All the communities are bright and warm, only the community they rent in the real world is dark. Not a single light was on, not a single voice was heard.
They parked the car at the gate of the community. Chu Tianshu got off the car. Wearing a shirt that exposed his collarbone, he looked at the dim apartment building that belonged to them.
"Lin Huai." His voice was like smoke in summer, which would soon dissipate, "We can't turn back when we get here."
"I know." Lin Huai said.
Chu Tianshu was silent this time longer than ever before. In the end, he took Lin Huai's hand, wrapped his warm hands around him and said, "If Shui made her choice, we also made ours..."
Lin Huai turned around and hugged him tightly.
His hug was so tight, it was hardly like Lin Huai would have hugged. Chu Tianshu patted the back of his neck lightly and said, "I will always be with you."
"Hmm." Lin Huai said softly.
This residential area they rented in real life...is their perfect world in the black gap, the only place they have never set foot in, the only place that has nothing to do with it.
Chu Tianshu held Lin Huai's hand tightly, and walked into the strange neighborhood. The moment they stepped in, they seemed to hear the life behind them calling them.
What a beautiful, what a perfect life... This is the life that Chu Tianshu has always wanted to live with Lin Huai.
After entering the compound, all illusions disappeared like magic at twelve o'clock in the middle of the night. What appeared in front of the two of them was still a black seam, but the surroundings were pure white.
On the pure white floor, there were three lines of writing.
"Before entering the final 'door', there is one last checkpoint."
"After passing the level, you will get everything you want."
"Before then, you have a minute."
A one-minute countdown is displayed on the other side. The two looked at each other in the vast whiteness. Finally, Chu Tianshu looked at Lin Huai's face and smiled.
When he smiled, he was still bright and sunny: "Lin Huai."
"I will always love you," he said.
He didn't say anything coquettish, he didn't fool around, he didn't make jokes, and at the last moment, he only said the simplest sentence.
"Me too." Lin Huai said.
They are like travelers who have traveled through thousands of mountains and rivers for a lifetime, and finally meet here again. Chu Tianshu stroked Lin Huai's hair and said, "It's okay, it's just the last copy, see you soon..."
"Wait." Lin Huai interrupted him suddenly, and said seriously, "This is the last sentence, I want to be in the real world..."
At this moment, the countdown reached zero.
zero.
…
Lin Huai was drenched and woke up from a cold sweat.
The vision in front of him was still a little shaken, and he didn't know how he appeared here.
He held a mobile phone in his hand, which was already wet with his sweat.
He found his fingers were shaking.
Lin Huai saw that she was in a small room. In front of him is a big screen, and on the screen...
on the screen…
Lin Huai's teeth began to chatter. It wasn't because of the bloody "18" in the upper left corner of the screen, but because of the scene on the screen... He heard his own heartbeat, as if he could burst out of his chest anytime, anywhere.
The heart that belonged to the evil god was howling.
"Chu..."
"Chu..."
He finally felt what it was like not being able to say a word. Lin Huai wants to destroy everything, wants to kill everything, wants to turn everything she sees and feels into ashes...
Until the phone in his hand started vibrating.
A text message came in.
"The 18th time," the content of the text message was simple and clear, "Send a text message to Chu Tianshu from the past to change your ending."
Yes.
What appeared on the screen... was a bloody, but still recognizable corpse belonging to Chu Tianshu.
Lin Huai heard his bones creaking. He saw a new text message coming in, which said: "After entering the maze for the first time, you passed the customs hand in hand, but Chu Tianshu died, and you came here. Just push open the black door next to you, and you can reach the place you want. want the truth."
"But you chose a new game—send text messages to Chu Tianshu who just entered the maze. You can only send three text messages at a time. It doesn't involve practice, trying to change the ending..."
Memories of being temporarily stuck due to a coma just now came one after another.
Lin Huai saw himself entering the maze with Chu Tianshu, saw Chu Tianshu's death, saw his choice, saw himself sitting in this room, sending text messages to Chu Tianshu again and again.
again and again.
But the end result is... He hasn't changed anything.
No matter how he texts, the world line changes. In the end, he fell into a coma, and the final outcome he saw was still Chu Tianshu's body, and he was still in the room at the exit. As he struggled again and again, Chu Tianshu's death became more and more miserable.
From whole, to bloody. A new text message came in again.
"Do you want to continue?"
Lin Huai's eyes stayed on the inbox. In the blank recipient box, he could type Chu Tianshu's cell phone number without thinking—as if he had recited it hundreds of millions of times.
But this time, after he finally entered the string of cell phone numbers, he stopped his fingers.
"It's the last time." He closed his eyes and said softly.
He didn't send any valuable attempt information, in the end, he only typed three words in the typing box.
"I love you".
Lin Huai closed her eyes, this was the nineteenth time. He knew that when he opened his eyes again, he still saw Chu Tianshu's more tragic death on the screen.
He threw the phone under the table.
"I understand." He said dryly, "I didn't admit defeat to the game, but to him."
"Because... only one person can enter that door. He should know it before I just entered the maze, right?"
"He gave me the right to choose... He chose death, let me leave, and let me pass the level."
"So, it's not that I can't beat the game, it's not that I can't calculate the game, it's not that I can't beat the game anyway..."
"What I can't beat... is his determination to die for me."
"No matter what I post, there will only be this ending. I am not fighting the game, but fighting him."
Lin Huai heard his voice distorted, he never thought he would make such a voice.
He finally got up, instead of looking at Chu Tianshu's nineteenth death, he picked up the phone whose screen had been broken.
And turned around, pushed open the door.
The... door to all truth.
Inside the door, there are white stairs that go straight up. It floats in the dark air, weird, weird and cold.
Lin Huai saw the transparent data stream floating around her. He remembered that he had seen such a scene before. The memories that belonged to him that were originally sealed in his brain were unlocked little by little with each step up.
He remembered that he was a ghost isolated in Wen County, the war zone.
I remembered the strongest virus that I was called "Huai Xu No. 0" by those white ghost-killing executors.
He is Huaixu's original virus, with all the original information. The rest of the ghosts are nothing but his derivatives. They then treated him like a father.
Recalling my acquaintance at the well with the original white executor. The white original executor had the appearance of a child at the time. It always looked at him silently and never spoke to him.
I thought of the normal kid Gu Youruo who accidentally broke into this place, and the ghost that wanted to escape here with the virus and infect the whole world.
He remembered that ghost that took away Gu Youruo. As a genius, Gu Youruo's final revenge before his consciousness dissipated was to bring out the original executor who destroyed ghosts in his own consciousness.
In the many years that followed, the amnesiac ghost was out in the world, married and had children, and with the birth of his own son, found himself taking the original executor with him.
It spent the last time thinking of a way to simulate Lin Huai's structure, and compiled a pseudo virus - which is also the original body of the game system. The whole game needs to rely on the engine-like powerful ghost—that is, Lin Huai—as the core to drive. But Lin Huai is not there, it can only temporarily create a pseudo-virus that can grow, that is, black shadow, to temporarily replace it.
It tricked humanity into creating the Advent Foundation to aid in its plot.
It wanted to bring the original executor back to Wen County to kill, and looked for Lin Huai, only to lead to his own death. The blood-red virus somehow chose to protect the original executor, maybe it was out of fun, or maybe it didn't want the outside world to be a core and work for the conspiracy to destroy the world.
But in the end, because of an accident, or the pull of the original executor, or the conspiracy of "Gu Youruo", he finally became a person in the world outside Wen County.
Lin Huai Xu.
Later, the virus with amnesia and the original executor of amnesia re-acquainted. The compiled pseudo-virus gave birth to its own will, formed a system, pulled sporadic supernatural events into the "copies" within its own control, and was eager to devour the real virus for its own perfection. For this reason, it devoured the will of several human beings to perfect its own functions, including Gu Chaosheng.
Later, enter the copy...
He feels the conspiracy, the bondage, all the dangers and the world that is about to collapse. He will never walk into a good night calmly like Chen Liexue.
He will burn before good night.
So he entered the door, walked up the same long staircase, and saw the shadow. Sombra invited him to merge with it.
Lin Huai rejected it. He has not yet fully awakened his ability to be a virus, and he is still unable to resist the shadow of the pseudo-virus that has been entrenched for many years. He said, "Let's make a bet..."
Lin Huai stopped at the last step.
The door facing the last step is not a high-end, or deep and mysterious door. On the contrary, it is extremely ordinary, as ordinary as the door of a rental house in an apartment building, and when you push it open, you can see a photo of the two hanging in the living room...
Ordinary anti-theft door.
So the so-called "God" lives in such a door
Lin Huai put his palm on the door. At that moment, he thought in a trance that he just finished class again and returned home.
He remembered the content of his bet with Sombra.
His bet is... to close the game forever, and he and the shadow will devour each other in the eternal darkness and the eternal space, and fight repeatedly until they are all reduced to ashes in the long future.
"I will consume you completely, even if in the end, the existence of both of us will disappear from this world."
He heard his wanton voice again.
"I'm sorry, such a heroic fight to death is more to my liking than working hard to infect the world for the game 996 every day."
He also recalled a lot of complicated memories.
Such as the copy at that time.
A copy before entering the door.
The dungeon at that time... was not as easy and fun as today's dungeon. Players can even chat with examiners and NPCs happily.
The dungeon at that time... was a real life and death dungeon, a gut-piercing, bloody dungeon of fighting with vicious ghosts without sanity!
Even the memories of Chen Liexue and others in the current world... have been tampered with. It's like this world should be so relaxed and lively, even customs clearance should be wanton and free.
Lin Huai finally grabbed the doorknob.
The doorknob was very light, but when he opened it it seemed like a weight. He felt that he was not opening a door, but prying a whole world.
A whole... a world that enveloped him who was supposed to perish completely in darkness.