Zhan Chen paused for a moment, stretched out his hand and protected Yu Tang's back.
The little ball of light nestled warmly in his arms.
Yu Tang bit him with all his strength, as if he wanted to break the skin and flesh and expose the artery in his neck; the warmth of his breath was tinged with pain.
"Senior Zhan." Yu Tang said vaguely, "I am punishing you."
Yu Tang: "You should have come to me earlier."
Zhan Chen didn't wait for him to come back, didn't discuss with him, and didn't ask him if he had any solutions. He just turned himself into a two-story-high mecha without permission. He could understand that.
Zhan Chen refused to hand him over, and was forcibly retrieved by the terminal, causing him to temporarily lose his memory. He could understand that.
"But you shouldn't decide on one person to solve a problem after resetting time."
Yu Tang said: "This is a matter between the two of us... This is your universe, so it is also mine. I have become very powerful, I have read a lot, I can do a lot, and I can help you."
He had been thinking about this for a while, until today, when he met the person in charge of the game, and finally got a clear answer.
Reversing time will reset memory, but it shouldn't be such a coincidence that every time I buy Zhong San, I buy Feng Qing.
There are too many uncontrollable variables in the world, and not everyone will make the same choice every time. Any slight change will become a butterfly flapping its wings, causing the entire world line to deviate.
Even the most insignificant and tiny change may completely separate two life trajectories that were supposed to meet.
The reason why every new Zhong San could buy number 13 was that every time, there was a person in charge of the game secretly manipulating the situation so that Feng Qing, who became number 13, would fall into Zhong San's hands.
…
Zhan Chen is the person in charge of the mall. He has always been in a high dimension and has always had the opportunity to do something.
"You didn't come to me, and you didn't let me think about the past. If you hadn't discovered the conspiracy in your book, and if you hadn't realized the threat posed to me by your game world, you wouldn't even let me join the game for the second time."
Yu Tang raised his head and went over the past one by one: "Even if I came back and joined the cross-examination bureau, you never intended to let me remember."
"You are in a hurry to find me just to return the particles that were cheated from me."
"If I had just completed the task as specified, I wouldn't have met Zhuang Yu at all, nor would I have heard his reminder that I was looking for you."
"If I didn't want to see that little dolphin, I wouldn't agree to transfer to logistics and move into your dormitory."
If he took even the slightest wrong step at any fork in the road, he would never meet Zhan Chen again.
Zhan Chen will live alone in the outside world and alone in the reincarnation.
Where he lives there will always be a robot that can turn the pages, and there will always be milk and cookies, but no electronic storms to steal the cookies, and no one will read the pages that are turned one by one.
Once the electron storm is fully restored, it will leave the dimension forever and return to the depths of the universe.
Particle-level civilizations never live in groups. If they force themselves to get close to each other, they will only devour each other. If they stay in one place for too long, they will devour dimensions and eventually compress the space they are in into a singularity of no size.
They are the eternal wanderers of the universe, nebulae with no home.
Zhan Chen hugged his arms tightly and apologized softly: "It's my fault, Xiao Guangtuan-"
He paused and raised his hand to touch Yu Tang's eyelashes.
Zhan Chen swallowed all his words, reached out his hand, hugged Yu Tang into his arms, and gently kissed the top of his head.
…
The already very impressive large ball of light suddenly solidified.
All the old accounts that were being turned over or were about to be turned over completely disappeared in that instant, and were so shattered that even the puzzle pieces could not be put together.
Yu Tang opened his mouth, and the heat spread rapidly, penetrating into his collar and overflowing through the fabric.
The system stared at the camera: "Host, you are glowing!"
Yu Tang: “…”
The system was hit on the head by the little blue card and the little red card in turn. It regretted it so much that it shut up after realizing it belatedly.
Zhan Chen couldn't help laughing.
He touched Yu Tang's hair, picked him up, and gently placed him on the sofa.
He and Shi Ji borrowed extracurricular books to make up for the lessons, and it was also the first time that they did something physical. The roots of his ears reflected an unusual warmth, which was connected to the red teeth marks on his neck, and the dull color on his body seemed to be filled with a light layer.
"I will apologize sincerely when I get back." Zhan Chen said, "We have to find a way to let Feng Qing go first."
Thinking of Feng Qing, Yu Tang couldn't help but frown, and the look in his eyes darkened.
… He has also been thinking about something.
The person in charge of the game did not lie in at least one thing. From the moment Feng Qing entered the game, the final evolution of the entire game world had already begun.
No one can stop the evolution. Even the person in charge of the game can only use the "game over" card to forcibly leave the game.
"You compressed the game world into a singularity and sent it out, which in turn devoured the outside world, consuming a large amount of the energy originally accumulated in the game world and forcibly delaying the progress of the game world."
Zhan Chen said: "But this can only treat the symptoms, not the root cause."
The energy lost in the expansion of the game world will be replenished sooner or later.
The people who remain in this space are still being deprived of color. When everyone turns into lines, the eye of the storm will be completely evolved.
"We must first understand what the core of Feng Qing's world is."
Yu Tang sat up, hugged his knees and moved, leaning against the sofa: "After all, he is not a naturally formed electronic storm."
"Unlike our growth process from nothing to something, his evolution is the opposite - assimilation, rust, fading, everything he originally had slowly disappears, and finally returns to 'nothing'."
"We can match the code of the spring, which means that at least we guessed correctly in the first step."
Yu Tang: "So far, the core of his world still has a shape."
Zhan Chen nodded.
The first step may seem simple, but once you actually do it, looking back you will realize how slim the chances of success were.
They had to figure out the truth about the whole space at the same time. Yu Tang needed to locate the laboratory, the living area of the laboratory, find Zhan Chen's cabin, and then work with Zhan Chen to put the spring in the same position without a millimeter of error.
Only with a certain chance can a piece of space be temporarily distorted and collapsed.
"I asked the people who roamed the walls."
Zhan Chen replied: "As we speculated, all the confined spaces so far come from Feng Qing's memory."
The place where they were was the laboratory where human experiments were conducted.
The unregistered user who had desperately called for help but was dragged into the wall was in a ward in the hospital.
Zhan Chen left a message in the comment section and tried to contact team doctor Sui and Sui Zhengfan. According to their replies, they were currently in the laboratory's data room and main control room respectively.
Everyone was sealed in a separate space, and every door disappeared, growing together with the walls.
"Did the door really disappear?" Yu Tang asked.
"Really!" The system said, "We have carefully searched, and there is nothing on the wall..."
Yu Tang stood up from the sofa and looked at their current environment.
The original bedroom of the villa has completely disappeared, replaced by a completely enclosed space with no exit.
Everything in the space was a shade of gray, which looked extremely strange. But except for the lack of doors and windows on the walls, the furnishings in the room were complete, and it was easy to recognize that it was the small house where Zhan Chen once lived.
Yu Tang asked: "Senior Zhan, do you still remember how this room became this one?"
Zhan Chen nodded: "At first, this place was still the bedroom of the villa."
Yu Tang discovered something strange and smashed the window to go out, but he found himself in the bedroom of the villa.
Shortly after Yu Tang left, the window returned to its intact closed state and the world outside became calm.
Then the door disappeared.
"The situation was very chaotic at the time. The walls were twisting and the space was growing, swallowing up all the remaining things and people."
Zhan Chen said: "After the growth period of the space ended, it became a cubic meter."
The system didn't notice the whole process and was a little surprised: "Mr. Zhan, when did this happen?"
"It was very brief, lasting less than a second." Zhan Chen said, "Then new furniture 'grew' out of it, and I found that this was the dormitory I used to live in when I was doing experiments in the past."
"I couldn't tell if it was a coincidence at first." Zhan Chen said, "But since my bet was right, this place happened to be where I used to live tomorrow. It must be for some reason."
Zhan Chen: "You are outside, and you can locate a room at once. This is obviously not an illusion generated based on my consciousness."
Yu Tang confirmed his guess and nodded.
The system was anxious to know what was going on, but did not dare to disturb the host. It turned around and begged Zhan Chen: "Mr. Zhan, Mr. Zhan..."
Zhan Chen was speechless and touched Yu Tang's hair: "Teacher Xiao Guangtuan, can you help me with the spoiler?"
Yu Tang: “…”
I will make Deputy Captain Nie confiscate Shi Ji’s extracurricular books later.
Yu Tang felt his ears burning, he cleared his throat, and before Zhan Chen could withdraw his hand, he gently rubbed his palm that was covering the top of his head.
"It's not that this place just happened to become the place where we used to live."
Yu Tang said: "Senior Zhan, it's because you always miss that place and you want to go back there."
"This is Feng Qing's domain. He has been locked up most of his life. Doors and windows have no meaning to him because they are never places he can go out of."
"He likes to do handicrafts, is good at puzzles and building blocks, and has an extraordinary sensitivity to spatial structure."
“He assembled all the spaces he had ever seen and created a free world for himself in his consciousness.”
Yu Tang said: "Every enclosed space is a puzzle. He puts them together. He never needs to rely on doors or windows to move in these spaces."
The system asked quietly: "On what?"
Yu Tang picked up the system installed in the mecha figurine and let him sit on his shoulders: "Think about it."
…
In that assessment world, Yu Tang had seen the other world before.
Feng Qing's body was lying on the hospital bed, his consciousness huddled together with the electronic storm that came to test him. He gestured and enthusiastically introduced to Yu Tang a world that belonged only to him.
"I've been to some great places." Feng Qing was very proud, "Definitely better than you."
Electronic Storm was not convinced: "I have been to 698 galaxies and 439,713 planets."
Feng Qing: “…”
Feng Qing didn't care and insisted: "I've been to more places on our planet than you have."
This time it was Electronic Storm's turn to be speechless.
After he came to the Great Galaxy, he almost always lived in the room of the human he raised. Later, he stayed guarding the mecha and indeed had not been to many places.
"Look." Feng Qing was very generous and pulled him to visit. "This is the bathroom, this is the container, and this is the sleeping cabin I slept in before..."
By then, he was already able to use some of his supernatural powers to sketch as he went along. Countless fine lines formed by particles intertwined and extended, emitting a faint glow, accurately modeling the shape of each piece of furniture and decoration.
Electronic Storm was extremely envious: "That's amazing, can you teach me?"
Feng Qing asked: "What do you want to model?"
"A man." Electronic Storm said, "I think I broke him. I think he's angry, so he doesn't want to talk to me."
"..." Feng Qing tried his best to comfort his new friend and gave him a piece of bubble gum, "No, I'm not afraid of others breaking me."
Feng Qing raised his hand and taught him enthusiastically: "Come, learn from me. First draw a straight line, then draw a rectangle."
…
"That's all I learned," Yu Tang said, "Draw a rectangle."
system:"… "
The talents of Electronic Storm and Feng Qing are completely at opposite ends of the spectrum.
For a long time after that, Yu Tang was unable to learn how to model any room or person. He found another way and learned how to fill a rectangle with things until the rectangle became a skill card.
Feng Qing is very kind-hearted. He couldn't bear to see Electronic Storm disappointed, so he took the initiative to carve out a place in his own world according to Electronic Storm's description and modeled the home that his good friend was most familiar with.
Feng Qing had indeed been to the laboratory, but in the laboratory, Feng Qing only remembered one sleeping cabin.
It was based on Yu Tang's description that he built the laboratory building, the database, the central laboratory, seventeen street lamps, and the inconspicuous small room under the seventeenth street lamp.
"He taught me how to visit people in the house."
Yu Tang: "Senior Zhan, hold my hand."
Zhan Chen’s hand came up, and Yu Tang took hold of that hand, clasping them together and holding them tightly.
…
"I will make you my home, your favorite home."
In the assessment world, Feng Qing seized the few opportunities to be awake to work while pulling him and muttering: "If you want to wait for your human in the future, go home and wait. Humans must go home."
Feng Qing said: "Don't thank me, I will help you carve another little wooden man."
Electronic Storm hugged Feng Qing's bubble gum and said embarrassedly: "Then I will also help you raise your ten brothers and sisters."
Feng Qing touched the back of his head, pursed his lips and smiled, then opened his mouth to speak.
Before his voice could be heard, it was completely swallowed up by the white light at the edge of the memory fragment.
…
"Orphanage." Yu Tang said, "Knock on the door."
As he spoke, the surrounding environment was replaced by translucent lines.
For a moment, they seemed to be standing at a certain origin, and the gray scene around them quickly disappeared.
The system sat on the host's shoulder, tightly grasping the host's collar, and couldn't help but open the camera to take a look.
I was stunned unconsciously.
In the bottomless black background, there are only countless intertwined and faintly shiny thin lines, modeling a virtual space in memory.
After 0.75 seconds, everything around solidified again.
Deep and light grays are reconstructed, filling in the outlines created by the interweaving lines, and bringing them back into the new enclosed space.
It is a somewhat strange orphanage.