An infinite journey starting from paradise

Under the intense alarm, the unconscious Fan Qiye regained consciousness.

"Damn...what happened?"

She rubbed her head and forced herself to sit up.

"Oh? Did he discover that the paradise world was fake again? Is this the third time?"

"The first time was because we discovered the AI ​​character's unnatural behavior during mating. The second time was after escaping to the surface and forcibly escaping from the Paradise system's rendering range. What was the reason this time?"

Fan Qiye looked at Hehuan, the core of the paradise system:

"Could it be that he noticed something about Ando Tomoko? He clearly had no contact with Ando Tomoko. What should we do this time? Delete Ando Tomoko's character, and then exclude Aoi Natsuki, so there will only be four women participating in the game. This will be disadvantageous to you."

"No need... Let's go straight to the next stage. I implanted the relevant memories in him."

Fan Kariya laughed and said, "Oh, this is against the rules."

"I promised you a long time ago that I would be the core of the park, as long as you could save him. It was you who insisted on playing this evil game."

"Whether you become Sleeping Beauty isn't up to you," Hokariya said. "But it doesn't matter. Let's get straight to the exciting part. I'm looking forward to seeing how he'll kill you with his own hands in despair."

Then, Fan Kariye walked towards Lin Shangren's body. "Come to think of it, you're quite clever. Even with all the manipulation of your memory, you've always been able to spot the inconsistencies in the virtual world. This time, let's try a different approach."

……

"Woo..."

Lin Shangren opened his eyes again. This time, what greeted him was no longer a pure white room. Instead, he saw a starry sky, a deep and brilliant one. And he was lying beneath this starry sky, in a clearing in a forest.

"here it is…"

[New memories are being synchronized. Please be discerning, my Lord. The following will be displayed as false memories implanted by the Paradise system.]

"Eh?"

Lin Shangren felt his head sink, and then countless familiar yet unfamiliar fragments emerged in his consciousness.

Chapter 18: Escape Room → Outdoor Exploration

"My name is Lin Shangren, an ordinary male high school student. Unimaginable and terrible changes have happened around me. I must survive and save everyone. Ye, forgive me..."

"If you view this series of memories as a movie, using this paragraph as the opening line would be quite good, a standard 19+, level 4 cut movie..." Lin Shangren commented in his mind.

Just now, he finished reviewing the memories implanted into his brain by the Paradise System.

The memory explains the subsequent development of the game:

After the second round, Lin Shangren and Fan Qiye played three more rounds, each one more intense and dangerous than the last.

The second round was still a relatively basic spanking, but the third round turned into acupuncture point expansion: a huge thing expanded it, followed by a punch that "super"ed the person.

When he saw this, Lin Shangren already felt nauseous. Although his physiological common sense told him that women were more malleable, he still felt disgusted when he actually saw himself stabbing someone with his fist from a first-person perspective.

The fourth round involved a suffocation play, but it wasn't your typical suffocation. Instead, the game involved a pulley system with a rope tied around Fan Qiye's neck. The other end of the rope was then secured to Lin Shangren's right hand via a movable pulley. The two were connected, yet unable to move. Only Lin Shangren could pull the rope, tightening it around Fan Qiye's neck through the pulley, lifting her up and then lowering her down, creating a piston-like motion.

"This is just like the torture device designed by Jigsaw. It's so brutal!"

The fifth round was electric shock. Fan Qiye's entire body was covered in electrode patches, forcing her to endure shocks that wouldn't kill her, but would be extremely painful. Lin Shangren's job was to control the voltage and then shoot Fan Qiye, who was already oozing feces and urine...

"Ugh... I won't comment..."

After five rounds of the game, the final door to the white room opened. However, the person behind the game wasn't about to let them go. He set up several more checkpoints, and ultimately, Andō Tomoko died from the trap, while the remaining few managed to escape to the surface.

Just when a few people were about to ask for help, Lin Shangren fainted due to excessive fatigue and tension.

that's all.

"It's just like being forced to watch a perverted Category IV movie." Lin Shangren rubbed his neck and looked at the starry sky above his head.

"If you're trapped in this perverted game, you're doomed. Instigated by a bad woman, you choose to hurt your childhood sweetheart, then indulge in this perverted game while being condemned by your conscience. Ultimately, you lead everyone to escape. That's the role I need to play, right?"

Thinking of this, Lin Shangren stood up, pretended to be at a loss, and looked around at the surrounding environment.

But in his heart he was thinking about the next countermeasures:

"My previous reasoning shouldn't be too problematic, but why did He Huan do this in the end? Did she want me to follow the script they set? Why? What did I miss? Is it related to the three days of lost memories?

The current situation is really passive. If you put it in a mystery novel, using information asymmetry to hinder reasoning would be criticized by readers!

Lin Shangren felt helpless, but now he had no choice but to be led by the nose.

Looking at the dense and deep forest, Lin Shangren thought, "The realism of the simulated environment has been greatly improved this time. It doesn't look fake at first glance. However, this forest and the sky above are really out of tune."

Above Lin Shangren's head was an exceptionally clear and brilliant night sky, and the view was filled with a beauty that had not been polluted by industrialization.

More importantly, Lin Shangren could see the complete Orion from it.

He was currently in a deciduous broad-leaved forest common in the northern temperate zone. Judging from the condition of the leaves and the perceived temperature, it should be summer. In summer, the complete constellation Orion could not be seen in the northern temperate zone.

"It's interesting... The environment can be made almost realistic, and judging from the starry sky, it seems to have been carefully rendered. But it ignored such details? This doesn't seem like a mistake a computer would make." Lin Shangren thought.

"Considering that Sleeping Beauty is the core of the Paradise System, could this so-called Paradise System be some mysterious biological computer or something?"

Suddenly, Lin Shangren saw a piece of cloth tied to a low branch. When he walked closer, he found that it was the remains of a handkerchief.

"This is... something that belonged to Fan Kariha. I have memories of her using it to wipe her private parts and the corners of her mouth. What is this? A sign to guide me?"

Lin Shangren looked into the distance and saw a piece of cloth tied to a tree not far away. Looking further away, he could vaguely see a faint light.

"You want me to go that way?"

After thinking about it, Lin Shangren gave up the idea of ​​doing the opposite and started running towards the faint light in the distance.

As I ran, the light in the distance gradually disappeared, and in contrast, the shadow of a huge concrete building appeared faintly among the woods?

"What's that? School?"

Liuqingguan College, a public welfare educational institution combining an orphanage and a college, aims to adopt and educate orphaned children, teaching them basic knowledge and survival skills. It has both an elementary and a middle school department, and provides twelve years of education for these adopted children. I've lived here my entire life...

The specific information and details of the building emerged in Lin Shangren's mind.

"A comprehensive educational institution? But... why is it so dead? There's no light in the security office or the duty room. Oh, and... the role I need to play now requires some urgency."

"Teacher? Security guard? Is anyone there?" Lin Shangren shouted anxiously.

He broke into the unlocked security room, which was empty except for a few security uniforms hanging on the wall and a flashlight on the table.

"Hey, hey, hey, why does this scene look like some indie horror game? Could this flashlight also be nuclear-powered?"

Lin Shangren turned on the flashlight, which only emitted a faint light.

"It seems not..." Lin Shangren thought, "She wants me to explore this school?"

He walked out of the security room and started walking towards the teaching building.

"This is?"

Lin Shangren discovered that the window of the school building was broken. Judging from the glass on the ground, it must have been broken from the inside.

"Interesting! Escape room becomes an outdoor exploration. The school gate is locked, so let's go through this window."

Lin Shangren used a flashlight to knock off the remaining glass, grabbed the window sill, and jumped into the school building by stepping on the wall.

With the moonlight coming in from the window and the dim light of the flashlight, the scene inside the school building appeared before Lin Shangren's eyes.

"Is there a riot going on here?"

Everything in the corridor was in a mess, broken glass, smashed flower pots, fallen doors, and... dried blood.

Lin Shangren looked around, thought for a moment, and then picked up another piece of glass and put it in his pocket. Although all this was virtual, it might come in handy.

He pushed open the door of a classroom, and inside, the same scene unfolded: tables and chairs overturned, a mess. Lin Shangren saw blood on the floor and on several broken stool legs.

"Ye, are you in there?"

The next classroom was just as messy.

"Acacia?"

The same goes for the next room.

"Bai Ye-san?"

"Rika?"

Lin Shangren opened classroom after classroom, but without exception, they were all empty. Finally, he saw a classroom that felt very familiar. Judging from the memories imposed on him by the Paradise System, this should be his classroom.

Walking in, Lin Shangren gradually matched everything in his false memory with it. He saw an overturned table and a book on astronomy on the ground.

"Is this my place, my book...? Yeah, in my false memory, I was a member of the astronomy club."

Suddenly, Lin Shangren felt a headache and another memory began to emerge.

When Ye and I joined the Astronomy Club, there were already a few other students and a teacher serving as an advisor. The Astronomy Club was one of those small, but not deserted clubs either.

The advisory teachers rarely come, but it's nice to have an event where only the students can have fun. After the club activities, everyone usually leaves together. But today, it was just Ye and me.

Normally, Li Xiang would stick to the leaves, but today she had other things to do and didn't come, so it was very quiet.

"That's Cassiopeia, and that one, that's Ceres, and the Autumn Square, that's Pegasus."

Ye pointed to the sky and recited the names of the constellations fluently and skillfully as if he was reciting a poem.

I followed the tip of the leaf's finger to look at the vast autumn starry sky. Although I was used to looking at the night sky, I didn't expect the refracted light of the stars to be so eye-catching.

The starlight has traveled a vast eon before finally reaching human eyes. If you think of it this way, you'll have a new feeling every time you see the stars.

"When will this year's meteor shower come? I really hope I can see it this time."

Ye secretly held my hand. As my childhood sweetheart, Ye had this habit from a long time ago. If something happened, she would subconsciously hold my hand.

When I'm anxious, when I'm happy, when I'm lonely...

She said this would make her feel at ease, because I was with her.

"Ye, where the hell are you?! What on earth is going on here?"

Lin Shangren suddenly let out a hysterical yell, which startled the system girl who was on standby.

"My Lord? I should have protected your consciousness, right? What are you doing?"

"Is this a full-on performance?" Lin Shangren replied in his mind. "However, this immersive recollection is much better than the forced indoctrination of memories before. It makes me kind of wish I had actually had such an experience."

My Lord?

"System, if there's another memory intrusion, unless it's something forceful like deleting my memory, please be a little more lenient with the rest."

【why? 】

"On the one hand, it was to make my performance more realistic, and on the other hand, I wanted to find something from my memories of being there."

【Follow your orders. 】

Lin Shangren stood up, walked out of the classroom, and continued to explore the school building. Strangely, the glass windows facing the school courtyard were all painted black.

After turning off the flashlight, Lin Shangren could vaguely see a flickering fire on the other side of the window.

"Are we going there next?"

Chapter 19: Acting, Memory, and Mixing

"Get into the role, get into the role, start acting now. First, you have to understand the character's mentality..."

Looking at the faint and flickering light outside the window, Lin Shangren took a deep breath.

"First, there was a hasty run..."

Opening the window and jumping out of the classroom, Lin Shangren ran towards the courtyard of the school, towards the fire, towards where there were people!

"Ever since I escaped from that underground white room, I've been alone. Even when I frantically searched for others in the school building... I was lonely and scared, as if I was the only one left in the world.

I had to act excited. I heard the sound of a fire burning, there were people there. As long as I found other people, I would be safe. I could ask for help and go look for Ye and the others together!

Running excitedly, the flames came closer and closer to him.

Someone, a real person, was saved!

The pent-up emotions and ecstasy in my heart are about to burst out.

I saw what happened in the school building. You must have experienced something, and it was the same here. It was like a nightmare. Now it's okay...

"Hey!!!"

Lin Shangren shouted.