Chapter 73: Reality

By the time the supervisor picked up Mu Ke, Mu Sicheng had been woken up.

He lazily leaned on the back of Bai Liu's chair, the jacket that Bai Liu gave him on his shoulder was put on Mu Sicheng's hand. Originally, Mu Sicheng strongly prevented Bai Liu from taking part in the game, but he soon realized that Bai Liu's determination to take part in the game was so strong that, considering Bai Liu's style, Mu Sicheng felt that Bai Liu's heart was not something that he could easily shake. Considering Bai Liu's behavior, Mu Sicheng felt that Bai Liu's heart to participate in the game was not something he could easily shake.

Mu Sicheng witnessed Bai Liu lulling Mu Ke into a false sense of security and slept on his own, because after realizing that he could not easily sway Bai Liu's thoughts, all Mu Sicheng could do was to tell Bai Liu seriously that he would not fool around with Bai Liu and join this extremely dangerous league.

However, the jacket Bai Liu approved for him made Mu Sicheng's tone of voice couldn't help but soften quite a bit, "What, did you lure that little beauty into your thief ship?"

"You call Mu Ke little beauty, are you gay?" Bai Liu glanced at Mu Sicheng , "Mu Ke this type is sexually attractive to you?"

Mu Sicheng was instantly choked, "I'm straight! Can't you understand what I'm saying?!"

Bai Liu nodded casually, "I get it now, by the looks of you, you have something you want to say to me?"

Before Mu Sicheng opened his mouth, Bai Liu found a bench and sat down opposite Mu Sicheng.

Bai Liu sits freely and casually, but involuntarily gives Mu Sicheng a sense of oppression, making Mu Sicheng slouch in Bai Liu's reclining chair as if he had no bones, to sit up straight.

Bai Liu looks faintly straight at Mu Sicheng : "I guess you want to tell me that you will never join us in this gaming."

"Can you give me a reason that can convince me?" Bai Liu leaned back against the desk, flexing his hand and tapping his fingers on the desk, "Why don't you want to participate in this gaming league?"

"High mortality rate, high risk, not enough people, not enough sidequests." Bai Liu said several problems one after another, he raised his eyes to Mu Sicheng, "These can all be left to me, you just need to be responsible for participating, do you have any other concerns?"

Mu Sicheng was practically laughing at Bai Liu's relaxed demeanor.

If he was before a copy, he might have been fooled by Bai Liu's "everything is under control" look, but now Mu Sicheng is no longer the same Mu Sicheng, after a copy, Mu Sicheng already has a little bit of a clear understanding of Bai Liu's character - that is, he is a big gambler. After one copy, Mu Sicheng has become a little bit clearer about Bai Liu's character - that is, he is a big gambler.

Even if the success rate is very low, but as long as the income is high enough, Bai Liu this person is very bold to try.

"These are the main problems I'm worried about." Mu Sicheng had a rare serious tone, "Bai Liu, the league is really not a joke, the player mortality rate is very high, you don't need to give up your real real life for this game, although this game does bring a lot of things to the table, with your strength you can totally earn points slowly, it's much more secure, besides the game, you always need to do for the real life Some retreat ......"

"Real life?" Bai Liu repeated the phrase softly and imploringly, and he waited unhurriedly for Mu Sicheng to finish his words of bitter persuasion before asking irrelevantly, "What did you think of that single-player game Mu Ke cleared last round?"

Mu Sicheng was stunned, he didn't expect Bai Liu to suddenly bring this up, but just now Bai Liu did talk to Mu Ke about this, Mu Sicheng was sleepy as hell, but he also listened with his ears.

Mu Ke's last round of passes was called Day of Leaving School, a single player game with a somewhat Japanese campus setting.

The content of the game is not what attracted Mu Sicheng's attention the most, Mu Sicheng was more attracted to the point that--

-- Mu Ke says the school in it is based on a private high school he studied at in Japan, which was once haunted by a girl who jumped to her death, and has had a number of students die off and on since then.

The dormitory where Mu Ke lives is even more likely to have all but him die in various bizarre ways, which is a big part of why Mu Ke confuses the game with reality and comes out of it with injuries - the high school in the game is set in the exact same setting as the high school he went to.

It's also similar to what Bai Liu and the others went through - "Exploding Last Train" is based on an exploding last train that Bai Liu once rode by mistake.

Mu Sicheng was silent for two seconds, "I don't think it can be that coincidental that two consecutive games have prototypes in reality."

"That's right, I feel the same way."

"So I personally now feel there are three possible accounts that could explain this." Bai Liu pulled a piece of paper from his desk.

Bai Liu is accustomed to recording his thoughts as they come to him, especially since Bai Liu now recognizes that their memories can be tampered with to deceive people at will.

Because wrote specific information text will be [banned] disappeared, so Bai Liu only refined some simple key words to write down, he wrote down with five fingers to support the paper surface a turn, to the desk opposite Mu Sicheng see, Bai Liu explains the tone is very smooth:

"I'm leaning towards the idea that a lot of this game has real life archetypal events, it's just that some people know the archetypes and some people don't know the archetypes, for example, you and I know about this archetype of the Mirror City Bombing because we're both in Mirror City but obviously Zhang Gui doesn't know about it, and for example, this haunted Japanese high school that Mu Ke was talking about, he knows about it, but you and I don't know."

"But the question is, how are these realistic [prototypes] for designing the game, how is the game chosen?"

Bai Liu wrote a [Scene Selection] on the paper:

"The first possibility, the game randomly selects a real-life scenario event as a prototype to design a horror game, but judging from the Mirror City bombing and that haunted Japanese high school, the game's selection is clearly a certain tendency, it will select a tragedy that is originally horrific in nature to design the game, so this is not a high likelihood, PASS. "

Bai Liu writes down the word [Inspiration] on the paper again and continues:

"The second possibility is that the game will select tragic cases and spiritual locations that the player has experienced as prototypes to design the game, you and I both know that the game can delete and alter people's memories, so is it possible that the game can also read the player's memories and take inspiration from the player's memories and use the player's memories as a reference to frame the game."

"It makes it easy to bring the player into the horror game to a certain extent and the scenes are much more realistic, for example, the train scene in the last few minutes of the second copy is set up exactly as I remembered it, and that kind of realism that would make it impossible to tell reality from fantasy is actually very hard to do."

Mu Sicheng thoughtfully clasped his arm and tapped his index finger on the arm of his other hand, "I think this second possibility you mentioned has been more reasonable in its inference, and I'm leaning towards that one, what about the third possibility you mentioned?"

"No, but there's a very big hole in that possibility, and that's that the logic of the timeline is off." Bai Liu raised his eyes to look directly at Mu Sicheng, "Do you remember when that Explosive Last Train we were playing existed?"

Mu Sicheng was stunned as he recalled, "It seemed quite a while ago, didn't it? I was there when I went in."

Bai Liu calmly reminded Mu Sicheng: "But the Mirror City Bombing was this year, which means that the game Explosive Last Train predates Mirror City Bombing, and the game based on the bombing already existed before the bombing even happened, Mu Sicheng, do you understand what this means? "

Mu Sicheng's face began to change, he seemed to realize something, slowly looked at Bai Liu, Bai Liu nonchalantly continued to speak:

"This means that we got the reference archetype wrong, it's not that Exploding Last Train references Mirror City Explosion Case." Bai Liu continued smoothly, "Rather, The Case of the Mirror City Explosion references the game Exploding Last Train."

After saying this, Bai Liu wrote down the words [Test Phase] on the paper.

Mu Sicheng looked at Bai Liu's eyes without any fluctuation, it was as if a pot of ice water was poured over his head, he stiffly looked at the four words Bai Liu wrote on the paper, cold air bubbled up in waves from behind, Mu Sicheng's hands shook a little bit, as if he was shocked to the extreme, he understood what Bai Liu meant, but it also made him look at the desktop of the He understood what Bai Liu meant, but it also made him look at the words written by Bai Liu on the desktop, and retorted incredulously, "How is this possible?!"

To use an in-game expression to describe Mu Sicheng's current state, it was - his mental value had fallen below the safety line.

Bai Liu spoke in a calm tone, "When every game is developed to the end, it will come out with a version called public beta, which simply means that it will face localized public testing and will not be open to all players."

"If the response of this partial player of a certain copy is satisfactory to us, only then will we put this game copy in the official game and open this game copy, which is the final official game, to everyone."

Bai Liu flicked his eyelids up, "The third possibility I'm speculating on is that the game and the reality we're in are a public beta and an official version of a game, respectively."

"The in-game is testing how we, the selected localized players, react to a certain copy, and if [the system] is satisfied with our performance in this copy of the game, the corresponding game will be dropped into the reality we are in, made public to everyone, and turned into an official version."

"For example, Explosive Last Train was dropped into reality as Mirror City Bombing, and Day of Leaving School was dropped into reality as the Japanese high school that Mu Ke went to before, which in a nutshell is nothing more than two different manifestations of the same horror game."

"In other words." Bai Liu looked at Mu Sicheng with no emotion whatsoever in his eyes, "Our world isn't safe from being dropped at any time with the official versions of those horror games in the system."

"If that's the case, Mu Sicheng the very meaning of the real life you seek is no different from surviving in a game, so I don't see the need for you to turn down a competition for the sake of your so-called real life."

"Because the reality you're in is nothing more than a gaming competition that you can't see."