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XĂź Beijin finds himself bewildered.
They are living in a game. A game with a verisimilitude that makes it hard to distinguish from reality.
Their physical bodies may be inside of some pod hooked to an IV, or maybe they’re suspended in liquid inside some cylindrical glass jar…
Possibly, their brains have lost control of their physical bodies.
They, are the metaphorical brain in a jar.
In that sense, isn’t this an inadvertent proof of the scientists’ hypothesis of that?
Having placed a brain in a jar, and provided all the appropriate signals and stimuli which corresponds to environmental stimuli of the real world, then would the brain treat it as real?
It will, XĂź Beijin thinks. He knows the brain will.
The same way that, while he has never slept in this game, and his body hasn’t deteriorated at all because of it, because this is a game where sleep is unneeded, his brain is still telling him, you’re tired, you should sleep; this is the real world, so you should feel tired.
Here, Xü Beijin can’t help but smile bitterly.
Why is he even thinking about that? Having realised he is living——Or dead, as it were——Like a brain in a jar, wouldn’t provide him the tiniest of comfort after all.
No, he’s actually utterly furious, for that matter.
Damn it all, you——
A certain noun is on the tip of his tongue, almost ready to be sputtered.
A noun he has not been thinking about for years, but now, he almost spoke it out of reflex.
He stops.
This is the moment he realises, he has never really let anything go in spite of time.
The two——Or more accurately, three——stages of the Apocalypse that happened on Earth, to humanity, the memories of himself being powerless, are still torturing him on the inside.
XĂź Beijin stands there with a gloomy, suppressed expression. He puts his gaze back onto the grey fog rolling before him. The fog, and every speck of dust within, is a Cell Nightmare.
His fellow humans are enduring hellish repetitions within.
So——NE, if you really have changed your stance, then please hurry up. Do more. Humans, and him, are not going to last at this rate.
Xü Beijin doesn’t want to gamble on NE, he really doesn’t, because he does not trust NE at all.
The truth though, is that all he can do, is put hope on the faraway, unknowable NE.
He stands there blanked out for a long time, before putting his attention back on the Missiontakers.
He decides to look at one Cell Nightmare, where He ShujĂźn and Mystic have met up.
Personality-wise, they couldn’t be more different. He Shujün is straightforward and extroverted, optimistically interpreting every situation to give herself hope; while Mystic is a literal fortune-teller type, speaking in riddles, and depressed and pessimistic…
Here, they’ve met in a Cell Nightmare, which fits more with Mystic’s atmosphere in a sense – the kind of atmosphere born from ostensibly supernatural occurrences.
He Shujün tugs at her pants and complains, “oh bugger, why in a place like this… Ok. It’s not like ‘you’ could decide where you go, let’s just go through it quickly.”
She starts naturally cheering herself up.
Mystic can’t help but glance at her.
He Shujün is similar in age to her daughter in the Tower, which makes her a bit more noticeable in Mystic’s eyes. That is when she widens her eyes a little.
“My daughter?” She mutters, “companions?”
Mystic continues mumbling something while everyone else is distracted with something else.
They seem to be among some sort of… ruins?
There are people in the world whose interests involve exploring the abandoned buildings or areas in or nearby cities.
Whether they are buildings never finished, or finished but left to the elements, or ones left to rot in the elements after falling from grace, or ships having run aground… They are all valid targets for their exploration.
It’s like some grand urban adventure, and they label what they’re doing ‘Touring Abandoned Places.’
When the madness spread through humanity, these people banded into a small, harmless but close-knit community.
Their passion for exploration of the abandoned and ruined have intensified, and it’s certainly a godsend for them that many buildings are becoming abandoned from lack or inability to maintain maintenance due to the madness.
Since they’re all recently abandoned compared to their traditional targets, they call these new buildings ‘Maddened Ruins.’
The madness has also swept through these buildings. Death, blood and all sorts of unkind or deviant things have taken place within.
Maddened Ruins dot countless places throughout the world already. The governments have no idea what to do with them, and any yet sane inhabitants or commuters have long since moved away.
These Ruins have quickly deteriorated in condition after losing maintenance and liveliness, becoming prime targets for these urban trekkers.
The global madness has left a unique imprint on these buildings, after all.
It is so much, in fact, that explorers occasionally lose themselves inside. They end up immersed in that stench of mad, broken, rotten death.
They end up prisoners of these place, and if they, by luck, or rather, misfortune, as it were, and wander out of it, then the madness that should have died within the building, would spread to the rest of humans once again.
Now, He Shujün, alongside Mystic, and some other ‘explorers,’ are in front of an old apartment building.
They look like they’re waiting for someone, so they stand there unmoving in the lobby.
The ground has a thick layer of dust. The light is very dim; it’s night outside.
He Shujün can hear some kind of… buzzing from electricity nearby. It’s like some information they can never hope to comprehend is being transmitted through the wires.
The continuous buzzing makes He Shujün shake her head in irritation. She looks around her – security room, admin office, elevator lobby, sofas in the lobby… Everything seems to have been left as they were.
Though one can already surmise that everything in the apartment is not as it seems, simply by looking at the torn fabric on the sofa and the blood splattered on the wall, and what looks like handprints.
They are breathing quietly, but it also sounds like the building itself is inhaling and exhaling gradually, rhythmically.
And even though this building is abandoned to this degree, there is still an inkling to them, that it is ‘alive.’
They wait there for a few minutes, until someone runs in from outside, all panting.
He complains quietly, “shit, the old man watching the door is so hard to avoid… Lucky I’m good at running.”
Someone asks, “he didn’t see you entering, right?”
“Nope…” The person gloats, “I circled around the other side, and I saw the commercial complex there. If we have time, we can also check it out. I bet it’s far more interesting there than here.”
“Commercial area? Where people would shop and eat and have fun?” Someone nods and says, “interesting.”
“Alright, let’s cut the chatter and go up. The stairs are there. Careful, we’ll investigate floor by floor,” says someone who looks like the leader of this group.
Everyone else quiets down and follows his steps quietly.