Chapter 2309: Losing the "Future"
"What's the question?" the psychology professor asked, adopting a listening posture.
"Why could the third game create a fake environment?" Xu Huo said slowly. "Since the Water Cube isn't controlled by a person, it shouldn't have such strong adaptability, instantly creating everything related to my past."
"To be honest, it was too realistic."
It truly felt like the past being reenacted.
"I even suspect whether this device actually traveled through time to spy on that period of my life, which is why it produced such a real place."
"Of course, that's just one possibility."
"But since it can spy on the past, no matter how it accomplishes it, it should be able to touch upon the period of Xu Zhi's death."
"Why not push the time a little further? Afraid of causing backlash?"
"Or did it intend to trap me in this completely meaningless stretch of time?"
With each question he posed, the hospital space began to collapse. The psychology professor's terror, along with the screams of the patients outside, gradually faded away until only a single floor tile beneath Xu Huo's feet remained.
The surroundings reverted to a gray, dim tone, as if he were in an extremely silent space where all sounds he could hear came from himself.
When Xu Huo stood up, the chair behind him also disappeared.
Immediately after, three options appeared before him:
"In your view, among the past, present, and future, which is the most important? You can rank them."
Xu Huo placed "past" first, followed by "present," and then "future."
After he made his selection, the text in front of him refreshed:
"As a loser of the Time Rewind Experience, I regret to inform you that you did not win the third game, and you have lost the future."
Xu Huo let out a cold laugh and punched the text in front of him, but the next second, his entire body was thrown back by a powerful force, returning him to his previous position.
The few floating cubes were still before him, but the cube that had disappeared into his body did not return to its original place.
Xu Huo didn't know how he had won the second game, and he had lost the third game inexplicably. "A loser of the Time Rewind Experience"? What did losing mean? Was it exposing the illusion created by the game? Or not making enough effort?
But he lost the game, starting from the moment he exposed it. Therefore, he had every reason to believe that the "loss" and "win" in the third game were completely reversed...
However, soon, not only did he forget the memories from the game, but even the anger of being toyed with gradually faded. Seizing the last moments, he wrote in his notebook: "The cost of losing the 'future'..."
"The cost of losing the future?" A few seconds later, Xu Huo frowned at the words on the paper and began to check his body.
No injuries, his memories were mostly intact, no items lost. "Three Seconds of Life" and "Pure Heart" were both there. He had lost the "future." Both "past" and "present" had cost him memories. What was the "future"?
Then, recalling that the one-third game involved temporal and spatial power, he immediately tried to mobilize the Space Ray. However, a sense of obstruction quickly appeared. It wasn't that the chaotic space power made control more difficult, but that as soon as he slightly mobilized the space power, a layer of barrier-like blockade would form around him, preventing him from smoothly controlling the space power.
Whether he tried to create a Space Barrier or a Space Entity, neither succeeded!
His space power was sealed!
This realization made Xu Huo's heart sink. He stared at the few remaining cubes in front of him, his expression shifting unpredictably. He had just touched one cube to enter the third game. Since it was a medium, could he use it to enter the one-third game again?
But after standing there for a while, he gave up and turned to open the door.
Outside was a fully metal corridor. After the heavy door panel sprang open, there were several more sealed doors opposite, but these doors still hadn't blocked the power of the Water Cube.
Following the signs in the hallway to the ground floor, and then following the connecting wires laid out on the ground, he found a room not far away. The room was piled with various terminals of different sizes, but the chair in front of the terminals was empty. Nearby were some food packaging bags, but judging by the faded text and the surrounding dust, no one had entered this room for a long time.
Xu Huo walked over to the terminal that was still on and working, and saw the constantly flashing interface.
There was a lot of information from an account named "Ding Dong Bleeding," but the replies from the city center had stopped half a year ago.
Xu Huo sat down and operated the system to retrieve all the chat records saved on the terminal.
From what Old Cai and the others had said—about the programmer fixing the system and contacting them, as well as the description of the city center—the content matched. However, there was a slight discrepancy: the sketch of the deconstructed Water Cube wasn't sent out in the last two days, but about half a year ago. After fixing the system, this sole surviving programmer had packaged all the information he knew and sent it to them, also mentioning that his food and water were running low.
There was one thing Old Cai and the others had lied about. From the programmer's accusations and venting towards those players, it wasn't some "curious" uninformed staff member who activated the Water Cube, but a decision made by the upper echelons of the Player Organization. Because they prided themselves on having a large number of Temporal Evolvers and speculated that the current situation might be related to the inexplicably appearing Water Cube, they wanted to gain more benefits from it, so they risked activating the Water Cube.
The final result was, of course, countless deaths and injuries, along with innocent colleagues and the entire Buliucheng.
Some players were lucky or fast enough to escape and weren't trapped in the city center, but most of the ordinary staff were left behind. The vast majority died in the first wave of chaotic time power, while the survivors used emergency stored food and water to hold out and repair the original city government system, finally reconnecting with the players of Buliucheng.
These staff members demanded that Old Cai and the others contact the District Government, but the result was, of course, nothing came of it. After multiple failed communications, Old Cai and the others proposed a rescue plan: using instances to have outside players fill the one-third game, while they looked for suitable people and methods to enter the city center.
The current state of the Water Cube was originally the programmer's trump card, but half a year ago, he voluntarily gave that final trump card to Old Cai and the others, and then cut off all contact.
Old Cai and the others, however, never gave up trying to contact him, starting from being furious and exasperated, to finally calmly taking their chances.
The whole back-and-forth with Xu Huo earlier was a complete act.
There were still unopened compressed biscuits on the shelf. Xu Huo tore open a pack, took a bite, and chewed slowly. Then, through the terminal's internal system, he repeatedly elevated his own position's authority level, found the list of wanted criminals that Old Cai and the others had diverted, and signed his name in the blank space after the death sentence review.