Chapter 35: Reality

Sure enough, [Game] has authority over the [real world] and can tamper with [facts] of the real world.

This is a world that has been tampered with, and they, the chosen [players] who have discovered this [reality], have been [banned] from revealing the slightest hint of it.

I don't know how far this [ban] can go, but the objective existence of things that can be recorded can be easily tampered with and erased, such as deleting words written on paper and tweets sent out to friends, and so on.

Bai Liu found his phone in the drawer, which he hadn't replaced even though the screen was broken, found a friend's phone number in it and dialed it, telling him everything that had happened to him before he could respond. 6, 5 ......"

"What are you counting down for? Tell me more about this thing that happened to you! Is it true? You're not making it up, it's too exciting-"

Bai Liu drops his eyes, "- 3-2-1."

My friend's voice stopped abruptly and then started to become confused, "Eh, Bai Liu what are you calling me for? Eh? When did I answer your phone! I don't remember anything!"

"It's nothing." Bai Liu said casually, "I just missed you and called you."

Seven seconds was the time between Bai Liu's tweet and the last word of his tweet disappearing completely, and he made a special note of it, not realising that [the game] could easily tamper with even something as [non-objective] as human memory, and it only took seven seconds to complete the tampering without taking a second longer.

It seems that tampering with a person's memory is not much more difficult for [the game] than tampering with a piece of data.

My friend, who obviously knew Bai Liu well, joked and asked, "Seriously, why are you calling me? What's up?"

"I was thinking about a question, Lu Yizhan, would you say that people only have seven seconds of memory?" Bai Liu taps his fingers on the table diffidently, recording his experiences in the game on paper with a pen before watching the words disappear one after another.

Lu Yizhan's voice was a bit confused: "Why are you suddenly thinking about such philosophical issues? And you're wrong about this question, aren't you? Isn't the original saying that a fish's memory lasts only seven seconds?"

"Am I misremembering?" Bai Liu propped himself up lazily, "Maybe, after all, with only seven seconds of memory, it's normal to misremember things. eh, do you think it's possible that the original sentence was [Humans only have seven seconds of memory], and then something tampered with it and changed it to [Fish only have seven seconds of memory] to fool us humans who only have seven seconds of memory? "

Lu Yizhan has gotten used to Bai Liu saying some very strange things after he lost his job, he cried and laughed: "What are you thinking about after you lost your job, I got paid today, I'll buy you dinner, don't think about these people and fish and seven-second memories, if people only have seven-second memories, what do you want us people who have to memorize French terms and conditions to do every day? "

"Of course I'll come if you invite me to dinner." Bai Liu casually tossed the coin around his neck into his collar, cooled by a different cold touch than the coin, the piece of Siren King's scales ironed onto his heart, and before Bai Liu could hang up, he asked, haunted, "If a human's memory is only seven seconds, and a fish's memory is only seven seconds, Lu Yizhan, what would you say --How many seconds does a mermaid's memory last?"

"Why are you still dwelling on this, and bringing up mermaids?" Lu Yizhan laughed helplessly, "According to your hypothesis, both humans and fish have a memory of only seven seconds, so a mermaid's memory must be even shorter, a fraction of a second?"

"I suppose so."

Although he said goodbye to the mermaid named Tavel, the other man probably forgot himself the moment Bai Liu left.

Bai Liu rarely feels a sense of loss at being forgotten and ignored, he doesn't seek human approval himself and lives well as long as he has the money to entertain himself, but Siren King is a beautiful piece of data like no other, and even an emotionless guy like Bai Liu feels a faint sense of regret at having his few seconds erased from his partner's memory.

But it's just a bit, a bit the size of a fish scale.

The two have become unshakable revolutionary friends by sharing information about the various discount raffles, but some feel that the two play together only because they both have no parents and are orphans who can understand each other's misery.

As soon as Bai Liu sat down at the barbecue stall, Lu Yizhan opened his eyes with a wink: "Bai Liu, I'm getting married."

"Congratulations." Bai Liu was not surprised, Lu Yizhan and his girlfriend had been together for several years and it was normal to get married, "Then today's meal is on me, I'll give you two thousand for your share later."

Lou Yizhan almost sprayed a mouthful of cold beer in Bai Liu's face, his eyes widening in shock: "Are you crazy? Another treat to pay for my share? And two thousand! Didn't you say you'd never pay for a wedding in your life and do something like that?"

Yes, these were Bai Liu's words at a colleague's wedding.

This colleague usually does not get along well with Bai Liu, who is not a man of words, so he has been gossiping about Bai Liu behind his back, but when it comes to the wedding, he has been licking his lips and trying to get Bai Liu to pay for his share, saying that other colleagues have given 12,000, so Bai Liu, you should also pay a monthly bonus of 12,000.

This is when Bai Liu made the stone-cold statement [I don't have a marriage arrangement, so I'm not going to pay for a stranger's wedding and make an investment that won't pay off].

The colleague's face turned black as he was called a dog by Bai Liu, which meant that he and his wife were a pair of dogs! The colleague was so angry that he was madly swearing at Bai Liu behind his back, saying that Bai Liu would be cut off from his grandchildren.

But Bai Liu was unperturbed by this. He really had no intention of raising offspring, so this kind of expletive was just an objective account of his future life for Bai Liu, and he had no need to be angry.

"Not necessarily, I just don't give money to strangers." Bai Liu took a sip of his beer, "But you're not a stranger, we've been there and done that, and it's not an invalid investment for me to pay for your share."

The first time I saw you, I was happy to see you. I'm just happy to get married and want to invite you over for dinner. I don't have many friends, so I'm glad you're here. Really, forget it."

"We'll talk about this when you have money." Lou Yizhan said while waving his hand in a virtual gesture of pushing back.

If Bai Liu's meticulousness is a matter of nature, Lu Yizhan's penchant for scrounging is a matter of life.

Lu Yizhan is a poor policeman who has been better off recently, but much better off than Bai Liu, who is unemployed, and he really doesn't want Bai Liu to pay for this.

Bai Liu wiped his mouth after eating a skewer of grilled loin and suddenly spoke, "I've made 100,000 a week recently. "

"Pfft--!!! "Lu Yizhan really sputtered, "What have you been doing?!"

He knew Bai Liu wouldn't lie to him and say he had earned 100,000, so Yizhan was genuinely shocked: "You're not really doing anything illegal, are you? I'll arrest you myself!"

Lu Yizhan had always known that Bai Liu's brain was very good, but it was used in some very strange ways, such as designing horror games and devising plots for unmarked crimes, so when he suddenly heard that Bai Liu had become rich, Lu Yizhan's first reaction was not to lemon, but to pull out his mobile phone with a shiver down his spine, alertly preparing to call the police to inform his colleagues.

Lu Yizhan knows that Bai Liu has a very low moral compass, and with that [money hoarding] psychological problem, it's hard to say what Bai Liu could do without a source of income.

"I've changed jobs, you don't have to be so nervous, I've asked, it's legal." Bai Liu cackled as he peeled peanuts, "The job pays well, it's just a bit more dangerous, but it suits me quite well."

"What kind of job can pay that much?" Lou Yizhan was skeptical, "100,000 a week?"

"Emm, it's probably selling your soul to some large underground organisation that I can't reveal the existence of." Bai Liu stroked his chin in thought as he tried to say his experience in [the game] in a way that would not be banned.

"Then I would perform on stage, or live, and do this and that selling my body and soul on stage, and there would be the odd thing that would abuse and bully me, and then show the audience, and some of the people watching me would reward me with a lot of money, and then I'd make a hundred grand."

"......" Lu Yizhan's face appeared confused, shocked, horrified, complicated and so on, finally settling on pity, Lu Yizhan looked at Bai Liu sadly, "Do you work as a duck in a nightclub? Bai Liu?"

Bai Liu: "......"

After Bai Liu's explanation, Lu Yizhan reluctantly believes that Bai Liu is not doing that, but is adamant that he will not accept Bai Liu's share of the money, which he feels is Bai Liu's money for selling his body! He couldn't take it!

Bai Liu: "......"

If this is the way Yizhan has to be interpreted, it does not seem to be impossible.

After a short party, Bai Liu went home to rest for two days, paid his landlord for six months' rent, briefly cleaned his house and was ready to enter [the game].

Although [the game] requires access once every seven days, Bai Liu felt he needed to get in early to find out something else.

But before I go, I'll have a good meal. Even if I die in the game, it's the equivalent of a good severed head meal, Bai Liu thought, and went downstairs for a bowl of noodles with a fried egg.

The owner of the small noodle shop downstairs is quite good at what he does, and the shop has a TV set up on a stand, covered in grease, and now broadcasting social news directly above Bai Liu, who is eating the noodles.

The voice of the hostess on the news was clear and unmistakable: "Lawyers for Li Gou, the prime suspect in the rape and murder of a senior schoolgirl, have filed another lawsuit, claiming that there is insufficient evidence for Li Gou to uphold his death sentence and that preparations are underway for a second trial -"

A picture of a cross-faced suspect and a picture of a smiling girl in school uniform with a mosaic of eyes are placed side by side on the television, starkly out of place.

The male owner of the noodle shop also saw the news, he wiped his hands with his apron, shook his head and sighed: "It's a sin, a good girl doll was spoiled, if I were the parents of this girl student I would probably be going crazy right now, it was going to be sentenced, and now all of a sudden it's said that there is not enough evidence, that the evidence suddenly disappeared, and now the internet is up in arms."

The female presenter on the TV was still broadcasting in an undulating tone, "The victim's family is currently in serious emotional turmoil and is gathering in front of the courthouse to cause trouble, the relevant officers have intervened to investigate and coordinate."

The video in the background shows a hysterical hairy middle-aged woman being stopped by a group of people, so emaciated she's almost lost her human form, a ring around her eyes white and wrinkled with tears, and even though she can barely wipe them away with the back of her hand, the tears and snot she's managed to wipe away fall instantly when the next breath comes.

The woman was stuck under a crevice and was stopped by a group of people, but she lacked the madness to rush towards the courthouse door, almost half on her knees and howling, opening her mouth like a heartbreaking mother animal howling: "She's only 18 !!!! Why is the evidence missing! Why is all the evidence and documentation of what that beast did to me, Guoguo, gone! Are you guys covering for him!!!"

A middle-aged man next to him had been pinned to the ground by the security man's overpowering head, and he was writhing and screaming miserably on the ground, his clothes torn by his struggles.

The man cried out with tears streaming down his face, "Let go of me!!! Give my daughter justice!!! Give my daughter back her innocence! Call out that bastard Li Gou! I swore at Guoguo's grave that my father would kill the bad man to avenge her death!"

In the video, Li Gou, with a mosaic around his eyes, appears, subtly pressing the corners of his mouth, but the smugness of a successful crime still spills out from the corners of his eyes: "If you didn't do it, you didn't do it, and all the previous evidence was fabricated by the two families to frame me."

"A good man like me." Li Gou cracks the corners of his mouth, his mosaic-blinded eyes and the ever-uplifting corners of his mouth giving his expression an eerie grimace and tyranny as he whispers hoarsely, "-God help me, it's the kind of bad people who make random rumours about me that deserve to be burned."

"How tragic." The panel boss is a doughy, soft and chubby man, now watching a social news look with an apron to wipe tears, "I still know these two families, before living on our side, daughter named Guoguo, the results are quite good, I did not expect ...... how can this happen? "

"Evidence of a sudden disappearance?" Bai Liu finished the last bite of his noodles as he raised an eyebrow at the social news on the screen.

This technique of erasing the existence of something objective is somewhat subtly similar to the [game] [ban] technique ah ......

"Where is this girl's grave?" Bai Liu asked the noodle shop owner, "Or do you have her parents' phone number?"

The noodle shop owner was stunned, "Yes there is, what do you want Bai Liu ?"

"I might be able to help them." Bai Liu wiped his mouth and stood up after placing a ten dollar bill on the table and pressing it under the bowl of noodles.

The noodle shop owner was stunned, "Help them? How can you help?"

"By an unconventional yet legal means." Bai Liu comments calmly.

Bai Liu had already discovered that the game was a complete pyramid scheme, where players and players were like dominoes, one after another, being knocked over by events that seemed to be unconnected but were in fact intrinsically linked, falling into the trap and desperation pre-determined by the [game] to stimulate violent desires, and thus being absorbed into the [game], becoming [players] who sold their souls to the [game] to The [player] who sells his soul to the [game] to satisfy his own uncontrollable inner desires.

A condition for entering the game is a personal desire so violent that it defies life and death, such as Bai Liu's desire for money over life.

If Bai Liu is correct, there may soon be another pair of sad and desperate parents in this world of [players].

This [Li Gou] should also be a player, and this [Li Gou] should have used props to erase his crime, while Li Gou's action forced the parents, who had lost their daughter, to seek help and fall into an extreme desire for revenge, thus meeting the game's criteria for accepting players.

It's like [Muke] parachuting into Bai Liu's original position because he wants to experience life because of his bad heart, forcing Bai Liu into the game after being laid off into an uncontrollable desire for money.

Everyone in this world is like a pawn or a block under [the game], and [the game] plays with their lives as if they were gods, as if they were playing an interesting game.

What a cunning and cruel [game].