Chapter 431 Turning Point
"Make your choice! Whose life are you going to sacrifice first?" The voice of the Dead World Dragon echoed in the hall.
Yan Zhen bit her lip.
I didn't respond to him.
What else could I say to him at this moment? Opening the think tank door would put the whole world in the hands of the Black Box Society, and not handing over the key would mean watching the Necromancer slaughter these four innocent people according to its script.
This is never a multiple choice question.
…
…
Yan Zhen fell silent. It was obvious that he couldn't answer at all.
Then, the time came.
"Ding Dong..." The Necromancer imitated the sound of a timer, "Time's up."
"You don't want to open the door? Very good, then who do you choose?" The Necromancer swayed his shadow and moved between the four cages. "You Lola humans have a tradition of giving priority to ladies. So, who do you choose, Bai Lianlian who is resenting you, or this pitiful Song Jiarui?"
“Stop it!!”
"Or maybe this Fan Yingjie?" It announced happily, "It's decided. It's this unfortunate Fan Yingjie."
“You fucking…”
"That's him." Necromancer laughed maliciously.
As Yan Zhen cursed, a pitch-black snake leaped out from the gap between the thunderbolts. It was a virus generated from the redundant garbage of the data program. Wherever it slid, it left flickering spots. Fan Yingjie was still mumbling to himself in the same place without knowing it. The pitch-black snake entangled with him. A burst of light suddenly exploded behind the pitch-black scales, and the flying light particles were like sharp broken glass.
The blurry light and shadow faded away.
A man fell to the ground.
His size showed that he was obviously an adult. His body - which could only be described as corpse pieces - had turned into a miserable pile of debris. The pitch-black snake was also torn into pieces in the explosion just now, but it twisted into more small snakes in an instant, rolling among the man's remains.
Fan Yingjie was unharmed and was shaking on the spot. His eyes seemed to be empty.
"Hey, there's a dramatic turn of events!!" Necromancer shouted excitedly, "This secret investigator from the Eye of Supervision suddenly stepped forward at the critical moment and stood in front of Fan Yingjie. If this investigator had secretly used his trump card - a neutrino bomb - to escape, he might have been able to escape successfully. But he chose to protect Fan Yingjie, which is really touching. Is this the responsibility of an adult human being?"
“…”
The Necromancer said, "Oh? You are relieved." Its shadow flickered on Yan Zhen's face, "Because the person who died was not a classmate you knew, but a stranger, so you are relieved, right?"
Yan Zhen stared at it suspiciously.
"Clang clang clang clang..." said the Dead World Dragon in an excited tone, "In the narration of various dramatic stories, twists and conflicts are indispensable. At a time like this, how can there not be wonderful and unexpected twists and turns?"
"..." Yan Zhen said, " What do you want to say?"
"Of course, this turning point needs necessary preparation, otherwise it will only reduce the interest of the story." It said, "I'll give you a hint. Before entering the maze, why didn't the secret investigator choose one of you and your friend Liu Xingquan as his teammate?"
“…”
"You don't want to guess, right? The reason is simple, because he is not a stranger at all. Even if he has put on a disguise filter, if you get close to him, both you and Liu Xingquan will recognize him at the first time. So this secret investigator chose a third person besides you and Liu Xingquan."
"What are you talking about?" Yan Zhen's voice became sharp.
“Clang clang clang…” said the Necromancer, “Then it’s time to reveal the answer.”
"What do you want to say?"
"The real name of this secret investigator of the Overwatch who just lost his life is Liu Ruiguo."
The shadow of the Necromancer Dragon loomed over Yan Zhen's face. "Hey? You're finally scared. Are you surprised? The first person to be abandoned was Uncle Liu, the father of your best friend Liu Xingquan. "
Yan Zhen shouted hoarsely: "You are lying!!"
"Lying? Do you want to see it with your own eyes? The remains of his consciousness are not quite human anymore. I don't mind removing his disguise filter." Necromancer said happily, "Oh, that's true. After all, this secret investigator hid his identity and pretended to be an ordinary driver. He played the role very successfully for more than ten years and almost fooled everyone. The Supervisory Eye always works hard in this regard. Even his son doesn't know that his father, who looks ordinary on the surface, is actually an unknown hero who protects the city. Yo, you look really scared."
"I know what you want to refute. Why didn't your Uncle Liu meet you while exploring the maze? Because this is his secret investigation, and his priority is how to kick you students out of the game as soon as possible."
"What should we do next ? How are you going to explain to Liu Xingquan? Because you think the key you stole is more important than his father?"
The mazes began to sing.
The branch codes I had laid out layer by layer were finally activated silently. Those were the codes I had spread since I first infiltrated the game. They were nested with the maze structure and continued to multiply and replicate through the interaction between the player and the maze. I made several preparations. The Necromancer knew that I would invade the alien game, and in order to avoid any accidents, I conceived and generated several escape tricks, almost all of which were blocked by it.
The current code directly reverses the foundation of the maze of the alien game. Previously, I accumulated and upgraded my permissions by disguising myself as a maze task. Although this little permission alone cannot compete with the Necromancer, I can force all mazes to execute self-update mode at the moment of launching the code. The Necromancer will stop all this, but before stopping, it must put the maze data into a storage buffer, and the seconds between this cache are my chance. This method is very effective, the only problem is that it takes a lot of time.
This is also the reason why I have endured until now.
The mazes began to sing.
Each of the cube rooms was moving, left and right, up and down, making rhythmic sounds. The ground and the dome began to shake at the same time, and the monsters in the room ran out, changing positions in each moving room.
The song was intermittent, and all the mazes were swaying to the rhythm of the song. The Necra Dragon's smile was frozen on its face, looking like a suddenly frozen explosion cloud. But it didn't take long for it to process the sudden update in front of it.
My thoughts caught Yan Zhen. "Uncle Liu!!" he shouted, "My classmate! And Liu Xingquan!!"
A twisted crack appeared on the dome of the moving maze, spraying scorching white light into all vision. I pulled Yan Zhen up and flew up.
The alien maze rippled beneath our feet and gradually melted away.
We flew into the high-speed transmission channel.
It was dark all around, with only a small green bird flickering like a speck on the dome.
…
…
When Yan Zhen woke up from reality, he jumped up.
"It's a lie, isn't it? Uncle Liu is fine! And Liu Xingquan and my classmates, how are they?"
[Liu Xingquan is the winner of the alien world game just like you. He is not bound by the agreement. I just grabbed him and he escaped from the alien world maze together.]
"Where's Uncle Liu? It's lying, right?" he asked in an almost pleading tone.
He is brain dead.
Yan Zhen's face turned pale. He gritted his teeth and continued to ask, "What about my three classmates?"
[Their thoughts and consciousness are with the Necromancer. They are too deeply entangled in the agreement. I only had time to eject you and Liu Xingquan.]
"How could you not save them!!"
[There is too little time. I am not in a good condition to fight against the Necra Dragon head-on.]
Yan Zhen's eyes were red. He wanted to say something to me, but soon lowered his head and said, "This is all my fault, because I made you..."
[No, it's not your fault. Whether it's me, your Uncle Liu, or your three classmates.] I said, [All of this development is based on the careful calculations of the black box. Many things you think are just accidental results, but these choices are just the conditions set by the other party in advance, so that you can make the choices they want you to make.]
"It wants the key." Yan Zhen said, "I know I can't give it the key."
Yan Zhen is more sober than I thought.
As I explained to Yan Zhen in advance, you can imagine the entire world as a complex self-programming, which is constantly generating new redundant garbage, but the world can always run in a self-consistent manner. If you want to completely innovate and shape the world, you must master the source code of the world, which is what I told Yan Zhen about the principle of things. The "source code" of the world has always been locked. The pioneers realized that unlocking the principle of things would only bring devastating disasters, so they hid the key.
The Necra Dragon, an uncontrolled creature born from the Forerunners and one of the founders of the Black Box Society, wants to seize the key, but in fact it just wants to turn the world into its own property as it pleases.
[Yes, you can’t hand over the key.] I said to him.
…
…
At this time, the door was pushed open.
An Yuan poked her head out, "Xiao Zhen, Liu Xingquan is here to see you."
Liu Xingquan walked into Yan Zhen's room from behind An Yuan.
After An Yuan left, Liu Xingquan immediately said impatiently: "We have won the game just now, right? This game is really interesting! Did you get the prize you wanted?"
He had a happy smile on his face, and his cognition stayed at the moment of their victory. At the moment we talked with Necromancer, Liu Xingquan, as another winner, was left in the upper level of the maze, unaware of what had just happened. For him, it was just a happy and thrilling game journey.
He didn't know what kind of threat Yan Zhen had encountered, he didn't know that his three classmates were on the verge of death, he didn't know that his father had...
But he couldn't be told all this now.
Yan Zhen lowered his eyes, "Mr. Air , you were right before, I shouldn't have dragged Liu Xingquan into this."
"? What are you talking about?"
[He really shouldn't be involved. He shouldn't know these things. Now that he hasn't gotten too deeply involved, you still have a choice. ]
I quickly transmitted some of my knowledge to Yan Zhen. Since the Necromancer has appeared, the situation is irreversible. The existence of the Necromancer and I alone is enough to bring disaster to his friend. His friend is just an ordinary human, and there is only one choice we can make.
"I see."
"Yan Zhen, what are you talking about with Mr. Air?"
"Mr. Air, please immediately..." Yan Zhen paused, "erase all his recent memories of you and your recent adventure."
Liu Xingquan widened his eyes: "What are you talking about??"
"Forget it. Don't come to see me again recently."
"What are you talking about?" Liu Xingquan stared at him, "What do you want to do suddenly and inexplicably? Why do you want to erase my memory?"
"Mr. Air, hurry up."
"What are you doing? Are you in any danger?" Liu Xingquan raised his voice, anger flashing in his eyes, "Are you in any trouble?"
“…”
"I'm telling you Yan Zhen, you don't have the right to do this !! Who do you think you are?" Liu Xingquan shouted, "You don't have the right to do this to me!!"
"Mr. Air!!"
"Yan Zhen!! Do you look down on me?! What am I in your eyes??"
Then, a pale fire ignited in his brain, and his eyes became a little dazed. I burned all the boy's memories of me during these days, as well as his strange adventures with Yan Zhen these days. Although these memories were burned, only the uncontrollable anger remained in his consciousness.
At this moment, he didn't understand why he was angry, so he repeated it again based on his intuition: "Do you look down on me?!"
There was a silence at first, so silence that it made one's mouth dry, and then the boy heard the reply from the other side.
Yan Zhen said, "Don't be so self-righteous. I look down on you."
Deathly silence.
"You are just a driver's son."
I didn't see the expression on Yan Zhen's face, Liu Xingquan's eyes widened. After a few seconds, Liu Xingquan didn't say anything.
Then he turned around and left without saying a word.
First there was the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs, and then An Yuan's voice downstairs, "Xingquan, you're leaving so soon."
The door was closed.
I saw Liu Xingquan walking forward without looking back, then suddenly stopped and shouted at the window: "Yan Zhen you bastard!!"
A little green bird outside the window was startled and flew away.
Yan Zhen lowered his head. In order to drive his friend away, he lied, and this lie hit the most vulnerable part of Liu Xingquan's heart, so that the boy could not face it rationally at all. In terms of efficiency, this lie was almost perfect.
I began to think about the most pressing question before us: [What should we do next? ]
