Chen Ci's calm voice echoed in the empty room, bouncing off the walls and lasting for a long time before fading away.

Everyone except him held their breath.

One second, two seconds, three seconds.

Time passes step by step. In this space created by virtual data, is there still a concept of time?

In the silence, Shafley noticed a pop-up window appearing on the console screen.

He was startled and looked carefully.

[Skip program patch? ]

【whether】

It actually works!

Shaflay took a deep breath and pressed [Yes].

It's not that he doesn't want to repair it, it's just that the current situation is beyond his ability.

Although Shafley had learned programming since childhood and was very talented, he was not good enough to fully understand a computer language that he had never seen before.

The display screen went out, and a rumbling sound came from under their feet. Chen Nian immediately moved to Shafulai's side and saw that the sand table was sinking. The sea water was constantly surging in the vibration, hitting the bottom of the beacon and rolling up small waves.

The entire sandbox sank into the ground, and the surrounding walls became transparent, or in other words, disappeared at this moment.

Outside the room, there was still emptiness.

Chen Nian's intuition told him that there should be more designs besides the sandbox and program patches.

But under Chen Ci's cold questioning and demands, all of them were cut off.

But that's true. Anyway, there were only four of them who had truly discovered the deep secret. Testing them now would be like taking off your pants and farting. Apart from wasting time, Chen Nian couldn't think of any other purpose it would have.

The sandbox disappeared completely, and something else rose in the center, a small square platform with an unremarkable shape.

Four people walked forward and saw a storage device half the size of a palm placed inside.

Shafley picked up the memory stick and plugged it into the port on the console.

The moment I read, the blank nothingness suddenly darkened.

They were in a dark and endless universe, a universe where the stars had not yet been born, with only endless darkness and chaos. Expansion.

In a world where time has not yet been born, 0s and 1s emitting a fiery green glow quietly emerge, condense into points, connect the points into lines, pull the lines into surfaces, and drag the surfaces into bodies.

Zero dimension, one dimension, two dimension, three dimension.

The universe was filled, creating new material existence through endless random permutations and combinations.

It may not be appropriate to call it matter. Information is not matter. It exists beyond matter and beyond time and space. It is just attached to matter and is displayed to the world with the help of a carrier.

A huge amount of information passed by quickly. They were in the grand palace of information. From the beginning of its creation to its preservation for thousands of years, the beacon recorded all the data since the birth of mankind.

All knowledge was stored in computers at the beginning of the flooding disaster. If humans are unfortunately extinct one day, they will serve as relics of the existence of this race.

Humans speculate that the universe was born from an explosion and then aggregated to form countless planets.

The ancient earth was wrapped in magma, which gradually cooled and gave rise to the ocean. Primitive life was conceived and continued to evolve over hundreds of millions of years, eventually leaving the ocean and walking onto land.

There had been a catastrophe, and the dominant species on the planet had become extinct. However, the process of life continued, and more creatures appeared and multiplied. Primates that walked on two legs mastered fire and quickly created a brilliant civilization unprecedented on the planet.

They study the past, present and future, the sky, the land and the sea.

They are so smart that they can create countless new things, but they are so helpless that when disaster strikes, they can only try their best to find shelter.

Today, the people who built the beacon have long since died, but the underlying code that served as the cornerstone has been managed by generations of programmers. It continues to this day, iterating at a rate of trillions of times every second, calculating all possible futures.

A future where humanity can return to its original homeland.

Data gathers from all directions, forming shining lines, crisscrossing and interweaving in the vast space, forming an endless information highway.

The passage crosses into hundreds of ports, which are clouds set up at different locations on the earth for thousands of years, and also passes through six quite dazzling existences.

Red, blue, green, purple, gray, and gold.

Suddenly, the data flowing out of the golden area became extremely slow, almost disappearing.

It still continues to receive data from the outside world, but the upload is interrupted.

All four of them knew that gold represented moonlight.

Shafley tried his best to analyze the damaged hard drive that Chen Ci and Fu Tianhe brought back from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. One of the contents was that beacon Sanshui noticed the collapse of the moonlight without any warning. The five major beacons asked questions one after another, but got no answer.

In the records analyzed later, moonlight never appeared from beginning to end.

No, it is possible that it appeared, but the data recording Moonlight Communications was severely damaged and could not be seen by him.

If you observe carefully, you will find that the information transmitted by moonlight is not completely gone, but it is so sparse that it can be ignored compared with other huge bright data streams.

If the image we see here reflects what happened, then it means that after the collapse, Moonlight and other beacons were still in some small way connected.

Everyone paid close attention to those tiny points of light, but soon, the data flowing from the moonlight was completely cut off.

No matter how carefully you look, nothing is nothing.

The last bit of data flowing out of the moonlight circulated between the five major beacons and was finally transmitted into the huge cloud at the center.

That light golden spot attracted the attention of the four people. It was like the cold moon hanging high in the night sky, or like the eyes of a woman that Fu Tianhe saw in his dream.

Massive amounts of data are still flowing, interweaving between the five major beacons to form a dense communication network. Moonlight is isolated and has become an isolated island that other beacons want to contact but are helpless to do so.

No, strictly speaking, it is not completely isolated.

There were still sporadic data transmitted into the moonlight, and the other five beacons never gave up trying to reconnect with it, but in the end, all they received was silence.

The situation seems to have stabilized.

The four looked at each other.

Chen Nian whispered, "Are we going to go get the thing in the center next?"

Fu Tianhe: "I think so."

Shafulai gently pushed Chen Nian in the back. There was a close connection between the two brothers and Moonlight. Since that was the last thing Moonlight left, it would be more appropriate to let Chen Ci and Chen Nian go.

Chen Nian calmed himself down, he and Chen Ci looked at each other, and walked forward together.

The floor beneath their feet disappeared at some point, and they were now suspended above the abyss. It seemed that if they were not careful, they would fall endlessly.

Chen Nian tried to take a step forward, slowly moving his feet downwards, and when he was sure that he could step on the invisible existence, he immediately breathed a sigh of relief.

Chen Ci and Chen Nian crossed countless data torrents and arrived at the brightest large cloud in the center.

They stretched out their hands and touched the golden light together.

The moment my fingertips touched

Data gushed out from it, dyeing the surrounding darkness into a light golden color and transforming into a rolling circle.

From ancient times to the present, no matter in the East or the West, human beings have always been full of imagination about the moon hanging high in the night sky.

In Guanghan Palace, fairies are accompanied by the Jade Rabbit that makes medicine, and the Tengu that swallowed the moon is driven away by gongs and drums; Selene's silver chariot passes by Mount Latmos and travels through the night sky on the crescent moon; in the ruins of Upper Central City, ancient people used pyramids to pray to the moon and pray for wisdom; Yueyomi killed the god of food and was scolded by his sister Amaterasu, and from then on, the sun and the moon alternated.

But what about the real moon?

The beautiful imaginations in ancient legends have never existed. On the moon, there are Surveyor 1, Apollo 15, the Yutu rover, a nylon American flag, astronauts' footprints and vomit, the Bible, US dollars and monuments.

Fantasy and reality overlap here.

The data surged, forming countless strange scenes around them, true and false, real and unreal, and finally flowing and condensing in front of the brothers.

Just a few words.

[Save me]

My breath stopped at this moment, all the beautiful pictures suddenly went out, and the data froze.

The data area where the beacon was located gradually lit up, forming a six-pointed star with a missing corner, surrounding the two brothers and the final message in the center.

Figures emerged one after another: a young girl in a red dress, a young man hanging upside down in tattered clothes, a plump woman smoking a hookah, an old man with crane hair and lowered eyes, and a middle-aged man with a solemn expression.

They have different shapes, ages, and genders, and the only thing they have in common is that they all have a vertical pupil in the center of their eyebrows.

Red, blue, green, purple, grey.

Those eyes were open, staring at the twins standing in the center, with no emotion in their inorganic gaze.

hiss……

Chen Nian couldn't help but take a deep breath. He recognized that these were the eyes that everyone had encountered so many sea kings before and finally fell into.

"Cinnabar."

Shafulai whispered, nudging the dazed Fu Tianhe beside him with his elbow, and as Fu Tianhe came back to his senses, he and he came to the side of Chen Ci and Chen Nian.

Fu Tianhe's hands and feet were numb. Perhaps a virtual heart was beating wildly in his chest, or perhaps it was just an illusion caused by nervous tension.

The gorgeous clothes of the same style, the exquisite and almost inhuman perfect face, and the pupils standing upright between the eyebrows, all made him unconsciously think of the woman he had seen in his dream, floating in the pink lake.

And the golden eyes left in her shattered body.

Among the four people present, only Shafley had seen the core program of the beacon before, and he was also the most calm.

"You haven't shown up these few times. Is it to meet us here?"

Shafla looked at Cinnabar, who still had no expression on his face. Beside them, the last message left by the moonlight hung quietly in the air. It was just three words, but they were so glaring and so terrifying.

Cinnabar looked at him quietly, unmoved.

Schaffrey didn't expect it to give a detailed answer, so he asked directly: "When was this news?"

The first to speak was Gibbsite, who was hanging upside down in the air: "The collapse of Moonlight nineteen years ago was completely beyond our expectations."

Astrophyllite: "We kept calling for three days, and finally received a message from it."

Chalcanthite: "Moonlight repaired the damaged communication channel and informed us of the deep crisis we were experiencing."

The ethereal voice faded away, and groups of data rushed to the four people in the center, revealing many secrets hidden in the past in the most intuitive and convenient way.

From that day on, the six major beacons unanimously decided to use all their computing power to simulate all possible situations that might arise in the future and find the best way to solve the problem.

But it is too difficult.

For millennia, the beacon has been performing iterative calculations, but no matter how it is improved, the predictions are only accurate for a short period of time.

Once it exceeds the range of three months, it will deviate in the direction of one hundred and eighty thousand miles, causing huge errors.

They can create the most realistic physics engines, break through chaotic systems, and perform trillions of data iterations, but they cannot control the biggest and most important variables.

--people.

Human behavior is unpredictable.

So... can we take this variable into consideration and then proceed with subsequent deductions and iterations?

How to bring people in?

Just as they had calculated the optimal solution in countless situations before, the beacons also made a decision this time.

A game called "Dianhuan Shenguo" was started. It was completely based on a real-life replica of the world, introducing all variables that might affect the future, and "people" participated in the deduction as players.

The Moonlight, which is in poor condition, can only allocate a small part of its computing power to assist in game research and development, while providing other beacons with some important information that only it knows.

Ten years passed like this.

The night before the final test of the simulated world, the beacons suddenly received a message from Moonlight.

[Save me]

This is the last message left by Moonlight.

Since then, there has been no news from it, and all calls and data transmitted have fallen into oblivion.

At the end of December of the same year, the holographic game "Electric Fantasy Kingdom" which claimed to be absolutely real was released for free. On the same day, 98 million players were online at the same time, which caused an unprecedented sensation in the history of games.

Millions of players have come to this world where the sea water is receding through neural adapters. They have witnessed the land that is constantly emerging, the primitive creatures that want to take back the territorial waters, and the human relics that have been dormant under the water for thousands of years.

They picked up shovels, electric saws, sickles and weapons to build, to farm, to fight off alien species and to create a beautiful new world for mankind.

Yes, Shafley guessed right.

From the very beginning, the Electric Fantasy Kingdom was not a so-called simulated reality.

It is a preview of reality.

Every decision they make in the game is recorded, variables are changed, and things are pushed in new directions.

After trillions of generations, the world, which originally had countless possible endings, is like a giant forked tree, with a new trunk growing, guided by the branches ultimately decided by the players.

Branching, choosing, and branching again... extending forever, leading to the day when the sea water recedes completely.

The whole world is a huge computer simulation experiment.

Each of them is a tiny molecule in this experiment, but they have the enormous power to change the course of the experiment.

The iteration never stops.

Even though it was already expected, the story still shocked everyone to the point that they forgot to breathe.

From the moment they were created, supercomputers never forgot their mission.

The Creator used all of human wisdom to create them, and they are also doing their best to protect humans and help them survive this catastrophe.

"What about the moonlight?"

Chen Ci asked. He was not confused by the grand story and realized that the five beacons seemed to be deliberately avoiding the moonlight.

"After getting back in touch, did it tell you why it collapsed? What was the situation inside? Where did Ashes come from? Chen Nian and I were born shortly after it collapsed. Does that mean Moonlight was already prepared?"

"Yes." Chen Nian also came back to his senses from the excitement of the grand narrative and frowned.

"I've said so much just to explain the reason for the existence of the Electric Fantasy Kingdom. The global flooding disaster has lasted for thousands of years. Why did you have to use games to simulate it in the last ten years? Didn't you think about the impact of humans as a variable?"

In response to Chen Ci and Chen Nian's pointed questions, the Beacons responded.

Cinnabar: "To this day, we still don't know what happened inside Moonlight."

S.mokyquartz: "During the subsequent ten years of contact."

Chalcanthite: "Although it no longer exists as a shelter, the program can still run normally and participate in the production of the game."

Astrophyllite: "We know what it has been through, but we don't know exactly."

Here we go again.

Shaflay frowned. He couldn't remember how many times he had heard the Riddler's answer from the beacon. The feeling of powerlessness that was constantly hidden made him very unhappy.

And Beacon's next words were like a thunder, exploding in their ears.

Gibbsite: "The reason for this is the deliberate concealment of the moonlight."

Deliberate concealment?

Even Fu Tianhe raised his head in surprise. These four words were full of profound meaning and gave rise to endless imagination.

Deliberately concealing the crisis you experienced can be understood in two very different ways:

To protect other compatriots from the same danger; or they have already betrayed the camp without anyone knowing.

Which kind is moonlight? Perhaps no one knows except moonlight itself.

Fu Tianhe looked at Chen Ci, and the feeling told him that the probability of the latter possibility appearing was very small, otherwise why would the moonlight make the brothers Chen Ci and Chen Nian appear? And why would they send out a call for help at the last minute?

Cinnabar: "Now, the moonlight has been completely blocked."

S.mokyquartz: "We haven't heard anything from it in nine years."

Chalcanthite: "If you want to know the exact situation, you must go and explore it yourself."

Astrophyllite: "But because of the existence of that door, all the secret teams sent out before have returned empty-handed."

Chen Nian: "In other words, if we want to know what happened inside Moonlight, we two brothers have to lead people there."

He and Chen Ci looked at each other and saw a kind of suspicion in each other's eyes.

It is obvious that the door was designed for the two of them, and neither of them can be missing. Moreover, both of them have emotional seals on them, and they can only be opened smoothly after the seals are lifted.

This means that if you want to turn on the moonlight, you have to wait until they grow up and have a certain amount of experience.

Soon after they were born, they were separated in a fire and did not even know each other existed.

If you think about it carefully, you can actually taste the flavor of delaying time.

If the situation inside Moonlight is really urgent enough, why set such a high threshold?

Or does it mean that in order to successfully explore this, they must grow up and still have enough ties to each other in this world?

It's so weird.

"Is there any other information you can provide us?" Chen Ci asked directly, "At this point, everyone should speak frankly and stop wasting time on trivial matters."

"You'd better tell us everything you know," Chen Nian said, "otherwise, if we enter Moonlight and encounter unexpected emergencies, it will be like sending ourselves to die."

"We have told you all that can be said. But we still have one last piece of advice—"

"Watch your eyes."

The moment the words fell, everything around him disappeared.

Universe, data, beacons, including characters.

Everything disappeared without a trace.

The world was turned upside down, the soul was experiencing a chaotic electromagnetic pulse, feeling indescribably dizzy and falling into a thick darkness.

Three seconds later, their eyes were filled with deep blue, and they were forced to exit the login interface of the Electric Fantasy Kingdom.

At the same time, I smelled a burnt smell.

Chen Ci immediately took off the neural adapter on his head. He blinked his swollen and painful eyes, stared at the ceiling, and took a deep breath.

Schafflet examined the adapter and determined that it was burned and unusable.

Chen Nian sat up straight, his hair was messed up by the neural adapter:

"Be careful with your eyes? What eyes? Fu Tianhe's eyes? But didn't his medical examination report say that he was fine?"

Fu Tianhe looked confused, and subconsciously raised his hand to touch his right eye which was wrapped in gauze:

"Huh? But I'm fine, and the surgery went smoothly. What's there to be cautious about?"

"It may refer to something else." Shafley said. Because Fu Tianhe had a problem with his right eye, the first person they thought of when they heard the word "eye" was Fu Tianhe.

But if you think about it more carefully, you will find that it is more likely to refer to something else.

Eyes provide vision and are used to see everything in the world. They are the "camera" of living organisms.

Can this be understood as, we should be careful that their movements are being monitored?

The strange fire that started in the Chen family's house, the blue-eyed monster that sneaked into the mansion and wanted to kill Chen Nian, the ambush set up in advance on the Huanhai Platform, and the accurate news heard from the emperor that there were enemies infiltrating the interior.

Schafflei had thought that the situation would improve after the capture of the blue-eyed monster, but now it seemed that the observing enemy might have simply become more covert.

"Let's take a break and go to a safer place to discuss it in detail when we have time." Shaflay sat up and rubbed his swollen and painful forehead.

"Okay." Chen Nian also wanted to sort out his confused mind first. When he saw Chen Ci on the other bed, his eyes were filled with his brother's dashing and heroic appearance just now.

"By the way, brother, didn't you just say you had something important to do? Don't delay."

Fu Tianhe: "Yes, go ahead."

"Yes." Chen Ci agreed, and took out a small bottle of eye drops from the drawer of the bedside cabinet. He approached Fu Tianhe's bed and whispered, "Come."

"ah?"

Fu Tianhe hasn't reacted yet. Isn't Jiuyue going to do something important?

It took Fu Tianhe two seconds to suddenly realize that the most important thing that Chen Ci wanted to do in questioning Xin Beacon, which he did not want to delay, was to give him eye drops.

Alpha's entire face immediately started burning.