5-3: The Creator / "Someone cares about you too."
Huai Yan paused, and subconsciously looked at the young man.
His eyes gleamed with an unusual light, and rippled with emotion.
"Brother." Huaiyan blinked, trying to hold back his tears, and asked in a choked voice, "How have you been these past few years?"
He hoped his brother would be doing well, and that his brother would be doing better than him.
At least it will allow my brother to avoid being trapped in a difficult situation and stride confidently towards the future.
"Actually, I'm doing very well." The young man's smile was relaxed, as if he were comforting his younger brother who was having an emotional breakdown. "Even if there were many difficulties, those are all in the past."
He has also gone through countless hardships to get to where he is today.
At some point, Huai Xiang also complained about the hardships of life.
He has walked alone for more than 20 years, witnessed great storms, experienced the mountains and rivers of countless planets or worlds, and even once leaped onto the mainland.
Huai Xiang is not a person who likes to look back on the past, because the past path has been etched with deep imprints, each step taken with its own footprint.
He still prefers his current life.
In fact, he also took his lover back to that blue planet called Earth.
He stood with his lover in front of his parents' tombstones, recounting the hardships and difficulties they had faced over the years.
But what does it matter?
Huai Xiang did not believe in fate, but perhaps the hardships of the past twenty years had brought him the arrival of his beloved.
He thought he was willing to accept it.
“Right now, I hope you’re doing well.” Huai Xiang stared intently into the boy’s eyes and said slowly, “You don’t have to focus all your attention on me. I hope you learn to love yourself.”
Huai Xiang was the one who knew his younger brother's temperament best.
Seemingly carefree and playful, they are actually quite thoughtful and sometimes unusually sensitive.
The first essential lesson in life is learning to love yourself.
Huaiyan was a little stunned, her mind unable to process what was happening.
Huai Xiang smiled knowingly and said, "Perhaps some people care about you too."
Huaiyan couldn't understand what her brother was saying.
However, he roughly understood what his brother meant.
My brother doesn't blame him.
Huaiyan smiled and turned her gaze to the huge floor-to-ceiling window.
On the streets, the hosts walked in the square, some with hurried steps and others with leisurely pace.
The timing was quite coincidental; it happened to be winter in the world of AI that year.
Snowflakes swept down from the sky, landing on pedestrians' collars, statues in the square, and transparent floor-to-ceiling windows.
The white expanse in the distance stretched out in a continuous line, almost blurring the street scene.
New snow kept falling, covering the existing snow.
Huaiyan had seen such snow scenes countless times in the previous world.
But the sky was always gloomy back then, and his heart was always burdened with heavy worries.
He had to consider the mission, the plan, and what the villains would do that day, and what methods he should use to deal with them.
In the blink of an eye, Huaiyan returned to the world of AI and settled the major events that had been going on for so many years.
He suddenly felt a sense of relief, and all his worries disappeared.
“By the way,” Huai Xiang said, taking a sip of his iced Americano, seemingly casually asking, “You came here to find me. Now that you’ve found me, what’s your next plan?”
Upon hearing this, Huai Yan felt a slight stirring in his heart.
He actually had other plans, but it was too late to implement them now.
His mission was complete, and he could not return to his original dimension to do anything further.
Moreover, those things were unnecessary for him.
Now that he was back here, Huaiyan had no choice but to rethink his next plan.
“You can stay here,” Huai Xiangyi said, immediately understanding his younger brother’s thoughts, “or go back to the Interstellar Federation and do what you want to do.”
"What I wanted to do has been achieved."
The boy's voice was clear and crisp as he turned his gaze to the face of Huai Xiang, the face he had longed to see day and night.
“But I haven’t decided where I want to go yet.” The boy’s smile was pale. “I have no family in the Interstellar Federation, and no brother.”
Otherwise, he would never have come to the world of AI without any hesitation and signed a contract with it.
Sometimes he even felt that the alternate world was more interesting than the Federation world.
Huai Xiang raised an eyebrow, immediately understanding the unspoken meaning in the young man's words.
“Then you can stay here for now,” the young man said loudly. “You can leave whenever you want.”
-
"oh--"
073 sprawled out on the sofa, lazily drawing out his words, "So you've decided to settle down in the AI world?"
Huai Yan was browsing the forum when she heard this. She nodded and corrected him, "It's not that I'm settling down here. I'm planning to stay here for now."
After all, he had no attachment to the Interstellar Federation and no particular place he wanted to go.
Over the years, he has seen countless landscapes and has no other needs.
Not to mention the place I "most want to go".
“Oh,” 073 repeated, “that means you’re preparing to settle here.”
Huaiyan: "…?"
"You could say that..." Huai Yan frowned and asked, "Why isn't there a picture of my brother's boyfriend's face on the forum?"
073 is getting up from the sofa and drinking a Coke.
Upon hearing the boy's words, he spat out a mouthful of cola, which sprayed all over the pure white floor.
“…That’s enough.” Huaiyan wiped his face, which was covered in cola.
“What kind of question is that?” 073 said. “Your brother’s boyfriend is the big boss who runs the mall. In the past, that was something that most hosts and systems wouldn’t even dare to dream of.”
Huaiyan could hardly believe it: "...Huh? Really?"
“Before your brother got together with the big shot,” 073 said directly, “there wasn’t a single piece of information about the big shot on the forum, not even a single photo.”
The last photo Huaiyan saw was taken after the two had gotten together, when the man frequently entered and exited the host's apartment, and it was then posted online.
"Why wouldn't we dare? No one would care if we posted it on the forum." Huai Yan said, recalling the photos she had seen before. "I saw them before too."
073 sighed and shook his head as he sighed.
“Young man, you’re still too young,” 073 said. “If this photo hadn’t been approved by the big boss, it would have been blocked by the administrators long ago.”
If it weren't for asserting sovereignty, this photo wouldn't have lasted a second on the forum.
Huai Yan was skeptical of this.
Until one day, when he went downstairs to eat hot pot with 073, he saw Huai Xiang in the central square.
...and men.
Although Huaiyan and 073 did not go forward, their affectionate appearance was still evident, as if they were still in the honeymoon phase.
The man pulled Huai Xiang into his arms and shared a long, tender kiss with her.
Huaiyan walked away with 073.
At this moment, he had to admit that perhaps a man was qualified enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with his brother.
"Don't worry anymore, right?" 073 put the beef slices into the hot pot and looked at the boy amidst the swirling smoke. "I told you before, they are very much in love."
Even after several years of marriage, they still maintain the feelings they had when they were deeply in love, and their feelings have only deepened.
The two rarely argued, and disagreements were even rarer.
“I was already reassured.” Huai Yan had nothing more to say, took a sip of lemonade, and said, “The other party also seems very outstanding.”
Those who can be revered as big shots by millions of hosts in the intelligent world must be no ordinary people.
“Oh, right, I almost forgot to ask you something,” 073 said, “have you noticed anything strange lately?”
Huaiyan continued what she was doing and asked quite naturally, "...What's wrong?"
“There was a problem with your previous world,” 073’s voice was a little serious. “To be precise, there was a problem with all the dimensions you were in before.”
Huai Yan was startled; her heart skipped a beat.
For some reason, he felt a cold sweat break out on his back, and he had a vague sense of foreboding.
He had indeed felt uneasy these past few days, and that eerie gaze from the beginning had been haunting him ever since.
So Huaiyan stayed hidden in the apartment and didn't come out.
Because he could only notice that gaze disappear when he was in the apartment.
"What went wrong?" Huaiyan continued to press.
073 put down what he was holding and said slowly, "When headquarters was conducting the dimensional cleanup, they discovered that a large portion of the data in the dimensional planes was missing."
“This wouldn’t normally be a big deal; data loss is common,” 073 explained, “but your last dimension has now completely collapsed.”
Complete collapse.
The worldview is in complete chaos, and the planes are utterly disordered.
If we really have to describe it as 073.
It's as if a dimensional world has lost its creator and fallen into an eternal state of collapse.
That dimension is completely destroyed and will never be restarted.
"How could this happen?" Huai Yan asked worriedly. "When the mission was completed, the world was fine, wasn't it? I was just following the instructions from the backstage."
All the tasks in each dimension are issued by the backend.
Therefore, the plane does not collapse because the mission is completed.
"To be precise, the collapse of the plane has nothing to do with you." 073 comforted the boy, but his mood was still not relaxed.
He found a fitting description and said to Huai Yan, "It's because there's an intruder in the plane, and he has become the creator of the plane."
From the moment that person invaded the plane, the plane became his tool and served him.
The opponent's strength has become so great that it is undetectable to anyone, not even the backers behind them.
If headquarters hadn't carried out the dimensional cleanup and restoration, they might never have discovered it.
"To be honest," 073 asked the boy again, "did you offend someone in another dimension?"
"Why do you say that?" The boy suddenly sensed something was wrong.
"Because it's based on the headquarters' algorithm."
Every word in 073 was like a death note striking the boy's heart: "The person who caused the plane to collapse and the person whose data was lost in the previous worlds is the same person."
"Their objective is obvious," he said.
“It’s you.”
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