CH 63

Except for the time when Shen Yang suddenly went crazy, all the subsequent acting tasks went smoothly.

But Xie Ke really didn’t feel that he had lied to Shen Yang at that time. Zhiyu was indeed not dead. He was waiting for him in the actor’s space, but Shen Yang, the native data, couldn’t see it.

After seeing his score, Xie Ke only felt that a big stone fell from his heart. He felt relieved, but he didn’t think of any important authority and congratulations from the organisation for the first time. He had only one thought in his mind: I can finally go to Zhiyu.

He had already obtained the new authority, and no one could stop him from being with Zhiyu, right?

He found out the number of the interferer, and even maintained Xie Ke’s appearance in “His Name Will Live On in History”. He went to that person’s actor space and carefully prepared a gift, intending to formally confess to Zhiyu.

Finally, he was able to truly express his feelings to Zhiyu without being restricted by the plot, which made Xie Ke’s heart surge. He couldn’t help showing a silly smile of someone foolishly in love.

But when he saw the actor, before he even said a word, just by looking at that person’s eyes, he immediately felt something was wrong.

It was as if a pot of cold water was poured over his head, and it seemed that some illusion had finally been shattered, revealing the cruel truth.

He was not Zhiyu! Absolutely not!

The actor looked confused after seeing Xie Ke. This was not a public area. He had never seen anyone appear in the actor’s private space before, and he didn’t react at once.

Seeing the expression of the man who suddenly appeared in his space – as if he had been struck by lightning – he instinctively felt something was wrong and wanted to run quickly, but Xie Ke pulled him back.

“You are not him, you are not Zhiyu,” he was like a demon who had completely lost his mind, “Say, what have you done? What have you done! What did you do to Zhiyu?”

The actor actually didn’t understand what the intruder was doing, but he was experienced and quickly captured the key point.

Zhiyu, Fu Zhiyu?

It was the character that was fresh in his memory.

Advertisements

This was the first time he had received an interference task. This kind of task was like an Easter egg in the actor’s career. It was a bit special. If you did it well, you would get a lot more rewards than for ordinary tasks. He cherished this opportunity, but he didn’t expect it to become a failure right at the beginning.

He couldn’t log in to that role. Every time he tried, an invisible barrier pushed him back. After trying many times, it was still fruitless. After he reported an error, there was no reply from the Lord God. The actor waited for a long time and received part of the compensation, but the reason wasn’t explained. He was told that the task had already begun, and this matter was considered over.

He always felt that the data on the Lord God’s side was wrong, and perhaps two actors, including himself, received the same task. The “other person” logged in early, so he couldn’t log in.

After Xie Ke listened to this explanation, he relaxed a little bit.

“There must be another person, there must be another actor,” he muttered to himself, trying to force himself to believe this sentence, “I… will be able to find Zhiyu soon.”

But there was another possibility; Xie Ke thought of it, but he didn’t want to think about it, or rather, he didn’t dare to think about it at all.

What if Zhiyu was not an actor at all, he was just an abnormal data. What should he do?

Zhoyu would disappear and would never come back.

The people in the organisation didn’t understand why Xie Ke didn’t do other important things as planned after his successful return. Instead, he spent all his energy to track down the interferer, a less important supporting role in this world. 

Only a few friends who had been following him felt that something was wrong. It was the first time they had seen Xie Ke completely lose his calmness and become so crazy. So they didn’t say a word, they just helped him find this person.

But as the matter was explored deeper and deeper step by step, the truth was really unacceptable.

Everyone could see it; but no one dared to really say this sentence in front of Xie Ke, only watching him continue to go crazy and finally collapse.

There was no other actor, never had been, only the abnormal data that must have been automatically deleted a long time ago.

Xie Ke didn’t know how to describe how he felt when he finally accepted the truth. It was as if his soul had been drained, and he spent long hours cowering in a space where he was alone, recalling all the details of his time with Zhiyu over and over again.

Why hadn’t he realised that something was wrong earlier?

Obviously in the last few years, Zhiyu’s disappointment was so real, why didn’t he feel it at that time, he asked himself.

Zhiyu never pretended or acted. He loved him so sincerely and gave him everything he could give.

…And what did he do?

Xie Ke couldn’t describe his mood at that time. Words such as grief and regret were too little. He was tortured by the pain of killing his lover with his own hands, and for the first time he felt the meaning of the phrase that life was worse than death.

He hated himself; he wanted to flay himself alive and eat his bones, but the pain was pointless; because Zhiyu was gone. No matter how regretful he was, he couldn’t find him.

It was only then that Xie Ke really understood that the so-called organisation and the so-called authority were nothing in front of that person.

He had been trying to find an answer for his life as an actor with no starting point and no end. Zhiyu was the real answer, but he had lost it by himself.

Advertisements

Some people in the organisation were frightened by his appearance. Some of the people in charge of scouting the information went over to him because of the interferer’s mistake with a look of anxiety and apologies. Even the 027 system couldn’t accept the look on its host’s face and tried to take the blame for the mistake on itself, thinking that this might make the host feel better.

“Why… are you guys apologising to me?” Xie Ke’s face was blank when he listened; he didn’t feel the slightest comfort. He only felt that greater pain surrounded him. “It was me who did the most wrong. Zhiyu did nothing wrong but he went through the most painful time. I brought it all on him, but no one apologised to him. Why… do you want to apologise to me?”

“Then Zhiyu, what about Zhiyu?”

He was in a wretched state for a long time. The actor can’t rest all the time, and there are mandatory tasks every once in a while. Xie Ke was in this state, and even if he was forced into the acting world, he didn’t move at all. He would soon be deducted points until he failed and was kicked out of the world.

Although he had enough foundation not to be obliterated, after two or three times, the Lord God became impatient and threw him into the punishment world.

“Wake up yourself,” the Lord God said, “The actor must do a good job as the actor. Don’t talk to me about feelings, I don’t listen to this.”

The punishment world was actually another form of task. It was a trash world with extremely disordered data, but there would be problems if the trash was piled up for a long time, so someone needed to deal with it.

But in Xie Ke’s state, wherever he went, he would be passive.

The punishment world had no pain blocking, no progress bar function, and the use of props was prohibited. Xie Ke entered the punishment world for the first time. There were very few aborigines there. They were all mentally ill in the true sense. They looked strange and were very destructive. As soon as entered, one of his arms was cut off by a chainsaw.

The pain block used to be activated automatically, and it was the first time Xie Ke, who had always had a smooth journey, experienced this kind of pain.

This pain made him awake, and it also made him think of Zhiyu in an instant.

Were the injuries Zhiyu once suffered for him also painful like this?

Now that he was like this, could it be regarded as atonement for his sins?

The 027 system deeply felt that it couldn’t go on like this. If it went on like this, Xie Ke would be wiped out.

“If you are so decrepit, you can’t save Fu Zhiyu, nor can you save yourself,” 027 said to him, “I know what you want to do. The actor can’t commit suicide. Fu Zhiyu is gone and you think it is meaningless to be alive. But if you die, you can’t compensate for your previous mistakes, and if you die, you can’t get Fu Zhiyu back.

Xie Ke, if you give up now, no one will ever tell Fu Zhiyu that you once loved each other sincerely.”

When Xie Ke heard these words, he had already been tortured by the punishment world to the point when he was injured all over. His whole body was like a bloody mass, and his face was like a death mask. He lay motionless in a tree hole. Outside, there were fierce aborigines patrolling, accompanied by the sound of chainsaws.

“Get up quickly, I won’t say it a second time,” 027 said, “For Fu Zhiyu, I have a way to try.”

The last sentence of the system became Xie Ke’s motivation. He relied on this only belief to get out of the punishment world, and then according to what the system said, he began to secretly collect some strange props, looking for something he could use to change things.

The so-called new authority that he hated so much also came into play at this time, giving him the possibility of getting the medicine for regret.

“There are loopholes in the whole system to exploit, and the master brain is not an impenetrable thing,” 027 told him, “As long as you make the world of ‘His Name Will Live On in History’ reboot, Fu Zhiyu’s data may be reborn along with it.”

This was Xie Ke’s only hope, and for this hope, he could give anything.

All the things accumulated before were exchanged by him like flowing water. The so-called power points and props were nothing; it took an extremely long time until the chance to reboot actually came.

For the first time, he didn’t enter the world as an actor. It was one aspect to reboot the world, and it was another aspect to let himself go in again. Although the safeguards were prepared, Xie Ke could feel his identity gradually melting without pain blocking, as if he was being roasted on a fire.

Probably because he had experienced all kinds of pain during this period of time, this physical pain was nothing compared to the emotion he felt when he was about to meet Zhiyu.

He didn’t want to think about the consequences, he only had one thought in his heart: he was about to see Zhiyu again soon.

The timing of Xie Ke’s return was also coincidental. It happened to be when he rescued Zhiyu from the ice lake. He fished the person out of the hole in the ice. He looked at the face that he had been thinking about day and night, and he couldn’t help but feel his eyes blur.

That was the living Fu Zhiyu…

But the detail that the excited Xie Ke ignored was that Fu Zhiyu’s eyes had been closed when he was rescued, and there was no that love-at-first-sight glance between the two of them.

From the beginning, things were different from what he had imagined.