Chapter 265: Ice Age

The moment Spades' hand passes through Bai Liu's chest, the heart that Bai Liu has fixed to his veins slips out of his back.

The non-stop beating heart was falling in the deep blue-black sea, Bai Liu's eyes were half-closed, he knew it was useless, but he couldn't control himself to reach out his hand to try to reach the heart that disappeared in the deep sea.

Slender fingers opened and closed feebly in the cold waters.

Spades grabbed Bai Liu by the ribs and lifted him up a bit, while he himself turned and chased off into the deep sea, apparently to grab the heart and destroy it for good.

Bai Liu opens his limbs inertly, and slowly, passively, floats upward under the force of this uplift, to the surface of the sea, which is flooded with a fine phosphorescent light.

The sun was silent below the horizon, and there was only a faint, silver-framed shimmer on the edges of the infinite waters.

Glaciers and ice floes, souvenirs, or remnants, of a planet that has cooled and heated, scrape around Bai Liu, suspended on the surface of the sea, and follow the currents far away.

The pure black sky has no clouds, but only a myriad of stars in the universe, which emit mesmerizing flashes of light, as bright and dazzling as crushed carats of diamonds, as strings of pearls scattered on velvet.

As heartbreaking, yet insanely beautiful as everything luxurious and luscious in this world blooms the moment it breaks.

And that beauty was obscured by a light green veil that shivered from the southeastern sky - the aurora borealis.

The aurora borealis flowed through the night, fluorescent hues floating like a cheap curtain at the beginning of a dream.

Bai Liu's eyes were half-open, his mental and life values were decreasing greatly, and in his ears, as if it were a hallucination, the voice of Edmund's vicissitudes of exhortation resounded.

[Child, never test your beloved with truth or falsehood, I did it too, and I stuck to that experiment, but the only conclusion I came to was--]

[They can recognize it.

[What exactly is the difference between monsters and people, I still don't understand, even if they have the same memories, the same body, the same structure as we do, as if they were another us in a parallel time and space, but in the eyes of those who love us, they are still not us.]

[What exactly is it that separates them from us?]

[The experiment I wanted to do in the beginning was to find out if these monsters that were produced could actually be turned into indistinguishable human beings by the Turing test, and how they were really different from us humans.]

[If it's the same, then are we humans really human?]

[Perhaps we are just the same kind of monsters that were placed on this planet, in this game, and we carry the memories that were injected into us, from other people, a species that was produced to go to war and self-destruction - like my superiors asked me to do with these monsters.]

[So that everything makes sense, I understand all the unfortunate things that have been happening to me, to my friends, all around me all along - because we are born as we are, and there is a higher dimension than we are, or it would be more apt to call him God, who decides that the destiny of the world is just as cruel as it is.]

[If they are different, where do they come from when the body, the core, and the memories are all the same, and how can anyone recognize the real us when we can't even tell the difference between the real and the fake?]

[The people at Tarzan Station gave me the answer, and in you, I have verified that answer once again, but I still don't understand why.]

[Where the hell did this difference come from?

Before you came here, there were many guests here, and I experimented on them, some of them left in the middle of the day, and some of them stayed here forever - under every ice crack here, there are the "corpses" of these guests who failed in their experiments.

[Time and time again, the people at Tarzan Station have wiped their memories and read the files and started over, but they still recognize each other no matter who the guests are, and sometimes the guests who come can recognize each other.]

But why?

[Why is it that some people can recognize it and others cannot? Why is it that the people at the Tarzan station are always recognizable, but the guests who come cannot do so with such constancy?]

I couldn't figure out what was affecting the results, so no matter how many times I ran the experiment, I still couldn't manipulate the results-until I met Spades.]

[He was the fastest guest I've ever seen to recognize a teammate, and he was willing to talk to me and gave me the answer - intuition.]

[This is the strangest experimental variable I've ever heard of - if my student handed me a lab report with those two words on it, I'd make him jump into the Ross Sea in shame].

[I saw you in the memories of Spades' friend, the Reverse God, Bai Liu, and you will make an experiment a thousand times more extreme and insane than the one I've done so far - you'll use thousands of your own clones to make an unsolvable game. to test another's perception of you.]

[I know you do, and I'm sure you know the consequences of that, but you, like me, want to see it again, to verify that result once more--]

[These Bai Liu have the same appearance, memories, and kernel as you, to the point that you've been alienated into one of these monsters, the monster itself - so will Spades still be able to find you?]

[Thank you for finally letting me know the answer to this unsolvable puzzle.]

[I always thought it was the side that recognizes the monster side as a human, but it's not really like that, it's the side that can't give the special emotional feedback that the human side wants as a monster.]

You're a monster, but you love him, Bai Liu.

That's why you couldn't hide Taville's heart in the other Bai Liu's body, because it was your heart.

[Your response reveals yourself.]

[Love changed you from monster to man, love gave you a weakness, love made you float in the depths with him clutching your heart, love made you stand out from millions of other monsters and become the most special one for Spades.]

[So he found you.]

[But do not grieve child, it is not fate that brings you to your destiny, but love.]

[Love has kept you apart, but will eventually bring you back together.]

The ice melts away in large chunks, and the frozen "body" of the pale monster inside floats on the surface, mixing with the broken ice as it swims past Liu Bai, whose eyelashes are coagulated with very fine grains of ice, glowing fluorescent green in the aurora borealis, as the water rushes back and forth from his empty chest cavity.

Someone emerges from under the water and Spades picks up Bai Liu, who seems to be unconscious, by the waist and knees and lifts him to the shore, holding two hearts in his hands.

One was pinched and torn, but still beating weakly, and the other was frozen in a block of ice, so fresh that it looked like it had just been taken out of the chest cavity - Spades had dug it out of a [Bai Liu]'s body.

Spades action carefully thawed out this heart.

"This is your real heart." Spades looks down at the motionless Bai Liu and puts the newly thawed heart into Bai Liu's body, "Back to you."

Bai Liu's body, already transformed by Edmund, rapidly grew the veins of the united heart, and the muscular skin on the thin heart healed in an instant, and a slow, weak beat began to appear on the originally cold and stiff chest.

Spades turned around, he took out the fuel and strong acid he had stockpiled in the warehouse, and without any pause in his movements, he began to treat the heart in his hand, which was still beating weakly.

The heart was reduced to ashes amidst the roasting fire and the corrosive sound of acid.

Bai Liu's frozen fingers gripped together slightly, his dark eyes reflecting the beautiful night sky, nothing.

Bai Liu's chest, which had regained its heave, stalled for a moment as the other heart was processed until it stopped beating.

It was as if his heart stopped with the complete cessation of the other heart.

[System Alert: Player Spades destroyed the last piece of corpse, reached the true end line achievement, all players passed the game, the copy will be closed soon ......]

The snowfield collapses behind him, Bai Liu's system panel jumps out and automatically exits the game, and Spades bends his knees next to the ashes and the seemingly dead Bai Liu, looking up slightly at the melting world of ice and snow.

Only after Bai Liu, who was on his side, disappeared in a flash of light did Spades stand up and prepare to exit the game.

He also didn't understand why he had to wait for Bai Liu to quit the game before he did.

It seems like a deeply ingrained, intuitive habit.

Spades felt as if he had watched the man exit the game as a point of light many times before, and then fall into a long darkness, waiting for the next game to start to see the man again, so he did so this time.

It's like a subconscious intuition of having to come here and destroy all the corpses.

Spades vaguely senses that the people who designed this game are utilizing these body parts and hearts, preparing to use them to trap Bai Liu forever, so that Bai Liu will live his entire life in the snowy plains as a monster, cold and alone.

It's a very real possibility, and Liu Jiayi was even glad that the person they logged into the game with was Spades.

Because no one else can stop Bai Liu from going crazy.

If Bai Liu logs into the game with other players and discovers that the main quest here is to destroy the corpse, the [TRUE END] line is triggered as soon as one player finds the corpse to destroy.

Even if you kill these players and kill Edmund, the game won't end.

Because the game is already on the [TRUE END] line, the game won't pass without hitting the final ending that destroys all the corpses.

Bai Liu can also just quit the game, but at that point the game will be realized and will load in reality.

After exiting [Ice Age], Bai Liu would likewise enter a copy of [Ice Age] in the real world, the essence of which was no different from him staying in the game.

And in the real world, with the method of destroying the corpses already known, destroying these particle weather devices forever is inevitable.

The body parts would definitely face the end of being completely destroyed, and there would be countless people who would try to do this in any way they could.

Bai Liu knew he couldn't be the enemy of the world forever, which is why he made the choice to stay in the game at that time.

He prevents this game from ending in such a way that the TRUE END doesn't come and the game doesn't load into reality.

It can be said that this game from beginning to end is a trap specially designed for Bai Liu, the moment Bai Liu stepped into this game, he only had two choices in front of him -

--or become a monster forever and stay in the snowy plains.

--either ...... destroy Taville's heart, destroy the only emotion, love, & weakness in his psyche, become ruthless, become cruel, unscrupulous, and calculating, then pass the game as a winner.

Let Bai Liu go from Bai Liu to Bai Liu.

That's what the people behind the curtain have been doing.

Liu Jiayi thanked from the bottom of his heart that the player they met in this game was Spades.

Because the other players can't stop Bai Liu from doing what he wants to do, but Spades is the one who has the ability to win over Bai Liu, and as long as he wins, Bai Liu doesn't have to choose.

As soon as Spades destroys the heart, Bai Liu will have to come out of the snowfield.

Liu Jiayi wonders where and by whom Spades' obsession and intuition to destroy this heart came from.

Although Spades' intuition was cruel to Bai Liu, destroying the heart of the one person who meant so much to him.

But he did save Bai Liu.

Because he completely destroyed Bai Liu's only weakness, so that the person behind the scenes designing the game, no longer have the office to exploit this weakness.