Chapter 248 The Game Begins
Fifteen minutes ago.
When Xiao Zhen opened the door, Mr. Cat was still squatting in front of Wei Jingjing's incubator. He glanced at Mr. Cat who was fully immersed in the incubator, and in order to avoid the tragedy of being drenched again, he quickly put on a transparent raincoat.
Captain Madara also opened his small parasol again.
…
…
Wei Jingjing was preparing to attend the Wang family ball when Aunt Tan, a court lady, came to her side and asked, "Princess Jingjing, are you ready?"
Wei Jingjing nodded and looked at herself in the mirror. Her makeup was meticulously done. She was wearing a light blue satin skirt with beautiful pleated lace underneath, which was her favorite dress. This dress made her skin look whiter and more beautiful than before.
Auntie Tan raised her eyebrows, "Are you sure you want to wear this?"
"Yes."
"But this skirt was given by His Majesty the King." Aunt Tan reminded her, "Her Majesty the Queen likes red."
Wei Jingjing was stunned. She knew that her mother always liked red the most. Her father and mother always had very different preferences. She also liked the gift her father gave her more. But if she wore this blue dress, her mother would definitely be unhappy. Wei Jingjing hesitated again and again, and finally took off the light blue satin dress and changed into a dark red dress. To be honest, dark red never suited her. It made her skin look a little yellow and her temperament became a little haggard. But this was her mother's favorite color.
After putting on her mother's favorite crimson dress, Wei Jingjing hesitated for a moment, then put on a pearl necklace that her father had given her, and then followed Aunt Tan out of the room.
When she entered the venue, she looked at her father with some trepidation. King Wei Hongzhuo was chatting with the courtiers, and he turned around and glanced at his clothes. She was not wearing the dress that her father had prepared for her. Wei Jingjing wanted to see blame or opposition on his face, but her father only had a very peaceful smile on his face.
The dance was very grand, with gorgeously dressed men and women walking around in front of her one after another, laughing and talking. Every time Wei Jingjing saw them laughing so happily, she always wanted to join in, but every time she got close, they would disperse with strange smiles. She blushed and felt a little embarrassed.
Today, Her Majesty the Queen was more beautiful than ever before, and she was the center of everyone's attention as always. When Wei Jingjing walked up to her and saluted, this usually arrogant and cold mother suddenly looked at her and said, "You are very beautiful today."
At that moment, Wei Jingjing felt her head buzzing, and she was almost fainting with joy. Then her mother nodded slightly, indicating that she could walk beside her, "Come to my side, Jingjing."
"Okay, Mom!" Wei Jingjing hurried to catch up with her. Then the king came over and took his mother's arm. A soft smile appeared on her cold face. Wei Jingjing saw the love and tenderness in their eyes, and she felt even happier.
At this time, the noble men and women on the field began to buzz with discussion again. Wei Jingjing saw some noble ladies holding fans to cover half of their faces and laughing quietly. If it were normal, she would definitely panic again, but at this moment she was in a state of excitement that was almost dizzy. Her mother rarely praised her, and her parents seemed to have reconciled. They were now a complete family, and she could completely ignore the gossip.
"Look at her, she doesn't look like a queen at all, but she actually thinks she is a princess." A noble lady whispered.
"Haha, have you heard? His Majesty the King and the Queen have such a good relationship now, they will have another child sooner or later. What will this princess do then?"
Wei Jingjing pretended not to hear these words, but the sharp words of the court officials were still drilling into her ears. At this time, her mother suddenly reached out and gently held her arm, and Wei Jingjing looked at her.
The mother said, "The Prince of the Emerald Kingdom has come. He wants to ask you to dance."
Wei Jingjing's heart skipped a beat. In front of her, the courtiers and nobles automatically split into two sides, and a prince in a cloak walked towards her. He should be...
The hall suddenly became very quiet.
Wei Jingjing blinked, because in front of the prince, there was a cat.
The cat, like the prince, was wearing a cloak and approached her with a stately grace. Strangely, no one objected to the cat's appearance.
But why is there a cat here?
This scene seems familiar, she thought.
The cat had a pair of beautiful golden eyes. The moment she saw its eyes, Wei Jingjing felt that she couldn't look away. When it moved, everything around it became unusually quiet.
"Wei Jingjing," the cat said. Its voice pierced the hall.
Why can cats talk? Wei Jingjing wondered in amazement.
"You have to wake up."
"Awake?"
"This is your dream. You should stop dwelling on it."
Wei Jingjing looked around in panic. Everyone around her stopped moving, as if they were statues. Her father and mother were still smiling at each other, but the smiles were frozen on their faces. No one moved.
"What did you do?" Wei Jingjing asked.
"It just paused your dream for a moment. It will do you no good to fall asleep again."
Dream? Wei Jingjing looked at her parents. After all the twists and turns, they had reconciled. Her mother's attitude towards her had also become softer recently. Everything was slowly moving in the direction she desired. That was the family of three she dreamed of.
"You should wake up."
No. That's not true.
Wei Jingjing took a step back.
"Don't run away anymore, or your body..." Mr. Cat paused, and then he said in a steady voice with a strange surprise, "I see."
The hall suddenly shook violently.
An earthquake? Wei Jingjing wondered blankly.
"Wei Jingjing." The cat spoke again, and this time its voice was unusually serious. "That thing, how long has it been in your body?"
"What?"
"You're going to get killed by it if you keep going like this."
Wei Jingjing felt her muscles contracting restlessly. She woke up from a dream and looked at her parents who were holding hands and gazing at each other like statues. No, she didn't know what the cat was saying.
With a violent tremor, the hall began to collapse. Countless pieces of rubble fell from the sky. The cat's voice became urgent, "Wei Jingjing, you must..."
But Wei Jingjing could only see her parents who were as still as statues. "This place is going to collapse! Dad! Mom!" She hugged them and shouted in panic. The cat's urging began to become vague and distant. A huge rock fell from the sky and crushed her parents into a pulp. She felt her whole body sinking into an icy abyss and she couldn't stop screaming. The cat's figure turned into a golden light and dissipated into the darkness.
Dad! Mom!!
Her hands groped the mutilated bodies of her parents. The blood on the ground was hot and slippery. Countless stars fell, and the sky was collapsing. The courtiers and nobles turned into black shadows, roaring, rushing over in groups, tearing her into pieces as she wailed.
Then she heard a voice: "Just start over again."
Just start over again.
She vaguely saw a shadow.
Yes, just start over again.
So she dissolved, split, reorganized, and reshaped in her screams, and turned into Wei Jingjing again. Then, in the void and darkness, her perception was ignited again.
…
…
Yan's house.
The room was shaking, an invisible storm raging and roaring inside the laboratory.
Captain Ban's parasol was blown away, and it swayed in the wind, and the cat-worm bit the feathers on its tail and shook it up and down in the air. "Earthquake?" it shouted.
"No." Xiao Zhen stared at the incubator that was flashing warning signals crazily. Mr. Cat and Wei Jingjing in the incubator were at the center of the violent storm. He could not move forward at all. He could feel that Mr. Cat's golden eyes, burning like flames, were calmly observing the anomaly. The real world was distorting and being eroded by something that crossed the boundary of the void.
Then, Xiaozhen noticed another abnormality in the room.
He glimpsed a kind of unreal bond swaying and resonating in the storm. Mottled mosaics jumped in front of his desk, like unstable video, like flickering black and white film. He seemed to have seen this scene before.
Xiao Zhen walked towards the desk. The matter that made up the space was being pulled and squeezed. He reached out to the drawer.
"Xiao Zhen——"
He heard Mr. Cat calling from behind him.
The bright light blinded him.
Then everything turned into blank nothingness.
…
…
The room fell silent.
Apart from the equipment and furniture that were blown all over the ground, proving that there had just been a doomsday storm, it seemed as if nothing had happened.
Captain Madara ran to Xiaozhen's side. He was lying on the ground with his eyes closed, obviously unconscious. He patted Xiaozhen's face nervously, "Xiaozhen, what's wrong with you?"
Mr. Cat turned around and said, " There is something in Wei Jingjing's body, which is why I can't invade smoothly."
Captain Madara asked, "You were the one who invaded Wei Jingjing. Why did Xiaozhen faint? Is it related to that thing? Also, what is it you are talking about?"
"There is an alien implant in Wei Jingjing's body, which is a product of the Black Box Society. I just forcefully touched Wei Jingjing and caused it to automatically restart. In theory, it was just the restart of Wei Jingjing's own dream." Mr. Cat said, "However, things always happen by coincidence in such occasions."
"I have a bad feeling."
Mr. Cat said, "Anyway, unfortunately, it just established a connection with something in the room."
"something?"
Mr. Cat opened the desk drawer and inside was the game console left over from the Gu Yu incident last semester.
Captain Madara shouted, "I remember this game console was also the product of those lunatics in the Black Box Society!!"
"Yes, so they respond to each other. This game console already has the ability to invade reality across dimensions. Now with the implant in Wei Jingjing's body, the addition of each other may bring very troublesome side effects. Tsk tsk." Mr. Cat turned on the game console, "Sure enough, Wei Jingjing's dream is connected to this game console."
"Ah. What about our lovely Xiao Zhen?"
"Well, he became a character in the game." Mr. Cat said, looking at the screen of the game console.
Captain Ban leaned over to take a look and said, "Why is Liu Xingquan still inside?"
"Because of Wei Jingjing's dream, people she knows will be randomly pulled in. Let me see how many poor victims there are. Liu Xingquan, our Xiaozhen, Wei Hongzhuo, Sheng Shihua, Cui Mingzhi... Why is there this guy?"
"Who is Gin?" Captain Madara said, looking at the screen.
"An Alte who was cheating people for food and drink in the local area. Wei Jingjing probably knew him, so he was also pulled in." Mr. Cat looked through the character list. "Now we can only conclude that the trigger mechanism for pulling people into the game is the network of relationships centered on Wei Jingjing."
"So, can you pull them out?"
Mr. Cat shook his head. "My interference will cause the collapse of this game world, which means that all the characters in it will be in danger of death."
"The life of the game character is in danger." Captain Madara repeated, and suddenly realized something. "You mean, if you die in this game, people in real life will also die?"
"It forcibly took away the consciousness of the real person. According to the previous operation of clearing all memories by deleting the save file, the death of the game character will cause the real person to become a complete vegetable."
"I remember this game was a farming game, so there shouldn't be any deaths."
"No, it's not a farming game anymore." Mr. Cat said, looking at the screen. "It has re-established a set of rules based on Wei Jingjing's dream. Now it looks like an RPG game where heroes fight monsters."
"We have to tell Xiaozhen this information!!"
Mr. Cat pressed the buttons on the game console with his cat paw, and then he told Captain Ban that the game was no longer subject to outside interference. Outside players could not control the game, nor could they pass information to the characters in the game.
"..." Captain Madara said, "I think this game has malicious intent."
"Yeah." Mr. Cat looked through the character list, "I found Xiaozhen's character."
Captain Madara poked his head out to take a look.
The character's avatar is a small octopus made up of simple pixels.
Name: Octopus
Category: Monster
Level: Lv1
Attributes: A very ordinary little octopus, with very weak combat power. Can be used as food. [Bold] Please note, I am Yan Zhen. [Bold]
Use: Grilling and eating it will restore 20 HP.
Captain Madara said, "It's just an ordinary octopus."
Mr. Cat said, "It's Xiao Zhen. Look at its attributes. The last sentence should have been added by Xiao Zhen himself."
Captain Madara shouted, "This game is really malicious!!!"
