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Eternal Day
Xiao Xie was a very honest person.
He told Nan Zhou that Nan Zhou was actually a fictional character in a comic book called Eternal Day.
Just two days ago, a game called Forces of Temptation was officially released.
The author of Eternal Day, Nan Zhou’s true father, had completed his debut work ‘Eternal Day’ in two years. Since then, the talented horror cartoonist occupied his place in the world until he died of cancer 12 years ago.
Due to his withdrawn personality and indifferent relationship with his relatives and friends, he handed over the copyrights of all 13 of his comic books, including his debut Eternal Day, to one of his most trusted editors.
This portion of his assets was divided and the eccentric man didn’t announce the specific disposal method.
Therefore, Eternal Day was included in the adaptation part of Forces of Temptation as early as three years ago.
Now Nan Zhou was a character in the game instance.
Xiao Xie said he had read Eternal Day before and liked it very much.
So after his newly bought game cabin arrived, he chose to enter Eternal Day first to see the young man he had one-sidedly known and was a dimension apart from him.
Nan Zhou nodded in response to Xiao Xie’s eloquent remarks.
He couldn’t feel the cruelty and maliciousness behind Xiao Xie’s purpose of telling him the truth.
If a normal person was told that it didn’t matter how hard they worked, their destiny was always in the hands of others and their future years would always be controlled, their first reaction would be to collapse and go crazy.
However, Nan Zhou didn’t really care.
He had already guessed it a long time ago.
Nan Zhou sketched the lip shape of Ms Apple Tree on the paper, making fine lines on her lips so they were more gorgeous, and responded symbolically. “...Um.”
Xiao Xie noticed Nan Zhou’s expression and his eyes lit up. “Aren’t you surprised? How much did you guess?”
Nan Zhou glanced at Xiao Xie. “About what?”
If it was about his identity, this was a matter he had been thinking about since primary school.
He once thought he was a character in a book.
A comic was similar to his speculation.
As for the game instance...
Nan Zhou’s understanding of the concept of games was limited to the few game magazines in the bookstore that were a decade old.
In Nan Zhou’s cognition, a game was a story locked in a box.
It wasn’t much different from how he felt about books.
It was just that he hadn’t been pulled by the puppet strings for a long time, suggesting that the box was very open and the control over him wasn’t as strong as imagined.
In the future, more new people would come in.
If someone could come in then he could get out.
Therefore, he didn’t understand why Xiao Xie kept looking at his eyes.
It seemed that his bland emotions and reaction didn’t meet Xiao Xie’s psychological expectations.
Xiao Xie stared intently at his eyes. “Have you ever spoken to someone like me?”
Nan Zhou thought carefully.
He failed to speak to Ms Apple Tree.
Thus, he shook his head.
Xiao Xie’s shoulders collapsed slightly and he looked disappointed. “Why aren’t you surprised?”
There was no madness, no collapse, no pain.
It was boring.
Nan Zhou’s surprise was over as early as yesterday.
He wasn’t used to large ups and downs in emotions so he looked at Xiao Xie with confusion. “What exactly do you want to ask?”
Xiao Xie’s expression improved. “I’ll be your friend from now on, okay?”
“Why?”
Xiao Xie, “......”
He wondered, “Aren’t you lonely?”
Nan Zhou put down his pen. “I’m lonely. Still, why should I be friends with you?”
Nan Zhou spoke what was in his heart but Xiao Xie seemed choked up.
In order to avoid self-inflicted humiliation, Xiao Xie changed the subject. “Do you feel that your world is different?”
Nan Zhou thought about it. He didn’t feel that his days were any different from the past.
The sun was still scorching.
The arrangement of buildings hadn’t changed.
The world was still that world.
The only difference was that there was an apple tree.
Nan Zhou’s mood became a lot better when thinking about the apple tree.
If the making friends that Xiao Xie mentioned was to plant apple trees for each other...
He hoped to find the apple tree lady and plant one for her.
It was just that this question from Xiao Xie intrigued him.
According to his reading experience, shouldn’t games use data, algorithms and models to build another virtual parallel world where all conditions were as close as possible?
Why did Ms Apple Tree and Xiao Xie come to him?
This was a question worth thinking about.
However, over the years, Nan Zhou had no habit of sharing his thoughts with others.
He also had no desire to share ideas with XiaoXie.
He only intended to digest it slowly on his own.
It had to be said that Nan Zhou’s animal instincts were quite strong.
He was on guard against Xiao Xie from the start.
He felt there was something in Xiao Xie’s smile that he didn’t like.
Even so, it didn’t matter how wary he was. Nan Zhou couldn’t escape from the influence of the full moon on the light demons.
The periodic ups and downs of the tides reached their climax on the full moon of every month.
The third day that Xiao Xie came to the instance happened to be the full moon.
In Nan Zhou’s room, the watercolor painting of the blue sky and white doves tried their best to keep all the moonlight out.
Nevertheless, Nan Zhou lay weakly on the bed. His body ached, there were crazy night sweats and his waist had no strength.
During the full moon, all the light demons in town were too weak to get out of bed and they were almost non-threatening.
However, Nan Zhou remembered that there was Xiao Xie who was living next to him.
The moment he lost his strength, he struggled to lock the door.
The clock on the wall slowly pointed to the 12 o’clock position.
The moonlight outside the window became brighter and brighter.
Nan Zhou uncomfortably grasped the hard bedboard with one hand, his fingers pinching so  tightly they were white from blood loss.
At this time, Xiao Xie’s gentle voice was suddenly heard outside the door. “Nan Zhou, are you there?”
Nan Zhou’s heart thumped.
He hadn’t heard any footsteps just now.
Xiao Xie seemed to have been standing at the door for a long time.
Nan Zhou bit his lip and tried to swallow the weak gasps.
Yet not long after, he heard the sound of a key digging into the keyhole.
He didn’t know how Xiao Xie got in.
Nan Zhou’s throat was tight when he heard the door creaking as it opened. Before he could even think, he reached his soft wrist under the pillow.
However, his wrist was easily grabbed by a hand before he could grasp the hilt of the hidden fruit knife.
Nan Zhou pressed his pale lips together as Xiao Xie turned him over and easily controlled him on the bed.
Xiao Xie’s hand covered his mouth and his finger maliciously pressed against Nan Zhou’s lips like a condescending tease.
“It’s too painful. It is lonely, isn’t it?”
Xiao Xie spoke to him in a whispering tone but there wasn’t much sympathy. He just enjoyed the slightly out of control expression on Nan Zhou’s face when he couldn’t control his breathing.
“If I was you, I would want to die.”
Nan Zhou, “......”
You’re sick.
You aren’t me.
When did I want to die?
Xiao Xie leaned down and told him softly, “I’ll help you out.”
The heavy pressure suddenly left.
Before Nan Zhou could catch his breath, something cold touched his waist.
The deadly electric current caused the blood in his body to boil from his waist.
Taking the electric shock point as the center, a black-hole like substance was formed so that all of Nan Zhou’s senses and consciousness collapsed inwards.
The corners of his eyes were filled with the scattered and colorful flashes of light.
It drilled in through his fingertips and out his chest.
There were thousands of wonderful and extremely eye-catching points.
Suddenly, all the excitement returned to utter silence.
The moment that Nan Zhou’s heart stopped beating, there was still an afterimage of reality in his vision.
Xiao Xie’s figure was blurred, like the static on a TV screen.
Xiao Xie had a surprised look as he stared at his palm.
The next second, he disappeared from Nan Zhou’s room.
Then there was a burst of oxygen to Nan Zhou’s heart, like someone had taken an electric shock device and roughly pressed it repeatedly against his chest.
The feeling of being controlled by the irresistible force had returned.
The result this time was a forced resurrection.
Nan Zhou suddenly sat up from the bed, causing a terrible dizziness.
He leaned against tte bed and gasped for a long time before he was able to adjust to the influx of oxygen and pain coming from his body.
Next, Nan Zhou asked the school for three days of leave.
He went to the library, found some books related to games and reread them carefully.
He was in severe pain and he was the only one in the library. Therefore, he simply abandoned his normal sitting posture. He leaned against the table like a cat, placed the book under his head and rested while reading.
The author had never dabbled in the field of games.
In the Xinhua Bookstore that he built, most of the books were on literature and art.
There were only a few outdated magazines about games and a brief history of game development.
Nan Zhou read all the information that could be collected and realized something was wrong.
In a normal game, the players should be the core character being served.
It didn’t matter how badly the boss in the instance was killed by players. The process would end when the player left.
The status reset and nothing apart.
Then what about himself?
Apart from being resurrected, his memory hadn’t been cleared and the wounds on his body were still painful.
It was as if... the reset wasn’t complete.
Nan Zhou couldn’t think about why he was so different.
The day after he resumed classes, the two welcomed two strangers.
A man walked around the town with a lovely little girl.
The two people looked like they were traveling.
The little girl stuffed him with fruit candy when she saw him.
Nan Zhou wouldn’t have let his guard down if it wasn’t for the little girl who was around the same age as his students.
She reminded him of his sister from a long time ago.
He even took the little girl to his art class.
Two days later, on the sudden night of the full moon, the little girl stabbed him in the back and Nan Zhou clearly heard ‘her’ shake off the blood drops on the knife while speaking to her partner in a man’s voice, “The time modifier is really useful. I got another achievement.”
The man also let out a relaxed laugh. “The strategy guide is right. He is really easy to deceive.”
The two spoke and quickly disappeared.
It was like the situation when Xiao Xie disappeared.
It was all the same.
Nan Zhou fell to the ground and took a long rest before enduring the pain from his back and getting up.
He put his hand in his pocket.
There was an apple that was already crushed.
Originally, he had intended to give it to the little girl.
Since it wasn’t necessary, forget it.
Nan Zhou sat on the side of the road and wiped the apple on his clothes. He took a bite and calmed his mind.
He quietly thought of the ‘time modifier’ that he had heard from the little girl’s mouth and the ‘master key’ that Xiao Xie used to open his door.
He learned something else.
The players he met were likely to have a large number of items with different functions.
He needed to think of ways to deal with them.
After that, there were players constantly coming to Never Town.
Some players only came here to stroll around while other players clearly wanted to deliberately approach Nan Zhou.
Nan Zhou might be lonely but he wasn’t stupid.
He wanted to ask, ‘Don’t you have anything else to do?’
‘Why play games?’
‘Why indulge in something that doesn’t make sense to reality even if you win?’
‘Why do you have to kill me in another world to achieve this goal?’
No one could answer these questions for him.
Thus, he tried his best to show a fierce and indifferent side. He wanted to drive them out of Never Town.
However, he couldn’t escape from the curse on the night of the full moon.
The next full moon night arrived as scheduled.
It wasn’t easy to escape the chase and interception of four players. Nan Zhou just wanted to take a breath when he fell into the hands of three players he hadn’t seen before. He didn’t know when they had sneaked into town.
They used electric shock guns in the darkness.
There was an attack weapon that ejected high-pressure nitrogen and was embedded with barbed hooks and electrodes.
It was very powerful. It could be fatal at once but that wasn’t the case with Nan Zhou.
At this point, Nan Zhou had been dealing with the previous four players until dawn.
Nan Zhou was physically and mentally exhausted.
Thus, they hit him with one shot.
The moonlight on the horizon faded away and gradually dimmed.
The light that fell on Nan Zhou’s body was very light and thin.
The familiar and severe pain caused Nan Zhou to fall to the ground again while sweating.
He didn’t continue to resist. He closed his eyes and pretended to be dead while waiting for an opportunity.
The three men found he was motionless so they crouched not far from his ‘body’, ready to receive the rewards and be transported away.
“Why doesn’t this boss have a health bar? He is so fragile that he is gone in one shot?”
“Hey, it is just like the strategy guild. Just enter the instance and you can kill him. He is just a regular person and is boring.”
“Forget it. It’s fine as long as we get the achievement.”
The tinnitus caused by pain combined with the sharp roaring of blood rushing to his head became an ear-piercing and messy symphony.
The conversation that entered his ears mixed with the noise in his brain, making Nan Zhou’s heart jump faster.
“Strategy.”
“Boring.”
“Achievement.”
Was this what they were aiming for?
So why did they have to achieve their goal?
The unfamiliar and very provocative words stimulated his nerves. Anger gradually eroded Nan Zhou’s heart.
He supported his arms on the ground. After borrowing a bit of strength, his toes pushed off from the ground and he rushed forward.
There was a guest of wind on the empty street.
The tall man with his back to Nan Zhou cocked his head. He only had time to see a cold figure who was already close to him.
...In addition, a cold hand holding his throat.
Snap.
***
Ding.
Nan Zhou placed the small spoon on the plate and the slight collision between the plate and wooden spoon awakened him from his memory.
Nanji Star had finished eating the lychees and licked his paws clean. Then he ran back and pushed his meaty buttocks into the sleeves of Nan Zhou’s jacket.
The apple-faced girl came over shyly and handed Nan Zhou a fruit platter.
She gently said, “Guest, this is for you. Thank you for helping me with my sister just now.”
Nan Zhou looked to the side of the fruit plate.
There were a few cut pieces of apples with the red skin attached.
The apple-faced girl continued in a soft voice, “The fruit is grown from my own home. It isn’t worth much. I just hope... I hope you come here often—”
Nan Zhou got up.
A familiar scent.
A familiar luster.
A familiar... apple.
For a moment, he thought he was still in his memories and hadn’t left.
HE was sitting on the tree that belonged to him, picking the apples and swallowing them in the fine light that came through the branches.
Nan Zhou asked, “How did you get your apple?”
The apple-faced girl was startled by his actions and his tone. She held the apple and said, “How did I... everyone got the seeds from Boss Zhong...”
Nan Zhou inquired, “Where is Boss Zhong?”
“Go south and walk along the small road. There are signs on the side of the road. The seed store is very eye-catching.”
Nan Zhou grabbed the small tail of Nanji Star who was trying to head to the fruit plate. “Thank you.”
Then he hurried away from the dessert store.
It was like rushing to a date he was late to.
Li Yinhang was puzzled for a moment and turned to look at Jiang Fang.
Jiang Fang was stunned. He couldn’t help pursing his lips while his eyes flashed slightly.
...Did Nan Zhou remember the apple tree?
Jiang Fang had an idea in his heart. He didn’t answer Li Yinhang and just followed Nan Zhou.
Li Yinhang busily packed up their things.
Before leaving, she didn’t forget to pat the shoulder of the apply-faced girl who didn’t know if she had done anything wrong. “It isn’t your fault.”
No one paid attention to the two men and one woman who had been sitting two tables to the right of Nan Zhou’s group.
Seeing the three people leave, the girl’s tight back finally relaxed.
She patted her chest and let out a sigh of relief. “Wow, I was scared to death.”
Only then did her companion dare to speak up. He asked her, “Are you sure you’re not mistaken?”
“I’m not sure.”
The girl frowned. “That little thing is so small. We aren’t sitting very close. How can I recognize it?”
The second man tried to comfort her. “You must’ve seen it wrong. Perhaps it is a little pet. How can it be a monster?”
“No...”
The girl frowned even more. “I’ve played Forces of Temptation and I’ve been to Homeland Island before. That little animal looks like the monster in the only idyllic instance of Homeland Island.”
She compared the size of Nanji Star’s body. “If there was a lightning-shaped mark near the fluff of its belly then I could be certain!”
The second man still had doubts about her eyesight. “Even  if it is a monster, it is just a little mouse...”
The girl gave him a stern look.
“A little mouse?” She muttered. “That is a monster on Homeland Island with a combat power rating of A+. It is close to S grade!”
Having said that, the girl doubted her eyes again.
If that sugar glider was really the monster she knew, how could it be with other players?
How could it be raised like this?
So...
Cute?
***
After using the world channel to send a meeting signal to the other teams, He Yinchuan temporarily closed his backend and spoke to Lu Bifang. “Xiao Lu, tell me about your discovery. You said that our international friend, Mr Jiang Fang was once a player of Forces of Temptation?”
Lu Bifang nodded. “Yes.”
Unlike Lin Zhisong,  Lu Bifang didn’t understand the professional information so he focused most of his attention on the information of the missing people.
Lu Bifang added, “To be precise, he isn’t an official player of the game.”
“The price of Forces of Temptation is still very expensive. Every time a machine is sold, the buyer’s real ID will be recorded.”
“After the accident, the authorities investigated the circumstances of every unconscious person.”
“Only Lodoka... Mr Jiang Fang, his game cabin wasn’t registered with his own information.
Zhou Ao didn’t play games much and frowned. “What does that mean?”
Lu Bifang scratched his head.
“How to put it?”
“He should be a power leveler?”