Chapter 143: “Does that mean I wasn’t originally from this time and space?”
In the sky, the cracks were getting deeper.
Three full moons hung in the sky, emitting a faint blue glow under the sunlight, like translucent gemstones.
“A new moon appearing signifies a new parallel world merging with ours.”
An Wujiu gazed at the sky and murmured.
When the cracks appeared in the sky, it already indicated that there was a merging gap between parallel worlds, which might have been caused by them, the three divine pillars.
The so-called “resurrection” actually does not mean that the dead can be revived, but rather that they will meet the “dead” who are still alive in the parallel world.
Shen Ti came to the window and also saw the few people walking towards the building. He was not surprised at all.
The clothes they were wearing had slight differences compared to what Shen Ti had seen before. For instance, the polluted Wu Youo did not wear a hat before, but now he was wearing a gray baseball cap.
When they saw the pile of corpses downstairs, their expressions became very solemn, and they were talking to each other, looking familiar.
But there was no trace of him or An Wujiu.
“So,” Shen Ti said to An Wujiu, “it seems like there’s no trace of us in the third world either.”
It seemed like this so far, but it couldn’t be confirmed yet. They had encountered too few people from other worlds.
However, if they were indeed the only people in these parallel worlds, the cause must be related to the Altar.
An Wujiu looked at these people and suddenly thought of something, “I wonder if the masked man has left.” He tapped on the glass, but they were too high up, and the people below couldn’t see them.
An Wujiu raised his gun, intending to shoot and break the glass in front of him to alert the people from the third world below, but Shen Ti stopped him.
“That would be dangerous,” Shen Ti said to An Wujiu, “they can’t get in. Without you, there’s no access. Even if they try to enter through the rooftop, none of them are polluted.”
This group might be the safest and luckiest team so far, with no casualties.
An Wujiu even thought that perhaps he was the root of all misfortune; without him, they might actually proceed more smoothly and safely.
“Don’t think about that for now.” Shen Ti grabbed An Wujiu’s wrist, turned it over, and checked his time, “You have two hours left, and I have two and a half hours. Should we meet them?”
An Wujiu knew that the “they” Shen Ti referred to were the four people downstairs. He had originally thought about going down to the first floor to meet them, but this was also a dangerous decision. The four people downstairs were not their companions from their world but complete strangers.
How would they perceive them? If they rashly went down to persuade them to leave, would the others become hostile?
Most importantly, if the masked man was indeed still nearby, seeing them make contact, would he directly kill them to provoke him?
Pretending not to notice them might be the best choice for them. After all, these people had no access and wouldn’t stay here for long.
Through the glass, An Wujiu stared at the faces of Nan Shan and Wu Youo. Though it had only been a dozen hours, it felt like a long time since they last met.
And there were Yang Erci and Zhong Yirou. Seeing them,
An Wujiu’s mind would flash back to the image of them dying on the rooftop.
The four people standing below were costs he could no longer bear.
Even if they completely forgot who he was, An Wujiu couldn’t lose them again.
An Wujiu shook his head, “No meeting.”
He turned around and walked to the stained glass window, thinking about their next plan.
With only two hours left, to continue surviving, they had to go outside and kill more pollutants. But this also meant they had to leave here and might not return before the time ran out.
“Let’s keep looking for clues,” Shen Ti suggested they temporarily split up. He wanted to check the research lab floor.
He said to An Wujiu, “I can hear your thoughts. If anything happens, just call my name.”
Shen Ti’s eyes were filled with firm gentleness, “I will come to you as fast as I can.”
An Wujiu nodded.
He was actually the one who needed protection the least.
Even the masked man didn’t want to kill him, just wanted to torture him.
He watched Shen Ti leave the office and walk outside, then turned around and looked outside the building. The four people indeed gave up entering this main building and got back into their car.
An Wujiu didn’t know if this was a good choice, but for them, leaving here might be much luckier than meeting him.
Shen Ti went downstairs to the 46th floor, seizing the time to find clues. But like the top floor, this place was unnervingly clean. Until he reached the elevator entrance and saw Lilith lying on the ground.
She was lying in a pool of blood, the impact of the gunshot almost disfiguring her. Her attire was different from what they had seen in that old apartment building. Shen Ti remembered the last time she wore a large hoodie and a mask, but now she was wearing a dark red knitted sweater.
This meant that she and the Lilith they saw were from different time and space.
Shen Ti suddenly thought of Lilith’s strange behavior at that time.
She seemed very afraid of being recognized by An Wujiu, afraid that he would know she was his sister.
Perhaps, like this Lilith, she was destined to be used by the masked man as a fatal blow to drive An Wujiu mad. She probably already knew that danger was approaching, which is why she refused to acknowledge him and urged them to leave.
Yes.
Shen Ti clearly remembered that when they left the building, they indeed felt someone following.
It should have been the masked man.
Shen Ti looked down and noticed Lilith’s tightly clenched fist, finding it a bit strange, so he used some force to pry it open.
It was a very small metal ball.
Shen Ti held it in his hand and examined it, only finding a small hole.
Feeling it was something important, he kept it safe, placed Lilith’s hand back, and suddenly noticed a number gradually appearing on the back of her hand.
[97]
He had seen such a number on the back of An Wujiu’s hand, which was [99]. According to An Wujiu, in the last game, there was a mismatched player who also had a number on his body but was later recalled by the system.
The numbers on the three of them were different.
Shen Ti’s eyes narrowed slightly as he thought of something, then got up and left the floor, heading towards the rooftop.
He expressionlessly stepped once again into this blood-soaked place. The wind on the rooftop blew, bringing with it the overwhelming smell of blood.
Compared to An Wujiu’s overflowing empathy, Shen Ti had almost zero of this ability, but the people who died here were joking with him just hours ago, and a wave of unclear, human emotions surged within Shen Ti’s body.
“I should have known not to let you come up here.” Shen Ti squatted down, checking the backs of others’ hands and other areas.
Sure enough, the appearance of the numbers was not a coincidence. Every person here, including the already polluted Wu You and [Zhong Yirou], had a numerical code on their bodies.
Wu You and Zhong Yirou had the number 98 on them, while [Yang Erci] and [Zhong Yirou] had 97, the same as Lilith.
Shen Ti spread out his hands and checked his own hands, finding nothing.
He had also seen An Wujiu’s whole body, and besides the number on his hand, there was nothing else.
When these people were alive, it seemed they had no numbers on their hands.
Shen Ti sat on the ground, propping his chin with his hands, eyes closed in thought.
At that moment, a giant, four-winged, tentacled pollutant swooped towards Shen Ti at extreme speed from the sky, its sharp proboscis opening wide, releasing dozens of snake-like, sharp tentacles.
One of them shot straight towards Shen Ti’s forehead!
Just a hair’s breadth away, Shen Ti lazily opened his eyes, his blue-green pupils emitting a strange light.
In an instant, the pollutant that was about to attack him froze in mid-air, as if an invisible, massive pressure from his eyes restrained it with overwhelming force.
That was Shen Ti’s gradually awakening power.
Under Shen Ti’s indifferent gaze, the pollutant before him began to explode starting from its tentacles, like a chain reaction, spreading to its body and four wings until it completely burst apart.
Chunks of flesh scattered to the ground, but none of the blood or slime splattered on Shen Ti.
Shen Ti merely tilted his head, staring at the half of the pollutant’s head that had fallen to the ground, expressionless, looking pure and naive.
“Where was I…” Shen Ti frowned, thinking for a long time without recalling, so he simply stood up.
Feeling his eyes a bit sore, he rubbed them and turned around, muttering to himself, “Almost got hit, need to tell Wujiu…”
By the time he returned, an hour had passed.
An Wujiu had found nothing.
But seeing Shen Ti return safely, An Wujiu was still very satisfied. Shen Ti complained to him about encountering a pollutant, looking very weak. After finishing, he remembered what he had forgotten earlier and told An Wujiu about the numbers he found.
“So… these numbers appeared because they died.” An Wujiu lowered his eyes, staring at the back of his hand, “Then what about me?”
Shen Ti shook his head, “Not necessarily. Although the batch of people whose numbers appeared all died, you mentioned that there was once a mismatched player who was initialized into your game, also with a different number from yours. This means that the appearance of the numbers is not necessarily due to death; it’s like a distinguishing code.”
An Wujiu suddenly understood, “You’re right. That so-called mismatched player might have accidentally entered the game space of another time and space before the parallel spaces merged, causing an error in the Altar. And now, with all spaces beginning to merge and the boundaries blurring, it’s possible for the same person from several different spaces to appear together.”
“So after they die, their space code appears, is that what you mean?” Shen Ti said, recalling what Zhou Yijue had mentioned, “By the way, Zhou Yijue mentioned that our server number is 98, which matches Wu You and Yirou’s numbers.”
An Wujiu nodded and raised his hand.
“But from the moment I entered the game, I had a number on the back of my hand, and it’s 99, not 98.”
He looked up at Shen Ti and asked, “Does that mean I wasn’t originally from this time and space?”
Shen Ti, after hearing this, curled his lips and said, “If that’s the case, how did you come to the 98th dimension, and where did the original 98th An Wujiu go? Under the previous closed space-time conditions, it’s unlikely that there could be two An Wujius at the same time, right?”
“We don’t know that yet.” An Wujiu calmed down, recalling what Zhou Yijue had said earlier. “We are on server 98, and the Altar has self-learned and split into a total of 100 sub-servers, from 0 to 99. This means that if I am from server 99, then there should be 99 other An Wujius. But so far, only I have appeared. Where did the rest go?”
He frowned. At this thought, he suddenly had a splitting headache, forcing him to lower his head and rub his temples with his fingers.
The sudden pain made it difficult for him to think. When he looked at his wrist to check, he found that his time hadn’t run out yet; there was still half an hour left.
“What’s wrong?” Shen Ti noticed something was off and supported An Wujiu. “Where does it hurt?”
An Wujiu’s face turned pale, as if a thousand worms were trying to drill out of his brain, causing unbearable pain.
The pain was so intense that he almost hallucinated.
He repeatedly heard the electronic female voice he had heard upon waking up, telling him to stay alive and to never be alone.
“You must stay alive, live to see me.”
“You must stay alive…”
Who was it?
The constantly echoing voice gradually lowered, becoming lower and lower, and eventually almost turned into a man’s voice.
The electronic effect gradually faded, becoming increasingly familiar.
But in the next second, the voice abruptly cut off, leaving only a continuous piercing buzzing in his brain.
An Wujiu raised his head in agony, only to see the sky darken in an instant, eventually plunging into deep darkness.
The three moons in the sky multiplied, split, and increased in number, then suddenly disappeared into the darkness.
Just as they found this incomprehensible, the moons suddenly reappeared simultaneously!
The entire night sky was filled with moons emitting a blue, ghostly light.
It was as if… countless eyes had opened simultaneously, monitoring everything.
Shen Ti roughly counted, and the number of moons in the sky did seem to match the number of sub-servers in the Altar.
“Zhou Yijue really wasn’t lying to you.”
What they had guessed was probably true.
The An Wujiu, who had fought alongside them for so long, was indeed from another dimension.
“Something doesn’t feel right.” An Wujiu’s premonitions were rarely wrong. A great danger was approaching, and his subconscious sensed it. He grabbed Shen Ti’s hand and turned to leave.
They needed to act.
But just as he turned around, a tall figure appeared behind them.
The figure walked towards them from the shadows, with a Western face, blonde hair, and fair skin, looking around forty years old, dressed in a sharp, expensive custom suit.
“Are you Russell?” An Wujiu asked calmly.
The man smiled without denying it. His face was deathly pale, and he exuded a strange smell, a mix of strong perfume and the stench of decay.
“An Wujiu,” Russell said in a low, hoarse voice, “you are the pride of the Sha Wen.”
This remark was truly disgusting.
An Wujiu drew the long knife from his waist and pointed it at the man who had appeared out of nowhere. “What exactly is your goal? Your backer must be that evil god. Is it he who helped you resurrect?”
“So many questions,” Russell said with a smile. “This isn’t a press conference; I don’t need to answer so many of your questions.”
He looked at An Wujiu and said, “Kid, having too much curiosity isn’t a good thing. This world is unknowable.”
He avoided the topic of the evil god.
An Wujiu vaguely heard crying.
He held up the knife and said, “You brought someone else.”
The corners of Russell’s mouth turned up slightly as he walked to the table and turned around the leather office chair that had its back to them, facing them.
An originally empty chair now had a bound child on it.
“Noah?” An Wujiu frowned. Noah’s eyes were blindfolded, and even his mouth was gagged, unable to speak.
Shen Ti, however, pulled An Wujiu back, signaling him not to act yet.
Russell said softly, “It’s enough to have you witness the return of that one.”
His eyes looked out at the night, “My lord will soon descend upon the world again. This world originally belonged to him; everything should be sacrificed to him.”
Right after he said this, explosions suddenly appeared in the city outside the window. The flames soared to the sky. An Wujiu jerked his head around, knowing this was just the beginning.
The explosions increased, one after another, until the flames gradually formed a continuous expanse. He could even hear cries and smell the heavy scent of blood.
In an instant, the human world turned into a purgatory.
And before them, in this dark office, a whole array of blue light dots suddenly appeared. These dots gradually condensed, forming a world map.
The map showed red dot distributions, starting with a few and gradually spreading everywhere.
“Continue! At the moment of the god’s return, everyone will become the children of god.”
An Wujiu suddenly understood.
This was the display of everyone in the world being polluted!
Through prosthetics, through nanobots, and finally spreading into reality through the entire Altar, the goal was to make everyone a sacrifice to bring back the evil god!
Russell’s eyes glowed with a ghostly blue light as he spread his arms, embracing the air of death.
“Offer the true chaos and madness to the Altar.”
