Chapter 124 Death pressed the game exit button and then...
*
I rode Neil out of the abyss.
After Long brought me up, he fell to the ground and rubbed my palm exhaustedly.
Using bloody bones with little flesh left.
I touched him gently, afraid to hurt him. I smiled bitterly and found that my situation was not much better than his: "You've worked hard... Thank you."
Neil didn't say anything, just rubbed my hand again, quietly turned into a ball of light, and merged into the book.
"Why only thank him?"
A teasing voice came from not far away. The space was like melting wax dripping, exuding mottled colors. The outside world could no longer be seen in its original form. The ground had turned into a soft muddy ground, splashing with light with every step. The sky and the scenery had long since disappeared, leaving only the dark pillars supporting the sky and the earth, and the transparent river underfoot flowing quietly, never tired.
Xia Pingan wanted to completely destroy this world and rebuild it into what he wanted. But he obviously failed. The rebels continued to fight and never gave in.
Kazhuo stood not far away and looked back. His body was also covered with wounds and he was almost exhausted. Even so, he was still unforgiving. His pair of scarlet eyes were smiling, and he didn't show any fatigue or pain from the serious injuries.
I felt distressed and amused, my heart softened, and I started to worry about the rest of the people: "Thank you too - Lord Kajol, where are Samuel and the others?"
“Yes.”
Kazhuo pointed to his feet, and several balls of light floated over. I was stunned and could hardly believe my eyes.
The first white light brushed my arm, like a kiss, and I immediately recognized it as Samuel. He had used up all his strength and could only appear in this form. The white light circled around me and plunged into the book.
Then came Sion and Odysseus. The emerald green and light grey balls flickered, and I carefully touched them before entering the world book. I couldn't imagine how they had managed to hold on until I came back, and how much they had gone through in between. Kazhuo coughed up a mouthful of blood and chuckled.
"Don't make that expression. We stayed here just to help you. Don't feel like you owe us anything. Accepting kindness openly is part of love."
The dark pillar gradually tilted, and his body gradually became transparent. The data stream flickered, and the black light ball slowly entered the book. Neil struggled to look up at me, with dark mist flowing between his bones and uttering unclear sounds.
"...all the best..."
He gently touched my palm with the tip of his nose, and my heart trembled. The last ball of light merged into the book. The book of the world flipped, and the words gushed out. I subconsciously reached out to grab them, and the words like water waves gently slid over my fingertips and merged into the river.
I want to take them home. I must take them back to the real world. The flames burned from my fingertips to my heart. The whole world opened its core code to me. I could easily control any part of their mental power. My perception extended infinitely. There was no one around me, but I was never alone. The warm bond flowed in my chest. I took a deep breath and clearly realized that they were everywhere.
It is a gust of wind, a piece of rain, the river flowing under your feet, and it is the foundation of this world.
My body healed quickly, and all the wounds returned to their original state, as if the pain had never existed. My left arm was intact, warm and smooth.
But this is not the end, but the beginning. With Kazhuo's disappearance, the sky pillar in the distance finally collapsed. The world became more chaotic and disordered, and the colors in the sky kept flowing and dripping down. Fragments of memory kept pouring into my mind.
I knew what I was going to do, and I knew someone was waiting for me.
I walked forward, through the shattered haze that enveloped the entire world, and finally returned to the end of the river.
It was quiet here. The god in black robes stood in front of the river, his hair fluttering in the wind. He turned his head and looked down at me. There was no surprise on his face.
"Now it's round two."
We stared at each other, almost no one hesitated. The chaotic data storms immediately began to collide and collide, tearing each other's bodies apart violently. The data stream replaced the blood splash and mixed into the ripples of the river.
The world was divided into two parts, crushing and colliding with each other. It was a wonderful scene that was hard to describe in words, just like two pieces of melted chocolate sauce blending and eroding each other. Bubbles emerged from the collision point, which was a black hole caused by space damage. Neither of us retreated, and our memories kept colliding, covering each other's existence.
Tears, crying, an empty house after my grandfather died. Endless loneliness and pain surged up. Sometimes I felt like I was crying hysterically, smiling to everyone for tomorrow's overtime pay, silently swallowing the bitter fruit of life. I only smiled when I saw the two artificial intelligences when I went home. Sometimes I was on the long river, watching the red spider lilies swaying with the dead.
Who am I?
Xia Pingan, Parka, or the real me?
I am an insatiable black hole. I want more memories and more emotions to fill my void. Let my blocked throat speak, let my empty emotions be heard. The last page of the book floated up, and I could vaguely see the words.
【We all hope you are happy】
【We love you more than anyone else】
With a crack, the Book of the World shattered. Rainbow light surged and covered my body. A huge amount of computing power was injected into my body, combining with Samuel's and the others' spiritual power to shake the foundation of the world.
"You do have a backup plan, but I'm already prepared."
Xia Ping'an's pupils shrank slightly, and he snapped his fingers immediately. The river under his feet flowed upstream, and a large amount of noisy mental power surged out, entangled in minute detail, and the air became stagnant like glue, pressing people to the point of being unable to breathe.
I twitched my lips and immediately understood what he meant: "Is this the solution you came up with? Using the collected spiritual energy?"
The spiritual power of a genius is certainly powerful, but the spiritual power of thousands of people gathered together is no less powerful than natural talent. The opposing spiritual powers squeeze each other.
"That's right. Let's try it out. Who will win, me or you?"
Is it the future that heals the past, or is it the gloom that outweighs hope? I don't know, but I'm not afraid of these memories. A warm bond flows through my chest, connecting us together.
But I figured out one thing, which is something Xia Ping'an would never understand.
"I have thought about what you said for a long time. Now I have finally come to a definite answer, which is: you are wrong. You were wrong from the beginning."
At the beginning, this world was based on games, so my power was stronger than Xia Ping'an, so he would do anything to snatch my identity as the god of death.
But what exactly determines someone’s identity?
It is also a memory, not an identity given by the game, but a concept of other people.
I have walked in every corner of this land, gathering the voices of the dead, listening to their cries of death, and bringing them silence and eternal sleep. I have touched the heads of believers and listened to their prayers. I have started wars on this land, and I have also kissed the souls of fallen flowers on this land.
These are my own stories, memories created by me, and cannot be simply replaced by others. Just like after Xia Pingan took over my body, the bearded man was still willing to give me a break and bow to me.
The mermaid's faint song lingers in my kingdom of God all day long, three rivers flow, inhabited by the dead. Whenever the evening breeze blows, it is mixed with sand, each grain of which is the embodiment of the devout soul of the believers.
Believers dedicate their entire lives to their gods, and the gods will protect them forever. This is the contract between God and man.
——This is something Xia Ping'an will never understand.
Do game NPCs have souls? Are their words and actions programmed or do they come from their hearts?
Even though I have been an NPC for so many years, I still don't know the answer, but I know that everyone is trying their best to live. Even NPCs have their own lives.
Life should not be wasted.
I want to be happy, I want everyone to be happy.
As if responding to my prayers, the broken space gradually glowed with fluorescent light. A familiar atmosphere continued to rise. NPCs will not die. They will continue to revive and play out their own identical plots, becoming part of the player's progress. And now, those familiar people are responding to my call, sharing their underlying data with me.
Beard, CD player, goddess of nature...
There are countless others who are also struggling in pain and unwilling to die. Their wills surge like a tsunami.
When I gave them recognition, they also responded to me. More and more data streams gathered in my hands, and Xia Ping'an's face became ugly. Even though the mental power that was forcibly obtained was numerous, the world standing behind me was also a world.
The bright white color gradually began to spread, slowly occupying every inch of the space. Just like how he treated me before, it crushed him bit by bit.
The winner prospers, the loser is the enemy.
I am not happy, nor do I have any expression. Thousands of wills converge into sharp blades, cutting through the enemy's fortress.
"Look, Xia Pingan. This is the end of everything."
The black-robed god standing opposite me laughed miserably when he heard this.
The next second, his body disintegrated into a point of light and fell heavily to the ground.
*
People spend their whole lives examining themselves.
Being scrutinized by others, being scrutinized by oneself, and being scrutinized by everything that one encounters.
The world was dark and I was alone. I felt cold and sleepy until I saw a figure standing in the distance.
"Why do you want to help them? You should be the one who understands me the most. How interesting, we are destined to kill each other since we were born. It's like a curse. There is only one person who can get out of here..."
Xia Pingan spoke intermittently, and noises kept appearing in his body. We stared into each other's eyes, as if looking into a mirror reflecting the past and the future.
"...Grandpa doesn't want revenge, he just wants us to live."
I suddenly reached out and hugged him in my arms, resting my chin on his shoulder, and whispered, "You won't die. You are my past, and I am your future. We will both live well. Some people will forget their original selves in the end, but I will never forget you."
I will never forget the child who was abandoned by his parents and dragged up the stairs step by step.
I will never forget those brightly lit nights, and I will never forget all the tears.
I will never forget the young man who had everything taken away from him, who had to rely on the money his grandfather left after his death to get a diploma and who had to exhaust all his energy to barely make a living.
I know that we are all afraid of loneliness.
Xia Pingan opened his eyes wide in disbelief.
The world was shattered, and data streams were floating from everyone. This illusory world was disintegrating. Xia Pingan seemed to be crying and laughing, and after a while, my shoulders were slightly wet.
I wiped his tears and suddenly remembered something else: "By the way, where is my cat?"
He looked at me in surprise and suddenly laughed: "So that's it. In your eyes, is that a cat?"
"...What's the meaning?"
"In different worlds, identities will change differently. In your eyes, it's a cat, but in my eyes, she is the phantom left by my grandfather. In other words, she is the shadow of my grandfather resurrected in the game."
There is one thing I just can’t figure out: “Why is it a female cat?”
"I didn't understand this at first. Until I sensed your memory, I was surprised. Why didn't you recognize that it was grandpa?"
"My grandfather raised me after my parents abandoned me. Later, he passed away. From then on, his shadow was everywhere in my life, but I never saw him again. Until I grew up, my life no longer revolved around my grandfather."
"After your parents were sacrificed, the cat raised you. Later, she became your spirit and died to protect you. After that, you and her were separated more and more. There were more and more people around you, and she gradually became as thin as a shadow."
"Since the living have corresponding people in this world, why don't the dead have corresponding people? Since this world exists for us, then, at least in dreams..."
We can also meet people who have separated in real life.
Xia Pingan said: "This is the romance that Dahei and Dabai gave us."
This should be a very serious occasion.
But when I heard those two names. Me: “Pfft.”
Xia Ping's eyes curved on Christmas Eve. We fought to the death, trying desperately to replace each other, but in the last communication, we left each other with smiles.
His figure gradually faded until my arms were empty. The darkness did not recede, and I continued to move forward until something soft nestled at my feet. I immediately knew who it was, and squatted down to pick up the cat. She was still the same as I remembered, having never changed after experiencing the world. Or perhaps, as Xia Pingan said, her time was like that old man, and she had long since stopped in the past.
The cat licked the palm of my hand and whispered, "I want to go and keep him company."
I subconsciously wanted to touch her, but then I withdrew my hand and smiled at the cat: "Do you still need to ask me about this? I thought you would just go ahead with it based on your personality."
There are thousands of words flowing in the cat's eyes. It is hard to imagine that you can see so many expressions on a cat's face. She answered in a very gentle tone that I will never forget: "Yes, I usually do this. But this time, let me see you grow up a little longer."
What will the dead say? If gods really exist, why don’t good people get good rewards? Death is just the beginning, how the living continue is the problem.
The black robe flutters in the wind. If I become the God of Death, will I be able to see my deceased relatives?
When an important person closes his eyes, how should the living people cope with the situation?
If there really is a god in the world, I hope everyone is happy.
If there is nothing in the world, then I will be the god.
So, [I] became the god of death and had a cat of my own.
"You said, how many times do I have to recall your past appearance in my dreams before I can always remember it..."
This BGM almost rang in my head, and I wanted to cry and laugh at the same time: "Can you please stop being so weird at this time? I'm feeling sad!"
The cat flicked its tail, stopped playing music and continued: "But I am leaving because I love you. You have become a very good person, and many people love you, but the you in the past was always alone, so I want to protect him until he grows up like you, learns to face this cruel world, and accepts those not-so-good memories. Then..."
Children will grow up and the pain will fade.
Memory is the mark given by life, shaping different lives. But no matter what kind of life I live, there will always be someone to accompany me to stumble through the most difficult road.
The cat jumped off my lap and walked towards Xia Ping'an. Its body gradually stretched and grew, becoming hunched and old. Its hand covered with age spots held Xia Ping'an's right hand.
My biggest enemy blinked, tears welling up in his eyes. He was small, looked no more than seven or eight years old, and held the old man's hand and cried, "Grandpa!"
"Don't cry. Where are Xiao Hei and Xiao Bai?"
Lucifer and Michael landed gently beside them. The gorgeous faces and wings disappeared, and two small black and white balls bounced.
“We’ve always been here!”
"Don't worry, this idiot didn't lose us."
I stared at them for a long, long time, until a familiar voice sounded from behind.
"What are you standing there for? Come here."
I turned around. Odysseus was standing not far away, waiting for me with his arms crossed. Samuel smiled and winked at me. Neil wanted to rush over, but Sean held his head down, as if to say, "You can't move unless I move." Kajo looked at the two of them speechlessly, and when she noticed my gaze, she flirted with me.
I walked towards them step by step, silently saying in my heart: "Big black and big white?"
Almost instantly, two voices rang in my ears, one angry and the other helpless.
"Don't call me that name!" / "...I think the name Remiel is also good, what do you think?"
"But you have two intelligences. I can't call you both by the same name. Let's discuss this issue after we get out."
I couldn't help laughing, and deliberately teased him mischievously, then walked briskly towards the person who was waiting for me.
The azure data stream surged, paving a long road to the sky. A translucent button popped up in my vision. I was about to press it, but suddenly I began to hesitate. This may be the most solemn and nervous moment in my life. It has always been others who came to me, but now I finally took my first step.
"Whether we still remember this memory after we get out, thank you very much."
"If we can meet again after we leave here, can you have a relationship with me?"
*
Sunlight came in from the French windows, and I typed the last letter. I felt the warmth of his body on my back, and I turned my head and exchanged a kiss with him.
"What are you doing?"
With his gilded eyes full of laziness, Sean lay on my back like a real big cat. I wanted to reach out for the water cup, but he held me down, so I had to stop. The star pirate narrowed his eyes. In reality, he was more mature and cold than in the instrument. He looked like a lazy leopard when he held me.
"Those two annoying guys are going to be back today, right?"
"Yes, Remiel and the others will come back with the core of the game. Then we can revive the Goddess of Nature and the others."
"I really don't want to see those two AIs. There are already enough people."
Sean muttered. This is the sixth day since we left the device. We are all safely out of the mental repair device. The first one to find me was Samuel, followed by Sean. Then came Kajol, Odysseus and Neil.
The memory in our consciousness left such a deep impression that we were all a little confused. But I still asked the question I wanted to know the most: "Why did you choose to help me?"
Yes, Xia Pingan only said half of what he meant.
It is true that these people entered the instrument with damaged mental powers, it is true that I was injured while saving two artificial intelligences, and it is also true that they invaded the mental healing device for me.
It was not until I returned to the real world that I understood what Xia Pingan meant by "the grown-up you" to Neil, because we all knew each other and had a good relationship.
After the two artificial intelligences were taken away, they were designed to be the core of the mental healing device. Samuel and his team helped me enter the institute and stole their core device. As a result, I was seriously injured and had to rely on the mental healing device to recover. So in order to help me, Samuel and his team also entered the mental healing device.
...What a touching story about friendship. Xia Pingan, how did you develop to the point of destroying the world?
I really want to ask my past self again. But after thinking about it, I finally laughed it off. Who hasn't had a low point where they want to destroy the world? It seems meaningless to look for someone who has long passed. After all, he is me and I am him.
Grandpa accompanied him through the long darkness, and the people I love and who love me will also accompany me through the rest of the journey.
Like I said, I won't forget them.
I looked up and asked Sean, "What do you think will happen if Death presses the game exit button?
The star pirate raised his eyebrows and looked at me with a half-smile: "Become alive?"
"Hahahaha what kind of answer is that!?"
"...Aren't you asking me a joke?"
He looked at me in confusion, the sunlight falling on his well-defined face. I laughed so hard that tears were about to come out. Sean pinched my face fiercely, looking ferocious, but actually his movements were very gentle.
"Why are you asking that? It sounds like something Odysseus would ask."
"It seems that I have been trying to write down the things in the game recently..." I puffed my cheeks, finally got rid of the clutches, rubbed my face, and continued. "... so that I won't forget it later. I plan to name this book "The God of Death Pressed the Exit Button", and the ending is..."
*
Once upon a time there was a lonely god of death, who knew that he was an NPC in a game.
He traveled a long, long way, met many, many people, and received a lot of love.
There are laughter, there are sorrows, there are losses, there are gains.
Some people watched the sunrise over the sea with him, some accompanied him through the long years, some wrote poems and painted for him, and some took him to see the stars.
Life is like a mirror, everyone is looking for something in the projection, but in the end they find themselves back at the starting point. It turns out that he is not alone, many people have accompanied him to the end of this road. His pain will eventually pass, and the unacceptable wounds will gradually heal. It turns out that he can also understand love and companionship. He held the hands of others and was pulled out of the water. Facing reality and illusion, he finally understood that the world created for one person is beautiful, but it is not just him who wants happiness, those who love him and are loved by him should also be happy.
The world rushed towards Him. Love was a seed that nourished fresh blood and flesh, filling every gap in the dry flesh. It made Him no longer afraid of fear and despair, nor afraid of the unsatisfactory reality.
The God of Death pressed the game exit button.
So, I was reborn.
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