Chapter 151 - System vs. System (1): For you, madness, an old friend calls
translator: kiribold
061 entered the kitchen and cut oranges for Chi Xiaochi while talking about his agreement with Ding Qiuyun before he left.
Chi Xiaochi was lying on the bed recovering, his body still extremely cold, wrapped tightly in the quilt, and waiting to eat oranges.
The plump, soft oranges were cut open, and the thin fibrous juice made a splattering sound, which gave a whimsical, refreshing feeling.
After listening to what he said, Chi Xiaochi bundled up in the quilt and his nerves relaxed a little, “For Ding Qiuyun, this is good.”
061 pared the orange peel circularly and responded from a distance, “I didn’t do it for him, I did it for you.”
…His family’s Xiaochi had heavy thoughts, so he had to take good care of him.
Chi Xiaochi was stunned.
However, 061 behaved like he said something common and then asked, “Oranges are for eating, and orange peels can be soaked in water. Is that okay?”
Chi Xiaochi hid half of his face under the quilt, “Mn. Quickly present it to Zhen.”
061 smiled, “Yes. Your Majesty, please wait a moment, I’ll get a plate for you.”
Chi Xiaochi breathed a few breaths under the quilt before trying to sit up.
Lying down for a long time would cause dizziness.
And when he propped himself up to rise, he felt something was wrong.
He pulled his right hand out from the tightly tucked quilt and found a ring on his ring finger.
The ring was simple and fit his finger perfectly. It seemed unremarkable at first glance, but if you looked closely, there were extremely fine star patterns on it with silver light dispersing. It seemed to be the Milky Way flowing slowly.
When did he put on this ring?
Chi Xiaochi felt that the material of the ring was familiar, then he heard the subtle call again, “Mr. Chi?”
The voice was much louder and clearer than last time.
The voice was cautious, but it sounded more stable and self-controlled than the person in Chi Xiaochi’s memory, “Mr. Chi, are you there?”
Chi Xiaochi didn’t say anything, just tried to answer in his mind, “It’s me.”
The steadiness and self-control that he secretly admired just now completely disappeared. The surprised vibrato was more in line with that person’s age, being less than 20 years old, “Mr. Chi, Mr. Chi! I’m Ji Zuoshan, do you remember me?”
Chi Xiaochi “…How many months has it been for you there?”
Ji Zuoshan obediently replied, “… It’s been almost four months.”
Chi Xiaochi asked again, “Does it seem like I have dementia symptoms?”
Ji Zuoshan understood his meaning and pursed his lips to smile gently.
Chi Xiaochi was accustomed to gaining information from people, and he had already learned a lot of information from the question and answer exchange just now.
He did quick addition and subtraction in his mind.
The flow of time in each world was different. Some were faster, some were slower, but generally, the difference wasn’t too big.
Compared with the world he came from, he spent eight months in the first and second worlds and more than seven years in Dong Ge’s world. But because he successfully used the low, medium, and advance time compression cards, the time once converted outside only took one year and two months.
He had spent more than two years in the interstellar world where Ji Zuoshan was located. Fortunately, he had a 16x speed advance time compression card, and he only stayed there for a little more than a month.
In Song Chunyang’s world, he had taken the shortest time, only 45 days, when all was said and done. After offsetting it with the time compression card, it wasn’t even a full 3-days in the outside world.
The post-apocalyptic world took three years and eight months, and after offsetting it with the advance time compression card, close to four months had pa.s.sed in the real world.
Then add up the remainder of the breaks and the time difference between each world and the real world, calculate them separately, and add them all up together. In Chi Xiaochi’s original world, two and a half years have already pa.s.sed.
… it’s been too long.
Don’t look at him jumping around like a giant gra.s.shopper in various worlds now. In reality, he was probably a weak, pitiful, and helpless wheelchair ghost. If the nurse accidentally stepped on his oxygen tube, he might die on the spot and directly be reincarnated.
In Ding Qiuyun’s world, Chi Xiaochi once asked 061 how he managed to have ten hosts in his 12 years of employment. He deserved to be awarded the May 1st Model Worker Medal with a float parade in his honor.
061 said helplessly, “They also exchanged for advance time compression cards. Also, they generally only selected goodwill points…goodwill points are easier to obtain than regret points.”
Chi Xiaochi felt strange, “Even then the efficiency shouldn’t be so high.”
061, “Sometimes, there would be a situation like Zhan Yanchao, when they first arrived in the world, the goodwill points of the target for the host would be full, so they would directly commit suicide.”
…Well, that was effort and time-saving.
However, in his cognition, the time he spent in person was real and couldn’t be faked.
For Chi Xiaochi, Ji Zuoshan was a memory from almost four years ago.
Chi Xiaochi brought his thoughts back to the right track and asked, “How did you contact me?”
Ji Zuoshan: “It’s Blue’s armor. Do you remember ‘The Scar’ summer training? The Naman metal found by Liu-laoshi? Blue was refurbished by that Naman metal, Liu-laoshi also kept another portion of it. The Naman metals come from the same piece of stardust and have some special sensitivity. So…”
Chi Xiaochi gently rubbed his ring finger, his face flushed slightly having thought of something.
But soon, he didn’t dare continue this foolish thinking and started to loosen the ring, intending to put the ring back in the warehouse once the off-site transmission with Ji Zuoshan ended.
He asked, “What are you looking for me for? To sing KTV?”
Chi Xiaochi said it with a smile. His heart was like a mirror.
From when Ji Zuoshan connected to the present, they had already spoken for so long, yet he didn’t call 061’s name, and 061 didn’t greet him either.
Obviously, Ji Zuoshan opened up a secret channel that even 061 could not detect.
Since he didn’t mention it, Chi Xiaochi thought he had something private that he wanted to tell him. Naturally, there was no need to call 061 over to listen with him for the time being.
As for being able to break through the Lord G.o.d’s defense system, directly shield from other systems, and sneak in here without detection—in a sense, Ji Zuoshan’s spiritual power was indeed at a well-deserved near-G.o.d level.
Ji Zuoshan said, “It’s like this, I found a strange person here. It seems to have something to do with the system that Mr. Chi works for. Therefore, I specially blocked Liu-laoshi to prevent the system from overhearing.”
“Who’s this person?”
Ji Zuoshan said, “A man. I b.u.mped into him suddenly when I was shopping with Rosie and the others. He said that he came from another world and asked me to take him back to his original world.”
Ji Zuoshan’s description was already very objective and gentle.
The doctor confirmed that he was a lunatic with a moderate mental disorder.
Ji Zuoshan made a great effort to find essential information from his incoherent descriptions to understand the whole story.
This person has been in “this world” for thirteen years, and he couldn’t remember his own name. He called himself ‘Bai Chufei’ at one moment and ‘Tan Hu’ at the next.
Ji Zuoshan investigated and found that although there were more than 300 Tan Hu’s with the same name and surname on the planet, they all have valid IDs, and none of them matched the person in front of him.
There was a Bai Chufei, but his ID was canceled.
In other words, Bai Chufei was a person officially recognized as “deceased.”
Bai Chufei was a gentle and handsome young man. Even if this unshaven ‘Tan Hu’ was neatly groomed and counted as half a ‘little white face,’ it was still far from Bai Chufei’s appearance.
But Tan Hu insisted that he should have been the deceased Bai Chufei.
Rosie thought he was actually out of his mind and told Ji Zuoshan not to spend unnecessary time on him.
However, Ji Zuoshan couldn’t him comparing with this unidentified lunatic.
He investigated Bai Chufei and learned that this person came from a good background. His family background was only a little behind Zhan Yanchao’s family. He was an excellent Alpha who was quite proud and cold.
After Bai Chufei entered the army, he was imprisoned by another Alpha, Zhao Jinnian, head of a certain division of the East Route Army. He was chained to the military tent and forced to have s.e.x every day.
Later, he probably couldn’t bear such humiliation, so he chose suicide.
However, Tan Hu said he had to commit suicide to complete the task.
In the process of doing the task, he hopelessly fell in love with the handsome and powerful Zhao Jinnian.
Most love in the world is a.r.s.enic to others and honey for me. For the weak and timid Tan Hu, who was afraid of fighting in the real world, Zhao Jinnian chains him to the army tent so he doesn’t have to go to the battlefield again. He is not good at making decisions by himself, and the domineering Zhao Jinnian will solve everything for him. He was afraid of interacting with people, and Zhao Jinnian isolated him from everyone, only for him to enjoy.
In Tan Hu’s view, Zhao Jinnian was the perfect match.
If he hadn’t had to complete the task, he would not have left Zhao Jinnian.
When he filled Zhao Jinnian’s goodwill levels and ignited the military tent with the hidden flint, he secretly made up his mind that when all the tasks were completed, he must come back to find Zhao Jinnian.
However, when he completed all the tasks, and it was the Lord G.o.d’s turn to honor the contract, his dream completely turned into soap bubbles.
With Tan Hu’s face and the ident.i.ty of a mediocre Beta, he appeared on the city’s busy streets.
…no ID card, no source of income, no place to stay, absolutely nothing.
Bai Chufei’s ill.u.s.trious family background, golden clothes and jade food, handsome appearance, and strong martial power—he didn’t have any of it.
He was Tan Hu, a person who shouldn’t exist in this world at all.
He went to look for Zhao Jinnian, claiming that he was Bai Chufei, but almost ate the guard’s gun. He had to squat on the side of the road, rummaging through the trash can for food like a beggar, shivering from the cold, waiting for Zhao Jinnian to come out of the barracks, ready to rush up and reunite with him.
He has so many beautiful memories with him, and what he (ZJN) loved should be his soul, and he wouldn’t be willing to abandon him.
His dream came to an abrupt end when he saw Zhao Jinnian’s car driving out of the military camp gate while hungry and dizzy.
The right seat in the back seat that originally belonged only to him was occupied by a man who looked like Bai Chufei.
Afraid that he would get motion sickness, Zhao Jinnian rolled down the car window, put one hand on his shoulder, peeled the milk candy, and stuffed it into his mouth. He stuck to his ear, whispering words of love, and made the good-looking man laugh.
Tan Hu thoroughly gave up hope.
He called out to the Lord G.o.d, again and again, begging the Lord G.o.d to let him go back. Even if he did ten more missions, he didn’t want to stay in this place where no one knew him.
He regretted and yelled until his throat was hoa.r.s.e, but the Lord G.o.d never acknowledged him again.
When the contract was signed, the Lord G.o.d had already stated that he would only fulfill one wish per person.
After realizing that he could never return, Tan Hu tried to commit suicide. After picking up the blade and motioning on his wrist for a long time, his legs softened, and his b.u.t.t landed on the ground. He hugged his knees as he cried.
He was afraid. He didn’t want to die.
Living but not daring to live, wanting to die but not daring to die. Tan Hu could only grit his teeth and stay in this world, surviving for thirteen years in a world that respects force by fearfully scavenging.
Over time, he went crazy, hid in his little world, chanted words, and told countless pa.s.sers-by his prayers, “Take me away, take me back, I don’t want to stay here anymore…”
Among the prayers, only one person understood his prayer, took him to a place where he could rest and gave him food and clothing. It’s just that his state of mind was already fuzzy, and he was in a daze every day. In addition to eating and drinking, he whispered to the wall.
He could no longer tell if he was Bai Chufei or Tan Hu.
Although he had already guessed it, when the b.l.o.o.d.y facts were directly in front of him, Chi Xiaochi still felt a chill in his body.
He tightened his hold on the quilt, trying to get more information, “Did he say anything else? For example, which system was his?”
Ji Zuoshan replied, “He said it was ‘No. 127’. He has been begging me, hoping that I can contact his system and ask him to help plead to the Lord G.o.d. But he also mentioned that he was the last host for No. 127. In short, he doesn’t know whether No. 127 is still working as a system.”
No. 127, 13 years ago, the last host…
Chi Xiaochi had never heard Liu-laoshi talk about this system.
Either an ordinary colleague or he resigned long before Liu-laoshi took office.
Chi Xiaochi contemplated for a while and planned to ask more detailed questions so that when he found an opportunity, he would ask a qualified, senior system through 061 for information, “What does No. 127 look like? Has he seen him? Could you ask him to describe him? ”
Ji Zuoshan was also attentive and had asked the lunatic countless questions in advance. At present, he has almost all the relevant information he can obtain.
He picked up his recorder full of Tan Hu’s fragmented narration, a hammer in the east and a hammer in the west.
It took him a lot of effort to sort out the general content from those voice files.
Ji Zuoshan held the recorder and read out the contents summarized above, “No. 127 was very young. He had just been admitted to university when he died. He was a liberal arts student. He wore gla.s.ses, appeared good-looking, and had long limbs. No. 127 was very dedicated and tried his best with his hosts, had a lively personality, and sometimes liked to talk to him about romantic things…oh, and he liked to eat very much.”
kiribold: hi everyone! I’m a big fan of this novel, and I thought it deserved a completed translation. The previous translators set the bar high, and it’s my first time translating, so please be patient with me! If you have any questions, edits, or kudos, drop a comment!
Updates will be on Mondays.
P.S. I’m looking for editors