Chapter 3, Let's Set Sail, ███! His alternate identity has been unlocked...
Xue Chao discovered that the bespectacled man was the only player whose name was blocked. He thought of the perfunctory host name "Zhang San"—was this a newcomer protection mechanism?
The bespectacled man's back was soaked with cold sweat, and when he pressed himself against the glass door, the chill made his whole body go numb.
However, he dared not move an inch. The car door became his only defense against the car. He pressed himself tightly against the door, neck stiff, glaring back angrily, but his arrogance was noticeably weaker: "You..."
"You'd better stay away from the door," the hooded boy said lazily, shifting his position.
The bespectacled man immediately locked onto the boy and saw that it was just a child. His bewildered anger suddenly found its target. He became erect again and was about to rush towards the boy when he felt a tremor in his back.
Tap, tap, tap—it wasn't rain, but rather something patting his back.
But isn't there a car door behind him?
He turned his head again, his long hair, mixed with rainwater, cascading down from the top of the car door, covering half of the door. The ends of his hair swayed gently as the car moved forward, hitting the door again and again, reaching just behind his back.
It's like someone is lying on the roof of a car, letting their hair down.
"Aaaaaahhhhhh—"
The bespectacled man was so frightened that he scrambled back to his seat.
My hair disappeared in the blink of an eye, as if it were an illusion.
Boy: "Tch, what a piece of trash."
"You have a good eye." Yan Bocheng seized the opportunity to speak. "It's so dark outside, and he was blocking most of the view, yet you spotted him at a glance."
"If you have bad eyesight in the game, are you just waiting to die?"
"...Game?" Yan Bo was speechless. This was too blunt. It was one thing for the newbies with glasses to be naive, but they might not even be able to coexist peacefully in the game.
"You had a good time." The boy pulled down his hood, which was painted with a smiley face. He had an innocent baby face and long, straight, jellyfish-shaped hair with a pink and blue gradient. He held his chin high, looking proud at all times. "Let me introduce myself. My name is Zhu Wen."
Yan Bocheng couldn't contain his expression for a moment, his eyes widening: "You're Zhu Wen?! The one ranked seventh in the entire server..."
The little jellyfish was pleased with his reaction and gave a "humph" as an admission.
The man in the trench coat, who had been eavesdropping from behind, clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction, opened his eyes (which he had been pretending to sleep), and looked gloomy.
The location of the aircraft is no longer in doubt.
On the room page, Bennu also showered the room with confetti, congratulating them: "You're really lucky! You've got a top ten player on the leaderboard in your very first dungeon!"
This means you've already earned 5 or even 10 popularity points by default.
Xue Chao raised an eyebrow and lazily hummed in agreement.
This bird is more delusional than he is.
"This is my first time playing a beach-themed dungeon, and I don't even know what kind it is this time," Yan Bocheng sighed. "Let's find the shop first."
To appease him, a long progress bar extends from the small flame icon representing "popularity" on the room page.
At the 30 o'clock position, there's a small gray house icon with a triangular roof resembling the All-Seeing Eye, and below it reads: Shop [To be unlocked]
“An investigation team, I suppose.” Zhu Wen calmed down, adopting an indifferent attitude that made people grit their teeth. “It seems like our guild members have played this dungeon before, and they even wasted a leader’s ID card, resulting in a complete wipeout, haha. So, we’ll probably end up like last time, investigating a case.”
completely annihilated!
With just a casual remark, the already quiet bus became so quiet you could hear a pin drop, and even the bespectacled man's breathing became weaker.
Yan Bocheng opened his mouth, wanting to ask another question, but Zhu Wen, as if anticipating his words, pointed upwards and made a shushing gesture: "Be careful, the walls may have ears~"
Xue Chao narrowed his eyes; this kid was targeting him.
【00:00:01】
At the last second, Xue Chao made his choice.
[Start Game]
Live streaming is now available.
In an instant, Xue Chao's body seemed to disappear, his consciousness was ripped out, as if he had been thrown into a washing machine and spun around several times, then taken out and roughly shaken, instantly torn apart into powder, dust, and endless sand, which poured into the vast harbor in the sea, like a storm of no return.
He himself was also buried in the storm, the pain of his consciousness being shattered into millions of pieces was like a roaring attack, drowning out all other sounds and colors. Time was stretched out, or as if it had stopped in place. For a moment, the laws of the universe failed him.
When he opened his "eyes" again, a jumble of images flooded his mind, accompanied by a cacophony of sounds, instantly snapping his reason.
Buses approaching from the kilometer-long bridge, the passenger terminal winding like a Möbius strip, the strange robots passing by the ticket counters, baggage check-in, customs, and border inspection, the deserted duty-free shops and restaurants... The giant wave-shaped clock hanging high on the wall of the hall connecting the first and second floors ticks away, echoing the undulating seawater outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. The waves crash against the platform on the water, piling up faint colors, like dark green garbage bags or balloons being pushed back to the shore. I wonder who is so inconsiderate.
His consciousness traversed the area, even seeing the simplified files of eight players in a hidden office on the third floor—his eyes and ears were everywhere, and he had opened countless "eyes".
There was also a whole bunch of "rules" crammed in, the core of which was "putting the port first and working hard without complaint".
The pain of separation is followed by the pain of stagnation.
His consciousness was not completely fragmented; it was like pieces of flesh stuck together, causing a domino effect, like pulling out disgusting blood threads, which were his nerves that had been forcibly stretched.
The electronic children's voices chirped in his ears, making it impossible to tell which direction they came from. Xue Chao struggled to clear away the noise from Giant Harbor and barely managed to make out Bennu's cheerful cry. He could no longer tell whether it was worry or schadenfreude.
The naked eye is confined to a small space, unable to distinguish black from white, and what it sees is not a complete world. Is the blue seen through the narrow hole the sky, or the skin of a monster skimming over the surface of a planet?
If eyes were as numerous as flowing blood, could you now see the heart of the world?
[Your consciousness has been fragmented; you have experienced a mutation far beyond common sense. Warning! Warning! Your sanity (sanity value) is rapidly decreasing.]
[...60...42...31...14...]
[Warning! Warning! Your SAN value has dropped below 15. Please...]
"...Shut up!" Xue Chao's previously blank consciousness was suddenly disrupted by the birdsong, and his anger surged up. He said impatiently.
[…Sizzle…sizzle…]
The SAN value has stopped decreasing.
[SAN value: 14/?]
It took Xue Chao a long time to adjust to the extra "eyes," but the nausea and pain were unbearable, and his mood suddenly became gloomy.
He was like someone sorting garbage in a landfill, trying his best to organize all the images and sounds.
Among countless screens, he found the host panel, which was the game room page. There was only one prediction camera, just as he had expected.
A message pop-up notified him that his file had changed.
[Recommended Host Role: Hong Kong Controlling AI (This role cannot be freely selected)]
His clone identity has been unlocked.
Xue Chao: "..."
He originally had no body; now he's just a stream of data.
The alternate identity is that of an artificial intelligence, but he is a genuine human being.
Although artificial intelligence itself is a statistical product that imitates the neural network of the human brain, forcibly stuffing it into cold data as human consciousness does not mean that its neural network becomes a lifeless flow of electrons.
This is like crushing his carbon-based life-oriented mindset and scattering it on a silicon substrate. Whether it's been upgraded or downgraded, it's no longer in the real world built from length, width, and height... How could his mother not feel pain?
It's all artificial intelligence now, and this company is trying to create a "realistic gaming experience" in a place like this? What a lousy company!
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