CH 57.2

Bai Lixin’s heart skipped a beat.

What did it mean when memories of someone were fading away?

Human death occurred in three stages.

The first stage was the physical death of the body in the physical sense.

The second stage was when memories of the person faded away from those who knew them.

In the third stage, the memories of him that have been handed down through generations are gradually forgotten and finally disappear completely.

By the end of the third stage, the world would have erased any trace of this man’s existence.

Dijia had not yet died, but the process of his death had already skipped the first stage and started to enter the second stage.

“Do you know Tan Yue?”

The priest began to count the number of people. He looked very happy, and the folds on his face were almost piled up into a lasagna.

Lin Jue froze for a moment, then slowly shook his head, “I don’t know him.”

Seeing that the priest was slowly approaching, Bai Lixin lowered his voice and said, “If you don’t know him, why are you taking special care of Xia Chi? Wasn’t he the one who asked you to look after Xia Chi?”

Lin Jue froze again, and he looked at Bai Lixin in amazement. He saw the priest out of the corner of his eye and said hurriedly, “Quickly, add me as a friend.”

A beep sounded from the system.

Bai Lixin quickly accepted and saw Lin Jue’s message in the chat box.

Lin Jue: [I only remember someone telling me that if I ever met someone called Xia Chi in the future, I must help him out. But I forgot who that person was.]

Bai Lixin: [What other memories do you have of that person? Was that person of a high rank? ]

Lin Jue: [Now that you mention it, he should be of a very high rank. When I think about him, my heart is in awe and admiration. The only person in this world who makes me feel worshipful, apart from him, is that mysterious person at the top of the rankings.]

Bai Lixin took a deep breath: [ Did he make it to the 900th floor?]

Lin Jue: [It seems like he did, I just remember that I was looking up to him, the awe kind of looking up.]

Bai Lixin did not reply to Lin Jue’s message again.

Dijia’s warning not to go up to the 900th floor came to mind again.

The person Lin Jue had forgotten was, in all probability, Tan Yue. Just because Dijia was able to reach the 999th floor didn’t mean that no other player had ever entered the 900th floor or higher.

So one would be forgotten after they reach the 900th floor?

Assuming that person was Tan Yue, what happened to him after he ascended to the 900th floor?

Lin Jue said that this game was constantly evolving; it was almost like a child, constantly learning to absorb the players’ knowledge to fill itself up and make itself better.

Dijia lost his memory; it’s dangerous above the 900th floor; the advanced player suspected of being Tan Yue was completely forgotten…

All the information blended together, and a bold guess suddenly flashed through Bai Lixin’s mind.

Was it possible that by entering the 900th floor, the players get closer and closer to the escape game’s main system, and their brain waves start to link with the main brain.

So the escape game plunders their memories and abilities to upgrade and perfect itself?

Dijia’s memory loss may not be because of that, but of self-protection.

So he was still alive while the other players who made it to the 900th floor were gone.

Lost Beauty…

That name ……

Could those crystalline fragments that could not be taken out be Dijia’s lost memories?

Bai Lixin opened the points leaderboard.

The first place was far ahead, dominating the leaderboard, and the second place position only went to the 800th floor or so.

There were no players above the 900th floor, except for the first place.

Bai Lixin bit the corner of his lip. This escape system was like a compulsion gu, huh.

But what happened to all those players on the 900th floor who disappeared?

Did they die? Or did they exist in another form?

While the game progressed, the mystery of this escape game slowly began to unravel.

If Dijia had deliberately erased his memories to protect himself, then it seemed that he couldn’t let Dijia remember too much.

……..

The live broadcast room

[Fuck, what did I hear?! I wondered why I hadn’t seen this copy before. Is this another bug copy? Almighty pop-ups, can someone please give me an analysis on this copy?]

[…… It’s even scarier; it seems that only God Xin and Lin Jue still have their sanity, and everyone else is gone. Is it because of the pills?]

[Could it be related to entering that Underworld hotel?]

[Speaking of the Underworld hotel, sorry to go off topic, but what kind of room did God Xin and that ghost stay in?]

[Wasn’t the live stream blacked out at that time? The live broadcast resumed when God Xin was already lying in bed at Red Apple House so how would I know? I still want to know what happened to him before that. I feel like he’s touched a lot of things in one night. Damn, I’m dying to know.]

[ My reasonable guess, maybe it was an intimate kind of scene?]

[It’s exciting to think about.]

[By the way, what about that ghost?]

[Aren’t these two intersecting worlds? A ghost can’t appear during the day, right?]

[ I was still knocking the CP of God Xin and the True Ancestor from the last copy. I’ll be tearing that CP soon.]

[I’ll tell you a secret. Yesterday night, in the apple orchard, there was a moment when the mist on that ghost dispersed a little. I saw the face of that ghost at that time, and it seemed to look exactly like the True Ancestor.]

[?! Really? You’re not lying to me?]

[Really, I saw it too. I thought it was an illusion at the time.]

[I saw it too…]

[ Wow, I’m happy! I’ll keep knocking the CP.]

———

“Children,” the priest’s call pulled Bai Lixin’s thoughts back, “I’m glad to see you all so happy today.”

“The two-day meeting is coming up again, and when the guests arrive this afternoon, I am sure you will do even better than the first time.”

The meeting was once every two days?

The guests came on the day those two players disappeared.

Bai Lixin began to recall the day when they met the guests.

The missing female player, who had been the first to walk, had done a good job of modelling and had even received praise from the priest that day.

What about the missing male player?

He was also praised.

All the other players, including himself, had one or more problems.

He was vigilant about the situation, kept an eye out, and didn’t walk properly. At the time, he had secretly cautioned Xia Chi and Emil, who were closest to him, to not be so perfect.

So the two players were missing, not because they had been taken away by their ghost mother, but because the guests were satisfied with them?

Bai Lixin remembered the writing he had seen under the table in the confinement cell.

Many scattered pieces slowly began to fit together.

The guests came once every two days. They would come again on the fourth day, which corresponded to the “fourth day” written under the table.

——

After breakfast, it was time to go to the apple orchard and bask in the sun.

This time, the players did not go out exploring as they had done in the past.

They had completely forgotten their purpose, and their memories were left in the fantasy that this copy had woven for them.

Bai Lixin and Lin Jue tried to jog their memories, but to no avail.

Not only Xia Chi and Emil, but the memories of the others had been completely replaced as well.

Seeing that nothing worked, the two gave up on their plan to awaken them for the time being.

Bai Lixin planned to go to the “end”, as the ghost mother called it.

His first stop was at the end of the road.

Just when Bai Lixin was about to set off, Lin Jue’s eyes were suddenly shrouded by a black mist. When the black mist dissipated, Lin Jue’s slightly panicked face became a cold, stern and he gave off a murderous aura.

“Lin Jue”: “Let’s go.”

Bai Lixin took out two acceleration cards and handed one to “Lin Jue”.

The acceleration card was a single consumption card that could be used to increase speed by 200% within the next 5 minutes.

Bai Lixin: “Can you use it?”

“Lin Jue” nodded and tore up the card and a green light surrounded his body.

Seeing Dijia’s action, Bai Lixin silently tore open the card as well.

Although Dijia couldn’t connect to the system and backpack through Lin Jue’s brain, he could use props as a default to Lin Jue’s identity as a player.

Bai Lixin pointed to the only road in the distance and smiled, “Do you want to race?”

Dijia was intrigued, “How shall we compete?”

Bai Lixin pointed to the pathway and said, “How about seeing who can get to the end of the path first?”

Dijia laughed loudly, his sharp eyes filled with fighting spirit, “Okay, let’s go!”

With a low call from Bai Lixin, two phantom shadows, one black and one white, disappeared into the forest.

The road was curved and narrow, and it was paved with asphalt. It was just wide enough for a car to pass.

The two sprinted forward, one in front of the other. One moment the white shadow was ahead, the other the black shadow was ahead.

The two phantoms left long streams of light behind them, and wherever they went, hurricanes of wind followed, branches swayed, and leaves rustled.

——–

In the live broadcast room.

[Fuck, God Xin became light?]

[Is this what they call absolute power?]

[Lin Jue is not bad either .]

[Brothers and sisters, get this straight, that’s not Lin Jue, he’s possessed by the ghost boss. Lie Jue’s eyes changed just now, and didn’t you notice that God Xin’s tone when talking to Lin Jue was that polite and distant, while he is more intimate and relaxed when talking to the ghost boss.]

[Help, I’m pushing CP again.]

[This sugar is deadly.]

[ thought this copy was filled with despair, but I didn’t expect to see a divine love story in such a depressing copy. What’s with the sudden feeling of hope?]

[Me too, I had heard Lin Jue talk about the danger level of the copy and my heart broke. However, God Xin is still able to smile! He still has the heart to compete! That means that there’s no problem at all! Since everything is fine, I’ll focus on knocking CP for 100 years.]

[Bai Lixin is really amazing. This is an S-grade copy, moreover, with bugs, but Bai Lixin on the 72nd floor is more composed than Lin Jue on the 300th floor.]

[You may not believe in high-end copy players, but you can always believe in God Xin. He’s only at the 72nd level because he’s a newbie and a late starter! ]

[Heh, low end players are low end players, you guys are being blindly confident. An S rank copy is not at the same level as those low end copies, just wait until you collect his corpse.]

[That’s right. Leave alone taking everyone else out. If he gets out of this copy alive, I’ll eat my keyboard on my knees.]

[I’ll run around the game lobby naked.]

[Sitting and waiting for the keyboard-eating, and the naked party.]

————

The asphalt road went deeper and deeper into the forest. Bai Lixin and Dijia, who were running at breakneck speed, finally saw the end of the road.

It stretched all the way into the sea.

When they saw that they were about to reach the coastline, Bai Lixin and Dijia suddenly stepped on the ground at the same time and quickly stopped in their tracks.

S419M: [Lord host, an interference has been detected just ahead.]

Bai Lixin frowned as he slowly approached: [ I noticed.]

He took two steps forward, and some mottled reflective fragments were reflected in his eyes.

Bai Lixin picked up a branch from the ground and sent it towards the spot where the light didn’t look quite right.

The next second, the branch was obstructed.

The branch touched a place and a mesh barrier wall appeared with the branch at its centre.

Bai Lixin: “……”

Shit, an energy force field?

What the hell? How could there be such a thing in this copy?

Bai Lixin felt like his three views of this copy had collapsed and become reconstructed.

He straightened the branch and kept it against the barrier, moving to the side as he measured its size.

As the branch slid, the shimmering reflections of the mesh barrier wall rippled like waves, one tiny wave after another.

He had reached the sea, and without batting an eye, he directly stepped into the seawater.

The shoes that should have been soaked were suspended above the seawater and were not one bit wet.

Heh.

Bai Lixin picked up a harder branch from the ground. He arched his body back in a nice tight curve, his arm holding the branch high in the air, and then he took a Strength Enhancement Card out of his backpack and shredded it.

As the red light flashed on his body, Bai Lixin’s eyes went cold as he poured all his strength into his arm and threw the branch towards the sky.

The branch flew straight towards the blazing bright sun.

The branch, which should have flown up and come back down, was suddenly stuck in mid-air.

Where the branch came to a halt, it revealed a huge semi-circular mesh-like dome.

The dome was extremely large, enveloping not only Red Apple House but also part of the sea.

With the insertion of the branch, the barrier overhead made a “crackling” sound, and some light began to fall downwards as if there was a short circuit.

Bai Lixin withdrew his arm and took a deep breath.

This was not an island at all; it was all a sham.

The sea was just a simulation using the illusion of sight, light, the wind and the smell of the sea.

It was an illusion created by certain forces to create a seemingly harmonious utopia.

Bai Lixin thought of something that was a bit similar.

The Rat Utopia Experiment

In order to study the development of rats, experimenters created a paradise for them, where there were no natural enemies, plenty of space and so on.

The rats reproduce and grow rapidly in this utopia, oblivious to the fact that they are merely the subjects of human experimentation.

And now, they were in this utopia made for humans.

Perhaps somewhere, unbeknownst to them, experimenters were watching them 24/7.

He had seen a bright spot in the morning, and now it seemed that the spot of light must have been because of some fault in the visual simulation equipment in the barrier.

What the eye sees is not always real, and there was the possibility that someone would deliberately try to trick others.

If this was a secret testing ground, it would easily explain why the priests had disappeared, and where the guests came from and where they went.

They weren’t on an island, and by quietly opening a corner of the barrier wall, those luxury vehicles could easily come and leave this Red Apple House.

According to this, the “guests” were not guests but experimental observers.

They came every two days to observe them.

This fucked up copy.

No wonder this copy was full of oddities and there was no logic to many things.

No wonder the ghost mother said she couldn’t access some places. He thought it was because the Underworld hotel had some kind of binding ability that kept the mother ghost from getting too far away.

But the ghost mother meant it literally. The end was really the end, there were no word games in her words.

An energy wall kept her from getting through it, and it kept so many ghosts from leaving and going to the world that they were supposed to go to.

Did that mean that they weren’t just watching humans, but also the ghosts?