. He didn't want Li Ziyue to notice his disordered breathing and the tip of his nose that was starting to turn red due to the bitterness in his heart.
Li Ziyue's body became more transparent, and one could even clearly see the bright red heart beating in his chest.
“Bang, bang.”
Overlapping with Li Ziyue's heartbeat.
"Do you know what I think every day when I look at my senior sisters? I will never forget the scene of me brutally killing them with my own hands. At that time, my consciousness was not under my control, but my eyes remembered everything clearly."
"Those images were like nightmares, tormenting me during countless sleepless nights."
"But what can I do?"
His voice was sad.
"What can I do, Li Ziyue?"
[Li Ziyue] pulled the corner of his mouth with difficulty: "Can I confess to them?"
"What right do I have to repent?"
"Li Ziyue, what have you been so self-indulgent for these six years? What have you been condemning yourself for?"
[Li Ziyue] looked miserable: "The one who killed them... was me from the beginning to the end. What does it have to do with you?"
Li Ziyue felt bitterness in his mouth, and his eyes were filled with sadness and a little pity.
"Li Ziyue, your expression of pity for me makes me want to vomit," Li Ziyue stared at him, "Why do you give me such cruelty and then give me moral constraints that will make me suffer and torture myself?"
"I can kill people cruelly, or I can be a good person all my life, but why did I become the one in the middle? I couldn't control the dark side of my heart. I killed them inhumanely, but then I fell into endless pain because of the little kindness from you."
"I hate you, I hate myself, do you understand all this, Li Ziyue?"
"That's not pity." Li Ziyue choked halfway through his words.
"You understand." He said with difficulty, "I am not qualified to pity you from a high position."
I just...
I'm just sad.
From beginning to end, [Li Ziyue] never really harmed him.
When he was trapped in his own fantasy, it was Li Ziyue who left him a mark, reminding him to come to the "other side" to find his true body. When the agreed 24 hours were about to expire, it was also Li Ziyue who came to stop the deterioration of his wrist wound.
When he was unconscious, Li Ziyue gently tapped his brows, making him temporarily forget the horror of water.
The reason why he dared to jump into the pool full of hair that made him creepy was because the scene of Li Ziyue pointing a gun at him on the second floor reminded him of the cycle in "Snowstorm Mansion".
Li Ziyue is not good at using guns, and Li Ziyue's shooting skills are not much better than his. If Li Ziyue really wants to kill him, as a copy NPC, he has too many weapons to choose from.
[Li Ziyue] said that he wanted him dead, but in reality, all he did was things that benefited him.
Plum should have known this sooner.
[Li Ziyue] I can say a lot of things against my will, but my eyes will never lie.
Don't listen to what [Li Ziyue] says, look into his eyes, observe his actions, and then listen to his heartbeat. [Note 1]
Li Ziyue's voice was dry: "...It turns out that my initial feeling was right...All your abnormal behaviors were hinting at this ending, but I..."
"But you don't believe that I, as a part of you," Li Ziyue sneered, "will take the initiative to go to such an ending where only you are allowed to survive."
"You don't distrust me, you distrust yourself." [Li Ziyue] looked complicated, "Just like you never hated me from the beginning to the end, what you hated the most was actually yourself."
"Do you think that if you didn't have a trace of evil thoughts in your heart, I wouldn't have been born, and the tragedy wouldn't have happened."
Li Ziyue lowered his head and remained silent, but his red and hot ears and the clenched fists at his sides betrayed him.
"I didn't do anything to make myself look noble, nor did I want anyone to forgive me," Li Ziyue's mouth turned pale. "If someone like me can be easily forgiven, who will pay for the lives of those who died because of me? I did kill someone, whether I did it intentionally or not, I did it, and I never deny it."
"I do this just to atone for my sins. My life is already full of black spots, and I just hope... doing this... can make me... a little happier in my next life. Just a little. Because my sins are truly unforgivable."
"Li Ziyue, I hate you, and you have to hate me too."
He pursed his lips nervously. "In the Elementary Fake Human Dungeon, you didn't kill the innocent player. It was me who changed the number of real people and fake people at the end. I killed him. It has nothing to do with you. From the beginning to the end, your hands were clean. You didn't kill anyone. You don't know how to kill anyone."
"So," he paused for two seconds, "people like you can make a wish. You have to wish that you won't meet someone as bad as me in your next life. You have to wish..."
If you make a wish, you will live a happy life in the future.
"Li Ziyue." His voice suddenly became gentle, "I'm leaving."
Most of the body was completely transparent, but the eyes were still bright, shining with a soft silver light due to the moisture of water.
"You must not forget that I died because I saved you," Li Ziyue gritted his teeth, an ugly smile appeared on the corner of his mouth, and his brows knitted together, "You must not forget the wound on your wrist, which was cut by me, and it contains your blood and mine."
"You are not allowed to die so easily. You will be tortured for the rest of your life. You will never forget how much I hurt you. You will remember the pain in your wrist and the words I said to you for the rest of your life."
"I hate you, I hate you, I hate..." He emphasized again and again, "I hate you, Li Ziyue."
"I hate you so much that even if I go to hell, I will curse you to live until the day you die of old age, until the day you can no longer remember me, until the day you can no longer see your own face in the mirror."
"You have to live, Li Ziyue, because I hate you, so you have to live, forever, together with my time. I don't want my time to move anymore, I want you to live."
For the first time, he smiled as he spoke to Li Ziyue, even though his tears had not stopped: "We should have aimed to kill each other, we should have fought to the death... but how could I... how could I want to say these words to you, how could I feel timid, inferior and cowardly in front of you."
[Li Ziyue] whispered: "Li Ziyue, I hate you, but I also hate you more than anyone else..."
The candle burned out, the last bit of flame went out, leaving only a black wick, the only proof that the flame had ever existed.
The voice of Li Ziyue will never be heard again in the world.
Li Ziyue returned to the frozen lake in "Snowstorm Manor". The mutant zombie No. 102 gathered on the lake surface, and the sharp point of the axe smashed into the ice with great force.
Li Ziyue seemed to be unable to hear any sound from the outside world.
He was completely submerged in the water, with colorful fish wagging their tails briskly around him. The surface of the lake was covered with thick ice, but the water below had a little warmth that could accommodate humans.
This was the first time he felt the warmth and softness of water in Advanced Pseudo-Human Copy.
He was no longer afraid of being trapped in the middle of the water.
Then, some light finally appeared in front of him, allowing him to see the person in front of him.
The man looked like him, but there was a hint of sadness between his brows. His eyes were closed, and for some reason there was a fist-sized hole in his chest where his heart was, but there was no dirty blood.
The snowflakes fell slowly.
Snow and wind entangle the treetops.
Li Ziyue watched the man slowly open his eyes, and the pair of eyes that were very similar to his met his gaze.
The man seemed to be crying, but also seemed to be happy.
His hand moved slowly in the water until it reached the front of Li Ziyue's clothes. His fingers trembled and hooked it, but he could not touch the corner of Li Ziyue's clothes due to the waves of the water.
At this moment, the system prompt sounded in Li Ziyue's mind.
Rule 5: Kill Me
[Side quest...]
[An answer conflict has been detected in rule 5. A new rule is now randomly generated for you to replace the original rule]
[Rule generation in progress, please wait]
Li Ziyue stretched out his hand with difficulty, and when he was about to touch the fingers extended by Li Ziyue.
"Bang!"
The sound of gunfire, which had not been heard for a long time, rang out again.
Li Ziyue's body, which had turned into a thin mirror, shattered into powder in an instant.
[New rules have been generated, please check]
Rule 6: Hug me
[Side quest: He once handed you the 'Boy's Letter']
At this time, Li Ziyue was only one centimeter away from him.
[Li Ziyue] What was left to him in the end were gentle ripples in the water and beautiful colorful fish. The broken glass gathered into a long and bright galaxy, like the twinkling stars in the night sky, gradually lighting up the entire dark lake bottom.
In the end, Li Ziyue only remembered Li Ziyue's eyes when he left, the trembling pure black pupils, the long eyelashes stained with crystal tears, the red corners of the eyes, and the lonely emotions suppressed in the eyes, like a sailboat floating on the sea after a storm.
Li Ziyue could clearly pretend that he didn't know what he wanted to say in the end. Li Ziyue could clearly forget about it all and treat him as an insignificant question mark, but Li Ziyue couldn't do it.
How could there be two such people in the world? How could Li Ziyue be facing him?
This man, who was as clear and transparent as lake water in front of Li Ziyue, his hesitation to speak, his tossing and turning, his nervousness and depression, Li Ziyue knew it all when he looked into his eyes.
Because that's who he is.
…
[Congratulations on successfully complying with your personal role rules. Here is a summary of your task progress]
[Rule 1: Suspect me/Suspect me of being mean]
[Corresponding to the copy of "Primary Pseudo-Human Game"]
[Mark: Completed]
[Rule 2: Trust me/Trust that I am innocent]
[Corresponding to the copy of "The Suicidal Peasant"]
[Mark: Completed]
[Rule 3: Save me/Save me from the snow and fog cycle]
[Corresponding to the "Snowstorm Villa" copy]
[Mark: Completed]
[Rule 4: Become Me/Become Me in Data Soul]
[Corresponding to the copy of "I came to school voluntarily"]
[Mark: Completed]
[Rule 5: Kill Me/Allow Me to Sleep]
[Corresponding to the "Advanced Pseudo-Human Instance" copy]
[Mark: Completed]
[Congratulations to the player for finding the fourth mirror - "I"]
[So far you have perfectly completed the third-level "Snow Mirror" mission, but the system has detected that there is a conflict between your copy and the mission copy. Considering the priority, we will open up a new path for you]
…
[Li Ziyue] A long time ago, a trap was set up to help Li Ziyue pass the level.
Next, he will embark on the path of life that Li Ziyue created for him through death.
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