CH 60

Fu Zhiyu had long known about the so-called mission world, but as time went on, he was actually puzzled, feeling that what he saw was not everything there was to see.

If, as he had always thought before, Xie Ke was just doing it for points, now he spent much more points, props and energy than he had gained back then. This contrast made Xie Ke’s behaviour seem very strange and illogical.

In addition, there was his so-called “I knew I was in love with you a long time ago” rhetoric.

There was indeed more truth to it, wasn’t there?

Fu Zhiyu had thought about delving into it before, but was frustrated by Xie Ke’s various actions. He didn’t want to have more entanglement with Xie Ke, nor did he want to repeat the same mistakes again. This emotion made him suppress the pursuit of the so-called truth.

But now in this situation, probably Xie Ke had finally discovered something, right?

“Zhiyu, you… have seen the Lord God, right?”

Xie Ke took a deep breath and finally asked these words.

“Yes,” Fu Zhiyu thought for a while, and didn’t deny it. “After I died in my previous life, I stayed with the Lord God for a long time. It told me about the whole world, and it also told me about actors like you.”

Xie Ke’s mind was blank for a moment. Even if he had heard the system say it and he was ready, when the words really came out of Fu Zhiyu’s mouth, he still felt unreal, as if someone punched him in the head. 

“The Lord God… what did it say about me?”

Fu Zhiyu thought for a while and said, “You are a very good actor and can be ranked in the top three among all actors. Before you rebooted the world, the Lord God had a pretty good opinion of you.”

“It also said something about points?”

“Of course.” Fu Zhiyu said, “It told me that you scored well in this world and earned a lot of points.”

After Xie Ke finished listening, he smiled bitterly, and then asked: “Did the Lord God mention that the world of ‘His Name Will Live On in History’ was very special?”

Fu Zhiyu remembered that the Lord God had mentioned it. It said that the world of “His Name Will Live On in History” was a super-advanced world with high difficulty in playing. This kind of ancient world with no supernatural powers and no high technology had the least number of loopholes that could be exploited, and the time span was so large that one really had to play for decades, with few places to pull the progress bar. There were many characters, and the plot could drift off if one wasn’t careful, resulting in points being deducted.

It was because of this that the world of “His Name Will Live On in History” was considered the super-advanced world for the actor.

Xie Ke hadn’t waited for Fu Zhiyu’s answer, he went on: “The Lord God didn’t mention to you… that this was the world that me, or rather my organisation, had been preparing for for a long time to advance?”

This… the Lord God didn’t say.

Fu Zhiyu frowned, not immediately understanding the meaning of Xie Ke’s words.

“The actors have a clear class stratification. The higher you rank, the greater the pressure. What’s more, the managers of major organisations like ours are not only responsible for themselves,” Xie Ke said. Recalling the previous events, he felt as if he was another person at that time. “’His Name Will Live On in History’ is such a level that requires the actor to score 90 points. Only in this way could I break through the bottleneck and truly meet everyone’s expectations and become the first person to play this kind of role.”

To reach such a point, it wasn’t Xie Ke’s efforts alone, the resources of the entire organisation were piled up. But it was Xie Ke’s responsibility alone as an actor to make the entire organisation go further. The world of “His Name Will Live On in History” was the world where he could only succeed and not fail.

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In a sense, Xie Ke even became the representative of all the actors.

The routine scoring requirement for an actor is only 60 points. But 60 points is easy, going higher is difficult.

Reaching a 90-point rating in the super-advanced world was naturally even more difficult. Xie Ke had this ability. In the end, he lived up to expectations and scored 90.5 points. From the 9.5 points deducted, 9 points came from Fu Zhiyu and 0.5 points came from Shen Yang who went crazy in the end.

“Oh, that’s quite important.” After Fu Zhiyu finished listening, he lowered his head and took a sip of tea, and thought for a while, “Under such circumstances, it makes sense for you to choose to give up on me.”

“No, Zhiyu,” Xie Ke said with a wry smile, “I felt at that time that I had never given up on you.”

Fu Zhiyu was taken aback for a moment, and a mouthful of tea stuck in his throat.

In fact, what Xie Ke said before, about this mission being particularly important and so on, it was not that he hadn’t thought about it and to him these things were nothing. But Xie Ke’s next words made him puzzled.

What do you mean… never given up on him?

“As I said before, my organisation has invested a lot in this world to ensure that nothing went wrong. This contribution included all aspects.” Xie Ke said, “When the actor organisation reaches that level, it is possible to find channels for cheating. But now that I think about it, I would rather that we have never made such efforts.

Zhiyu, I received news as soon as I entered this world. There was another actor in the world. The task he received was an interference task that differed from the original.”

The fact that the mission of “His Name Will Live On in History” was complicated to the extent that it even engaged an interfering actor reinforced Xie Ke’s desire to win and strengthened his determination to make the mission a success.

“Zhiyu, from the beginning, I thought you were the interfering actor. Only your performance deviated from the original plot.” Xie Ke said, “You also meet almost all the characteristics of the interfering actor. I tested it with props, and there was no problem with the data of other people. Only you were blocked. I even asked 027 to check it carefully again, and I confirmed it over and over again. The role played by another actor was Fu Zhiyu.”

Fu Zhiyu: “…What are you talking about?”

He couldn’t believe it; the Lord God had never mentioned this to him.

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“When the actor tried to enter the world, he had an accident that had never happened before. The actor couldn’t get rid of the original data. He has never entered this world. Zhiyu, you have been special from the beginning,” Xie Ke said, “But I didn’t know about it. I only found out about this accident when I tracked it down later… I always thought you were an actor. Just like me, you could pull the progress bar, block the pain and know all the plots of the book.”

Knowing full well that Fu Zhiyu was actually acting too, knowing full well that he was deliberately interfering with the plot lines, there were times when Xie Ke looked into those eyes and instantly forgot exactly what he was doing.

The Lord God’s system had bottom-line rules for the actors. When performing a task, you must treat yourself completely as the character, and you cannot show any hint of “I am an actor” in the world, even under the shielding of the props. As long as a violation was detected, the mission would be judged as failure immediately.

When he was in this world, Xie Ke couldn’t show his true feelings to the person he liked. He used all the shielding props he had in this world so that he could have a short respite in the plot without being deducted points. Most of the time, he used this opportunity with Zhiyu. The most obvious thing he said when in bed was “Wait for a little longer” and “It’s just a temporary grievance.”

For the actor’s endless acting life, these decades could indeed be considered “a little longer”, but for indigenous data, it was a lifetime.

“I really didn’t know,” Xie Ke said, his hands shaking uncontrollably. “I thought that after I finished this mission, I could find you and tell you everything. I wanted to tell you that I had long liked you. It didn’t matter if you didn’t do this interference task well. Now I had the highest authority and could protect you from now on.

I never thought that you were just abnormal data from start to finish, and I… even killed you with my own hands, because I thought at that time that this was just helping you get out of the world on time.”

It is also part of the role of the actor to leave the world on time. According to the plot, the character Fu Zhiyu was indeed going to die during that time. This was nothing to the actor. Blocking the pain, he really didn’t feel anything. It was just a normal procedure.

Xie Ke himself didn’t know how many times he had experienced it. He naturally did it and didn’t think there was anything wrong.

He originally thought that he and Fu Zhiyu had only met the right person at the wrong time. Fu Zhiyu happened to receive this interference task; although they were rivals, they were also a rare fate.

But he didn’t expect that he was wrong to begin with.

“I thought I chose a path that was good for both of us,” Xie Ke said. When he said this, his voice trembled, “But it turned out that it was the worst path.”

Fu Zhiyu didn’t make a sound while he was talking. He waited until Xie Ke had finished speaking before taking a long breath. Xie Ke felt that he seemed to relax all of a sudden.

“I really appreciate you telling me this,” Fu Zhiyu said slowly. “After all, I even thought I was the one with the problem before.”

It was about the first time in a long while that he actually spoke to Xie Ke in such a heartfelt way, without being perfunctory or indifferent.

“You, Shen Yang, Yuan Mingdao, my mother, the Yuan family… The people I love dearly do not love me, the people I have given to betray me, the people I want to protect leave me. Why did all these things have to happen to me? For a long time… I felt that it was my own fault, that I had asked for too much, that I had harmed Mingdao and the others.” He said, “Xie Ke, in all fairness, I have to thank you too. After all, it was you who made this world reboot so that I can have all these things again and let me know… that many things were not my fault.”

After Xie Ke heard these words, he felt a little disbelief and hope in his heart.

Zhiyu, he…

But Fu Zhiyu’s next words made his heart sink in an instant.

“But it’s too late,” Fu Zhiyu said, “If I heard all this earlier in my previous life, maybe…”

He didn’t say anything else about this “maybe” possibility. He thought for a while and said to Xie Ke: “Have you actors never really experienced what it feels like to die?”

Xie Ke was speechless; he shook his head.

The death of the actor was probably the time when the missions failed too many times and he was wiped out by the system. The rest of the so-called “death” was only the moment when the mission was over and it was time to leave the world. The body would feel light for a while, and then after the buzzing sound in your mind, the system’s tone would come. Then you would open your eyes again, and you would return to the actor’s space. There was no extra feeling in the whole process.

“Let me tell you, the death of people like us is different from yours. It was a very painful moment,” Fu Zhiyu said. “It was obviously a very short moment, but I seemed to remember my whole life. All the pain and unwillingness emerged, like the scars all over my body. At that moment, after experiencing such a moment of death, it seemed… I became a new person.”