Chapter 378 Part 2
"Where are we?" Liu Xingquan asked.
After meeting up with Yan Zhen's good friend Captain Chicken, no, Captain Ban, this world that was similar to but different from his perception receded like mist. The world he was familiar with, the passers-by he knew, the streets he had walked a thousand times, all disappeared. He was now in an irregular rectangular space, surrounded by white all around, above and below. He felt like he was in a dream, or in a movie, and the scene was switched instantly.
"Cage." Captain Madara replied, "We are trapped in a place similar to a cage."
Liu Xingquan pointed to a wall and said, "Look, there is a door on the wall." There were tiny cracks on the white wall, and the outline of the door could be vaguely seen.
"Yes, but this is not the exit." Captain Madara said, "It's useless even if you open it. Hey, you actually went and opened it!"
Liu Xingquan had already opened the door. In front of him was another irregular white space. He ran forward unwillingly and opened another white door. He entered another irregular room, and then forward, there was another white space.
After running through four or five rooms in a row, Liu Xingquan finally gave up the useless exploration.
"I'm glad you finally stopped running around." Captain Ban said, flapping his wings and coming to his side.
Liu Xingquan turned to look at Captain Ban, "You are too calm."
"I'd like to know how you can tell whether a chicken is calm or not from its face."
Well, the chicken is right. Liu Xingquan said, "So what should we do now?"
"Do you remember what happened just now?" Captain Ban said, "You were in Lola's life just now."
"Remember."
"Then, close your eyes. Tell yourself that you are back to reality." Captain Madara said, "Calm down, trick your brain, and believe that what you just saw is real."
"I'll try my best."
"alright."
Liu Xingquan opened his eyes again and stood on the pedestrian street again. Noisy passers-by came and went, vendors not far away were hawking their wares, and the owner of a snack bar stood beside him unhappily, blaming him for breaking the chicken coop.
(Give him the money and let's go.)
(Okay.) Liu Xingquan rummaged through his pockets and luckily found that he had enough money to buy books, so he immediately paid for the chicken.
When the owner saw the money, he smiled and didn't embarrass him anymore.
"Let me tell you, this little rooster can be used to make boiled chicken when you go home. It will taste very tender," he suggested, counting the money.
Liu Xingquan picked up Captain Ban in time to stop his rampage. They walked out of the pedestrian street. He looked around. He could see Xiaosheng's brothers laughing and eating barbecue in a food stall not far away. The expressions on each of their faces were so delicate and real, and the smell of barbecued and fried meat wafted in the air. "This dream is too real."
Captain Madara said, "Unfortunately, this is not a dream."
"What is this?"
"It is a route compiled based on your memory. It is a collection of algorithms. You have been in a self-loop of this route. Before you jump out of the self-loop, I will also be bound by the algorithm."
"Can you explain it more clearly?"
"For example, one day you quarreled with a friend and broke up with him, but you regretted it very much, so you thought about how it would be if you hadn't quarreled, so there would be a possible direction of not quarreling with your friend; you were hit by a car when you went out, and you might think that if you had walked 2 minutes later, you would not have been hit by the car and injured, so there would be a direction of if you had walked 2 minutes later and not been hit by the car; your friend got seriously ill, so there might be a direction of your friend discovering the early signs in time and being saved before the disease worsened. When the subject makes different decisions, there will be countless possible directions derived for him."
Liu Xingquan blinked, "You mean the parallel world?"
"No matter how you interpret it, we are now in a sandbox of possibilities." Captain Madara said, "It corresponds to the direction of reality. You didn't meet Yan Zhen here, right?"
"Yes. They seem to have forgotten him." Liu Xingquan said, "Wait, is this a world line without Yan Zhen? Or is it that Yan Zhen is actually there, but we just don't know him."
"It's a sandbox," Captain Madara said.
"What should we do now?" Liu Xingquan said.
"It was originally a self-looping sandbox. After jumping out of the self-loop, some directions will produce dead ends in space and time. In this case, it cannot operate normally, which will cause probabilistic errors in gravitational electromagnetic waves. At the current scale, of course, it can be deduced using mathematical models, but the problem is that there are no computers with sufficient computing power here. What do you mean by that look?"
Liu Xingquan said with a straight look in his eyes: "This doesn't sound like something a chicken would say."
"What's your problem with chickens?!"
"No." A chicken that can be a captain is certainly not an ordinary chicken.
"I have to make it clear that Xiao Zhen has no way to interfere here at the moment. That means you and I need to find a way to escape from the cage on our own." Captain Madara puffed out his chest, "That means you need to rely on me. Hmm? Where are you looking?"
Liu Xingquan was looking around. He suddenly quickened his pace and stopped in front of a fried stinky tofu stall.
"Hey! It's Koizumi." The busy female stall owner smiled at him, "You're a little late after school today."
"Hello, Auntie, give me one."
"Okay."
Soon the female stall owner put the golden fried stinky tofu on bamboo sticks and poured sweet and spicy sauce and garlic chili sauce on them. When he took it, the stinky tofu on the bamboo sticks was still sizzling.
Liu Xingquan took a bite and said, "Mmm, delicious, it's the taste I'm familiar with!"
The female stall owner smiled and said , "The taste of my food has never changed. Hmm? Why is there a chicken here?"
Captain Ban said angrily: "What's wrong with having chickens?" He turned to Liu Xingquan and said: "It's amazing that you still have the mood to eat stinky tofu now."
Liu Xingquan asked the female stall owner for a small paper box and gave half of the stinky tofu on the bamboo skewers to Captain Ban.
They each took a chicken and walked to a roadside bench, sat down, and began to eat with relish.
"How's the taste? I really like this restaurant. Yan Zhen and I used to come here to eat after school."
Captain Ban buried his head and pecked a few times. "That's right, but you are a little too relaxed now. I hope you can have a sense of urgency. We are now prisoners in the sandbox locked by the bad guys."
"I've eaten this stinky tofu many times, and I remember the taste very clearly. But now I can seriously say that yes, this is the taste. This spicy sauce, this crispy feeling, this special fragrant and stinky smell, I mean, it's like real and vivid reality."
"The muscles, blood, and every cell in your body right now are also real. It's too difficult to explain. This is a very complicated algorithm."
"Do we need to fight to get out of here?"
"It's likely that."
"I understand." Liu Xingquan stood up and threw the bamboo sticks into the trash can next to him.
"where did you go?"
"Go get something." Liu Xingquan said in a low voice.
"What?"
…
…
Liu Xingquan strode forward, with Captain Ban following closely behind him.
It was already night. He crossed two streets and turned a corner. This was a very old neighborhood. An entire block here was employee welfare housing for the local shipyard. Liu Xingquan remembered that the shipyard went bankrupt many years ago, and the shipyard community had been neglected. For children, this community was a paradise for playing and they could come and go as they pleased.
There are various recreational facilities in the community left over from the glorious days of the shipyard, and children often gather together to play happily there. But for Liu Xingquan at this moment, this community has another meaning.
He passed through buildings and finally stopped in front of the water tower behind the community. The water tower is about 18 meters high and has been out of use in recent years.
"Is this a water tower?" Captain Madara said.
"Yeah." Liu Xingquan lowered his head and began to fiddle with the door lock in front of the water tower.
"What are you doing?"
"This water tower is very tall, right? People nearby can see it. When we were little, we always heard that there was a snake spirit on the water tower. Our parents even said that there was a man-eating monster there, and it would eat us if we didn't obey." Liu Xingquan fiddled with the door lock and said, "Later, Yan Zhen wanted to prove that there was no snake spirit in the world, so he told us that he wanted to go up and take a look."
"Oh. Can you drive this?"
Click, Liu Xingquan unlocked the door. "Yes, because there is something wrong with this lock. It can be opened as long as the angle is right." He walked in. "Of course, this is what Yan Zhen told me."
The two of them walked into the water tower. It was dark inside the water tower, and they couldn't see their hands in front of them. In the dark space, they couldn't even see the stairs clearly.
Liu Xingquan turned on the flashlight and illuminated the narrow staircase. "I thought it was too dark inside and didn't take Yan Zhen's words seriously. I didn't expect him to sneak in here alone."
"Then what?"
One man and one chicken walked up the stairs. The space was extremely narrow, and the small beam of light could barely illuminate a circle of light. The surroundings were very quiet, and only the sound of Liu Xingquan's footsteps echoed up and down.
"It's very dark, right? But Yan Zhen came in alone and climbed to the top alone."
"Considering that humans are naturally afraid of the unknown and darkness, that child is very brave."
"Even if you are by my side, Captain Ban, I still feel scared. It's too dark here, and so steep." Liu Xingquan whispered, "But Yan Zhen is always so brave."
"You are quite impressive," said Captain Madara, "but not everyone can act calmly after being caught in such a predicament. Besides, what are you going to take?"
Liu Xingquan said nothing more. They moved forward silently.
Circle after circle, after walking who knows how many circles, Liu Xingquan and Captain Ban finally reached the top of the water tower.
"We've reached the top of the tower," Captain Madara said, "What are you here for?"
They were now standing in the center of the water tower, surrounded by dark, bottomless reservoirs.
"Yan Zhen said there is no snake spirit on the top of the tower, let alone any man-eating monsters." Liu Xingquan squatted down and felt around on the platform on the ground. "He said he found something."
"What?"
"It's here indeed!!" Liu Xingquan shouted, raising his hand excitedly.
He held a small knife in his hand, and the blade shone coldly in the dark room. Captain Madara saw that when the blade cut through the air, there seemed to be tiny particles vibrating.
"Then he gave me this knife."
