No.
Li Shuoxing felt a little speechless.
Not only does it use scenery and photos from reality, now it’s developed to using a love story of people from reality.
Using the affairs of the academic circle from beginning to end, how much does the creator of this game love the academic circle?
He searched for George and Mary’s love story.
But he didn’t find anything.
Li Shuoxing searched again with keywords.
He still didn’t find anything.
Li Shuoxing stopped searching. The speechlessness in his mind gradually turned into strangeness.
Something seems to be wrong with the situation.
If a short story can be used in a game, it must be something anyone can know about, right? Like this photo, it’s probably also widely circulated on the internet—
Li Shuoxing, unwilling to give up, screenshotted the photo from the game and put it on the internet to search.
But he still failed to find anything!
The strangeness in Li Shuoxing’s mind changed again, turning into confusion.
He couldn’t help but start thinking about a question.
Since the love story and photo aren’t things that can be casually searched on the internet, how does the creator of the game, that Su, know all this and include them in the game?
Even if he has the channels and the means.
Does he have to do such a thing?
Every image of the past is realistic, with real people, and seems traceable.
Almost as if it’s real…
Li Shuoxing pondered absentmindedly.
His fingers subconsciously moved over the keyboard, looking for more clues.
He found George’s Wikipedia page, which listed a few things, such as the awards and honours he had received, his status as a guest professor at a famous university, the year and month he got married to Mary, and the number of children he had now.
But this didn’t seem to mean much to Li Shuoxing.
Rather, in the course of his search, Li Shuoxing found the first edition of Age of Revolution . He didn’t find the text on the title page, but rather the long code mentioned in the diary.
Another proof of the truth and accuracy of the records in the diary emerged.
Li Shuoxing stared at the densely packed pages in a daze.
Until a voice woke him up.
“Ximu?”
A familiar voice rang in his ears.
Li Shuoxing abruptly came back to his senses. He looked at his phone to find that inside the game, the little person was calling out while turning his head back and forth, as if searching for his trail.
“I’m here,” he hurriedly responded.
But the little person didn’t seem to hear his voice.
He not only looked back and forth, but also raised his feet to walk around, going from the lounge to the room, from the room to the courtyard.
Walking all the way, searching all the way, and calling out all the way.
“Ximu, are you there?”
Li Shuoxing then remembered that he had turned off the game voice. He hurriedly turned it back on and spoke again, “I’m still here. Sorry, I left for a moment just now.”
Su Mingqian breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s good you’re still here.” He seemed to think he had overreacted and explained, “I can’t see you. If you suddenly disappear, I get a little nervous…”
“Cub.”
Li Shuoxing suddenly spoke out.
He didn’t know what he was thinking saying these words, maybe just a little impulsion.
“I found George’s Age of Revolution . The book is now in my hands. The title page really does contain what you recorded in your diary. Do you want to see the book? Perhaps… it’ll be of some help to you.”
He finished.
A number instantly leapt out of the little person’s head.
Big +100.
Clearly showing how delighted the little person was at that moment.
When he realised this, Li Shuoxing’s fingers acted one step faster than his head.
He first took a photo of the book at hand, and then got in the title page as well.
As soon as the two clues corresponding to the diary entered the game, Su Mingqian took them off through the light screen and put observed them back and forth in his hands.
Li Shuoxing could detect his subtle excitement.
Su Mingqian’s hands firmly grasped the materials, his eyes not willing to look away for even a second.
Su Mingqian murmured, “The tone recorded in my diary is very intimate. He and I must know each other. If I can contact him, perhaps I could learn all about myself…”
“But”—Li Shuoxing had to interrupt the little person and took pictures of each page on his browser—”I couldn’t find his contact information. Not in the book, not in Wikipedia. I even tried to climb over the wall <sup>1</sup> 翻墙 [fān qiáng] refers to bypassing the Great Firewall of China. to look at foreign websites, but he doesn’t have an account on Facebook and Twitter either.”
Li Shuoxing took pictures of each page he had just opened and showed them to Su Mingqian.
There were contents in Chinese and foreign languages.
As he had just said, he had searched for all kinds of contents he could think of.
More and more materials entered Su Mingqian’s hands.
The little person calmed down. He gave it some thought and suggested another solution. “John?”
Li Shuoxing was stunned.
Su Mingqian’s thoughts were clear. “In the diary, I mentioned a regular meeting. In other words, John, George and I are likely in the same company, working on the same project. Given George is a scholar in artificial intelligence, John, who is 55 or older this year, may be as well.”
With an age, a project and a name, there was room for search.
Li Shuoxing thought it over and felt it could work. So he sat down at the computer again and began searching.
This time, he kept his communication with Su Mingqian the entire time. For every page he searched, he took a picture of the page and sent it to the game to show Su Mingqian. And for every page he sent, a +5 popped out of Su Mingqian’s head.
Li Shuoxing had never found it so easy to accumulate favourability points.
With just a few pages, the negative favourability was becoming positive.
Just… the search results weren’t entirely satisfactory.
It wasn’t that they didn’t find any content, but that they had found too much content.
Even with the age and occupation restrictions, there were still so many scientists popping up at the same time that they simply couldn’t tell which one was the right one among all of them.
More importantly, like George, these “suspects” had no public contact information.
Maybe scholars in the academic circle were really more aloof.
The investigation had come to a standstill again.
Li Shuoxing looked at the ceiling with his head resting on the armrest, while Su Mingqian flipped through the travel journal in the game.
As his eyes stared at the ceiling, he recalled the information given in the game, intuitively feeling that he had missed something, but what was it that he had missed…
Li Shuoxing reviewed the basic situation again.
It is known that three named people have emerged.
But two have become dead ends and can’t go on.
Em?
Three named people, two dead ends?
Then the remaining one…
“Mary!”
Li Shuoxing thought of the key issue!
He rolled over and sat up, feeling a hint of excitement at having successfully solved the puzzle, and couldn’t help but start explaining to Su Mingqian.
“Mary is George’s lawyer wife, and the profession of a lawyer is different from that of a laboratory experimenter. It’s a profession where you have to contact your clients. In other words, if we can pinpoint Mary’s specific law firm, we’ll be able to find Mary’s contact information!”
Su Mingqian listened to Li Shuoxing’s analysis.
His originally tense nerves unexpectedly relaxed a bit.
He curled his lips and a cute little smiling expression jumped on his head.
He replied with a trusting monotone, “Mm.”
Pleasant +20.
Favourability pool: 10
The negative favourability that had lasted many days finally jumped back to a positive number at that moment!
The pleasant surprise came so suddenly that Li Shuoxing was a little stunned.
But the most important thing now was to find clues. Li Shuoxing only spent five minutes appreciating the beautiful positive number in the favourability pool before he returned to the computer and started investigating.
As usual, for every search he did, he showed the search contents to the little person.
The little person analysed the information with him to figure out the next search direction.
Lawyers really did leave a lot more information on the internet than researchers did.
Compared to the balding search just now, this time it didn’t take Li Shuoxing much time to find Mary’s law firm and, in turn, see Mary’s social media account in the firm’s contact information.
The last active date of this account was three days ago.
That meant that the account was consistently in use.
When Li Shuoxing sent this screenshot to the little person, he heard an exhale.
A thin stream of air rushed out of Su Mingqian’s mouth, passed through the receiver, and transmitted all the way to Li Shuoxing’s ears.
Li Shuoxing’s ears moved sensitively.
From it, he seemed to hear relief and relaxation, and of course, most of all, anticipation.
Li Shuoxing was infected by the little person’s unspoken anticipation.
With his hands flying, he edited a half-true and half-false private message in five minutes and sent it to Mary.
“Hello,
I am a good friend of Su Mingqian and we had arranged to travel together. But on the appointed date, he disappeared without half a greeting. I was very worried and had to ask his other good friend—your husband George—for help. But I don’t have his contact information, so I can only send this request for help to you. I hope you don’t mind passing it on for me.
PS: Su Mingqian has always used his Chinese name in his communication with me.
But he also has an English name, which he hasn’t told me, but I’m guessing, maybe Su?
By the way, he has another characteristic, a pair of special grey eyes.”
Finished writing, sent.
Then he showed the sent screenshot to the little person.
When everything was done, impulse subsided and reason slowly returned to his mind.
Li Shuoxing reviewed everything he’d just done and suddenly shivered.
What the hell was I doing?
When I sent that message, did I really think that all the clues given in the game are true and expect feedback from reality?
But it’s impossible no matter how I think about it.
It’s just a game.
But if.
If there really is a reply, and it’s not a reply like “you’re stupid”, but a serious response.
Then how… should I respond?
Li Shuoxing could no longer tell whether he was expecting a response or not.
But he instinctively turned his attention to the game.
He saw that inside the screen, the little person was holding all the materials he’d just screenshotted in, looking at them with particular care and treasure.
There were also +3’s constantly bouncing on the little person’s head.
The favourability pool had gone all the way up to 50…
Never mind.
What’s important is the little person’s favourability… No, what’s important is that the cub is happy.
Li Shuoxing rubbed the little person’s head on the screen with his thumb, ruffling his hair.
Getting his shrinking head in response and a complaint: “Ximu—”
A happy cub is the cutest after all.
1
翻墙 [fān qiáng] refers to bypassing the Great Firewall of China.