“Zhou Hao? You mean the member of the investigation team we analyzed before entering the restricted zone?” Jiang Ce leaned forward slightly, pulling the bandages across his shoulder and back taut.
“Twenty-three years old, unmarried, no children…” Shen Wu recited the information one item at a time.
“It’s most likely him.” Shen Wu’s gaze fell on the barrel of the liner pen.
Jiang Nuan’s hand curled beneath the blanket.
The movement was immediately met by the large hand tightening around hers.
Ye Que reached across the coffee table with his other hand and picked up the pen. “After spending so long tracking down clues about Zhou Hao, who would’ve thought they were hidden here.”
“I can clearly sense that the anomalous energy radiating from this pen is different from every other kind of energy we’ve encountered in this restricted zone.” Shen Wu leaned back in the single-seat sofa. “Our current theory is that this may very well be a remnant of the restricted zone’s core energy.”
As he spoke, he took out a small anomalous-energy detector. A faint blue light swept slowly over the liner pen.
At last, the beam stopped on the wooden barrel.
“This section of wood is where the problem lies,” Shen Wu concluded.
Jiang Nuan’s eyes settled on the unremarkable wooden barrel. “How could an ordinary liner-pen barrel be connected to the core of a restricted zone?”
“The wood isn’t common.” Ye Que held the pen out to her horizontally. “A few months ago, I took a bounty job in Area A and saw it there. The region stays cold year-round, and this type of tree actually grows well in those conditions.”
“It’s generally not used for landscaping because its growth cycle is too slow. No one can afford to wait that long. But it does have one advantage—it’s extremely cold-resistant.”
“Area A.” Jiang Ce nodded in understanding.
Whale Harbor City’s administrative area was enormous. Although Areas A and E nominally belonged to the same city, the drive between them took at least eight hours.
Shen Wu had already pulled up a route on the terminal around his wrist. A holographic projection floated in midair, the route winding across most of the city.
“If we leave tomorrow morning, we can get there by tomorrow evening at the earliest.”
“Then tomorrow it is.” Ye Que made the decision without hesitation.
Jiang Nuan’s gaze remained fixed on the words carved near the end of the pen barrel: “To my beloved.”
A sense of absurdity rose layer by layer in her heart.
She didn’t know how many years Zhou Hao had spent in this world—despite knowing it was false—before he fell in love with someone, or how long it had taken him to gather the courage to carve those words.
In this post-apocalyptic world, before entering the restricted zone, he had probably never imagined that he would one day have a wife or a child.
Then he walked into the gray fog.
And gained an entire lifetime.
Jiang Nuan didn’t know whether that counted as luck.
Most likely, Zhou Hao himself didn’t know either.
“But…”
Jiang Nuan bit her lower lip.
“Zhou Hao came from our world. If he was trapped here, how could he have formed a relationship with a ‘person’ from this world, and even had Zhou Mengmeng’s father as a child?”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“Unless…” Her throat went dry. “Unless this world has become real enough to exist as an independent universe.”
“That would be something only a Creator on the level of a god could accomplish.”
She nearly laughed at herself after saying it.
The Creator? What was she even talking about?
Beneath the blanket, Ye Que’s thumb began stroking the back of her hand again, once, then again.
Jiang Nuan’s heartbeat skipped. She could only hold herself rigid, not daring to reveal anything in front of the others.
In truth, everyone had found Zhou Mengmeng’s existence more or less impossible to believe.
Across from the sofa, Qinian rested his elbows on his knees and cupped his chin in both hands. He stared at the pen on the coffee table for a long while, clearly at a loss.
“I’ve been thinking about this ever since I left Zhou Mengmeng,” Shen Wu said, breaking the silence.
“I have a theory.” His long legs were crossed casually. “This world may be the projection of another world, forcibly separated from reality by an exceptionally rare high-level esper, using his own flesh and blood along with all of his supernatural power.”
“A form of ultimate manifestation of consciousness.”
“Using the Creator’s memories and understanding of the real world as a blueprint, it reproduced a previous point in time.”
The living room fell silent for a moment.
Shen Wu continued.
“Those who enter the gray fog are like people stepping into this manifested domain, becoming part of the world itself. All the physical laws here remain valid—including birth, aging, illness, death, and the continuation of bloodlines.”
“That’s why Zhou Mengmeng truly exists.”
In other words, the people in this world were no different in essence from those in the original world.
Even if their starting point had been constructed, every step that followed was guided by genuine will.
Real choices. Real love and hatred. Real death.
Su Yang…
She thought of this friend she had known for less than two days once again.
She remembered Su Yang running out of the ruins of the barbecue restaurant, still protecting his milk tea, and the hopeful words he had spoken: “We’ll be back to the days when we didn’t have to live on edge in no time!”
Beneath the blanket, Jiang Nuan’s clasped hands trembled. Almost at the same instant, Ye Que’s five fingers tightened, enclosing her entire hand firmly within his palm.
“So… it’s like uploading one’s consciousness?” Jiang Nuan couldn’t help asking. “Anyone who enters becomes part of this world.”
“But the projection is most likely one-way.” Shen Wu’s tone turned cold. “Pure projection lifeforms cannot leave the gray fog. And once outsiders become too deeply immersed, they also find it difficult to escape.”
“What about Zhou Hao?” Qinian asked. “Even if that rule holds, he never resolved the restricted zone’s core. How did he get out?”
A good question.
“That cannot be explained yet.” Shen Wu shook his head. “It may have something to do with a mechanism of the core, or perhaps it was triggered by some special condition. We’ll only be able to solve it by continuing our investigation and tracing the source of this wood in Area A.”
Jiang Nuan felt a chill crawl over her as she listened. Various science-fiction concepts she had encountered before transmigrating flashed through her mind—AI, the metaverse.
It was also somewhat like an immersive VR world. But in VR, dying only meant logging out. Here, death was real.
“But…” Jiang Nuan forced down the unease in her heart. “If there really was an esper powerful enough to do this, what was his purpose?”
She unconsciously clenched her interlocked hands beneath the blanket.
“Creating a manifestation of consciousness on this scale would be absolutely devastating. That esper probably came close to death the moment he finished creating it…”
Ye Que lowered his head, his gaze resting on the words carved into the liner pen.
As if he were trying to see the despairing investigator through those few characters.
Several seconds passed before Ye Que finally spoke.
“Perhaps it was so that everyone could have an ordinary life.”
Shen Wu nodded.
“Let’s make a bold deduction.” He interlaced his fingers and rested them on his knees. “When the anomalous-energy disaster struck, there may have been an esper of this magnitude.”
“Although he possessed power approaching that of a god, he was still unable to save the real world from collapsing. He couldn’t purge the anomalous energy running rampant across it.”
“So, before he died, he made a reckless decision.”
“Using his understanding of the real world before the disaster as a blueprint, he selected a peaceful point in time as the starting coordinate and exhausted his life to construct this almost perfectly replicated, fully realized world.”
“He wanted everyone who entered the gray fog—or who was given physical form in this world—to be able to live out a peaceful life here.”
To give everyone an ordinary life.
Jiang Nuan thought of Zhou Mengmeng.
She remembered the girl shouting recklessly for her favorite idol at the concert, laughing as she said that her grandmother loved to paint, complaining that her family wouldn’t let her pursue her dream of becoming an artist, and sincerely taking Jiang Nuan’s hand to tell her, “It wasn’t your fault.”
A girl like that could only grow up in peaceful times.
“And I have another theory,” Shen Wu continued. “The Creator who brought this world into existence should also have a projection here.”
Shen Wu lowered his voice slightly.
“And the continued existence of this world most likely depends on whether that Creator’s projection—or some object belonging to the projection—still exists.”
“Once the projection disappears, meaning the core energy sustaining this world is gone, the entire world will collapse.”
That was the greatest difference between this world and the original one.
No matter how rotten the outside world had become, at least there were still people struggling to move forward, fighting for whatever hope might remain.
But the survival of this world was probably just as Shen Wu had guessed. If the Creator’s projection died, it would be like someone pulling the plug on a game server.
Jiang Nuan’s cat, Jiangjiang, jumped onto her blanket-covered lap, its warm weight settling against her.
She placed her other hand lightly on its back, stroking it again and again, her fingertips brushing over its soft, fluffy fur.
“If your theory is correct, and the Creator’s purpose was to give people ordinary lives—”
Jiang Nuan abruptly raised her head.
“Then why is there anomalous energy in this world?”
In the original world, anomalous energy had indeed begun to invade around this point in the timeline.
But if the Creator’s intention had been to build a refuge, then most likely, when constructing it, he would have removed anomalous energy entirely from the original blueprint.
And yet the reality was—
It existed here, and it was highly active.
“That completely contradicts his original intention,” Jiang Nuan concluded.
Shen Wu looked at Jiang Nuan. She understood the meaning in his eyes.
You really can keep up with me.
Then his expression gradually turned cold. “That’s exactly what I was about to say.”
“Creating a manifested world on this scale would be almost tantamount to exchanging one’s life for another. By the time the Creator completed the final step, he had most likely exhausted all his power, leaving him unable to protect the core of this world—the energy source sustaining the existence of his projection.”
He paused.
“So the core most likely fell into someone else’s hands, and that person sealed it away.”
“In other words, time in this world was once placed on pause for a very long time.”
Shen Wu looked around at everyone.
“Until the moment the E District of Whale Harbor City in our world was eroded by this gray-fog exclusion zone. That was when someone pressed the start button.”
“Only then did this world truly begin operating on its own. Time started flowing again, and the anomalous energy was most likely introduced at that point as well.”
Jiang Nuan suddenly understood everything. It explained it all!
According to the flow of time within the exclusion zone, even if only a few days had passed outside, hundreds of years might have already passed inside.
No matter how abundant the Creator’s projection energy had been, it should have burned out long ago.
This world should never have survived until now—until they entered it.
If the world had once been paused, then everything made sense.
Shen Wu’s voice grew colder and colder.
“The person who possessed the core released the seal.”
“But he turned this world, which was originally meant to be a refuge, into a massive slaughterhouse and laboratory.”
He raised his eyes, a bone-chilling coldness shining in them.
“Then what was the purpose of releasing all that anomalous energy and allowing monsters to run rampant in this refuge?” Jiang Ce asked in a low voice.
Shen Wu leaned forward slightly, put the pen back into its case, and wrapped the case in the isolation cloth.
“The most likely possibility at present…”
His gaze lifted from the case.
“An experiment.”
No one spoke in the living room.
Jiangjiang sat upright in Jiang Nuan’s arms, its round eyes fixed unblinkingly on everyone.
Jiang Nuan felt a chill creep through her entire body.
Someone had exhausted everything they had to create a world for the people who had already been driven to the brink of despair—a place where they could live ordinary lives.
Then someone else seized it and pressed the pause button.
Now they had pressed play again, and were throwing monsters inside.
Watching to see how these people struggled.
Watching to see how they died.
And they had even caused the deaths of countless people in E District of Whale Harbor City in the original world.
“…A psychopath.”
The word slipped from Qinian’s mouth.
No one disagreed.
“So tomorrow, we go to District A,” Jiang Ce said, his large hand settling over Jiang Nuan’s left shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. “We find the core, and then—”
“Then we smash the core that’s already been turned into a tool for evil,” Ye Que finished.
Beneath the blanket, Ye Que’s fingers were still clasped around hers. He had no intention of letting go.
Outside the window, the lights of Whale Harbor City at night streamed through the gap in the curtains.
Jiang Nuan thought that if Shen Wu’s theory was correct—
If the Creator truly existed, then he must have been a very lonely person.
Powerful enough to be almost godlike, yet forced to watch helplessly as everything around him fell apart, unable to save anything.
In the end, he had done something no one else would have done—or could have done.
He had forged an ordinary, peaceful place from his memories of the world, using everything he had.
Her breath caught for a moment.
Suddenly, she thought of the man who had appeared out of thin air in the shopping mall.
He could erase a rift of anomalous energy with a lift of his hand.
He was impossibly powerful, yet his features were so gentle and composed.
And there was that sentence Jiang Nuan had remembered ever since.
“I hope that when we meet again, there will be lights in a thousand homes behind us—not a wasteland of ruins.”
Lu Zhaoming.
…Could it be him?
