# 1367
Chapter 1368 「Virtual Reconstruction」
Under the night sky.
"A bunch of good little kids."
On a distant hilltop, Li Kengqiang sat atop a massive boulder, hands propping up his torso behind him, the evening wind fluttering his floral shirt.
The pitch-black sunglasses perched on his nose concealed his expression, only the corners of his mouth slightly raised.
Nie Jinshan, in his Zhongshan suit, stood on the peak like a sturdy pine, his gaze fixed on the direction where the bonfire burned. He spoke calmly,
"Miss it?"
"Miss what?"
"Your brothers." Nie Jinshan glanced at him. "The you of back then and the current Lin Qiye... they're exactly the same..."
The usually flippant and slick Li Kengqiang fell into rare silence. He sighed, lying back on the boulder, his eyes beneath the sunglasses gazing at the brilliant stars in the sky.
After an unknown duration, he slowly spoke:
"Lao Nie, do you know what's the hardest thing for me after becoming a Spirit?
"Loneliness?"
"No, it's that f***ing老子 can't drink!" Li Kengqiang couldn't help but curse. "This spirit body, no matter how much I drink, I can't get drunk! I want to drink freely with these kids like them... even just once."
Li Kengqiang took a deep breath, murmuring to himself in a voice only he could hear:
"That way, I could dream of them one more time..."
Nie Jinshan said nothing. He gave Li Kengqiang on the boulder a long look, then turned and walked into the distance.
After a long while, a voice drifted slowly into Li Kengqiang's ears:
"...Take good care of them."
The cold wind brushed across the silent peak. Li Kengqiang lay motionless on the boulder, like a corpse dead drunk.
...
The next morning.
Lin Qiye carried his washbasin and toothbrush to the clear stream's edge, where Baili Pangpang and Cao Yuan were already squatting, having finished washing up.
Just as Lin Qiye squatted down, Baili Pangpang's puzzled voice came from beside him:
"Lao Cao, did you hear any weird sounds last night?"
"Weird sounds?"
"Like... like, the creepy kind, like someone was singing in my ear..."
Nearby, Lin Qiye's mouth twitched almost imperceptibly.
Cao Yuan thought carefully. "No, I didn't hear anything."
Baili Pangpang scratched his head, not quite convinced, and asked Lin Qiye beside him, "Seven Nights, did you hear it?"
"What did you say? Speak up!"
"...Never mind."
After they finished washing up and returned to the underground air-raid shelter entrance, they saw Li Kengqiang in his sunglasses standing at the door, curiously examining the brand-new equipment inside.
"Brother Gun."
"Wow... you guys have really upgraded. Is technology this advanced outside now?" Li Kengqiang patted the automatic massage chair in the corner,试探性地 tentatively sat down, then the sudden bulge in the chair back startled him, sending him bouncing off the chair. "Fancy, really fancy!"
Lin Qiye spoke with a mix of amusement and helplessness, "Brother Gun, we're all ready. What are we training today?"
Li Kengqiang's gaze swept over everyone. "Follow me."
...
Half an hour later,
Li Kengqiang led them along a rugged mountain path, finally stopping before an extremely spacious valley.
More than a valley, it was like a small basin surrounded by mountains. The flat central area was at least half the size of a prefecture-level city. The vast视野 combined with the surrounding peaks made humans seem as insignificant as ants.
"What is such a wide space for?" Baili Pangpang surveyed the surroundings, asking quietly those beside him.
"Probably some kind of chase training? Or endurance exercise?" Lin Qiye thought. "But at our level, we shouldn't need to train physical endurance anymore..."
For those below the "River" realm, their spiritual power was relatively weak. Even when activating Forbidden Ruins, the effect was quite limited. Therefore, in daily combat, physical strength played an important role, and the lower the realm, the more obvious the effect.
But for Lin Qiye, not to mention just one valley, even from the easternmost to westernmost point of this Island, activating Somersault Cloud would take at most ten seconds.
In the confused gazes of everyone, Li Kengqiang slowly stopped.
"Everyone, are you ready?" He turned to look at them, a smile curling at the corner of his mouth.
"Ready for... what?"
Snap!
Before Lin Qiye and the others could ask further, Li Kengqiang snapped his fingers lightly. The scenery around everyone rapidly transformed!
The flat ground with grass beneath their feet suddenly became uneven stone brick roads. On the desolate flatlands on both sides, buildings rose from the ground. The sky shifted, the mountains vanished, and everything around became unprecedentedly unfamiliar.
In the blink of an eye, they had traveled from the Island to the center of an urban district.
Dingalingaling——!!
The dense chorus of bicycle bells pulled Lin Qiye and the others back to their senses.
Numerous bicycles穿梭 on the roads. As far as the eye could see, there were almost all young figures in lake-blue clothes, pushing bicycles. They laughed and chatted as they walked out of distant factories, moving slowly under the tree-lined paths.
The broadcast from an old radio, the hawking of street vendors, the distant hum of a train whistle... sounds from every corner of the street entered their ears.
Lin Qiye and the others stood by the roadside, gazing at the bare retro buildings around them, falling into deep confusion...
"Cough."
A light cough came from beside them. Li Kengqiang, in his floral shirt and bell-bottoms, was perfectly integrated into the surrounding environment, looking at them with a smile.
"Brother Gun... what's going on?"
"Don't be nervous. This uses my Forbidden Ruins to reconstruct memories in your consciousness." Li Kengqiang took out eighty cents from his chest, bought a pack of production cigarettes from a street vendor, tucked one between his lips and lit it.
He took a deep drag, exhaled hazy smoke, and continued unhurriedly:
"My Forbidden Ruins is Sequence 048, 【Virtual Reconstruction】. It can recreate scenes I've experienced in the environment of specific targets."
An Qingyu thought about it. "Scene recreation... like watching a movie?"
"No, it's not that simple." Li Kengqiang grinned. "All scenes I reconstruct will be 'corrected' according to my cognition and memory... Simply put, everything here has its own agency."
Li Kengqiang夹着烟 pointed at the vendor who had just left:
"For example, that cigarette seller. In my original experience, I didn't buy cigarettes from him. But in the reconstructed scene, I made the 'change' of buying cigarettes, so he would sell me cigarettes according to my subconscious ideology... Everyone you see here, every situation you encounter, will change based on your actions. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"...It's not like watching a movie, but more like an open-world game?" An Qingyu pondered.