DTTM 72

Chapter 72: GAME OVER!

Creating “him” was solely for the purpose of killing “him.”

The reason why the Messiah was able to become a “god” and have the power to rule over all living beings was that he sacrificed himself and built an “indebted system of sins” that could not be repaid.

When someone endures pain and sacrifice that is difficult for ordinary people to bear for the sake of a group or an ideal, they instantly become the biggest creditor of all the beneficiaries.

Even a debt as enormous as Xiang Ze’s could eventually be repaid. But the Messiah’s debt was “guilt.” It had no substance, was invisible and intangible, couldn’t be offset, and increased infinitely. Therefore, its repayment can only be achieved through transformation, becoming eternal “loyalty.”

This was the Messiah’s “umbilical cord,” the true source of divine authority.

There is no pure love that can create a god; only an unpayable, profound debt can elevate a person to a divine status.

The deeper the guilt, the more secure the throne.

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Amidst champagne, beautiful women, and a barrage of flashing lights, the GTC league president presented the Sun God team with the championship and runner-up trophies for each race and the final overall championship trophy.

Due to the citywide curfew, the post-match celebration banquet had to be held earlier, starting at 8 pm and expected to end at 10 pm

At the banquet, the Sun God Racing Team, as the biggest winner, was subjected to a barrage of criticism from the other teams. Tan Yunmei and Yi You were both forced to drink quite a bit, and even I, unable to refuse the urging from Qi Zhan and others, drank a few glasses of champagne.

The wine was cool and refreshing, and the bubbles pricked my throat like needles, with each making me feel uncomfortable.

The banquet was only halfway through when I said goodbye to Xu Chengye and left the noisy banquet hall early, citing feeling unwell.

“I’m not saying this to brag, but if I weren’t a co-driver, I’d be a top streamer……” As we left, Yi You was still talking at length with the other team members about how he earned hundreds of millions through his superb live-streaming skills.

I took the elevator all the way back to the floor that the Sun God team had booked, and knocked on Zong Yanlei’s door. The medical staff and other personnel inside had not yet left.

When they saw me, they all smiled and congratulated me.

“Mr. Jiang, congratulations! The match was fantastic!”

“Congratulations on winning the championship!”

“Congratulations!”

I nodded to each of them and gently opened the door to the inner bedroom. Zong Yanlei was lying on the spacious bed, his left hand under a positioning cushion, receiving an IV drip, and was fast asleep.

“Mr. Zong’s injury is quite severe this time, and the neuralgia may last for a while,” the doctor explained in a low voice. “I prescribed him some nerve-nourishing and strong sedative-hypnotic drugs, so at least he can get a good night’s sleep tonight.”

“Will he wake up tonight?” I asked, looking at the sleeping face on the bed.

“Probably not. Is there something wrong, do you need to talk to him?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

I tiptoed toward the bedside, and when I turned around, I found that the doctor had already closed the door, leaving Zong Yanlei and me alone.

“…Young Master?”

I brushed aside Zong Yanlei’s silver bangs, and gently traced his pale cheek with my fingertips. He was fast asleep, oblivious to everything.

Just then, I heard a faint vibration from my phone in my pocket.

I paused, straightened up, and took out my phone to check it.

[I’ve figured out a way.]

It was a message from Ye Shuer.

I put my phone back in my pocket before picking up the terminal belonging to Zong Yanlei from the bedside table and switching it to Do Not Disturb mode. Then, I took a look at the person on the bed, leaned down, and gently kissed his forehead.

After doing all that, I turned around and left the bedroom without looking back.

In the corridor, I dialed Ye Shuer’s number.

“Tonight.” As soon as the call connected, without any small talk or background information, I threw that single word at the other person.

A chaotic commotion came from the other side.

“Tonight? But I have to work overtime…” He said the last two words very softly, perhaps because he felt guilty.

“Tonight is the only suitable time.” I left no room for negotiation.

Tonight, with Zong Yanlei unconscious and unable to enter the virtual space, Ye Shuer and I would have ample time to copy the key. Once we had the key, we could find a way to erase all traces of his entry and exit, and no one would notice anything amiss for a while.

“Alright…” Ye Shuer struggled for a few seconds before finally nodding. “But you can’t use the neuro-navigation pods around you, they’re not safe. I’ll give you an address, go there now. It’s the shelter my father left behind, on a mountain in Langfeng.”

Not long after I hung up the phone, Ye Shuer sent me encrypted coordinates. The location wasn’t far from where I was, but it wasn’t close either; it was on a desolate mountain more than fifty kilometers away.

I immediately hailed a taxi and headed there. Along the way, drones patrolled the night sky, and city lights swam across the sky like a flock of white birds.

“Curfew is about to begin. Please do not loiter on the streets…”

Zhong Xiaoshan’s men who had been following me all withdrew after I returned from Wo Province. Maybe because he thought I had cleared my name, or Wuxi Kunpeng’s martial law order was no longer suitable for his men to openly spy on me as before.

In any case, now that no one was watching me, my actions were indeed much more easier.

An hour later, I arrived at the coordinates.

After fumbling around in the dark forest for a while with a flashlight, we finally found the “shelter” that looked quite old, hidden among waist-high weeds.

I entered the password to unlock the box, took out the key from inside, and opened the door. As soon as I stepped into the cabin, a musty, dusty smell hit me, making me cough twice.

The small cabin was about fifty square meters in size. Though small, it had everything you needed: a kitchen, a bathroom, running water and electricity, and a basement storing a large amount of supplies. I picked up a box of compressed biscuits and saw that the shelf life was a whopping thirty years.

In the open space of the basement, there was a similarly dusty neuro-navigation pod, but it lit up immediately after being powered on, and it seemed to be working fine.

I lay down inside, and when I opened my eyes again, I was already in the familiar “Sky Domain”.

Ye Shuer was already online in my short friend list.

He quickly sent a message: [Please teleport me over to your side.]

I first summoned a door to the virtual space, and then teleported him over.

I gently pressed my fingertips onto the thorns, and just like last time, the thorns greedily absorbed the blood, quickly loosening their tangled branches to reveal a narrow passage just wide enough for one person to pass through.

“Alright, how are you going to get in with me?” I shook the blood off my hands and asked the figure in my peripheral vision.

“Like that?”

When I turned around, I was immediately stunned.

The person, who should be Ye Shuer, was wearing a black, tight-fitting bodysuit, with a golden mask covering his face. Countless parallel golden lines and nodes ran along his limbs and torso, converging to the mask, making him look like a giant humanoid chip.

“This is my ‘ghillie suit’.” He lowered his head and tugged at the thin, gossamer-like membrane, then walked to my side and slowly “melted” close to my feet.

In just a moment, the figure that was about my size disappeared, replaced by a strange, writhing black shadow at my feet.

“As long as I disguise myself as a part of you, this space will not reject me.” The “shadow” twisted and emitted Ye Shuer’s slightly distorted voice.

I tentatively lifted my leg and approached the thorny door with some skepticism. Seeing that the door didn’t react and hadn’t recognized his disguise, I felt relieved and walked into the passage.

A breeze carrying the fragrance of flowers brushed against my cheek, and a vibrant spring scene unfolded before my eyes. The green lawn was soft, tulips and roses bloomed in the sunlight, and the gray and white mansion was like a carefully preserved old painting.

“Wow, this place is so beautiful.” The shadow at my feet arched restlessly into a small cone shape, looking around. “Ge, is that you when you were little? And that’s Zong Yanlei? Oh my god, I thought the media saying he was very sick before was just a persona, but it turns out he was really that sick, he’s practically a mummy…”

I ignored his chatter, put my hands in my coat pockets, and walked straight ahead without looking to the side.

Upon entering Zong Yanlei’s living quarters, which was also the core area where the after images were most concentrated, Ye Shuer let out a strange cry.

The shadow beneath my feet stretched rapidly across the carpet, eventually stopping beside a semi-transparent figure—that was probably when I was sixteen or seventeen, standing naked and calmly in front of Zong Yanlei’s wheelchair.

“Is this alright…” the figure muttered the same lines.

Zong Yanlei, who also looked about sixteen or seventeen years old, placed his chin on one hand and his elbow on the armrest of his wheelchair, looking at me with great interest.

“Like last time, do it yourself,” he said.

It was during my grandmother’s illness that I asked Zong Yanlei for a favor, which triggered a series of absurd and ambiguous “king’s games”.

“Ge…ge ge…how could you…ahhh…Zong Yanlei, you pervert, what are you doing to my brother, um…” I stepped forward and stomped the shaking, mud-like black shadow back into the floor.

“Enough, stop looking.” I warned him coldly. “Come with me.”

The shadow shrank to one-third of its original size. He immediately became docile like a small animal grabbed by the back of its neck.

“Oh,” he replied cautiously, pressing close to my heel.

I led him into the bedroom. As soon as he saw the huge and dazzling sun symbol above the bed, he couldn’t help but let out a soft “wow” again.

He quickly twisted and climbed up the wall, then the ceiling, casting a long, thin shadow.

“What a beautiful data stream…” he exclaimed, looking at it from left to right, admiring it for a moment before gradually merging into that soft golden hue.

The key surface immediately rippled, like the surface of a lake where pebbles had been thrown in. Countless tightly interlocked chains of code were forcibly stretched, imprinted, and deciphered by the shadow, peeling away layer by layer. Golden data, like extracted meridians, transformed into strands of gold, flowing downwards along the shadow and eventually converging at my feet.

The shadow twisted and tumbled, completely replicating the key into his “body”.

“How long will it take?” I asked.

“Um… about two hours…”

Two hours was more than enough time for me to stay until the morning and then rush back to the hotel.

I sat down on the single sofa next to me and closed my eyes to rest. The soft rustling of the wind through the window, lifting the sheer curtains, and the whispers of shadowy figures mingling in my ears. I listened, and my restless heart was gradually calmed.

“Ge, my plan went so smoothly thanks to you…” Perhaps due to the data transmission, Ye Shuer’s voice sounded slightly electric.

“What do you plan to do after you get the key?” I had already heard his plan before, but I just wanted to confirm it again.

“On the day of the celebration, most of the nobles, royalty, and church members of Penglai will enter the metaverse… This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity… We can trap them, then create a virtual prison to imprison them, forcing them to relinquish their power and agree to the reforms…”

“Does Yu Xuan agree as well?”

“Yu Xuan… um, of course he agrees … why do you ask that?”

I recalled Yu Xuan’s expression that day when he declared to me that no one could stop him from restoring his kingdom, an expression filled with hatred and a thirst for bloodshed. I couldn’t believe he was content with a mild form of “imprisonment.”

My intuition told me that he would kill all those people without hesitation, and push forward his “restoration” in the bloodiest and fastest way possible.

“I can’t be by your side forever. Promise me, the key can only be kept where you know it, and only you can use it.” I slowly opened my eyes and said with a serious face, “If anyone tries to take it, destroy it rather than let it fall into their hands.”

The shadow beneath my feet paused for a moment, as if stunned. After a while, he began to ripple again.

“Okay, I promise you.” Ye Shuer solemnly promised.

Time passed by, second by second.

Two hours later, the last golden thread flowed into my feet, and the dark shadow slowly withdrew from the sun symbol on the ceiling.

“Finally done…” The shadowy figure moved as if it were stretching.

But at that moment, an unexpected change occurred.

Almost instantly, the air froze, the sunlight froze, and even all the figures stopped moving

My sixth sense was screaming, and I immediately tried to open the portal, only to find that even my system panel was locked, and no matter what I did, there was no response.

Immediately afterwards, everything in sight turned crimson, and all the figures disappeared in an instant.

The ground shook, the house trembled, and a piercing alarm sounded throughout the space.

“GAME OVER! GAME OVER! GAME OVER!”

“Oh no, it seems we’ve been discovered!” Ye Shuer emerged from the shadow in a disheveled state, “Ge, oh, what do we do?”

“Try opening this space with the key!” As I spoke, I pulled him along and ran quickly into the corridor.

Huge cracks stretched from the floor to the ceiling, with stones and dust constantly falling from above. The walls were peeling away, the ground was uneven, and the entire mansion seemed to have been lifted and crushed from the bottom by an unseen hand.

I ran downstairs as fast as I could, but abruptly stopped when I reached the large staircase leading from the second floor to the first floor.

A figure was standing at the end of the stairs, in the center of the first-floor lobby and amidst the ruins and dust.

Zong Yanlei looked like he had just gotten out of bed. He was wearing a black silk pajamas, with a triangular brace hanging from his left arm, and he was looking up at me expressionlessly.

The world around him collapsed, but he remained calm as if this was how it was supposed to be, as it was always meant to be.

“You still chose ‘betrayal’.”

His voice was as soft as a sigh. As he spoke, his gaze slowly shifted from my face to the golden mask behind me, and a chilling smile curved his lips.

“Aren’t you going to introduce him?”

***

Author’s Note

The relationship between sin and divine authority comes from Nietzsche’s *The Genealogy of Morals*. It’s not hard to see that the world sometimes associates divine sacrifice with humanity’s original sin, creating a sense of indebtedness that is difficult to repay. In my view, the achievement of heroism is, to some extent, also a form of “debt.” Without debt, a hero is not a hero, but simply a “good person.”

Ghillie suit: A type of camouflage clothing, like the one in PUBG that’s all grass.