CH 58.1

The tree branch remained firmly planted in the sky for a long time.

The dome overhead shimmered with translucent mesh-like ripples, but it was only a little while the sky further away was still clear.

An alarm suddenly rang out with a flashing red light in the back of Bai Lixin’s mind.

S419M’s began to echo: [Ding! Warning, unknown objects have been detected approaching at extreme speed. Please be careful, Lord Host.]

Bai Lixin and Dijia quickly hid in the dense forest behind them.

Tiny ionic ripples appeared in Bai Lixin’s hands, and a moment later, a golden scythe and a blue trident materialized in his left and right hands, respectively.

“Here.” Bai Lixin shouted at Dijia and threw the trident in his hand.

Dijia reached out his right hand into the air and caught the trident.

After learning how to use the crystal ball, Bai Lixin found that it could be used even when it was in the system backpack and didn’t need to take it out.

The moment Dijia received the trident, six figures passed through the barrier that Bai Lixin could not get through and rushed in from outside.

Their goal was clear, and as soon as they entered, they began to rush toward Bai Lixin and Dijia.

They could be called people, but not exactly.

Half of their faces were covered with old metal; they had long arms and legs; and their bodies were made of a combination of machinery and flesh.

But this combination was not high-tech like interstellar marines, it was more like a crude combination of the nineteenth-century Frankenstein.

They were originally human, but were now half-mechanical and half-human. Their sanity had been replaced by machinery.

The semi-mechanical men moved so fast, their fingers gripped the trunk of the trees, which immediately shattered them into bowl-shaped grooves.

Seeing that a thick fist was about to smash into his head, Bai Lixin leapt backwards nimbly and dodged the attack.

A crater half a meter in diameter and half a meter deep appeared in the ground.

Three semi-mechanical men surrounded Dijia and the other three surrounded Bai Lixin.

Bai Lixin stood there, the starlight in his eyes flickering.

A moment before the semi-mechanical men attacked, he heard a painful plea.

—“It’s so painful, kill me.”

Bai Lixin took two steps back and jumped to Dijia’s side. They stood back to back with the six semi-mechanical men around them.

Dijia: “Should we kill them?”

Bai Lixin: “Yeah.”

Just when the mechanical men raised their hands to attack them again, Bai Lixin and Dijia’s eyes sharpened at the same time. The weapons in their hands flashed with cold light, and they moved towards the mechanical men without delay.

One by one, a golden and a blue ray of cold light traced beautiful arcs in the air.

The six mechanical men stopped moving at the same time, they seemed to have lost their kinetic energy and their bodies lost power as they crumpled to the ground.

Bai Lixin found the mechanical man that had just made the desperate plea.

The mechanical man stretched out his hand and pointed to the place where they had just come from, “Save …… them.”

[Ding!]

A prompt from the escape system suddenly rang out in Bai Lixin’s mind.

[ Hidden task, rescue the imprisoned experimental subjects.]

[This is a hidden task and you will receive an additional 30,000 mall points upon completion, and a random performance score bonus based on the completion of the mission. There is no penalty for failure.]

[A friendly reminder: as this is a hidden task, points will not be deducted from the points pool and are provided as an extra.]

[Receive, Decline.]

Bai Lixin decisively clicked the accept button, and a small line of golden letters immediately appeared below his task panel.

As he remembered, golden meant it was an S-rank task.

Seemingly knowing that Bai Lixin had heard his request, the man smiled, showing relief all over the lower half of his face.

Bai Lixin half-crouched beside the mechanical man. In addition to the cheap-looking mechanical equipment, Bai Lixin also noticed through the cracks in the metal shell that the arms and body of the mechanical man before him did not belong to the same person.

Thinking of those ghosts with missing arms and legs, could it be that the most perfect parts of the human bodies were cut off for secondary assembly in order to create combat weapons?

The mechanical man’s breathing became lower and lower, and the rise and fall of his chest gradually grew fainter.

The other mechanical men had obviously lost their minds, and only this one in front of him had some humanity left: “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

The mechanical man thought for a moment and spoke with his last strength, “Be careful of that guy. He has experienced life and death.”

With those words, his beating heart stopped and his tense body slumped and slackened.

S419M: [Lord Host, I have detected a surveillance system on these mechanical men. The footage they captured was about to be transmitted back, but I intercepted it.]

[I just hacked into their memories; they are all metal pieces, and they were given the task of checking the anomalies and feeding the data back. They obviously don’t know that it was you who just poked a hole in the barrier.]

[These mechanical men have lost connection, so there is a high probability that a second wave of mechanical men will come. I suggest that you get out of here.]

Bai Lixin retrieved the scythe and trident and sent them back into the crystal ball: [Okay.]

——–

Ten minutes later, Bai Lixin and Dijia returned to the Red Apple House.

All the players were unaware of what had just happened. Some were climbing trees, others rolled in the grass, and all had simple smiles on their faces that shouldn’t be on people of their age.

A few minutes later, a loud clanging sound suddenly came from the distance.

Everyone was startled except Bai Lixin and Dijia.

The priest immediately appeared before them with a smile and he reassured them, “Don’t be afraid, children, it was just some thunder.”

As if in response to the priest’s words, the sky, which had been clear a moment before, was filled with dark clouds. It was dark enough to obscure the somewhat discordant web-like barrier in the sky.

“Everyone has thrived nicely today. It’s going to rain, so today’s sun time is over. Come back to the Red Apple House with me. We have culture lessons today.”

Lessons?

Bai Lixin and Dijia silently followed at the end of the group. They entered the Red Apple House and arrived in a room that looked very much like a church.

One by one, each person sat in a chair, and a nun handed them each a book.

Bai Lixin opened the book. It contained no words, only pictures.

Dark clouds gathered outside the window, and thunder was rumbling.

Bai Lixin looked out of the window. There was a wind blowing, rustling the leaves outside the window.

The sunny day turned into a dark cloudy day in a second, but the rain didn’t fall.

The priest went to the window and drew the curtains.

The room was suddenly plunged into brief darkness.

The lights were turned on, and Bai Lixin began to flip through the book.

The first picture was a hand-drawn picture of the Red Apple House, followed by a rather old and quaint building.

The book described the history and creation of the Red Apple House.

A long time ago, it was an orphanage.

A disease struck and many people died in the orphanage.

Just when everyone was in despair, a doctor appeared. His medical skills were superb, and with the many instruments he built, he saved the sick from death.

Afterwards, he stayed at the orphanage, and it was officially renamed the Red Apple House.

Later, a plague spread through the world and no one was spared. The world selected the best and most precious group of children and sent them to this Red Apple Home.

That was what this book was all about.

It was because of this that the priest kept emphasizing the “preciousness of things”, “resources that no one else could enjoy” and so on.

Bai Lixin finished flipping through the book and stopped on the page with the doctor.

The doctor in the book wore a thick mask, so it was hard to see him, but he was thin, in a white coat, with a million lights painted behind him.

As Bai Lixin flipped through the book, the priest was also explaining the history of Red Apple House page by page.

When he spoke of this doctor, his usually calm tone became even more excited.

“He is the savior of our Red Apple House, the creator of this worldly paradise. He is even above death, children, and you can consider him your faith and your god. We would not be who we are now without him.”

Bai Lixin looked at the players around him who had fallen completely. When they heard the priest speak of this doctor, a look of eager adoration appeared in the players’ eyes, and a few of them even had tears in their eyes.

This level of brainwashing… even working in a pyramid scheme would be a disservice to the priest’s eloquence.

“Mr. Priest,” an emotional player raised his hand, “what is the name of our savior? I wish to keep his name in my heart.”

The priest: “Remember his name. His name is Dr. Huai. From this day forward, he is your only faith.”

Bai Lixin: “Is he dead? Mister Priest?”

“No,” the priest said, shaking his head, “Dr. Huai has long since learned the true meaning of death, and death will not come near him; life is only devotion and sacrifice for him.”

“He has experienced life, and also death, and has returned from it.”

“Since then, he has been immortal and has long since ceased to be human. He is a god.”

“To this day, he still lives in the world.”

Bai Lixin: “Will I ever have the chance to meet this great god?”

The mechanical man said that “the man” was dangerous and had experienced life and death, which just happened to fit with the experience of this man called Dr. Huai.

It seemed that this Dr. Huai was the boss of this copy.

He had experienced life and death, and returned from death.

Did it mean that he came back from the dead?

What did “coming back from the dead” mean? Escaped from the Underworld hotel back to the living? And came back to life with a human body?

The players listened carefully to this lesson. Only Dijia propped his head lazily throughout, his dark eyes looking intently at Bai Lixin beside him, wondering what he was thinking about.

This Red Apple House was gradually turning people into losers.

You can enjoy the “best” resources without doing anything, all the good and bad memories disappear, and all you do every day is eat and sleep.

It was like living in a cosy village.

After a sumptuous lunch, it was time for the usual siesta.

The first thing Bai Lixin did when he got back to his room was to open the curtains. He found that the rain had not fallen after all the dark clouds outside.

The ground was dry and the clouds had dissipated.

The spot where Bai Lixin had poked a hole earlier had been patched up; the branch was gone, and the sky had turned a perfectly normal shade of blue.

Bai Lixin didn’t linger in that spot for long as he noticed the unnaturally bright flickering light again.

The light kept flickering at regular intervals which was very suspicious.

Was there something there?

He listened to the fading footsteps of the priest.

This afternoon was the second visit of the guests.

Players were to be selected for good behavior, and it was on the first day that the two dead players were selected.

It was the fourth day that was the most dangerous, which meant that it was when a large number of players would be taken.

So the first two meetings would have just a few people disappearing.

The first day, there were only two people taken, so there shouldn’t be too many today either.

To be taken away, one just has to become the best among these people.

Dijia saw through Bai Lixin’s thoughts at a glance. The guests came a little earlier than usual this time.

They came at around 4 pm last time, but they appeared outside the Red Apple House before three in the afternoon this time.

Bai Lixin had been watching the movement outside the Red Apple House and he noticed that the cars had come from that side road.

They should have seen the bodies of the mechanical men on the way over, right?

The players were sunbathing in the orchard when these guests arrived. They had become accustomed to the environment here, and not only did they forget their status as players, but they even began to gradually forget other things.

Xia Chi, for example, could no longer remember who Bai Lixin was.

This was not bad, as Xia Chi could at least remember who he was.

Some players had even forgotten who they were, and if things continued like this, not to mention making it to the fourth day, all the players would become idiots by tomorrow.

Bai Lixin pretended to climb up to the apple tree to rest, but in reality, he stood on high ground to observe the guests coming out of the cars.

There were men and women, and all were dressed in the same clothes as on the first day.

But this time, their expressions were a little harder, and their faces were free of those fake smiles.

One of the “guests” pointed in the direction of the end of the road and said something to the priest. Because they were far away and the guest had his back to him, Bai Lixin could only focus on the priest’s mouth.

“What? Dead?”

“All six are dead?”

“How is that possible?”

“But it’s fantastic. If one of them did it, then they would be the best of the bunch, or the perfect one.”

“We’ll find that person.”

From the priest’s words, it seemed that they didn’t know who had destroyed the sky and killed the mechanical men, which was evidence that the place was unmonitored.

Bai Lixin called out in his head: [How is it going?]

s419M: [A full scan of the surveillance system is underway, but because of the powerful energy field, the scan often encounters interference. But please don’t worry, Lord Host, I will definitely scan this space thoroughly.]

Bai Lixin: [ First tell me the results of your most recent scan.]

S419M: [Yes, Lord Host. The current scan results show that there are surveillance devices within the Red Apple House, but there are not many. There is another one in the corner of the corridor, one in the hall, and another in the basement.]

Bai Lixin: [What about in this orchard?]

S419M: [There are no surveillance devices detected in this orchard, but it cannot be ruled out that they have been interfered with.]

S419M paused for two seconds: [Lord Host, I detected another surveillance; the sun above your head. On top of that, there was a significant amount of attention here. Several photos were taken but it was only this area that was captured.]

Bai Lixin: [Is the surveillance equipment monitored 24 hours a day?]

S419M: [Yes.]

If the surveillance equipment was monitored 24 hours a day, then what he had been doing must have been in full view of that person.

His behaviour was different compared to other players.

So was the boss not watching the surveillance, or did he already know all his moves and was playing with him?

Or maybe he was just an experiment in the other party’s eyes, and all his strange actions were just filling up experimental data for him.

When this thought came to mind, Bai Lixin suddenly froze.

The fog that shrouded the sea was slowly blown away, revealing a rippling, clear sea level.

This boss was a science fanatic. Having a set of alternative data suddenly appear would be too precious for that kind of person that was obsessed with experimentation.

Bai Lixin tilted his head and squinted up at the huge sun hanging in the sky., then pointed his middle finger towards the sun.