Chapter 318: Strange World, Strange Senior (Part 2)

Chapter 318: Chapter 7: Strange World, Strange Senior (Part 2)

If real humans could live in the Virtual World, it could only mean one thing… They were all Digital Life forms who had undergone the Consciousness Upload surgery!

‘How… How is that possible?’

According to Teacher Yan Chonghan, the technology was only meant to treat people in vegetative states. Healthy people had no need for the surgery.

“Could it be…”

Jiang Ran slowly rose to his feet.

‘Could it be that something happened before 2045, forcing a large number of people to undergo the Consciousness Upload surgery… and transfer their entire lives into the virtual network?’

He was truly confused.

‘Would that many people really be willing to abandon their physical bodies to live in the Virtual World?’

Jiang Ran, for one, was completely unwilling.

This very topic had been discussed in Teacher Yan Chonghan’s class before.

Both Jiang Ran and Fang Ze had expressed their respect for science and technology, but they refused to acknowledge that a Digital Life, separated from its body, could still represent the original individual.

Fang Ze had even said during a private conversation that those Digital Life forms, corralled in the online world, were like “electronic pets” in a gaming console—they didn’t even possess the most basic human rights or freedoms.

Although his analogy was a bit inappropriate, it was crude but true. That was essentially the situation.

From what Jiang Ran had seen, people in 2045 lived happy lives, and the world was as wonderful as a Utopia.

But…

‘It was all virtual. All fake. Just a string of computer data, ones and zeros.’

“No wonder the food tasted so unbelievably good.”

At one point, Jiang Ran had believed that in twenty years, humanity would enter a semi-Utopian society with a bright future.

But now he realized that if the people of 2045 had truly abandoned their bodies and the Earth, choosing instead to hole up in the Virtual World and numb themselves with digital illusions… that was an incredibly bleak future, tantamount to the apocalypse for human civilization!

More importantly—

‘What’s the deal with the reset that happens every 39 minutes and 11 seconds?’

Jiang Ran frowned.

‘Is this “feature” also one of the rules of the Virtual World?’

‘When I go back to 2045 tomorrow night, I’ll find a library, a bookstore, or an internet cafe, and look into the history of the last twenty years.’

Jiang Ran yawned and stretched.

‘Every world, every course of history, is bound to have written records. I’ll just have to read the right books, and I’ll understand everything.’

He then put away his laptop and placed Fang Ze’s English copy of *Narrow Gate* back where it belonged.

The moment the book touched the coffee table… Jiang Ran froze.

He was a little curious. Was this book, rumored to be so morally ambiguous, really that good? Good enough to have kept Fang Ze so captivated he couldn’t tear himself away?

So, he picked up *Narrow Gate* again and casually flipped it open.

It was the all-English version. While Jiang Ran’s English was decent, and he could slowly work through it sentence by sentence, the mental effort of cross-language reading was grueling, like trying to chew on boiled wood.

‘Nope, can’t do it. I just can’t get into this.’

After only two pages, Jiang Ran was already worn out from the constant English-to-Chinese translation in his head. He decided to give himself a break.

When people get frustrated while reading, they have a habit of flipping through the rest of the pages.

Jiang Ran was no different.

With the attitude that “skimming to the end is as good as reading it,” he pinched the edge of the pages with his right hand and began to riffle through them quickly.

Suddenly, his thumb caught on a page.

It was because the corner of the page had been dog-eared, and a passage was highlighted with a black pen.

Jiang Ran looked at the passage and read it aloud in Chinese:

“Before the Narrow Gate, there is clamor; after the Narrow Gate, there is eternity.”

“But this slender, Narrow Gate, only a few can find.”

Oh.

So it was this line.

Fang Ze had once said this was his favorite quote.

Jiang Ran, however, was baffled; he couldn’t see any deep meaning in those two lines at all.

‘Perhaps it’s just a cultural difference,’ he thought.

His intuition told him the lines were most likely related to the Bible, which was definitely a gap in his knowledge.

“Forget it. Time for bed.”

Jiang Ran yawned again.

He put down the book, climbed into bed, and turned off the light.

Sleep.

…

After waking up the next day, he went to class as usual.

Now, Li Yini, who had been impersonating Cheng Mengxue, was dead. Fang Ze was still away in the United States, not yet back. And Teacher Zhang Yang had not yet officially ended his leave to return to campus.

Jiang Ran felt like he was all alone again.

He wasn’t the kind of person who could enjoy solitude. Since he was a child, his childhood friend had always been by his side, and he’d had plenty of friends through school. He had never been as lonely as he was now.

To be honest, it felt awful.

He believed that no one in the world was truly willing or even hoped to be alone.

Even Qin Feng, who had been a recluse before high school, was no exception.

On World Line 0, Qin Feng had cherished their trio’s friendship. He had openly admitted several times that he’d never had any friends before then—he was always alone. So, becoming best friends with Jiang Ran and Cheng Mengxue was the most precious thing in his life.

He wondered if the Qin Feng of today was still alone.

Does he have someone to keep him company?

Has he found new friends?

Is there anyone fighting by his side?

Jiang Ran didn’t know.

It wasn’t for lack of trying to find Qin Feng. It was just that there was absolutely no trace of him in the Dragon Country’s national database or its Sky-Eye System.

Clearly, some “person” had cleaned up after him, helping Qin Feng hide all his traces.

Without a doubt, this “person” had to be Lilith.

It seemed those people really liked using Lilith to handle their chores… Safe, efficient, and reliable.