Chapter 56
Chapter 56
The cold night held a faint chill. Rao Lin sat by the river, watching the fish swim back and forth in the water.
Footsteps came from behind him. Rao Lin did not even lift his head. “Are Scripts from Zone A always this bizarre? Never mind that it doesn’t selectively reset the plot and NPCs like the Scripts in other zones to make the story feel more realistic. To make the whole idea of a corpse-built human ladder stretching up to Sky City feel even creepier, it actually flipped heaven and earth upside down.”
Nian Chao chuckled as he sat down beside him. “Scripts are just like that. Who can really tell what’s true and what’s false? Don’t tell me you’re treating an infinite-flow game like an actual Murder Mystery Game and trying to puzzle out the logic inside it. PvP is one thing, but in PvE, it barely matters.”
Rao Lin said, “There’s no logic?”
“Of course there’s logic. The trick is figuring out whether something is logic or just a horror element,” Nian Chao said with a sigh. “I talked to a lot of people on the way here. Turns out there are Player from every zone. This Script has made its way down the line. You’re a Player from Zone F, right?”
“That’s good. At least you still have some hope of making it out alive.”
Rao Lin said, “If it were that guy with the glasses, or the person beside him, they’d probably say, ‘How does that even count as a horror element?'”
“Exactly. That’s why this Script became a defective product and drifted all the way from Zone A to Zone F.”
Rao Lin lowered his eyes. “I heard the System grants the wishes of the top three in the Star Zone Arena. If Zone ABC won, would they wish to get out alive?”
Nian Chao said, “You know about the zones and the Star Zone Arena. You must be a High-level Player from Zone F. Maybe you’ve even taken part in the Star Zone Arena before?”
“Yeah. A few times.”
“Oh? A few times?” Nian Chao asked casually.
Rao Lin counted in his head. “Three or four, I guess. I never won.”
Nian Chao’s fingers, which had been tapping against his knee, suddenly stopped.
He could no longer remember how long he had been dead, but in Zone F, there seemed to be only one Player who could attend the Star Zone Arena that many times in a row-
Nian Chao smiled. “I never asked your name. So you’re Willow.”
“It’s a good codename,” he said meaningfully. “Willow. It has a lot of meanings, doesn’t it?”
Then he answered Rao Lin’s earlier question about whether the Player from the top three zones would want to get out alive. “Even if they did get out alive, who knows what would happen afterward?”
“Would they be missing an arm or a leg? Riddled with illness? Or maybe they’d still be alive when they got out, only to die two days later?”
“No one knows whether they’ll be missing some part of themselves after they leave. In contrast, inside the System, the top three Player have not only Heat Points, but lives that are no different from living people in every basic need. They might even be much happier than they would be outside.”
“Even with all those conditions added in, let’s imagine this: you step onto the podium amid everyone’s cheers, and the System asks what you want.”
“If you can reach the top three, most Scripts are no longer difficult for you. The Rest Area is no different from real life, and you can even experience more than real life has to offer.”
“Human beings are creatures easily swept away by emotion. After seeing so much life and death inside Scripts, they’ve long since drifted away from the dull, ordinary life of the real world. Their nerves have gone numb. It’s like the two are completely separate worlds.”
“In the middle of cheers like that, how many people can still remember the attachments that, to them, already belong to several years ago?”
“A real, unknown, painful life, or a false, familiar, happy death. In truth, it’s not a hard choice.”
Rao Lin was silent for a moment before asking, “Is that why you struggled so much in your diary?”
Nian Chao shook his head. “Not me. I was simply tired.”
“You’ve read that diary, so you know I was a police officer, right?”
“At first, I also carried the belief that I would bring everyone out. In the first few Scripts, I did my best to maintain order.”
“But in the face of life and death, human nature is hard to predict.”
“I met someone inside a Script. He was optimistic, and we worked well together. I thought we would become the best partners.”
“But I never imagined that when I nearly faced death a second time, it would be because he stabbed me in the back.”
“After I broke with him, I suddenly started to feel lost. If I made a wish to let everyone out, what about all the Evil Person among those who had died?”
“If I wished for all the Good Person to get out, then did the Bad Person deserve to be abandoned in the System?”
“What defines good and bad? Where is the line? Does littering make someone a Bad Person too? Then does he deserve to pay for littering with his life? Does he deserve to die?”
Nian Chao began to lose his way.
He believed life ought to be treated with reverence. If everyone really did get out, then naturally there would be laws to Judge them.
But setting all that aside, even if everyone got out, after living in the Script for so long, would those Player still be able to live properly once they returned?
It was like the friend who had stabbed him in the back. When Nian Chao had first met him, he had known very clearly that back then, that man would never have done something like that.
While Nian Chao was lost in confusion, someone suddenly patted him on the shoulder. “The top ten in every district can change their code names. Guess why I’ve kept using Willow all these years?”
He looked back. The young man was smiling, clean and bright. “I entered this System at eighteen, and now I’m twenty-five. Seven years have passed, but my original intention has never changed.”
“All I’ve ever wanted is to bring them back home.”
As for the people who would feel reluctant to leave the System behind, Rao Lin thought.
That was exactly why he had tried every possible way to destroy the System.
Once the thing they couldn’t bear to part with was destroyed, then under the order of society, no matter how reluctant they were, they would have to make themselves return to a normal life.
…
When Ning Shuo woke with a start from a sweltering dream, he realized it wasn’t just the dream that had been hot.
His entire body was burning up.
With an ugly expression, Ning Shuo looked down at himself and thought of how the night before, he had still been wondering, How could anyone get hard over himself?
He turned and went into the bathroom.
Outside the window, it was still pitch-black. It was probably only three or four in the morning.
Ning Shuo looked at himself in the mirror.
His face was quite red. No wonder he felt so hot.
Ning Shuo took off his glasses, frowned, bit his lower lip, and reached down to ease the heat.
A dozen minutes later, Ning Shuo slowly slumped to the floor in front of the mirror.
It’s over, Ning Shuo thought.
You’re beyond saving.
He stared blankly at the showerhead, then went to wash his hands.
The chill cleared his head a little. Immediately after, an even crazier thought took over.
After two years in the modern era, and after getting used to doing everything by the book because of the Word Spirit, he’d almost forgotten how insane he was by nature.
That worldly theory of “can you really get hard looking at your own face?” had just been shattered by Ning Shuo’s own hand.
Xie Ning was someone who could fall in love with himself. That was undeniable.
A drop of water slid from his forehead to the bridge of his nose, then fell into the sink with a soft plink.
The eyes in the mirror held desire.
Ning Shuo dried his face and put his glasses back on unhurriedly.
The lenses concealed the desire at the bottom of his eyes. Ning Shuo carefully recalled Ning Wang’s eyes.
They clearly looked exactly the same, yet Ning Wang’s eyes seemed as if they held no desire at all.
Ning Shuo cleaned himself up and lay back down on the bed.
There was no rush. Ning Wang had no romantic experience whatsoever. He would have plenty of time to reel him in later.
So thought Ning Shuo, who also had no romantic experience whatsoever, but considered himself very experienced in love thanks to having read a large number of webnovels.
He didn’t remember when he fell asleep. It felt as if he hadn’t been asleep for long before he heard someone opening the door.
When that person saw he was still sleeping, his breathing clearly became lighter.
Ning Shuo didn’t need to open his eyes to know who it was. “I’m awake.”
His voice was low and hoarse, clearly just woken up.
Ning Wang said softly, “It’s fine. Sleep a little longer…”
“I’m not sleeping.” Ning Shuo reached out. “Come here. Give me a hand.”