Chapter 156
Chapter 156
When Song Zhu returned to the Main God Space, he had originally planned to destroy all the Scripts he had created.
After all, his Scripts were horror-heavy but not especially challenging, so that alone was a perfectly valid excuse to shred them.
But on the way back, he saw quite a few Judges under the Main God’s direct control taking over the entire Main God Space. After knocking those Judges unconscious and forcing his way in, Song Zhu suddenly discovered that among the Judge seats, Shu Xiao’s codename had turned gray.
He knew Shu Xiao’s capabilities well. Aside from the Main God, no one could have killed Shu Xiao.
Song Zhu had once believed that everything could be calculated.
But Rao Lin had become the beginning of an unforeseen variable.
And now, Shu Xiao’s death had also fallen outside his calculations.
Human nature truly was not something that could be computed.
Song Zhu lowered his gaze, stepped over the unconscious Judges, and made straight for the Main God Space.
If the people you worked with couldn’t be emotionless things, then at the very least, you should choose someone who was pleasant to be around.
So without the slightest hesitation, he chose to betray the Main God. He was also fighting for his own way out.
Recovery meant shredding all the data where the Main God Space existed at that moment and dumping it into the recycle bin. The Main God’s virtual form was there too, so it was very much the kind of move that hurt yourself badly just to wound the enemy.
But that tradeoff was highly effective for Song Zhu. Even though he moved fast enough to use the shredding effect to successfully disconnect from the System, his body still suffered tremendous damage, and before the disconnection, most of the memory data that had still been linked to the System was also shredded and recovered.
The difference between an android’s body structure and those machine Clowns was that, in pursuit of agility and independent problem-solving ability, their physical makeup was no different from a human’s. The only difference was that their organs and tissues had been reinforced to the highest level their bodies could withstand.
The near-erasure damage inflicted by the System was not something the Rest Area’s repair function could heal, even though Song Zhu himself shared the System’s wound-recovery ability.
By the time Song Zhu woke up, two months had already passed in System time.
A voice sounded by his ear. It was still Rao Lin’s calm, leisurely tone-the kind that somehow made people want to snap back at him.
“Awake? I’ve been watching over you for a long time. Considering I took care of you for so long, I won’t ask for much. Ten thousand a month-twenty thousand Heat total isn’t expensive, right?”
Song Zhu lay quietly in bed, sorting through the chaotic information in his mind as he replied, “So this is how the number one spot scams and swindles people?”
“What do you mean scams and swindles? Hey, why don’t you look at what you were like two months ago? Who was it that showed up at my door like that?” Rao Lin immediately put on a weak, pitiful act, imitating how Song Zhu had looked that day. “‘I have nowhere else to go. Please take me in for a while.’ You think taking you in was supposed to be free?”
Because the Rest Area had a wound-repair function, the pharmacy there wasn’t fully stocked. It basically didn’t sell medicine for external injuries, only medicine for naturally occurring illnesses among Players, like colds.
Song Zhu had just been about to say something when he suddenly saw Rao Lin start grinning like an idiot. That composed posture from before instantly turned goofy.
He muttered, “This really does feel like the righteous side collapsing at the villain’s doorstep and begging to be taken in… Teacher Song and I really do have strong couple chemistry.”
Song Zhu only caught the first half. Otherwise, he would definitely have replied, “Couple chemistry is something other people decide whether you have, not something you declare for yourself.”
As for Rao Lin’s description in the first half, he asked hesitantly, “…The righteous side?”
He laughed. “I used to be on the System’s side. No matter how you look at it, that makes me the villain.”
“It’s the same thing,” Rao Lin said at once, moving closer. “When the villain is gravely injured and has nowhere else to go, he knocks on the righteous side’s door. Isn’t that just as exciting?”
When there was barely any distance left between them, he gently took hold of Song Zhu’s uninjured left hand, his gaze suddenly turning deeply affectionate.
He already had the face of a natural flirt. Deliberately making that expression only made him even more bewitching.
“Teacher Song, abandon darkness and join the light. You may be broke, but I don’t mind if you pay off your debt with yourself.”
Song Zhu, who had in fact come precisely to “abandon darkness and join the light,” was thoroughly taken in. On top of that, he didn’t realize that “pay off your debt with yourself” was Rao Lin joking around, nor did he catch its other implication. He answered without even a moment of hesitation:
“All right. I’ll join you.”
Rao Lin hadn’t expected him to be this innocent, and nearly failed to hold himself up, almost collapsing onto an injured patient.
“…No, wait. You really just betrayed the Main God just like that?”
Song Zhu pondered. “I wouldn’t call it easy. It was a narrow escape from death.”
Looking at his injuries, Rao Lin felt that inexplicable soreness in his chest rise again-the same feeling he’d had two months ago when he first saw Song Zhu in this state.
He couldn’t help asking, “How did you get hurt this badly-”
“Forgot.”
“Forgot?”
“Yeah.”
The soreness in his heart was suddenly wrapped in a warm current, tinged with a fine, numbing itch. Rao Lin unconsciously curved his lips and reached out to tuck the blanket around Song Zhu.
“You forgot even the nearly fatal injuries, but you still remembered to come find me?”
“Because you’re the only one I remembered.”
Rao Lin: ?
Song Zhu quickly realized his wording was off. “More accurately… among the people not on the System’s side who could be trusted, you’re the only one I remembered.”
Affected by Recovery, Song Zhu no longer remembered the course of the two internal wars. He didn’t remember the two Xie Nings, who had left little trace on the path of his life. He didn’t remember Rao Lin’s former teammate, whom he had personally buried and erected a grave marker for. He didn’t remember Shu Xiao’s death either.
Of the very few things he still remembered from that period, what stood out most clearly was probably the Rao Lin he had hunted for two months.
He had disconnected from the System and had become a Player. The wounds covering his body were clearly not from any Script or Player, which meant they could only have come from the System.
In that situation, he absolutely could not go to the System and walk into its trap.
That meant the only non-System person Song Zhu could turn to was Rao Lin.
After all, Shu Xiao and Shu Yan were still under the Main God’s jurisdiction. He couldn’t put the two of them in a difficult position because of himself.
The ironic part was that, in Song Zhu’s memory, he had spent two whole months chasing Rao Lin down to kill him. Then, after who knew what happened, he woke up one day and his mind told him: Go to Zone F and find Rao Lin.
Although there were a lot of gaps in his memory, his memories of Rao Lin were still mostly intact, enough to connect the pieces.
Even though Song Zhu had explained himself in time, Rao Lin was, at the end of the day, a hopeless romantic. More than that, he was the kind of hopeless romantic who had already harbored some feelings for Song Zhu, forcibly suppressed them because they stood on opposite sides, and was now starting to relapse a little now that they were on the same side.
I only remember him.
Other than the System and those Clowns, Teacher Song only remembers me.
But before that little relapse could grow into anything, Rao Lin strangled it in the cradle.
At the end of the day, Song Zhu had once killed many Players without even blinking. That was a fact.
And those Players were human beings, just like Rao Lin.
Even if Song Zhu had been following the rules at the time, and even if he had killed quickly, without leaving them in much pain…
The fact that he had human lives on his hands was real, and it could not be erased.
Yet just as Rao Lin was about to say something, Song Zhu’s reaction was calm. “I know what you’re thinking.”
He said, “Now that I’ve left the Main God, I’ll atone for my past too.”
And Song Zhu was right.
Whether it was temporary teammates in PvE Scripts, or fixed teammates like Qin Genan and the others who joined later, Song Zhu’s presence had reduced their casualty rate to the absolute minimum.
Not only could he rapidly heal external injuries no matter how severe, he could also catch Script details Rao Lin couldn’t cover. That was probably the root of why he had always been able to catch Rao Lin’s OOC slips before.
Because of that, after the others learned that Song Zhu had once been a Clown, they only looked a little strange for a moment before quickly going back to normal, continuing to treat Song Zhu as a member of Zone F’s Team.
In this year’s Star Zone Arena, other than Rao Lin, none of the others went, because they hadn’t secured Team slots.
That was also why Ning Shuo and the others had previously needed to prove their individual strength by smashing Scripts, so that Zone F’s branch System would make an exception and invite them into Zone F’s Team as specially invited Players.
And by another ridiculous coincidence, from Song Zhu to Luo Li, not one of the four drew an audience slot for the Central Zone.
Then Qin Genan discovered that Song Zhu had gone insane. “Z… even if the Captain still hasn’t sent any news… we don’t need to clear eleven Scripts in one month, do we…?” This had already gone way beyond normal.
Even Luo Li, as an NPC, couldn’t take it anymore.
Song Zhu frowned. “Is that a lot?”
Seeing that he was genuinely confused, the other three fell silent.
Zhuang Yao was the first to turn toward the Rest Area. “I’m going to sleep. Don’t call me for the next half month.”
Once they all went off to rest, Song Zhu stretched his arms and was just about to start the next Script when a message suddenly popped up in his contacts.
Willow: I’m back.
The location tag showed that Rao Lin really was in Zone F.
But the Rest Area location was a little off.
…Smiling in the Netherworld?
When Song Zhu arrived at “Smiling in the Netherworld,” he happened to run into Rao Lin just as he came out from the registration desk.
The NPC responsible for handling corpse interment had always had an easy, low-risk job, so for hundreds of years, that worker had never been replaced.
So he recognized Song Zhu immediately-the former 001, who no longer had the signal of a Judge on him, but whose silver-white long hair was still unmistakably conspicuous.
Not to mention that Song Zhu had buried quite a few bodies here before.
That had been the largest batch of corpses ever interred at one time since he’d started working there.
—
Only Rao Lin had come back, and the fact that he had appeared at “Smiling in the Netherworld” also proved where the rest of his teammates had ended up.
Rao Lin set several bouquets before a few gravestones, and for once, stayed silent the entire time.
Song Zhu said nothing either, simply waiting quietly behind him.
After a long while, Rao Lin finally got his emotions under control. He was just about to joke it off like usual when the corner of his eye suddenly caught a gravestone.
Seeing that he hadn’t moved for a while, Song Zhu followed his gaze.
It was a name he didn’t recognize. The flowers before the grave had already dried out in the wind. There was no way to know who had left them there, or how long they had been there.
There were many such flowers, so Song Zhu asked, “Someone you knew?”
Rao Lin frowned. “I’ve seen this name in my contacts.”
They were probably teammates who had died in the previous Star Zone Arena.
That said, he had also seen Players from other Star Zones.
Only a few pieces of information were engraved on a gravestone: real name, codename, Star Zone, and the time they were interred.
And across these two entire rows of graves, the Players had all been interred at the same time-a time that lined up exactly with the previous Star Zone Arena.
What level of authority would someone need to transfer all the dead from other Star Zones into a single Star Zone?
It definitely wasn’t a Player. After all, Zone F’s branch System had said Rao Lin was the only Player to survive that Star Zone Arena. He had even lost his memory, and when he woke up, he had still been badly injured. How could he possibly have had the chance or energy to handle his teammates’ funerary arrangements?
Seeing him stay silent for so long, Song Zhu asked in confusion, “What’s wrong with you?”
Suddenly, someone took his hand.
This was the first time Rao Lin had ever taken his hand on his own when it wasn’t necessary. Song Zhu hadn’t even had time to examine the strange itch that rose in his heart before he heard Rao Lin say, “Teacher Song… you said before that you’ve forgotten a lot of things.”
—
The NPC in charge of Smiling in the Netherworld lounged back with one leg crossed over the other. “What do you two want?”
Rao Lin gave several names. “We want to find out who put up those tombstones.”
The NPC didn’t hurry to check. Instead, he looked Song Zhu over.
There were only three kinds of identities in the System: Judge, NPC, and Player.
001 didn’t carry the signal of either a Judge or an NPC, so that only left one possibility: Player.
And if he was a Player, there was no need to be respectful anymore. The NPC had just started putting on airs when Rao Lin curled a finger and tapped the table, all trace of a smile gone from his eyes. “Buddy, if you drag this out any longer, I’m filing a customer service complaint against you.”
“…” The NPC immediately sat up straight. “I remember the names you listed. They were all sent over together that day, so there’s no need to check.”
He jerked his chin toward Song Zhu. “There. Our 001 is busy with ten thousand matters every day. Of course he wouldn’t remember the people he casually dropped off to be buried.”
He put especially heavy emphasis on the words “busy with ten thousand matters.” Coming from him, it sounded downright mocking when aimed at Song Zhu, who spent his time wandering idly through all kinds of Scripts.
But Song Zhu’s focus wasn’t on that. “You’re saying I was the one who put them up?”
“Of course. A whole batch of Player corpses delivered at once, and personally delivered by the System’s top boss at that. How could anyone forget that?”
If that was the case, then this was probably one of the things Song Zhu had forgotten.
The NPC had just been about to tell them to leave when Rao Lin pulled up the Virtual Screen instead. After running through the full complaint process, he took Song Zhu by the hand and led him out while the NPC cursed behind them.
When they got back to where they were resting, Song Zhu had just opened his mouth to ask what was wrong when he saw Rao Lin sit down on the bed and wrap both arms tightly around his waist, his head reaching just to Song Zhu’s chest.
This was the first time they had ever been this close. Even if it didn’t quite count as a hug, Song Zhu’s heart began pounding faster and faster, as if no moment had ever been more intimate than this one.
“Teacher Song,” came the sigh against his waist, “how do I like you this much?”
About the comments mentioning similarities to another novel
This is not a bonus chapter!!!
First, let me protect myself a little: I’ve read Global Examination, but that was four years ago. I can guarantee that while creating this Narcissus story, I was not thinking about any other novel. I didn’t remember a lot of the plot clearly, so I went back and reread that novel over the past few days. In this chapter, I’ll respond one by one to the readers’ questions and concerns ^^ (P.S. This includes major spoilers for this story, so if you don’t want spoilers, I recommend finishing the whole story before reading this chapter w)
1. About the alarms and System error messages: I studied computer science, and during hands-on computer work and cloud computing labs in daily life (yes, things fail often, orz), I was constantly getting error messages from computers. I originally wanted to write the World-Descent Rule without Apuleer’s control as something similar to a computer system, so when something happened that didn’t fit the “computer rules,” it would trigger an error;
2. “May we meet again in the near future”: when I wrote this line, I was thinking of high school essay writing (sumimasen). Back in high school, a lot of the essays I read would often say things like, “May the youth of our generation, in the not-too-distant future, xxxxxx” or “May we rise high in the days to come,” and so on. Is the problem people have with this line just that it also uses the two characters for “meet again”? I always thought the more charming part of that line in Global Examination was “a world where the smoke of war has cleared.”
The reason I used “meet again” here is because of the existence of the character Zhu Xiangfeng. I considered a lot of names for her. One backup option was “Fengchun,” but when I read it aloud, it didn’t flow as nicely as “Zhu Xiangfeng.” On top of that, I set up her older brother as someone pure and graceful like white jade. “Fengyu” sounded like it carried the imagery of wind and rain, while “Xiangyu” is a homophone of “encountering jade,” so I settled on Zhu Xiangfeng as the name. That was also one of the origins of that line;
3. Why is the way to clear a Script by smashing the Script? The inspiration came from a variety show (I won’t say which one specifically): “The trolley problem has a third solution.” At the time, I thought people who refused to follow the script were really cool. The gameplay itself was also a combination of a Murder Mystery Game and Werewolf, so that’s how I came up with smashing the Script. (I really hadn’t read Global Examination in a very long time. After starting college, I barely read novels at all, and only after finishing this did I go back and reread it. I genuinely never connected smashing the Script with blowing up the exam hall, TT. Maybe it’s because both are forms of resisting rules?)
4. Why did they confirm their relationship by kissing during an explosion? One thing at a time. First, why an explosion? Because I’m lazy. You can tell from my homepage that I’m not someone capable of writing a super long story. The System only had a few rule loopholes to begin with, and I couldn’t come up with any new ones, so I simply shifted the focus onto the Script threshold instead (which is basically what we’d usually call memory load). The explosion was created to push the level of Script damage past overload. You can also tell from this that the Hospital Script was the last Script to be smashed. The later Scripts only turned into easy ones because the NPCs developed self-awareness. That’s one reason I wrote the explosion. Another reason is that I’d gone to the hospital too many times before, and smelling disinfectant makes me miserable, so my darker side acted up and I started thinking about blowing up the hospital (just kidding);
Second, why kiss during the explosion? Because a kiss amid gunfire is just that good!! Guns and roses really hit different!!! (Though here it was swords.) OS: when I was writing this part, I even considered having Wang ride a motorcycle over with a “wuwuwu!” siren blaring to pick up Shuo. After pulling Shuo onto the bike, with his adrenaline still spiking, Shuo would ask if they should get together. But then I thought about it, and first, they had no way to find a motorcycle; second, what would even be the point of finding one, since it had nothing to do with blowing up the hospital; third, the motorcycle key would definitely be with the owner, meaning the NPC, and the NPC had already been blown up by them, so what motorcycle would they even ride? So I gave up and went back to writing the kiss amid gunfire;
Lastly, on why I had them officially get together: as mentioned above, because the Author is lazy and can’t write super long stories. A little ambiguity before the relationship is fine, but if I drag it out too long it loses its flavor, so I was already planning to have this Script confirm the relationship. I couldn’t exactly have them confess in the middle of clearing the Script, right? QAQ (Everyone else is diligently clearing the Script, and meanwhile those two are thinking about whether to make it official? No matter how you look at it, they’d at least wait until they were sure they could get out before deciding that, right? QAQ)
5. About the Z on Song Zhu’s wrist flashing red: has it occurred to you that it might not be a warning, but that he’s actively blocking the System signal? He’s the only one in the entire System with that kind of marking. I should’ve explained what that letter does. Didn’t I say it before? (Scratches head like an idiot)
6. Why the System setting also uses numbers like 001: if you keep reading, you’ll see that this setup is meant to show how shameless and self-important Apuleer is. He copied the World Management Bureau’s setup, imagining that 001 and the others who originally watched over him were now working for him, and enjoying that twisted, perverse sense of satisfaction. (It does sound a little abstract.) The World Management Bureau setup was something I already wrote in my first book, including Big One’s friendly cameo. (He’s a professional background extra. He ran from the first book all the way into the second.)
7. Why it seems like both protagonists went through “two rounds of amnesia,” why the protagonist’s body also gets injured, why he’s weaker than before, and why his luck is bad: first off, Shuo lost his memory three times, and Wang lost his memory once. What I wanted to show here was the unique appeal of Narcissus: two people who look the same, sound the same, and have the same personality, with one taking the fall for the other as part of a later plan, and nobody else can even tell. I just thought that was really compelling, so I wrote it that way.
As for why the protagonist’s body is more damaged and weaker than before, that’s because of the protagonist’s suicidal behavior. (Also, I went back through it again-is he actually weaker than before? No, right?) He went to test it without even knowing whether he’d survive. At the time, Shuo was actually in a state of extreme self-loathing, because he was just a copy. He felt that if he survived, great, and if he died, that was fine too. As for the bad luck, it wasn’t like that from beginning to end. Their luck is originally at a normal person’s level. The only difference between Shuo and Wang is that Shuo has bad luck, because the Water Moon Mirror is no longer in his hands. As a lifeform born from the Water Moon Mirror, he carries the Water Moon Mirror’s negative passive ability, the Water Moon Curse. Because Shuo is cursed, he always thinks he’s the one bringing bad fate to other people. In the Dreamweaver Script, if Wang were really unlucky, he wouldn’t beat Wanzi even once. The fact that it ended after only getting bitten a couple times was already a sign of good luck. In an Infinite Flow Script, no Ghost/Monster is to be underestimated, let alone Wanzi, who eats human flesh. If Wang had truly been unlucky, he would’ve been gnawed down to nothing but a skeleton. It’s just that at the time, Shuo thought Wang and he were the same person, so because he believed he brought others misfortune and thought he himself had bad luck, he naturally assumed Wang had bad luck too.
Bad luck isn’t a joke setup, okay? Doesn’t this count as angst? TT
8. Why the line “Once we’re out, I’ll get you treated” also appeared: if the person you’re talking to has been bedridden for years, and you, the healthy one, clearly know his body should have been just as healthy as yours to begin with, then of course you’d say something like that. This is Narcissus, after all. Every time you swing a sword, it’s in stark contrast to how frail he is. When his face is pale, when he has to drink medicine every day, when he’s so weak he can barely get out of bed, then having the healthy one say that the first thing he wants to do after getting out is make the sickly one well again… what’s so hard to write about that? TT When someone is on the verge of dying, you can’t exactly say, “The first thing I want to do once we get out is date you,” right? TT
Shuo actually can’t remember the things he experienced inside the virtual System simulated by the Water Moon Mirror anymore. What he remembers are the things that happened after going through two rounds of memory loss, because the Water Moon Mirror Fragment carried those memories. The things he remembers about entering the System the first time were told to him by Wang, who hadn’t lost his memory, whenever Apuleer wasn’t monitoring them. Another part is because when Shuo’s memory was erased the first time, he used the Water Moon Mirror to block it. The memories that were wiped out didn’t go into the recycle bin. The mirror blocked that hit and remembered them instead, which is why he can recall some of them. But that’s all. What remained still got thrown into the recycle bin during the second wipe. In other words, no one who has had their memory scrubbed by the System’s data capsule can remember it afterward, including Rao Lin. That’s the insanely painful thing that extracts your memories and throws them into the recycle bin to be crushed.
9. Why they were both removed from the System: they weren’t removed by the System, okay? TT Song Zhu used “recovery” as a cover to actively sever the connection. His extra chapter explains that after Shu Xiao died, he didn’t want to keep working for the System because he was afraid he’d die too, so that’s why he betrayed it. The disconnection was an accident, but he was pretty happy to accept it. TT
10. Why memory fragments keep surfacing: the memory fragments are for the readers to see. Didn’t both protagonists remember things only to forget them again not long after? That’s a side effect. Later on, the reason those memories could keep being retained was because Wang copied them down in a notebook. Shuo only truly regained all his memories after getting the fragments back in hand. The earlier memory fragments were written for readers, so you’d know what stage of recovered memory they were at, and to fill in the earlier plot points I’d laid down. (Or rather, to keep laying down more.)
As for the similarities people keep bringing up, these are the ones I’ve seen mentioned. Things like saying it’s similar to other novels because of white shirts or whatever-I personally think that’s complete nonsense, so I’m not going to explain that. Every source of inspiration has its origin. If people still have questions later, I won’t go into too much more detail here. And if anyone still thinks I plagiarized, make a comparison chart and submit it officially or @ me on Weibo. I’ll make a rebuttal chart based on whatever comparison chart you put together, okay? ^3^