Chapter 131
Chapter 131
Ning Wang had Rao Lin in his arms and Qin Genan on his back. “Captain, even the System says our team should switch Captains.”
At a moment like this, Rao Lin didn’t dare hang all his weight on Ning Wang’s neck, so all he could do was curse at him. “It’s a limited-time Captain experience card for this Script. You should be enjoying it in secret!”
When he turned his head and saw Ning Shuo and Song Zhu whispering to each other over there, Rao Lin narrowed his eyes. He had originally wanted to say something, but then he noticed a mark at Ning Shuo’s waist.
It looked like it had been pinched out, and there seemed to be a hickey too.
He let out an ambiguous snicker and stopped minding how close Ning Shuo and Song Zhu were.
Ning Wang, on the other hand, heard that inexplicable laugh and asked, puzzled, “Did a zombie smack you stupid?”
“…” Rao Lin said, “Your face really is a pleasure to look at when you’re not talking.”
“I’m only more pleasing to the eye when I do talk.”
They sprang toward the car by stepping on zombie heads. Rao Lin started the car, while Ning Wang and Ning Shuo dealt with wave after wave of zombies lunging at them.
After the car started, Song Zhu pulled open the door. “Get in, quick!”
With a clang, the sound of a blade striking the car door rang out.
Qin Genan swore. “Holy shit. I didn’t realize they were this fierce when we were fighting them.”
Once they finally got into a safe area, Ning Wang let out a breath of relief, then turned to look at Ning Shuo, only to find his face flushed red.
Ning Wang was alarmed and immediately checked him all over. “You weren’t bitten, and you don’t have a fever, so why is your face this red?”
Ning Shuo paused. “That red?”
After a moment’s thought, he took out the Water Moon Mirror. “It’s probably because of this. After getting the complete Water Moon Mirror, I felt like my body improved a lot. Saving our teammates came first, so I didn’t think about it for the time being.”
The crack between a small corner fragment of the mirror and another mirror piece was slowly repairing itself. Beside him, Song Zhu continued, “That’s why, when we were leaving just now, you asked me whether the authority level of a special item like the Water Moon Mirror might be higher than the System itself.”
Song Zhu’s answer had been maybe. Even when he had served as Judge, he had never seen an item like the Water Moon Mirror, one that could affect an entire Script and even block out the System itself.
Or maybe he had seen one before and simply forgotten.
Holding that mirror in his hand, Ning Shuo smiled faintly. “Do you all remember the Script Li Kingdom Cold Case?”
Rao Lin, from the driver’s seat, said, “What about that Script? Wasn’t it shattered a long time ago?”
Ning Wang suddenly thought of something, and his heart began to pound faster. Then Ning Shuo dropped a bombshell. “I suspect that Script may have been the ‘teacher’ of every Script in the System.”
Qin Genan’s eyes widened. “Huh? A teacher!?”
Since when could Scripts have teachers?
Ning Wang took his hand. “If a system has a mature operating framework, then there must have been an original template at the beginning.”
Rao Lin frowned. “Then how do you know Li Kingdom Cold Case was that original-”
He broke off, and Song Zhu said in a low voice, “Because of how complete it was.”
“All the other Scripts-for example, smaller ones like Dreamweaver’s Troubles-only cover an area the size of that small town. Once you leave the town, you reach the edge of the Script: that mist associated with Harming Others.
“As for larger Scripts, like Quick, Escape from Senior 3 Class 1, boarders can only move around within that school. Those who live at home, like Ning Wang, can only take the bus or get picked up by family, and the bus only stops at the stop near Ning Wang’s house. The other scenes only unlock on the day of the college entrance exam, as if unlocking them a few months earlier would overload it.”
Ning Shuo said, “But in Li Kingdom Cold Case, whether inside the Water Moon Mirror or not, Ning Wang and I really did live there for over a decade.”
Yizhou, beyond the frontier, the capital, Jiangnan.
Whether inside the Li Kingdom or outside it, they had truly experienced it all.
Their meaning was obvious: Li Kingdom Cold Case had originally been a small world that truly existed.
Qin Genan frowned. “How do you know those memories weren’t just prewritten settings the System assigned to you, like the backstories given to the Ghost Brides in that Script?”
The Ghost Brides only had to go through those things when the Script called for it.
For example, in Spirit Tracing, Mingzhi should clearly have had a complete life, yet all Ning Shuo saw were two scenes: the ghost marriage and the suppression in the ancestral hall. And those were both things Mingzhi had personally experienced.
Mingzhi had been sold by her parents into that ghost marriage. She shouldn’t have had no feelings toward them at all; at the very least, she should have felt some resentment.
But in Spirit Tracing, before she arrived in Aotianli, there was nothing-no memories, no story.
The limitations of that Script weren’t just confined to the place called Aotianli. Even Mingzhi’s experiences were trapped there.
As for the later plot point about letting the innocent girls in Aotianli return, that too was a choice Mingzhi and the others made based on memories shaped by the plot in their minds. Whether the girls really returned, or what lay outside Aotianli, none of the Player ever actually saw it.
In response to his question, Ning Wang answered bluntly, “It’s very straightforward. We have internal energy.”
He pressed his fingers to Ning Shuo’s wrist.
Their internal energy was only a tenth of what it had originally been, but that was enough to prove that something requiring long years of cultivation truly existed in them.
In other words, their experiences were not NPC memory settings from Li Kingdom Cold Case. They had actually lived through more than ten years inside it.
The sheer amount of information left the car silent for a moment. Rao Lin let out a short laugh. “So… the Main God kept cutting down the ‘teachers’ in every Script again and again, and even turned all the lifeforms that originally had self-awareness into NPCs with their consciousness completely erased, making them controllable by the System?”
Ning Shuo thought for a moment, then added a simple clarification. “As for the ‘teacher’ that originally had a complete body, it was probably cut down until there was only about a fingernail’s worth left.”
That was why, compared to the other Scripts, Li Kingdom Cold Case had pitifully little plot.
For once, the Danmu in the Live Stream Room went completely blank.
Only after a long while did the first comment appear.
[Did we just accidentally find out some huge secret?]
[That’s such a stretch. Are they claiming the Script they escaped from had a teacher on the System’s highest level just to make themselves sound more important?]
[That Script was a Newbie Script, and it even shattered. What status is there to brag about?]
[So… am I the only one wondering why, now that they’ve said all this, the System still hasn’t directly cut off the stream?]
That comment was like some kind of warning. Some viewers shakily tried sending messages to friends who were still in other Star Zones.
There was no signal.
The messages were intercepted.
At the very start of this Star Zone Arena, an extra rule had mysteriously appeared: without the System’s permission, any Player who entered the Central Zone was not allowed to return to their own Star Zone.
At the time, the audience hadn’t understood what that rule meant.
Now they knew.
The System was going to trap them here to die.
—
Rao Lin said, “We’re just going to let the System know all this out in the open?”
Ning Shuo sighed. “Once that rule came out saying the audience couldn’t return to their own Star Zone, the System had already decided from the start of this Star Zone Arena to keep all the Player here for good.”
That meant if they failed this time…
Then everyone would die.
Ning Shuo was truly exhausted. The clues tangled in his mind had also given him a rough understanding of the System’s civil war in the past.
He leaned against Ning Wang’s shoulder. “I’m going to sleep for a bit. Wake me when we’re almost there.”
Ning Shuo was holding the Water Moon Mirror in his hand, and Ning Wang knew perfectly well that he intended to use it to recover his memories.
He answered softly, “Mm. I’ll keep watch over you.”