"It's the same old thing. I heard that voice again."
The young man swiftly took off the backpack from behind, placed it on the ground and untied the rope wrapped around it. The backpack immediately spread out like a piece of sackcloth, and many small fruits appeared on it.
Some people took the fruit handed over by the young man, took a bite, turned their heads numbly, and each found a corner to eat quietly.
Soon there were only two people left at the distribution site, one was a young man distributing fruits, and the other was a skinny middle-aged man.
The middle-aged man's hair is messy and frizzy, as if it was chewed by a dog.
There was dirty mud on his face and clothes, and a thick beard covered half of his face.
Unlike other numb people, this person's eyes have some spirit and can complete basic conversation.
Hearing the young man's answer, the bearded man looked at him deeply and couldn't help but pour cold water on him: "Baili Xin, you have been here for fifty years. Don't you understand? That voice is just an ordinary voice, it has no meaning."
"Just accept your fate. You can get out later."
There were only a few green fruits left on the linen cloth in front of Baili Xin. He took a few of them and stuffed them into the bearded man's arms. His expression was cold but polite. "Since I can get in, I must find a way to get out. I must get out."
As he spoke, he picked up the last two fruits, put one into his mouth and held the other in his left hand.
He picked up the cloth and rope on the ground with his right hand, turned and walked in one direction.
Looking at Baili Xin's back as he left, the bearded man sighed and shook his head gently, "You are too young after all. I really envied you at that time. You are a newborn calf that is not afraid of a tiger."
A faint voice came into Baili Xin's ears from behind. He turned around, stopped, and didn't refute anything anymore.
He walked straight to a big tree in the survival area, picked up a small diamond that had been sharpened from the edge of the tree, and drew a "one" symbol on the tree.
After finishing the stroke, the "一" just formed the character "正" with the previous traces.
Baili Xin raised his head and saw that the entire trunk of the tree was covered with neatly arranged "正" characters, one after another.
They are densely arranged on it, silently showing the long years.
Baili Xin: Escape system, s419m
After taking a bite of the green fruit, the rich juice immediately filled Baili Xin's mouth.
In an instant, his mouth was filled with complex, layered tastes of bitterness, sourness, and sweetness.
It didn't taste good, but he already had enough food in his backpack to fill his stomach.
Baili Xin shouted a few more times in his mind, and as expected, he got no response.
It has been 50 years since I arrived at the Time Prison - Eternal Diamond Mountain. It is like an endless abyss forgotten by the system.
He could open his backpack and take out the daily necessities inside, but the prop cards had lost their function and he had lost contact with the escape system s419m.
Although he had stored a lot of supplies and food in his backpack, they were all used up long ago due to the daily consumption.
Although there are other people around, they have long succumbed to stereotypes and lost their ability to think. Eating every day is the only way to prove that they are alive.
It was already pitch black above my head, and the surroundings were silent, with not even the sound of the wind.
Baili Xin ate the green fruit in no time, put the small diamond back to its place, turned around and sat down beside the tree to rest.
He threw away the seeds left over from eating the green fruit, dug two small holes in the soil on the ground, and put the seeds in them.
While he was planting seeds, he opened the task bar.
Although the connection with the escape system s419m has been cut off, the taskbar can be opened.
There is only one task in the task bar.
Dungeon: Time Prison—Eternal Diamond Mountain
Mission content: Leave the cage. After completing the mission, you will get a rare item - Diamond Heart.
Time limit: None.
Note: Night is the paradise of the abyss.
Friendly reminder: You can leave Eternal Diamond Mountain by breaking through it.
The system defines the time cage as a "copy".
In this way, this world should be a plane world connected to the system like a line. It's just that this world is too difficult to conquer, so it is used by the system as a punishment prison.
What Baili Xin was most interested in among all the tasks was the task reward.
"Diamond Heart", seeing the name reminded Baili Xin of an item he had obtained before.
That prop is called "Mermaid's Heart".
"Heart of the Mermaid" is a pendant in the shape of a black pearl. It is a growth-type healing item. When I was clearing the Undead dungeon, it was thanks to the Heart of the Mermaid that I was able to complete the task successfully. It is a very buggy item.
Could the Diamond Heart be a bug-type item similar to the Mermaid Heart
…
In the distance, those numb humans with stereotyped behaviors finished eating the fruit. Some continued to spin in circles, while others yawned and lay down on the ground to sleep.
After eating the seeds, the bearded man threw them away. After hesitating for a while, he walked up to Baili Xin.
The tree was at least a hundred years old, and from a distance it looked like a dark brown wall. The bearded man leaned against the tree trunk and sat beside him, imitating Baili Xin's posture, not too far away from him.
The bearded man was one of the few people in the group who still had some sanity left.
Feeling someone sitting next to him, Baili Xin glanced at the bearded man and continued to stare at the ground in front of him in a daze.
The bearded man thought for a moment and sighed, "Why do you believe that voice is a clue?"
"Maybe it's just the normal movement of the Earth's crust at Diamond Hill, it rings on a certain day every year."
"I know you've tried very hard and really want to leave. But I'm like that. The greater your hope, the greater the disappointment you'll feel after it's gone."
"When I first came in, I was just like you. I would go out with that rope every day to see what was going on outside."
"I'm just like you, trying to chip away at the diamond mountain."
"But I have persisted for more than ten years and have only chiseled a groove the size of a fingernail. If I can keep chiseling, we need to rush back to the survival area before dark every day."
The destruction he suffered seemed to have left something on Baili Xin. His fingers were as slender as ever, and still as white as jade.
Baili Xin's eyes were a little dazed, and his fingers seemed to be drawing something aimlessly on the ground.
The bearded man is wrong. Eternal Diamond Mountain is not an item to be noted. You need to explore it on your own.
Diamond Mountain is very safe during the day, but once it gets dark, the outside will become a paradise of the abyss, and the only safe place is the survival zone.
If there are only monsters outside, that's easy, maybe you can give it a try.
But this is not the case.
The "Paradise of the Abyss" is really the abyss.
The surroundings will be covered by darkness, and everything will be swallowed by the darkness, leaving no one able to resist.
The only way is to get back to the survival area before dark.
Baili Xin even felt that this place was like a bug in the code. He wanted to fix it but was powerless and could only let it go on.
It takes half a day to run to the edge of Diamond Mountain with all your strength, but it takes another half a day to run back.
There were only a short one or two hours left to dig Diamond Mountain.
Seeing Baili Xin answering him, the bearded man thought that Baili Xin's faith had begun to slowly collapse. He sighed and continued, "I have heard the voice you heard."
"It's not just me." The bearded man pointed at the numb people in the distance, "They've all heard it."
"You see that guy," the bearded man pointed his finger at one of the men circling in place, "When I first came here, he was just like me now, a bit rational."
"But decades later, he became like that."
The man rubbed his face and smiled bitterly, "Soon, I will become like him."
"You know what your future will be like, but you can't do anything about it. Isn't that sad?"
"How did I become like this?"
Baili Xin's fingers finally stopped. He turned to look at the bearded man with a determined and firm look in his eyes. "I won't."
"A long, long time ago, I once experienced the same predicament as now, even more desperate and lonely than now. Do you know how long I experienced it?"
It was the first time that the bearded man heard the young man mention this. His already numb heart was a little curious, "How long?"
Baili Xin: "Nearly ten thousand years."
He was not as strong as he is now at the beginning. He had been weak, helpless and unwilling before.
When he was bound by s419m to do the quick-travel mission, his fragile heart was slowly ground into a hard diamond.
He was not a perfect person, nor was he a genius as others said.
He just works harder and is stronger than others.
All his abilities now were gifts from his past training. Because of the difficulties that ordinary people could not imagine, he could now cope with many situations.
He used to blame others and resent others. But when he got through the lows and became the person who was determined to achieve his goals, he began to realize something.
The hardships are right in front of you, you can't avoid them, so just endure them.
If you can get through it, you will be Kunpeng.
If you can’t get through it, you are just mud and sand.
That's why he would help the newcomers whenever he could, not because he is a saint, but because he is an experienced person.
Isn't there a good saying? If you have been caught in the rain, you will know to offer an umbrella to others.
The bearded man was stunned for a moment, then two seconds later he suddenly opened his mouth and laughed. It must have been a long time since he laughed, and his thick beard began to tremble.
Baili Xin just glanced at him lightly, without saying anything more, he put the branch aside, tidied up the long black hair that was like a waterfall around him with both hands, and rolled it into a ball in his arms.
His hair was tied up beautifully, and from a distance it looked like a huge black rose blooming in the night.
The bearded man laughed for a long time before he stopped laughing. "Come on, you look like you're only eleven years old. I've been in there for 200 years, and 10 years have passed in the game hall. I saw you when I was in the game hall. Even if I count the cage when I entered, you've only been in the game hall for 10 years at most."
"10 years, plus the 50 years you spent living there, and then plus your original 20 years, you have spent an extra 80 years. How can it be nearly 10,000 years?"
"It's not a coincidence." Baili Xin was explaining something and suddenly said something that made sense.
The bearded man was stunned for a moment, "What?"
Baili Xin supported herself on the tree trunk and adjusted her sitting position. Then she picked up a branch with one hand and casually grasped her long hair with the other hand. She gently tapped the branch twice on a certain point on the ground. "I said that the sound was definitely not the crust of Diamond Mountain. It was not a coincidence."
"It happens once a year, on a very specific day."
"It has been ringing for fifty years, and I have been observing it for fifty years."
"Guess what I found?"
The bearded man followed Baili Xin's line of sight to the ground. He thought Baili Xin was drawing something on the ground, but that was not the case.
The map that Priscilla drew was of Diamond Mountain.
The small circle in the middle is their living area, and there is a line connecting the edge of the living area, which is the rope connecting to the outside.
At the end of the rope was a huge, rugged circle, which wrapped the circle in it like a giant, leaving only a tiny gap.
The branch in Baili Xin's hand pointed at a certain location on Diamond Mountain.
The bearded man asked in confusion: "What did you find?"
"Fifty years later," Baili Xin lightly stroked the branch with his fingers, and the fixed point moved forward a distance. "I found that the sound was getting closer and closer. It was already at the same place as before, and now it has come to the inside."
The bearded man was stunned. He stared at Baili Xin's wrist. "You mean..."
Baili Xin: "Eternal Diamond Mountain, you should have heard of that fable, right?"
The bearded man nodded. "The system introduced it to me when I entered the cage."
Baili Xin said: "How many seconds is eternity?"
"On the Diamond Mountain in Trans-Pomerania, a bird flies every hundred years and pecks the mountain with its beak. When the entire mountain is pecked away, the first second of eternity ends." (1 excerpt, source is regarded as a saying)
"A bird that pecks at Diamond Mountain appeared in my hometown."
The bearded man's eyes were still dull, with an inexplicable excitement in them, "You mean, that sound is actually the bird that flies over every year to peck at the Eternal Diamond Mountain?!"
"But how is that possible?" The bearded man remembered something and quickly regained his composure. "The system is so good that it locks us in cages and gives us a big bird that is specially designed to break through Diamond Mountain?"
Baili Xin's eyes were a little dazed. "That's what's strange about me. But there is a possibility that the system cannot prevent the appearance of a big bird."
"The system doesn't even have the ability to establish a dialogue with us. Sending us into a dungeon is the limit of what it can do. In this case, how could it possibly do anything else?"
The bearded man's eyes became excited again, and he listened to Baili Xin continue, "Fifty years ago, I started to dig the mountain in the opposite direction of the sound."
Bearded Man: "What are the results?"
Baili Xin: "In fifty years, more than eighteen thousand two hundred days, I dug a hole as deep as two fists."
"Two fists..." The bearded man raised his fist and gestured, then looked at Baili Xin in shock, "How deep did you dig? How did you do it?"
Baili Xin raised his eyebrows, and suddenly revealed an arrogant expression, "I am Baili Xin, who do you think I am?"
“It’s not just brute strength, it’s about skill.”
"To put it simply, diamond is a diamond unit cell crystal composed of carbon atoms that are too tightly connected and holding hands. Since they are holding hands, that is where the weakness lies."
It had been fifty years, and it was the first time that the bearded man listened to Baili Xin seriously. He was stunned and confused, as if he was listening to a science fiction story.
Carbon atoms holding hands? A fragile spot
Did he mean that he found the place where carbon atoms were connected and knocked it open
How the hell is that possible? They're atoms!
Seeing the bearded man's eyes wide open, revealing an expression of obvious disbelief, Baili Xin said nothing more, just yawned, "I'm a little sleepy, I'm going to sleep first, I have to get up early tomorrow."
The bearded man watched Baili Xin stand up and jump neatly onto the tree, then looked at the horizontal line drawn on the ground. He thought for more than ten seconds, as if he had made an important decision. He looked up at Baili Xin's back and said, "Baili Xin, I'll go with you tomorrow!"
After coming here and chiseling for 20 years until all the hair was chiseled away, he had left the living area for more than a hundred years.
But Baili Xin's words today suddenly rekindled his desire to leave.
Go take a look, what's there to lose, right
Seeing is believing, hearing is not.
Baili Xin speaks in a mysterious way and often says shocking things, making it difficult to tell which of his words are true and which are false.
If what he said is true, I can help to chisel it. One more person means one more force to leave.
If what he said was false, I would completely give up that unrealistic fantasy and return to reality.
Baili Xin had already crawled into the wooden house on the tree trunk. Hearing the bearded man's words, he poked his head out of the small doorway and said, "Okay, we'll set off at dawn. Good night."
The long black hair immediately fell down in a cascade, more than four meters long, swaying on the tree trunk like a naughty vine hanging on a branch.
The bearded man stared at Baili Xin's hair for a while, "Isn't it time for you to cut your hair? It's already so long, isn't it? Don't you feel it's falling down?"
Baili Xin pulled the hair up, "No, I'll keep it for later use."
Bearded man: “…”
What's the point of keeping it
Are you going to let your hair down and hang your husband
Tsk tsk tsk, that’s so strange.
____________________________
At dawn the next day, the bearded man was awakened by a strong poke.
He opened his eyes in a daze and found Baili Xin, who had been packed up, standing in front of him.
The young man was wearing a black suit, with the linen bag wrapped around his waist and his long hair neatly coiled on top of his head.
The diamond reflected the sun's light, and the colorful light just happened to shine into the young man's eyes, and his already bright eyes instantly turned into a sky full of stars.
The bearded man was stunned for a moment.
Baili Xin looked down at the bearded man and threw a fruit to him. He said in a competent manner, "There is a fruit in my cabin. Eat it first and then come back. It will take you too long to cross the rope. I am afraid you will be exhausted. I will leave first. Come back to me after you have packed up."
The bearded man came to his senses and remembered his heroic words before going to bed last night. He quickly got up from the ground, picked up the fruit and took a bite. "Okay, you go first, I'll be there soon."
Baili Xin stayed to wait for the bearded man, then turned around and ran towards the rope that was as thick as his wrist.
He jumped onto the rope without any hesitation, like an agile black panther, and soon turned into a small black dot, quickly blending into the dark clouds.
The bell made a crisp sound, and as the young man left, the sound gradually faded away.
The bearded man ate the fruit quickly, then came to the rope.
He looked at the thin rope, then at the bottomless abyss below, and suddenly a wave of fear surged in his heart.
The feeling of fear came over him and even he was stunned.
When he came to the cage more than two hundred years ago, he ran on the rope every day and was never afraid once.
But now when he looked at the rope again, he actually had this reaction.
The bearded man suddenly laughed bitterly, raised his thick hands and slapped his face hard.
His shots were so loud that even those who were stuck in a rut looked over in confusion.
Do not be afraid!
The beard is for myself.
You were the guild leader back then! How could you say you were a well-known figure on the leaderboard
In the past, it was always others who were afraid of you, but now you are the one who is afraid!
You can do it! Chi Yan!
I'm awesome, invincible! Let's do it!
Chi Yan took a deep breath and his eyes gradually became firm.
Then, he took his first stumbling step.
In the distance, a few people who had been sleeping and turning in circles all night stopped. They looked at Chi Yan with dull eyes, wondering what he was thinking about.
The beginning is always difficult.
Once we got started, everything got much better.
He originally had good abilities, but due to long-term laziness, his abilities declined. Now that he has picked up his abilities, he is much faster than a beginner.
Chi Yan first tried to find the feeling, and when he found it, he spat out a mouthful of foul water and started to run forward like Baili Xin.
At the beginning, his running posture was a bit clumsy, and he even staggered a few times and almost fell off the rope.
The bell seemed to sense the panic of the people and made a chaotic sound anxiously.
The ringing sound made people's scalps numb and made their already tense nerves even more difficult to control.
But it actually aroused the men's fighting spirit. The closer they were to death, the more rigorous and calm they became.
The fighting desire and passion that he had once abandoned were rekindled like a flame, just like his name!
The others seemed to have received some inspiration and began to move towards the rope in tacit understanding. The man's running posture became more and more agile. As he ran, he suddenly opened his arms and laughed.
The wanton and arrogant laughter and behavior were like an untamed eagle in the sky.
Among the numb crowd, the eyes of one of them suddenly flickered.