Chapter 575: Chapter 575 The Shadow In The b.l.o.o.d.y Sun
In the canteen, the bleary-eyed w.a.n.g Yijian was holding a lunch box that had six steamed buns inside. Three of them were for himself, and the other three were for the fool. When he just turned around, he suddenly could not see anything. Everything in front of him was pitch-black. He panicked and began to shout nervously,
“I can’t see anything! Am I blind? I can’t see anything!?”
At the same time, the chef behind the counter also shouted, “who turned off the f.u.c.king light? Hey! Someone check the light switch!”
Then, a clatter of noises appeared from inside the kitchens.
The students outside the food counter reacted very quickly. They immediately took out their mobile phones and switched on the flashlight function. Many light rays instantly penetrated the darkness and shone on people’s puzzled faces.
“What happened?”
“Why did it suddenly become dark?”
“Is it going to rain? Oh my G.o.d, my clothes are still hanging outside on the balcony!”
“That’s so strange, it shouldn’t get completely dark like this! It has already pa.s.sed seven o ‘clock in the morning. Nothing bad is going to happen, is it?”
“Don’t worry, nothing is going to happen, it is just a little bit dark, probably it is going to rain. But if you don’t pa.s.s the exam today, that will be a big problem! I heard that today, the teacher, who is going to invigilate us, is Mr. Zhou, that old man, so I prepared three small notes. Haha…”
The students, who came to buy breakfast, were all talking to each other about the sudden darkness. w.a.n.g Yijian patted his chest and took out his cell phone. He heaved a sigh of relief and said, “whew… I thought I was blind.”
Today was Sat.u.r.day, usually on this day, not many students would get up this early. But this morning, each academic department has arranged the optional course examinations. For example, w.a.n.g Yijian, if it weren’t for the examination of the ideological and political course, he wouldn’t have gotten up so early in the morning after drinking so much.
There were a lot of discussions, but it was not chaotic. In the era that everyone had a mobile phone, it was equivalent to having a small torch in everyone’s hands. Most people just thought that it was going to rain, and all of them were waiting for the staff in the canteen to check the issues of the lights in the canteen. There were even a few brave male students even whistling to the female students in the dark to tease them.
However, before the light was even switched back on, a student suddenly ran into the canteen breathlessly, while holding the mobile phone in his hand, and shouted,
“Something incredible just happened outside! Come and take a look! You all need to see this!”
All the students in the canteen instantly shone the lights at the student, who had just run in, at the same time. It made that student immediately covered his eyes while cursing repeatedly, and a few seconds later, he just ran out again.
In the distance, on the city roads, there were sounds of emergency brakes and a series of violent and dull collision noises. It quickly followed by the ear-piercing cars’ alarm noises.
There was no lightning, no thunder, no wind, no rain, just the sounds of the emergency brakes, car cras.h.i.+ng, and alarms everywhere as if there were car accidents all around the whole world.
The students in the canteen realized something was wrong and began to grope out of the canteen one after another with their mobile phones. However, there was basically no fear or panic. Because one, there were many people, and two, they were all curious about what had just happened.
The street lights in and around the university town were scheduled to switch on and off by electronic clocks. It was not controlled by the easily broken brightness sensors, so at this time, the staff in the electric control room probably haven’t figured out the situation, and perhaps, they were still waiting for their superior’s instructions as to whether they should switch to the manual control and turn on all the lights.
Therefore, there were no street lights outside at the moment. Students gathered together using their mobile phones to provide as much light as possible. In terms of the place further away, it was mainly illuminated by cars’ lights.
With the help of the mobile phone’s light, w.a.n.g Yijian walked carefully around the table and followed other students out of the canteen. As soon as he got outside, he heard other people shouted loudly, “look! The sky! The sky!”
Instinctively, he raised his head to take a look.
From his position, he was just able to see the No. 2 teaching building, and a dark red sun, seemingly oozing blood, slowly emerging from the corner of the No. 2 building. It was just like the sun that was slowly rising from h.e.l.l.
“Ho…ly f.u.c.k!”
w.a.n.g Yijian was completely stunned by what he saw.
Little by little the b.l.o.o.d.y sun struggled out of the darkness.
And then someone shouted, “Look, there’s someone next to the sun!”
“Where? Where is it?” Someone with bad eyesight said hurriedly.
“Over there, near the teaching building!”
“Wow, so freaking cool! Quick, we need to take pictures!”
Some foolish girls screamed and then quickly adjusted their phones, wanting to capture the moment.
Under the huge red b.l.o.o.d.y sun, on the edge of the corner of the building roof, a dark shadow was holding a seemingly sword-like object with its tip pointing downwards, and standing in between the pitch black and the b.l.o.o.d.y red, like a messenger, who wandered between h.e.l.l and Earth. The entire scene was filled with the breath of destruction.
“Who is that person?”
“Huh? He disappeared?”
“Look, the man is gone.”
“It wasn’t an illusion, was it?”
“The canteen’s light just came on. Let’s go and get some food.”
“There are car accidents outside, let go and see if there is anything we can help.”
…
“No f.u.c.king way!” Seeing the familiar silhouette, w.a.n.g Yijian could not help but blurt it out.”
……..
w.a.n.g Yijian’s mouth was wide open. The buns in the lunch box were getting cold, but he still stood motionless. He was so familiar with that shadow. Just last evening, he had seen it so many times that he could not even remember how many times he had seen it. He could not help but murmur again, “don’t tell me that he is really Dummy! Normally, he should have come to the canteen at this time.”
The sky was getting brighter and brighter, s.h.i.+ning with warm and genial light. The sun gradually drove the darkness away.
In the canteen, the students, who did not leave to help the people, who were in car accidents, were talking about the ten minutes darkness, hoping that someone would be able to give a reasonable explanation. After all, it was very strange. There was no advance warning, and there was no rain, no earthquake or anything like that, and everything just went back to normal as if it had never happened.
Students are always a group of young people with great imaginations. It didn’t take long before someone mentioned the Mayan prediction and made a compelling connection between them. It made many students, who had heard this hypothesis before, nod in approval as if this prediction was true.
“The Mayan people predicted that on the 22nd, the sun would no longer rise and the world would fall into darkness. So that thing is real?”
“Who knows? But didn’t the sun come out again?”
“What if it disappears again?”
“Who do you think that shadow in the sun is? It looks so scary.”
“No idea, but I think it is pretty cool.”
Two young girls, who were carrying lunch boxes, were talking about the latest topics when they came out of the canteen. Then a girl with a ponytail suddenly came running towards them hurriedly. Her eyes were looking everywhere anxiously while running as if she was searching for something. Seeing w.a.n.g Yijian was just about to get back to the canteen, she quickly stopped him and whispered,
“Did you see Dummy?”
w.a.n.g Yijian was still thinking about what happened earlier. Being suddenly stopped by someone, he was startled. Only after he realized that the person who stopped him was Lu Bingyan did he finally let out a sigh of relief, “I did not see him, we drank too much last night, so probably he is still sleeping somewhere in the university.”
Lu Bingyan looked at him and said anxiously, “I’ve been to the grove and also the security office, he is not in those two places.”
w.a.n.g Yijian’s mind was still in a muddle. Whenever he thought of the words, “it is getting dark” the fool said, it sent chills down his spine. It instantly killed his mood to chat with Li Bing Yan. After he stuffed another meat bun into his mouth, he grabbed Lu Bingyan’s hand and said, “I also have something that I need to ask him. Let’s go to the No.2 teaching building to have a look!”
Lu Bingyan was fl.u.s.tered. Earlier on, when the darkness arrived, she also thought of the words the fool often said in the night, “the sky is getting dark, they are coming!” and the most terrifying words he said were, “everyone will die!”
“Dummy must know something!”
Surprisingly, both people thought exactly the same. On the way, they started to hear more and more people discussing this strange phenomena and see more and more terrible car accidents outside on the street. It made their hearts start to thump rapidly and anxiously. Until the end, they began to run toward the No.2 teaching building as fast as they could.
Along the way, many people looked curiously at the two running people in surprise.
w.a.n.g Yijian was not famous, but Lu Bingyan was a very famous top student. At the moment, she was running inside the university campus with a male student while holding hands. Originally, this should be a very surprising thing, but compared to what had happened today, it was no longer that surprising anymore.
However, after they arrived at the teaching building, two people did not find the fool. It was as if the fool had disappeared. Only a photo that disappeared from the wall outside the student council activity room proved that he came here before.
At that moment, w.a.n.g Yijian’s mobile phone suddenly rang, and then he received a short message from an unknown number,
“I am leaving, if you have problems in the future you can look for me, my name Chu Yunsheng.”
Seeing w.a.n.g Yijian’s face was very strange, Lu Bingyan could not help but ask, “who is it? is it Dummy?”
w.a.n.g Yijian pa.s.sed the phone to her and asked her to see for herself, “take a look. I don’t know if this is him.”
“Chu Yunsheng?”
Lu Bingyan’s pretty brows were pressed together as she read the message. She then quickly typed a message using her slender fingers and sent it back,
“Are you Dummy? Will the sky become dark again? Who is coming? Where can I find you? What should we do?”
After sending the message, the two people looked at each other in silence. An inexplicable tense atmosphere enveloped the hearts of the two people. Nervously, they stared at the phone, counting the time and waiting for the message.
After a long wait, just when they thought that there would be no reply, the phone rang again, this time with only a shorter sentence, three words,
“Shoes, fat meat, weapons.”
…
At noon, after the exam, Lu Bingyan met with w.a.n.g Yijian at a remote corner of the canteen.
“w.a.n.g Yijian, what does Dummy’s last reply mean? Did you figure it out?” As soon as Lu Bingyan saw w.a.n.g Yijian, she asked hurriedly.
She had completely messed up her exam. Her mind was full of anxious thoughts. Sometimes, she thought about the sky becoming dark again, sometimes, she thought about the message the fool sent, and sometimes, she thought about the fool’s cold expression.
w.a.n.g Yijian quickly took out his phone and opened the alb.u.m to show Lu Bingyan a group of photos and then whispered, “Look at this first.”
Lu Bingyan looked at him in confusion and then took over the phone. What she saw was a group of photos of a dark shadow holding a sword-like object next to a b.l.o.o.d.y sun on a building roof.
“What is this?” She asked in a surprised tone.
w.a.n.g Yijian leaned over to her shoulders and whispered into her ear while smelling the faint fragrance of her body, “it’s Dummy!”
Lu Bingyan was so shocked that she almost scremed. Fortunately, she quickly used her hand to cover her mouth in time. Then she looked at w.a.n.g Yijian and then looked at the photos on the phone in disbelief.
w.a.n.g Yijian nodded his head and said, “it’s him, I’m sure!”
Lu Bingyan’s eyes revealed a strange l.u.s.ter as she asked in confusion, “is… Is that a sword? What’s he doing with a sword up there?”
Then all of sudden she asked in a shocked tone. “where did he get the sword?”
w.a.n.g Yijian cleared his throat and said, “don’t you feel that Dummy was always a bit strange? When I first saw him, he was only a little skinny and dark, and his whole body was very clean except for his hair, which was messed up by the Tank auntie. But strangely enough, his clothes were full of holes, which seemed to be caused by something sharp. The Tank auntie would not do that kind of dangerous thing. So what do you think that happened to him in the past?
Moreover, he had no problem understanding other people. He just didn’t know who he was and couldn’t remember the past. Other things, like waiting in line at the library, he understood it before I even finished teaching.
Later, someone in the university put up some missing person notices, do you still remember it? The one with the big reward! So, I think…”
…..
w.a.n.g Yijian deliberately paused for a second to keep Lu Bingyan in suspense, and only after her eyes were looking at him with antic.i.p.ation did he finally feel satisfied and said secretly, “Combined with the fact that Dummy successfully predicted the darkness this morning, I think, Dummy must be an insider of some secret organizations.”
“And with the reaction that the girl from the Aurora College had, Dummy might be someone, who was at the very top of such organizations. Perhaps, because of an unexpected accident, he was badly wounded; and then he lost his memory.
In terms of why he came to our university, perhaps, there were still some parts of his memory that remained, and he probably graduated from our university, so he wanted to come to our university to restore his memory. However, I still don’t know why he always shouted below 311 Girl’s Dormitory.”
Hearing this, Lu Bingyan hurriedly said, “I know this, he went to the 311 Girl’s Dormitory to find a girl. That girl used to study at our university. Oh right, do you still remember last night in the corridor when he took down a photo from the wall outside the student council’s activity room and said that she died?”
w.a.n.g Yijian was dazed for a second and asked, “How do you know that?”.
Lu Bingyan said, “I used the student council’s members.h.i.+p login details to check the students’ information in the school database. There was only one person that matches the photo. And she used to live in Room 203 in the 311 Girl’s Dormitory.”
Now all the leads were connected, w.a.n.g Yijian instantly understood everything. He patted the table and said, “I didn’t expect that Dummy is really an affectionate person!”
However, Lu Bingyan didn’t seem to have heard what he said.
She said with concern, “I just don’t know what is the meaning of his final text.”
w.a.n.g Yijian said, “Based on what he said in the past, I think he was trying to tell us to prepare for the end of the world. Everyone is talking about Mayan Prediction now. A few lads in my room already went out to gather supplies.”
“I know that, too.” Lu Bingyan thought for a second and said, “Out of those three words, ‘Weapon’ is the easiest to understand. It is for our protection. We need to use weapons to protect ourselves.
Regarding the ‘fat meat’, I once saw a movie explaining that fat meat can be processed into oil, and this oil can be solidified and preserved in a low-temperature environment. In a critical moment, it can be used to save lives, so it is also understandable to gather fat meat.
But why shoes? And most importantly, why did he mention the shoes first?”
w.a.n.g Yijian said with a long face, “Your IQ is so high that you can get a good score in every exam. If you don’t even know why, how would I know?”
…..
In the city, 20 kilometers outside of the Songshan University town.
A private black car slowly stopped at the side of the road. There was a serious car accident that occurred in the place ahead at around 7 a.m this morning, and the road still hasn’t been cleared even until now. There were simply too many cars involved in the car accident. With so many cars cras.h.i.+ng into each other, even some ambulances had trouble getting in.
When the door opened, a man gave the driver all the money he had to pay for the ride and the fee for the two text messages.
Then he began to walk along the street while being completely shocked by the things he saw. The shops around him, the people on the sidewalk and the cars on the roads.
The advertis.e.m.e.nt on the telephone poles, the grease stains on the gla.s.s of a snack bar…
Everything he saw just completely blew him away.
Eventually, he came to an overhead pedestrian bridge. While turning his body around and around repeatedly; he tried to see the world that was seemingly chaotic but still maintaining order, as much as he could.
The dust that covered the handles of the overhead pedestrian bridge had different thicknesses, the branches of the trees on the roadside had different sizes, but none of them had repet.i.tions! The same goes for the clouds in the sky and the people that walked past by.
They were all very chaotic, very different, but none of them didn’t conform to the laws of physics and chemistry!
Looking at the advertis.e.m.e.nts on the big billboards hanging outside the buildings in the distance, and then looking at the cars driving past just below the bridge, Chu Yunsheng could not help but recall the conversation he had had with Tan Ning before she operated the machine.
….
“Tan Ning! What is happening? How did that gigantic s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p descend into the lower dimensional s.p.a.ce before the dimensional s.p.a.ce is even stabilized?”
“The arrow you shot made a crack, it took the opportunity to jump in. But don’t worry, it is stuck in the sky at the moment. We will use a Gravity Bomb to pull it down and destroy it. The main problem is the fleet that is currently surrounding the solar system.”
….
“No.1 told me all the secrets about the Chu Clan before he pa.s.sed away. He told me that if you still did not use the plan he suggested after he pa.s.sed away, I will need to activate the contingency plan. We know that you are looking for the fifth pendant so that you can go to the moon to get the real Wood Elemental Core to save your daughter. I can help you!”
“How are you going to help me, if you could not even find it in the past twenty years?”
…
“The gate project is actually called the Pseudo-Monolith. In the past, the Pre-Cambrian beings tried to replicate the Black Monolith after the real one disappeared. Although the replica strangely collapsed when it was almost completed, this gate was formed…”
“So you are saying that this pseudo-monolith is going to help me?”
…
“Okay, it is ready, the energy is only enough for one slot.”
“You want me to lie in there?”
….
“Tell me in detail what will happen if the Pseudo-Monolith is activated.”
“Its function is to obtain the consciousness of the creature lying in it, and form a subsystem based on all the memories in that creature’s consciousness. And then using the information contained in this subsystem, and the corresponding relation between the subsystem and the mother system to deduce, simulate, and restore the whole, real world that gave birth to the creature’s consciousness and memory. It is like restoring an entire picture just using a few pixels.
There are a few important things that you need to know. After the Pseudo-monolith is activated and once you enter the simulated world, you’ll forget about the outside world completely and just live on your original memory timeline until you fully “wake up” to the outside world memory.”
“How do I wake up and get out of the Pseudo-Monolith?”
“Brother Chu, according to the records of the Pre-Cambrian beings, this is a very dangerous thing to do. Do you want to spend more time thinking about it?…”
…
“Okay, since you insisted, I’ll tell you what I know… Unfortunately, there were no records of those, who had entered the Pseudo-Monolith, woke up safely. According to the record No.1 gathered, some Pre-Cambrian beings never even woke up. And to the Pseudo-Monolith, failing to wake up means no change, and no change means everything will happen according to the original memory timeline. Anything that has happened before, will happen again, and nothing will change. By the time they climbed out of the slot, the two memories had merged with each other so completely that they didn’t even know they’d been inside the Pseudo-Monolith, or how many times they had even repeated the simulation.
And that was just the problem at the beginning after they left the Pseudo-Monolith. After they got out of the simulation after some time, they would even begin to question if they had really left the simulation; and wonder if the world around them was just another simulation. Because their memories before entering the Pseudo-Monolith were stored inside it, and the Pseudo-Monolith could use those memories to simulate a world, then they would need to enter it again. And this has been confirmed by those, who had woken up, and preserved as a record of great importance!
Many Pre-Cambrian beings lost their minds because of this, and in the end… the end, they… they committed suicide.”
“Committed suicide? So, that is the way to get out of the Pseudo-Monolith?”
“According to the Pre-Cambrian beings’ record, there are two possible ways to get out of the Pseudo-Monolith. The first one is to wait until the world simulates to the end of the memory timeline. This was said to be the safest way. Another one is death, which was said to be a very extreme and dangerous method. In the Pseudo-Monolith, whether it is the suicide, the death by accidents, or killed by other people, it will cause the simulated world to collapse, and then cause the destruction of one’s consciousness. The survival rate is less than 1 in 10,000 in this kind of method!”