Chapter 132
Chapter 132
However, Ning Shuo had still concealed one more thing.
Take Mingzhi as an example-the ghost marriage happened ten years ago. During those ten years, aside from being suppressed in the ancestral hall and meeting other female victims, it was impossible that nothing else had happened.
But even Mingzhi herself couldn’t explain it clearly. It was as if, in the ten years after she was suppressed, she had only mechanically repeated the cycle of meeting other female victims, taking revenge, and continuing to be suppressed.
In other words, the System must have some way to fast-forward a Script’s timeline.
Fast-forwarding time. Another “Ning Wang” copied by the Water Moon Mirror. The world inside the Water Moon Mirror.
Then inside the Water Moon Mirror, could it also create another virtual “System,” the way it had created the Sea Palace Merfolk?
Back then, when the Player and the System first clashed, did the flaw already lie within the Water Moon Mirror?
Did it lie with that Ning Shuo in the virtual System?
…
On the high platform, something appeared in the Main God’s palm.
Light shimmered around it. The hollow sphere flashed with star-like points of light. Countless streams of data drifted within the sphere, while outside it, a halo composed of data slowly circled it.
He applied the slightest pressure, and as if danger had been detected, all the data in the entire Main God Space flashed red.
He released his hand, then looked up at the Water Moon Mirror on the surveillance screen.
No one knew that Li Kingdom Cold Case was the most special Script in the System.
Taken by itself, it was naturally just an ordinary, even simple, Novice Script. But if Ning Wang was an NPC who had escaped from the Script, and one who even possessed twenty years of past experience, then Li Kingdom Cold Case itself became highly suspect.
All Scripts were merely scenes with a linear timeline. In other words, a Script itself would only be as long as what it presented.
Take Luo Li, a real and genuine NPC. Her memories of that Script extended only as far as what the Script had shown.
But Ning Wang’s nineteen years in the capital and the Jianghu, which had not been released along with the Script, had been lived in full. That could not be faked.
That was why Li Kingdom Cold Case was the most special Script. It not only had at least nineteen years of temporal progression, but the System had also cut away most of its timeline and scenes.
That was an extremely contradictory point.
But if the Script Li Kingdom Cold Case was itself a small world, then it became easy to explain-
An interstellar fugitive stole multiple items from the World Management Bureau. He even stole a small world, used it as the foundation for creating the entire System, then hid himself inside the System and concealed his whereabouts for a very long time.
Though judging from the current situation, that small world used as the foundation, Li Kingdom Cold Case, no longer amounted to anything at all-indeed, it had been shattered completely.
That interstellar fugitive observed the operating process of the entire small world. Through data intervention and his understanding of the world’s overall framework, he first established the framework of the entire System within the World-Descent Rule, then used the data stream to find Xie Ning, the individual in that small world whose spiritual power was best suited to connect with the World-Descent Rule. He used Xie Ning as the medium to establish a connection between the System and that small world.
The reason he copied a Xie Ning inside the Water Moon Mirror was to leave himself a failsafe: he needed to know whether the “chosen one” calculated by the World-Descent Rule would cause trouble, so that he could devise countermeasures in time.
The System was only a tool that made it easier for him to act, but the System could not completely predict the human heart. He needed to leave himself a safeguard.
After the duplication, two parallel lines of equal length advanced in sync. Outside the Water Moon Mirror, Xie Ning changed his name to Ning Wang. Inside the Water Moon Mirror, Ning Wang was pulled into the virtual System simulated within the mirror and met a series of teammates likewise virtually simulated by the System.
And after Xie Ning entered the System, Li Kingdom Cold Case was cut down again and again, successfully launched, and became an official Script in the System.
Inside and outside the Water Moon Mirror stood in contrast. Everything inside the mirror was a simulation generated by the System based on the environment outside it, including the setting Ning Shuo was in and the people he met. For example, the Willow he saw was only a calculated trajectory the System modeled from Rao Lin’s actions outside the mirror, false yet consistent.
Only Ning Wang-or rather, the current Ning Shuo-was different. He was a soul copy of the Ning Wang outside the mirror, with the same experiences, memories, soul, consciousness, and body.
That remained true until Ning Wang joined Rao Lin and the others in the first Star Zone Arena.
—
The capital and the Jianghu, everything that had existed in his memories, was experienced all over again by Ning Shuo after he entered the Water Moon Mirror and temporarily lost those memories. Once more, he became Ning Wang of the Li Kingdom.
He had been pulled into the System one second before successfully assassinating the emperor. At first, Ning Wang had no idea that his world was nothing more than a Script.
But that was hardly a secret, especially after Ning Wang saw Li Kingdom Cold Case during a livestream and saw the very Dog Emperor he had wanted to kill.
Even if he was already just a puppet.
Ning Wang tried again and again, but he could never reenter that Script.
During that time, he was in a slump, until someone named Willow came to him: “Want to join a Team? As long as we make the top three, you can make a wish to the Main God.”
“Any wish can come true.”
Ning Wang wanted to go back.
Ever since Xie Manor had been raided and everyone in it executed, and his master had also been killed by the Dog Emperor, Ning Wang had wanted to kill that emperor with his own hands.
So what if he was a puppet?
He didn’t believe the emperor had lost every last trace of consciousness.
Ning Wang joined the Team. His teammates were good people, and Willow was pretty unhinged.
In one desert Script, as he looked up at the eternally unchanging starry sky, he suddenly said to Willow beside him, “Let me help you.”
Ning Wang had always known that Willow was secretly planning something. Because of the System’s omnipresent Camera surveillance, he never directly spoke about what he intended to do.
He had never seen the world people referred to as the 21st Century, as the Player put it.
But he was willing to help them.
Even if, once the System was gone, he as an “NPC” might die too.
But that way, the Scripts that depended on the System probably wouldn’t be able to keep running either.
And then the Dog Emperor could die too, right?
Even if his consciousness had long since vanished, the death of his body would still vent a little of Ning Wang’s anger.
The plan went very well.
During that Star Zone Arena, the contestants from Zone F coordinated with audiences from the other Star Zones, attacking from within and without, and successfully pushed the System’s destruction progress past the halfway mark.
Yet just when they thought they were about to succeed, the world suddenly went dark.
When the world lit up again, Ning Wang found himself locked inside a Data Prison. Sitting in front of him was someone who looked exactly like him.
He frowned. Although he had already realized the plan had most likely failed, the appearance of this person left him utterly baffled.
The other man, however, clearly shouldn’t have known him. Yet the moment he saw Ning Wang, the deep furrow in his brow loosened.
“So that’s how it is.”
The man leaned back and said mockingly, “So they copied another me? No wonder every plan ended almost as soon as it began, and they rounded up all the audience members we knew into the Central Zone as if they could see the future.”
Ning Wang laughed. “You’re calling me the copy? How do you know you’re not the copy instead?”
That was what he said, but he understood perfectly well himself.
The plan had gone too smoothly, so smoothly that it felt unreal. It really did carry a false, fast-forwarded, artificially assembled feeling, and together with what the other man said about “seeing the future,” it was very possible the one across from him was the real original.
But accepting that he himself was a copy was no easy thing.
Especially when the other man opened with a punch.