The waves rushed onto the beach over and over again, and the water sent white foam to the shore in a forward direction. There are seagulls chirping around, crowds walking around, and children frolicking.

In the dream before waking up, I don't know whether it was long or short, Gu San always felt that everything he had experienced flashed in his mind like a marquee.

It is the bright starry sky and the whistling wind in the deserted city.

It's brightly lit high-rise buildings, traffic coming and going, and drunken crowds singing in the empty streets.

It is the birds and beasts between the mountains and forests, and the peasants who work in the fields.

It's a birthday in the supermarket, blowing out a candle.

It was the death of her mother, the last look at the blood splattered on the window as she closed the door with red eyes.

It was holding a gun in his hand and taking it as his own life, and he got into the car and watched the teacher who once guarded him never return to his side.

It's to protect your lover, but you end up watching your lover die. It's trying to fight and trying to change, only to find out that everything is still the same.

Nothing that turned out to be done did not work at all. In the end, they couldn't do anything.

She hadn't cried for a long time, and the tears had long since flowed in her unsettled life. She couldn't even remember the last time she cried, it was so long ago that it had become an even tougher challenge than surviving as an adult. Her tears dried up, and all the fragility, fear, sadness, and sorrow in her heart seemed to disappear as the people around her died one by one.

All that remains is numbness.

Only numbness.

No one can find out in the dark what kind of changes in a person's mood are. In the darkness of the night, people could only hear the sound of gunfire, wails, the smell of blood, the rancid stench of death.

No tears.

Tears are the least noticeable and least necessary things to appear in such a world, they are things that she has long forgotten.

Gu San slowly detached herself from her thoughts and dreams under the washing of the sea, and she felt that her brain was gradually tearing apart from everything she remembered, and the light slowly pierced down as she opened her eyes. She lifted her hand to block the light.

Beneath her was a soft sand, and the water washed over her body over and over again with white foam.

She had been to this place before, and in the first world, Murong Yuhua was still an overconfident fool, exaggerated like a peacock showing off his might. But here, he behaved like a normal boy, pulling her along the sand and letting her see what a normal world should look like.

Where the sea meets the sky, it is blue, and the sea surface is shimmering.

Seabirds are flying up and down in the sky, and travelers who come out to play are strolling in flocks. The lighthouse on the coastline in the distance is snow-white, and the road behind it is full of traffic.

Everything was still the same as she had seen it at the beginning.

"Do you like this place?"

Gu San sat on the beach and turned sideways to look in the direction where the voice came from, and there was a man standing not far from her, Murong Yuhua's voice, Murong Yuhua's similar appearance. It's just that the hair is longer and softer, and the face looks paler.

He didn't wear a suit, a short coat and straw sandals like in the second world, but a pair of navy blue bib pants with tools like wrenches and electric pipes hanging from his body. He stood barefoot on the sand shyly and reservedly, his toes slightly curled up with nervousness, and his gaze followed the churning waves, as if in amazement.

Gu San relaxed his body and leaned on the beach, "This is a new world, and you are still Murong Yuhua?" ”

"You can call me Murong Yuhua, that's me...... To accompany you to choose a name. ”

"So the world here isn't real." Gu San's tone was normal when she said this, she didn't bring much emotion in it, she just told a fact directly. The man, who had been a teenager and was now a young man, stood there and nodded, "Maybe you've sensed something—this is the world of consciousness I've built for you." ”

"Here? All of it? ”

"Yes. Everything, including the ocean, including the sand beneath your feet, these are the virtual perceptions that the world of data transmits to your neural silos to your neurons. ”

"So that's why I slit my own throat in the first place, but I woke up on different people over and over again?" Gu San looked at the young man, "Then can I ask a question?" Is it true that the world full of zombies was originally inhabited? ”

"That's true. That's part of your true memory. In fact, I started by building a neural silo for you to come to this world of data in the hope that your mind would stay active and 'alive'. But there are always some surprises. The young man approached Gu San, and he seemed to have a lot of confusion and unknowns that Gu San needed to answer for him, "I have laid a neural network for you, so that you can at least live like a dream for the time being, in a place where you can relax." ”

Gu San raised his hands, "It's not 'easy' to fight one world after another. If you're going to do it, you should let me go on vacation. But then again, when I die, will there be such high-end technology in the world that can keep me 'alive' as a dead person? ”

"Of course not when on the ground, I brought you back, I did this. I don't want you to die for us like this, Third Sister Gu. ”

Gu San looked at him with a somewhat puzzled look.

The young man finally raised his face at him, smiled wryly, and said, "Of course you don't recognize me at all. I was one of the children you saved from Fortress Nine, the little boy. ”

"I thought you were all gone. How did you do it when you were so young? Gu San's expression became serious, "You didn't bring the other children in for an adventure, did you?" You must know that there were definitely a lot of zombies at that time, and they were not something you could deal with at your age. ”

"I promise, they were already on their way to the next fortress, and I got off halfway. Because I am not a terrestrial born child per se. ”

"What do you mean?"

"In addition to the survivors on the ground, there is also a group of newborns born in the 'Castle in the Sky'. While you're still struggling to survive in a ruined city, a giant flying machine carrying human genes, soil, and the latest technology has taken off. After five years of steady flight, newborns began to be born. And I, on the other hand, was one of the third batch of newborns to be born. ”

The boy sat beside Gu San, stretched out his hand in front of her, and slowly unfolded a new picture using the data stream, which was the place where he had lived all along, the sky city shrouded in data.

"In the beginning, almost all the satellites were destroyed, and the few that were difficult to use were no longer usable, and Sky City even launched its own satellites. It's almost impossible to imagine how cold and unforgiving that aerial world is, denying everything that once existed in society. We just need to be humble enough to accept all the education instilled by AI, without any questioning, or even trying to understand the ground. ”

"And you? You're the one who left the island of safety at a young age, came to the surface, and found that we were all living like ants? Gu San couldn't help but sneer as he spoke, "And then you think our sacrifice and struggle are very pathetic, and you are very shocked to see me die for you children, so you decided to leave my mind behind and take me back to this shit-like fortress where you were born?" ”

The man sensed that Gu San's tone was a little impatient, but he still nodded, "I want to resurrect you." A warrior like you shouldn't just die. And more importantly, it can't be just because of me, a kid running around. You should have been like this. But this thing ...... It is true that I did not seek your opinion first, and there was no way to ask for your opinion again at that time. I was too young to think about it that much, I just wanted you to live and continue to live as I did when I met you. ”

"But you didn't make me feel easy, I thought the state you put me in should have been for me to go on vacation. What's the difference between meeting zombies over and over again and keeping fighting, and living like my shit? Do you really think of me as a lifesaver? Or are you torturing me? ”

When Murong Yuhua heard this, he hurriedly waved his hand to her in a panic, "I really didn't want to torture you!" The data world I used to build for you in the phone I picked up was all easy, but it was just ...... It's just that your mind, your memory, changes everything in the metaverse, and neural networks can't do that. The part of your brain tissue that you have left behind plays a role. In the end, the neural chamber is nothing more than a medium to present it all. ”

“…… Tale? ”

"Some, humorous and funny stories, at least the ones that will make you relax and live in them. Just like you...... That's what you saw at the beginning. But then something went wrong, and the zombies appeared. Murong Yuhua said with some annoyance, "The zombie virus that appeared in those worlds is actually you." Your existence is a virus for the data world in the neural warehouse. Infinite copying, aggressive, unshakable and inevitable. I'm sorry for that, of course, I'm really sorry, but I can't control it. ”

Gu San: "Then you don't have to be so sorry. ”

She let out a long sigh and her gaze fell on the waves not far away.

"At least you let me go on vacation in the first half, right?" Gu San's smile was inexplicably bitter, but this was her sincere words, "I have lived for thirty-five years, and during these thirty-five years, I have been accompanied by death almost every day. I don't blame you for throwing my mind into world after world, I've never seen anything so grand in the real world. I have never seen clean water, soft sand; I haven't seen so many people coming and going. All — all of this that you showed me that I had never seen before. ”