"System, let's go!" Chen Xiaoru muttered to herself, her voice barely audible but filled with determination.
"Mom, are you tired? Why don't you go back to your room and sleep for a while?" Xiao Ruo asked softly. She felt her mother's body trembling slightly and thought she was tired.
The surroundings suddenly became eerily quiet; even the sounds of children playing disappeared. Xiao Ruo felt panicky and gently placed her hand under Chen Xiaoru's nose...
No breathing!
"Mom! Mom! What's wrong with you? Wake up!" Xiao Ruo's voice suddenly broke. She shook Chen Xiaoru's body violently, tears streaming down her face.
Xiao Zerui rushed over, checked his mother's breath with trembling hands, and then froze there, as if struck by lightning.
"Mom! What are you doing? What will we do after you leave?" Xiao Qiang knelt on the ground with a plop, beating his chest and stamping his feet, his face covered with tears and snot.
"Grandma! Grandma!" The children were frightened by this sudden change and cried loudly around Chen Xiaoru.
"Hurry! Call an ambulance!" Xiao Zerui came to his senses and yelled at his family.
Xiao Ruo then remembered to make a phone call. Her hands were trembling and it took her a long time to dial 120.
The living room was in chaos, with cries, shouts, and children's screams mixed together like a pot of boiling porridge.
Xiao Qiang's wife was relatively calm. While comforting the crying children, she directed several young people to move the furniture that was blocking the road to make way for the ambulance.
Xiao Qiang knelt on the ground, tightly grasping Chen Xiaoru's hand, and kept muttering: "Mom, you can't leave! What will I do if you leave? Didn't you say you would see me get married and start a family? Didn't you say you would hold my grandchildren? How can you go back on your word..."
Xiao Zerui squatted beside his mother, his eyes red. He held her hand tightly, unable to utter a word. He hated himself for not noticing her abnormality sooner, for not spending more time with her.
Xiao Ruo collapsed on the ground, her eyes empty. She couldn't believe that her mother, who had just been talking to her, had left her like this. She remembered her mother holding her hand and sending her to school when she was a child; she remembered the delicious meals her mother cooked; she remembered her mother's kind smile...
For a moment, the Xiao family was shrouded in great grief, and the cries were deafening.
………
"Congratulations to the host for completing the fifth world, scatter flowers, scatter flowers." The system's cheerful voice exploded in Chen Xiaoru's mind, accompanied by 50-cent special effects fireworks.
Chen Xiaoru, however, felt as if her soul had been drained away, slumped in her consciousness, unable to muster any energy. The end of her previous life was too heavy, and she had yet to recover.
"Okay, let's draw the lottery," Chen Xiaoru said weakly. She just wanted to get this over with and find some quiet time.
"Alright! Host, are you unhappy?" the system noticed her low mood and asked cautiously. Usually, after completing a mission, Chen Xiaoru would excitedly discuss it with it, but this time, it was unusually silent.
Chen Xiaoru ignored the system's chatter and silently said "start" in her head. A huge virtual turntable appeared out of thin air, and the colorful prizes made her dizzy.
The turntable spun at a furious pace, the needle running wild like a horse without a bridle, its trajectory completely unnoticed. Chen Xiaoru felt nothing in her heart, even a little like laughing. She'd drawn so many times, and she'd never seen anything good.
"Stop!" Chen Xiaoru shouted.
The pointer swayed and finally stopped in a gray area.
"Congratulations to the host for winning 'Thank you for your patronage'!" The system's voice was still cheerful, but there was a hint of embarrassment in the cheerfulness.
Chen Xiaoru rolled her eyes. Sure enough, this broken system was never reliable! She took a deep breath and tried to make her voice sound calm: "System, what's going on?"
The system started to play dumb: "Huh? What's going on? Host, this is the normal lottery result, completely random and fair!"
"Alright!" Chen Xiaoru didn't bother to argue anymore. "Let's settle!"
"Okay, congratulations to the host for completing the fourth world. You will be rewarded with 100,000 basic points, 12,000 points for giving birth to 12 children for Xiao Lang, and an additional 500,000 points for the host. The remaining points are as follows." The system's voice was full of joy, as if it was happier than Chen Xiaoru.
"Extract the memory!" said Chen Xiaoru.
"Okay, host, please wait." The system responded.
Chen Xiaoru closed her eyes. In her mind, memories of Xiao Lang flowed through her mind like a thick book, page by page, then gently closed and locked away in a transparent box. From the shyness of their first meeting, to the warmth of their mutual support, to the final grief of separation... every scene was as clear as yesterday, yet gradually became distant.
She could feel the memories that had once caused her heartache, made her laugh, and made her worry, gradually being peeled away from her soul. It was a strange feeling, like unloading a heavy burden, feeling a lot lighter, yet also a little empty.
Chen Xiaoru suddenly spoke up: "System, tell me, as I travel through time and time again, experiencing different lives over and over again, will there ever be a day when I forget who I am?"
The system was silent for a few seconds and replied: "You think too much."
Chen Xiaoru smiled and said, "Okay!"
The system didn't say anything else. It knew that what Chen Xiaoru needed now was not comfort, but to vent.
"But... this lottery is really shady!" Chen Xiaoru suddenly remembered the "Thank you for your patronage" and couldn't help but complain, "System, tell me the truth, is there any manipulation?"
"Host, I swear to God! I am the most just and fair system!" The system immediately retorted, its voice rising an octave. "The lottery results are completely random. How could I possibly cheat?"
"Haha, I'd never trust you!" Chen Xiaoru curled her lips.
The memory extraction was finally completed. Chen Xiaoru felt like a formatted hard drive. Although it was empty, it was also brand new.
"Okay, host, the memory has been sealed. Now, I will teleport you directly to the next world." The system prompts.
As soon as she finished speaking, Chen Xiaoru felt the space around her distorted, and a familiar yet unfamiliar feeling of weightlessness came over her. She knew that a new journey had begun.
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