Chapter 96 Old School Days It seems I saw something floating in the bottle across the street…
Universities should be larger, but the campus area is fixed. A new unit of school is just a new layer loaded on top of the fixed layer, so it is more like a part of a university.
There is a long road at the entrance that leads directly to the second canteen at the end of the campus. Vehicles come and go, and there are traffic lights and bright streetlights. There are night market stalls and stalls selling small items on both sides. Couples stroll along the road, and roommates walk together.
Sitting in the back seat of the luxury car, Deng Dayun felt that this street was more like a commercial street around the university than a convenient road for cars.
Although this street is bustling, outside of it, the campus is deserted and quiet, as if it had been forcibly inserted into the area. The streetlights are warmer than elsewhere on campus.
Upon arriving at their destination, Deng Dayun got off the bus. The two-story building, which had been the second canteen when he arrived, remained unchanged in structure, but the decor had been transformed into a bar, with fluorescent lights shining in concentric circles, like a noisy vortex.
The security team was somewhat polite to him, but they blocked him completely, giving him no chance to escape. Once he entered the depths of their territory, the security team withdrew, leaving only a trusted figure who used a metal wine opener to insert into a bottle of wine displayed in the private room and open a hidden door.
After passing through the dark passage, the disco ball, like a will-o'-the-wisp burning in the darkness, hung high overhead. Through the glass floor, one could clearly see a large, exquisite wine bottle, nearly three meters tall, half-filled with liquor, with a straw protruding from the bottle's opening, leading forward and disappearing into the darkness.
Next to the bottle neck was a sofa. The owner of Whiskey Head was sitting with his legs crossed, lighting a cigar. When he saw him come in, he smiled and offered him a cigarette. Deng Dayun didn't know how to do that. After a moment of awkward silence, he shook his head in silence.
"Another good student. I wonder if I've been praying to the God of Wealth or the God of Literature every day." The boss wasn't angry. He put away his cigar, told his men to throw him into a bottle of liquor, and said, "You may not smoke, but you still have to drink."
Deng Dayun choked several times, struggling to maintain his balance underwater, and finally managed to stand up. The liquor was over his chest, sticky and sweet, and although it was icy cold, it seemed to emit steam that made his brain rush.
His gaze passed through the colored liquor and glass, then through a stretch of darkness, and saw another bottle illuminated by a disco ball.
He had already drunk half of it, and the other end of the straw was stuck in the drink, with a person tied to it. Deng Dayun couldn't see it clearly, but he recognized the telephone head.
The bottom of the bottle seemed to be a pressure device; ever since he fell, the liquor from bottle number 3 had been flowing down the straw into his bottle, causing the water level to rise.
The boss stood by the bottle neck, looking down at him, raised his glass and laughed, "I don't like good students. That kid is bad, but people who are too self-righteous are stupid. The person you introduced betrayed the bar, and he also handed over his own evidence. I don't want to keep him, but someone has to fill his vacancy. Think about it carefully."
The boss retreated to the sofa to watch the show, and two more students, a boy and a girl, were pushed over to the bottle opening. They were also members of the small group, looking at Deng Dayun with tears in their eyes. The ropes that tied them up hung down, suspended above his head, within easy reach.
The straw kept bringing in drinks, which were already up to his neck. He looked at the bottle opposite him. Bed number 3 seemed to be waking up a bit, struggling slightly. But with so much alcohol and so much distance between them, he could only see a blurry figure flickering with the light, like a dynamic ghost picture. With each change of light, the ghostly figure would change into a terrifying posture.
As the resonance continued to rise, Deng Dayun was focused on the ghostly figure, as if watching himself struggling underwater. It was the first time he had seen a victim from this perspective, and he always felt that something was missing.
A boy and a girl's student ID cards had their heads wrapped in cloth, and they were emitting muffled cries above his head. Deng Dayun looked up, tears dripping from the gaps in the closed ID cards and hitting his face. Unlike the sweet wine that made him feel lightheaded, these were salty and bitter. He wiped away his tears expressionlessly and asked in a mosquito-like voice, "...You're afraid of water too?"
He pulled the rope, and the two of them slid into the liquor. The splashing water hit his face, and this time it tasted sweet.
The two were bound hand and foot and couldn't find their balance. Every time they tried to pop their heads out, Deng Dayun would push them down. He vaguely experienced pleasure, and as the sweet wine fermented in his body, he became addicted.
After a few repetitions, they sank to the bottom of the bottle and stopped moving. It was unclear whether they had inhaled too much spiked liquor and passed out, or if they had already choked to death. The liquor that had reached Deng Dayun's lips began to descend and was inhaled back into the bottle opposite.
Deng Dayun usually keeps his eyes down, only leaving a slit to see the world. But now, he was so dizzy that he opened his eyes wide and stared intently at the ghostly figure in another bottle being submerged by the wine. He watched the ghostly figure struggle violently and helplessly, and finally, the ghostly figure even appeared as a double ghostly figure.
The feeling was indescribable, like looking in a mirror—both pathetic and exhilarating.
In his last moments before he fainted, he seemed to see a bright yellow flower floating in the bottle opposite him.
The game ended, the boss clapped his hands, and the security team came in to clean up the battlefield. They dragged people away first. Except for Deng Dayun, the rest were all corpses. Deng Dayun was thrown into a private room, and the rest had their organs cut up. Useful organs were taken to the warehouse, and useless organs were packed up and thrown into the trash can. They would be sent for cremation in a while.
After the bodyguards who delivered the garbage left, Fang Tailai immediately climbed out of the garbage bag and examined the group of "juicy" new goods. The flesh and tissues were soaked in alcohol, giving them a sweet taste and a slippery feel. Until she touched a plant root, the blood-stained bristles scraped against her palm, giving her goosebumps.
She pulled out a sunflower; a small piece of the seed was missing, as if someone had plucked it out. It was filled with blood, and the root was made of human flesh and blood.
The player whose sunflower head was taken away.
"【Fang Tailai】Damn, Jiang Ming's camera is really black."
"Didn't Fang Tailai say that evil deeds live on for a thousand years?"
"【Fang Tailai】It's hard to say whether Deng Dayun passed out from choking on alcohol or from feeling too good."
"【Fang Tailai】This kid really dares to kill."
"【Fang Tailai】It's a life-or-death struggle, you'd be just as audacious if it were you."
"【Fang Tailai】Did Deng Dayun know that two people drowned? From his angle, he could only see the No. 3 bed tied to the front."
"【Fang Tailai】 probably didn't see it, and it's not important. This is part of the plot. The mission is just to follow the plot."
Fang Tailai also realized this. The prequel would spoil other timelines. She didn't know about the other players, but if Xue Chao was right, she would eventually fall off the rooftop and die.
She realized with a chill run down her spine that this was the core of the final mission.
—Play the role you've been given without being discovered that you are not who you truly are.
—Please enjoy your university years and complete your own storyline!
To maintain your character's persona and complete the storyline, you must clear the dungeon.
But what if "death" is the end of the story?
Without completing the storyline, you cannot clear the game; you will be trapped in the instance forever, assimilated, and it will be no different from being dead.
Completing the storyline is like a sunflower; completing the character's death is like going to one's own death.
It's called the final mission, but it's actually a closed-loop trap, a dead end.
Taking advantage of the security team's departure once again, Fang Tailai slipped out of the bar.
There can't be every dead end in a game; there must be other ways.
Some parts of the story are frighteningly realistic, like a story "based on true events," but it is actually a "memoir." At the end of each episode, the protagonist receives a "revisiter's wish," with handwriting from his future self, indicating that returning to a certain memory in the past is the protagonist's voluntary act, or at least "voluntary."
Because the protagonist has a "wish" about the memories of the follow-up visits, these memories are beautiful for the protagonist, even the most comforting time in her painful life. For example, the follow-up visitor "Fang Tailai" wished, "Let me hide, let me wander." She can probably understand why it is the senior year of high school, because "her" pain comes from "domestic violence," and living in the dormitory during the senior year of high school allowed her to temporarily escape the pain of her family.
However, once the protagonist begins to waver, the beautiful paradise will crack, and the grotesque reality will take advantage of the situation, which is what is known as "alienation".
The ultimate task is different; it is not the memory of one person, but the shared memory of everyone about the same period of time, or even the same events, which corroborate each other and leave no room for self-embellishment.
Therefore, their deaths must be real.
However, even though it is a real memory, it is still a "memory". So what is beyond the memory?
...Is it possible to break free from "memories"?
To break free from memories, we must first understand how they entered those memories in the first place.
The name "Return Visitor's Wish" suggests that this isn't just a simple instance mode, but rather that the answer lies within the instance's story.
It can only be the host who connects all the segments.
...He has a role, that automated voicemail phone call!
*
The student union office had a damp, chilly feel, like it had been in a shady spot for a long time. The door was unlocked, no one was there, but it was clean and orderly.
But on the desk in front of the chair, there was a piece of a person's shoulder blade.
Xue Chao suddenly realized that there were no butterfly bones in the organ factory. Although most of them were organs, many bones were used as containers, limbs as frames, and there were also spines, ribs, skulls, etc. ... but there were no butterfly bones.
Now that I see it, I realize that the name was indeed well-chosen. Its shape is exactly like a butterfly, and against the moonlight, it truly looks like a giant butterfly specimen.
The only empty desk was the one at the very back, which was the student council president's seat. But it looked like no one was sitting there or using it; everything was empty. He eventually found a resignation letter under the keyboard.
It was his handwriting, very brief, meaning just five words: "dropped out of school, quit."
So arrogant, so lazy, just like he was back in school.
Xue Chao didn't disable the worst malicious speculation system. Players and characters are matched because they are the chosen ones, but as the host, he chose this instance, this matching...
Because of the contract? That lingering gaze from the infinite world, that had seen right through his soul? He thought with a chill.
There must be a reason for dropping out of school. Xue Chao logged into the computer. Although all his belongings had been taken away, there was still a record on the login screen. The account should be "Xue Chao's" student ID. He tried the password with his birthday and unlocked it.
Xue Chao did not receive any disciplinary action; he dropped out of school due to illness.
It wasn't a leave of absence, it was a direct withdrawal from school. Among the documents submitted, only a hospital bill could be found.
If it's a normal copy, he should continue to look for clues, investigate what the illness is, and what reasons from the school, family, and society led to his dropping out of school.
But if it's role-playing, Xue Chao thought about it and realized that dropping out of school meant "there's no hope, just wait to die."
But when his gaze fell on the shoulder blades, his heart skipped a beat. In these last few moments, would "he" really be "peaceful"?
He can now.
But back in his student days... he was quite the busybody.
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