Chapter 117: “What kind of wicked people came up with this crappy game?”
What’s happening?
An Wujiu looked up, the cracks in the sky growing deeper, like ice floes breaking apart in a glacier, gradually drifting from their original positions.
It wasn’t as they had imagined. After lighting the divine pillars, no miracle of rebirth occurred, or perhaps it hadn’t happened yet.
An Wujiu lowered his head and noticed the numbers on the back of his hand glowing. After flickering for a moment, the light vanished, returning to its original state.
That strange force hadn’t disappeared yet, as if it were battling his own innate power, neither side able to conquer the other. The blue flames burned even higher, speaking in an eerie and ancient language, but this time, An Wujiu seemed to understand its words directly!
This language was very similar to the one his father had recorded!
[Quick! Offer the sacrifice to me!]
An Wujiu tightly gripped the obsidian dagger, raising it high, but he still wouldn’t strike. Matsubara’s calm face was right in front of him, and the low murmurs seemed to mock his futile resistance.
[Foolish human, do you think you are special now?]
The deity questioned him.
[Look at me, and you will see your father. Don’t you miss him?]
An Wujiu almost uncontrollably turned his face, like a stiff puppet, being manipulated by that powerful force. But at the same time, the power within his chest rose to counter it, growing stronger in response to the opposition. So he turned back, refusing to look at it.
But the flames spread instantly to both sides, forming a large circle that encompassed them all.
Suddenly, An Wujiu saw a terrifying vision: in the scene, he was like now, kneeling before the sacrificer, crazily stabbing the person’s chest with the dagger in his hand. His face was splattered with blood, the thick liquid covering a calm yet mad smile.
No, that wasn’t him.
The person being sacrificed wasn’t Matsubara either; it was an unfamiliar face.
An Wujiu frowned deeply, blood once again trickling from the corner of his mouth.
The person in the vision—An Wujiu didn’t know who he was. Perhaps it was another possible version of himself. The current version of him had mostly integrated the extremely evil side, with the chaos and evil parts gradually calming down.
But what if it were the other way around?
He could feel his mind moving from stability to chaos, just as everything in the universe followed the law of entropy increase.
In chaos, destruction is the only constant outcome.
But An Wujiu forced himself to stop. The power in his chest nearly tore his body apart, and in excruciating pain, he fought through the suppression of the blue flames and threw the dagger off the cliff.
At the same moment, Shen Ti hugged him.
“Did you see it? Numbers have appeared on everyone’s hands.”
Hearing Shen Ti’s voice, An Wujiu weakly looked up. He saw a number 98 on the back of Matsubara’s hand. Looking at Wu You and Nan Shan, they also had 98.
Everyone had the number 98, except Shen Ti. He took off his gloves, and there was nothing on his hand.
As they were wondering, an obsidian dagger fell from the sky, piercing into Matsubara’s chest.
The moment the blood splattered on An Wujiu’s face, the metallic smell invaded his brain. Once again, he saw a blood-covered, maniacally smiling “self” staring back at him.
[Do you think you can stop me?]
That voice seemed to come from hell, so low it was hard to distinguish, like the sound of boiling lava. Outside the cliff, there were waves of human “screams,” and the red moonlight instantly drove away the last bit of daylight. The earth was left with only eerie crimson and coldness.
[Impossible, you can’t even control yourself.]
The bloody sacrifice flew from the dagger tip, landing automatically in the center of the ancient stone plate. Blood flowed down the grooves of the stone plate, reaching An Wujiu’s feet.
The stone coffin containing Matsubara’s body closed automatically. No matter how An Wujiu resisted, the sacrifice was completed. The blood-red moon hung overhead like a bloodthirsty orb, threatening to fall and crush them all, rolling into the valley, buried in the cold snow.
The hallucinations kept appearing in his mind, and An Wujiu stood up like a walking corpse, the icy wind penetrating even the gaps in his bones.
None of them could remember how they returned to the temple. If the sacrificer gave up his heart, then what they offered was likely their souls and fears.
An Wujiu couldn’t figure it out. It made sense that there was nothing on Shen Ti’s hand, given how different Shen Ti was from everyone else. But why was the number on the back of his own hand 99, while everyone else’s was 98? What did this number signify?
On their way back to the temple, Shen Ti told him that some memories flashed through his mind after he lit the divine pillars.
“What did you remember?”
Shen Ti frowned slightly. “I’m not sure if they were real memories, because what I saw seemed less like mine and more like something you could see.”
An Wujiu didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”
Shen Ti looked at him. “They were almost all initialization screens from different games, but they weren’t mine, because the top right corner displayed your name and level, ranging from A-level to S-level to SS-level, appearing alternately.”
An Wujiu couldn’t understand why Shen Ti’s memories would contain a perspective entirely his own.
“That’s not the strangest part,” Shen Ti told him. “What confuses me the most is that I paid special attention to some of those initialization scenes, and none of them were games you and I had experienced together. There was no Red and Black, no Containment Center, no Casino—just unfamiliar ones, and there were many of them.”
What Shen Ti said disrupted An Wujiu’s original train of thought.
He told Shen Ti about the visions that kept flashing during the sacrifice.
“It could be the me before I lost my memory.” An Wujiu thought. It was indeed impossible for him to be rated SSS directly upon entering the Holy Altar. “Yang Ming was very afraid of me at the time, wasn’t he? The games you saw me experience might be the ones I participated in from when I entered the Holy Altar until I met you.”
But this didn’t explain why Shen Ti could see from his perspective and see everything through it.
The closer they got to the truth, the more elusive everything became.
They talked for a while and returned to the temple, which was now much emptier and colder. Red moonlight shone through every window, casting an eerie glow on the temple floor.
Shen Ti walked An Wujiu back to his room. When they reached the door, they found Zhou Yijue leaning against the wall, seemingly waiting for An Wujiu.
“What are you doing here?” Shen Ti asked, his tone unfriendly.
Zhou Yijue didn’t bother to put on a smile, his narrow, upturned eyes were glancing at them.
“Just want to chat.”
An Wujiu raised his eyebrows. “Now? There’s only ten minutes left before ‘lights out.'”
“Ten minutes is enough.” Zhou Yijue stood up straight. “If it wasn’t important, I wouldn’t have come at this time.”
He glanced at Shen Ti. “You can go ahead.”
Shen Ti sneered. “It’s not ‘go ahead,’ it’s you should know your place.”
An Wujiu wanted to tell Shen Ti not to misuse words, but the timing wasn’t right, so he let it go and just held his hand, following Zhou Yijue.
Zhou Yijue led them to a quiet room, windowless on all sides, with a single altar in the center. It looked like the room they had for the warm-up match, or perhaps a confessional.
Without any preamble, Zhou Yijue directly told them, “I am actually a tester and researcher for the Holy Altar.”
This statement was like a thunderclap out of a clear sky, but strangely, An Wujiu didn’t feel very surprised.
Zhou Yijue was devious and good at lying. His words should have been hard to believe, but neither of the two people in front of him raised any objections.
“Then your purpose for entering here must be different from ours.” An Wujiu looked at Zhou Yijue. “But you changed later on.”
In one simple sentence, An Wujiu summarized Zhou Yijue’s emotional journey since entering the Holy Altar.
“Yes.” In the blood-red moonlight, Zhou Yijue’s outline was particularly clear, the moonlight illuminating the rare loneliness on his face. “My initial task was very easy. Enter the games, find bugs, push the plot and logic issues, then report back to the development department for them to fix. So my state of playing games was very relaxed. Losing didn’t matter because I could just exit and re-enter directly. Sometimes, to test completeness, I might go through one instance several times. So early on, I didn’t really have any sense of game immersion.”
An Wujiu listened silently, wondering if Zhou Yijue, being a tester, might know some background information about the development of the Holy Altar and the people involved in the project.
Before he could ask, Shen Ti spoke up, albeit in a less peaceful manner.
“What kind of scumbags created this shitty game?”
Zhou Yijue didn’t mind, instead, a faint smile appeared on his lips. “The project was originally conceived by a destitute independent game designer. It’s said that this person submitted his project plan to many companies, but received no response.”
Shen Ti interjected, “And then it was picked up by Sha Wen?”
Zhou Yijue sneered, “Wrong.”
“No game company adopted his plan. A year after he abandoned it, the trailer for this game appeared in advertisements for Sha Wen’s largest gaming company, with an overall framework identical to his submission, but the credit did not go to him.”
Shen Ti smirked, “Damn capitalist pigs.”
“This person tried everything but couldn’t get his name on the game. Eventually, he fell ill, and lacking the money to become a premium member of a hospital, he died. I found out about this after becoming a tester for ‘Holy Altar.’”
Zhou Yijue continued, “According to the company’s higher-ups, ‘Holy Altar’ was Sha Wen’s experimental foray into neural interface games. If successful, it would revolutionize virtual gaming. So, they poured all their resources into its development. The entire company’s top developers participated, putting all their efforts into the game. There were over a hundred testers like me, each personally entering the Holy Altar to experience the game firsthand.”
An Wujiu raised an eyebrow, “But as far as I know, the Holy Altar later went beyond the government’s control. If it was just a game, why would people die?”
“That’s why I said it started that way.” Zhou Yijue lowered his eyes. “Then things began to spiral out of control.”
Sadness filled his gaze. “I met him in a mid-game instance. I remember it clearly—it was my 32nd task and his 47th. He was a tester like me. We completed four test tasks together, repeatedly going through several instances. I felt like I’d known him for a long time.”
“Just after we got together, he died during my 36th test task.” Zhou Yijue didn’t look up, pausing for a moment before continuing. “He died and didn’t re-enter the game after loading again. It seemed strange to me. When I survived and left the game pod to ask at the company, I found that the development team was gone.”
An Wujiu frowned, “What do you mean by ‘gone’?”
Zhou Yijue looked at him. “The two floors were empty. I found out that the models used to develop the Holy Altar were generated by the latest neural networks. In other words, once the initial model framework was established, through iterative calculations and tests, using a massive player neural database, the model could continuously self-learn, eventually achieving self-repair and even self-writing. So, the developers gradually lost control of the Holy Altar. The system even restricted their read-write access, making it impossible for them to log in to the backend.”
The Holy Altar ultimately became a self-contained model.
“So you testers were abandoned by the Holy Altar as well,” An Wujiu said.
Zhou Yijue smiled wryly, “You’re right.”
Shen Ti showed no concern outwardly, but he was actually curious about Zhou Yijue’s deceased colleague. “You went to all that trouble just to save him?”
“I know it sounds ridiculous.” Zhou Yijue lowered his head in defeat. “We were the ones maintaining this system, and we got swallowed by it. We survive on science and technology, so I know it’s against science to bring someone back to life, but…”
Hadn’t An Wujiu experienced the same struggle?
Zhou Yijue scoffed, “To hell with science, I just want him back.”
“What happened next?” An Wujiu asked. “Did they completely abandon the model?”
Zhou Yijue wiped his face. “Not completely. It involves many issues. First, Sha Wen inexplicably stopped funding it, reportedly poaching many developers and pressuring them not to continue the project. But the Holy Altar, as an extremely intelligent system, continued operating independently, attracting more players and growing larger. So, instead of wanting to scrap the project, it seemed like Sha Wen wanted the Holy Altar to grow unchecked.”
He laughed. “But Sha Wen was already notorious enough with their quick-acting drugs and biotechnology. Every year they recruit so many volunteers—who knows what heinous human experiments they’re hiding?”
An Wujiu thought of what Yang Ce had said—that the executive director of Sha Wen was both the core of the Human Revolution Plan and the main investor in the Holy Altar.
If the Holy Altar was truly a breeding ground for sacrifices to summon some deity, and sacrifice was its purpose, then what was the Revolution Plan?
Wasn’t the original intention of revolution to be humanity’s self-rescue?
Shen Ti suddenly spoke, “You didn’t bring us here just to chat about your tragic love story and then go to sleep, did you?”
Hearing this, Zhou Yijue laughed, his eyes narrowing like a fox. “Of course not.”
He raised his hand, showing the number on the back of it to the two of them. “You’ve probably noticed that, except for the two of you, everyone else has 98.”
He clearly wanted an explanation, but An Wujiu couldn’t provide one, so he tried to explain about Shen Ti first. “He’s special. You could consider him a bug in the Holy Altar.”
Zhou Yijue wasn’t satisfied with the answer but acknowledged it made sense. He indeed found Shen Ti disagreeable in every way.
“I’m also trying to find out why I’m different.” An Wujiu’s tone was sincere as he told Zhou Yijue that he felt the Holy Altar wasn’t entirely made up of artificial intelligence; there were many things that existing technology couldn’t explain.
Having dealt with An Wujiu before, Zhou Yijue could tell if he was lying. Feeling that An Wujiu was being mostly honest, though with some reservations, he decided to let it go.
He lowered his hand and told An Wujiu, “Your thoughts align closely with mine. I don’t believe it’s purely technological either.”
“But something happened before that might relate to the current numbers.” Zhou Yijue said, “After my second task, when I logged out of the system, I had only completed two game instances. I remember a colleague reporting an issue about the database backup at a group meeting. Another colleague said the model had self-backup and repair capabilities, so there was no need to worry. Curious about this self-constructing framework, I went to see the source code.”
“I remember clearly—many models had already been copied.” Zhou Yijue’s eyes locked onto An Wujiu’s.
“The original model’s number was 0, and there were 99 copies. The number on your hand is exactly 99.”
