CH 1

1. Is This World Real?

Have you ever doubted whether your life and the world you live in are real?

Song Juyao once doubted. She wondered why she had to lead such a life, why her life was such a failure. Hadn’t she worked hard enough, or was she simply stupid? She had once blamed the gods and man, complaining about the injustice of the heavens, resenting those who were so easily able to get everything that she had to fight desperately for, because luck had never favoured her.

She had been born in an extremely poor family, and most people living in the city couldn’t have imagined that there were people living such a life. Their family lived near a landfill and her parents relied on sorting and picking up the garbage sent from all over the city everyday. Life was arduous and dirty. She did not wish to live such a life, hence she exerted her greatest effort in order that she may live a better life. When other children were still innocent and artless, she had already set up a goal for the future. She studied hard and made great efforts so that she could have the capability to realize her dream.

Since the age of seven, she was aware that she needed money and that she had to find a way to make money. For the sake of earning money, she had tried all sorts of methods. She helped adults run errands, helped her classmates to do their homework, helped others do their cleaning, and sweetly flattered her teachers so that she could get convenience and benefits from them. Because of this, her fellow schoolmates had ridiculed her and disdained her behind her back, but she didn’t care about this. She was clear that their mockery was too insignificant in comparison to her life. She saved her money and looked at the beautiful clothes in the shop window with her heart filled with envy, thinking that one day, she would become a superior person and that she would succeed.

The person whom Song Juyao disliked the most was Wen Ruoning from her school. She was always running over to pester Song Juyao, constantly lecturing her and saying that she shouldn’t help other people write their homework, that it was a sort of harm to other people and would cause them to have bad grades. She was always putting on a kind-hearted face that left Song Juyao disgusted and even gave her the clothes she had worn, just falling short of saying “I know you’re very poor and don’t even have any decent clothes to wear.”

Song Juyao almost cried with anger several times because of her, but she firmly endured it, and strengthened her efforts at studying and making money. She wanted to tell her, “I don’t have time to play around with you, I need to study, I need to do my homework, go home and do the housework, I need to help my parents sort the damn trash.” She wanted to say, “Even if I don’t help those people write their homework and take their money, they still wouldn’t do their homework, they would just ask others to do it for them for free or copy it from someone else the next day. Their poor grades aren’t because I did their homework for them, but because they didn’t intend to study hard.” She also wanted to say, “Don’t give your clothes to me in front of everyone as if you’re giving alms, I may be poor but I still have my pride….”

However, Song Juyao did not say these things. She knew that even if she spoke, she still wouldn’t bother to understand.

Wen Ruoning was from a well-off family, and she was a rich young miss. How would she possibly be able to understand that there were people in this world who had to put in such great efforts in order to have a future worth looking forward to.

Song Juyao thought that she and Wen Ruoning were from two different worlds without any intersection. Until the second year of high school, when Wen Ruoning’s parents suddenly showed up at her door and said that she was their long-lost daughter and Wen Ruoning’s fraternal twin sister. Her parents also admitted that they had bought her from a trafficker.

Song Juyao was at a loss, because all of her efforts in the past, wasn’t it just so that she could live a life like Wen Ruoning’s? Suddenly, she was able to fulfill her dream, yet it wasn’t due to her hard work, but because of a meat pie that fell from the sky?1  Then, what should she do in the future?

The plans she had made for her life and the objective she had been struggling towards were all disrupted.

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At this time, Wen Ruoning dragged her over to her friend’s party, and there, she met the handsome and confident Wei Qing, a young master from a wealthy family who was witty and funny. And he was very good to her. Song Juyao had never indulged in a young girl’s feelings before, but she had suddenly turned into a rich young miss and her heart was abruptly left with a lot of vacant space. In the end, this space was occupied by Wei Qing.

For Wei Qing, she learned to dress up, and he took her out to drink and sing. She feared that her inability to keep up with their rhythm might end up making them shun her, and her grades gradually fell to the bottom. Everytime she started feeling regretful and uneasy and wanted to pick up her books and study hard, Wei Qing would appear, those “friends” would appear, and little by little, the books would not be picked up again.

She thought she and Wei Qing were happily in love, until one day, she heard Wen Ruoning ask Wei Qing to continue to associate with her and not hurt her. Song Juyao realized that since the very beginning, Wei Qing had been entrusted with approaching her by Wen Ruoning! Wei Qing didn’t like her at all! This was also charity, this was another one of Wen Ruoning’s hateful and self-righteous acts of giving alms to her!

Song Juyao was furious. She was angry at being made fun of, and she was jealous of Wen Ruoning. These dark emotions induced her to start opposing her with equal harshness and make sarcastic comments towards her, but the results were not good. Everyone turned towards Wen Ruoning and thought that she was stirring up trouble for no reason. Even her biological parents expressed their disappointment and said that they would not find her and bring her back if they had known that she would be like this.

In the end, Song Juyao was sent out of the country. She was abroad and disheartened for a period of time. With great difficulty, she finally wished to pull herself together and get back up, but she met Raymond and he gave her a sweet love and drugs. Her biological parents severed all ties with her and Raymond also left her, leaving her to fall into an even deeper trough.

Later, after going through the agonizing detoxification in the drug rehabilitation center, she started afresh as an upright person and worked hard to find a job to support herself, but due to her lacking academic qualifications and her dark history of drug abuse, she suffered countless refusals. She failed again and again, with people making things difficult for her and dismissing her, she was unable to accomplish anything.

Finally, she walked around outside the mall, looking at the beautiful clothes in the display as she wondered; what happened to her, and why had her life become like this? From the moment when she had been retrieved by the Wen family, everything had deviated from the path that she had set for herself. However, she thought that the person who deserved the most blame was herself. Why didn’t she persevere, and why was she influenced by others so easily?

At that moment, on the LED billboard in the shopping mall, she saw Wen Ruoning accept Wei Qing’s proposal. Wen Ruoning’s face on the billboard was no different from the past, her eyes were still clear and innocent without any hardship, and her dress was like the ones from the shop windows that she had dreamt of wearing…

The end? When she was crossing the street, a car suddenly rushed out and collided with her, leaving her mangled and mutilated. Her short, bleak and meaningless life finally came to an end…

Have you ever doubted your world and your life?

Song Juyao had doubted, but it was merely a suspicion; until her death.

She saw herself floating out of her mangled body, floating higher and higher, higher and higher. And then, what did she see? Inconceivable, unbelievable, she felt like she was floating out of the screen, she saw a lot of people, a lot of machines, and a director-like person said, “It’s a wrap! Song Juyao has been killed off, how’s the response from the audience?”

“Director, you shouldn’t say ‘killed off’ nowadays, you should say that the trial is over.”

“What nonsense.”

“It’s awesome, everyone is praising you, director. Most of the audience’s comments are saying that Song Juyao is a profiteer, conceited, scheming, with a lot of intentions, licentious and greedy… anyway, basically, it seems like she has no hope of commutation…”2 

At this moment, another staff member rushed over. “Director, that Song Juyao seems to be dead.”

“After experiencing so many terrible things inside and accumulating so many negative emotions, having a mental breakdown is not a big surprise. In any case, she’s a murderer and she should use her life to pay for the Huo family’s young master. Just inform the higher-ups.”

What were they talking about? What did they mean? Song Juyao uncontrollably followed behind the young man, and then she saw herself. She was all skin and bones and lying in a strange cabin. Two people lifted her up like she was a sack and put her inside a body bag.

She followed the body bag and passed by another room, catching sight of more oval cabins identical to hers. Wen Ruoning and Wei Qing were sitting inside the cabins and drinking the water that other people were offering to them; when she went out, she actually saw the biological parents talking to the adoptive parents who had passed away six years ago.

Seeing the body bag that was passing by, they casually asked a sentence, then shook their heads and continued talking, as if it was just an insignificant dog that died…

What was this? What kind of weird scene was this? Song Juyao seemed to have fallen into a terrible dream. Everything in the dream was so strange, subverting her cognition.

At that moment, her hidden memory recovered.

She finally understood, from the beginning, everything was all fake. Her identity and her life, everything was fake. It was just a live performance, just a TV drama guided by other people. Her suspicions were true. The direction of her life was indeed controlled by others, and even her life and death was not under her own control!

Star Dream Entertainment, the largest entertainment company in the Red Lotus Empire, was controlled by the nobles of aristocratic families, and this was the most popular ‘Dream Works’ under their banner and over one billion people watched their programs every day. Among them, their most popular and discussed program was a live holographic reality show called “Judgement Day.” The leading roles of this program were held by convicts who had committed crimes, yet refused to obey the sentence and objected to the judgement.

The convicts sign an agreement and enter into a game cabin, after which the original memory in their brain is concealed, allowing the convict to be set up as a completely new individual in the virtual world, starting a brand new life under the gaze of more than a billion pairs of eyes.

Your fate is entirely in the hands of the director and the spectators. Supposing that the audience finds your performance inside likable and they feel that your inherent is good or that the mistakes you made in the past are actually pardonable, you can be given another chance, and it’s even possible than an injustice may be redressed with the court complying with the public opinion and granting a retrial. Furthermore, even if no evidence can be found to prove that the previous sentence was incorrect, the sentence could still be commuted.

At a time when mankind is lacking more and more in ways to entertain themselves and the spirit is in more and more need of stimulation, this ultimate theater experience and the feeling of being able to control the fate of others makes this program wildly popular.

Naturally, it isn’t easy for the convict to reduce their sentence. In fact, since the launch of the show, there hasn’t been even a single convict who was able to change their fate. This is because the director can design countless hurdles that would guide them to fall and make them experience numerous difficulties in life. Just like Song Juyao, her pride was shattered again and again, and she was hindered every step of the way as she tried to move towards her dreams. They devised up every method possible in order to lure her fall and become a beautiful clown to serve as a foil to the protagonist.

Yes, on her Judgement Day, the real protagonist was the girl who played Wen Ruoning, an actress of the new generation who was strongly supported by the Star Dream Entertainment group.

It was an extremely unfair trial.

The reason why Song Juyao had to accept the stage of this trial was because someone had tried to rape her, she had resisted, and as a result, the rapist had accidentally fallen down the stairs, winding up falling to his death. She had been sentenced to life imprisonment. The man was from a very wealthy family, therefore, the ending waiting for her could only be such a lamentable end.

Of course, It was only natural that Song Juyao was unresigned. Hence, she had decided to participate after hearing about the reality show trial, and then… she had a mental breakdown and died in the game cabin without causing any splashes. And only now did she know that the rapist’s family was also an investor of this program.

After finally realizing the truth, Song Juyao burst into laughter, laughing madly until tears came out. So that’s how it is, so that’s how it is, hahahaha…