under fern mountain

After parting from Pei Haojie that night, Shi Ran simply packed some things and lived in the Cicada House for two days.There is a separate lounge in the office, which is usually used for taking a nap. Because it is very close after moving, Shi Ran often goes home for dinner, and this is the first time she sleeps in the office.Two days later, he waited until he was calm enough to return home, opened the door, and felt that the room was empty.Go straight into the game room, the computer is still there, but many games on the bookshelf have been taken away.

Pei Haojie did not lie to him this time.He has temporarily moved out.

Before Shi Ran left, the two quarreled fiercely, but Shi Ran kept an eye out for it, and took "Messiah" with him when he left.

Pulled open the bedside table, pushed aside the sundries, and sure enough, the game was still at the bottom.He stared at the game box for a long time, wanting to call the courier to send it away, but sat by the bed for a long time without doing anything, and finally fell asleep in the early morning.

At first, Tie Tou and Li Qing'er didn't notice Shi Ran's abnormality, he disguised very well, but after a few days, he showed his clues.

Normally, Shi Ran hardly worked overtime, and insisted on going home for dinner every noon and night. Li Qing'er even teased him about his good relationship with Pei Haojie.In the past two days, he has completely changed his appearance. He eats at the company in the morning, noon and evening, and deliberately arranges himself to be very busy.For Shi Ran, although Pei Haojie was no longer at home, every time he returned home and faced the empty house, his heart became very empty.

"Brother, what's on your mind? Going to drink at night?" Tie Tou took the student form from Shi Ran's back.

"Drinking with you always makes a fool of yourself!" Shi Ran smiled and said, "Tomorrow morning, I have an appointment with the students to talk about becoming a member, so I won't mess around with you."

"Then go tomorrow night?"

"I have something to do tomorrow night."

Tie Tou pulled out the chair and sat in front of it: "To be honest, did you quarrel with Xiao Pei?"

Shi Ran pretended to look down at the information and turned a deaf ear.

"I don't think it's a problem for the two of you to have any major problems!" Tie Tou comforted him firmly, "But you are not in this state, you need to regain your confidence, come on, show some momentum! What's wrong with Xiao Pei? Tell me, you can scold me any way you want!"

Shi Ran lightly revealed the past: "Well, it's not a big problem, don't worry."

The iron head straightened up.If Shi Ran jumped up and yelled at him or drank and talked to him, as before, he was not worried, but the real state was not right as it is now.

Just as Tie Tou was about to speak, there was a knock on the office door.Li Qing'er looked at Shi Ran in a bit of embarrassment, followed by a man in a suit.

"You have an appointment?" Li Qing'er looked suspiciously at Tie Tou, then at Shi Ran, "Mr. Lin said he was looking for Shi Ran."

Shi Ran was taken aback, and finally Ken raised his head from the dense list of members.

He was looking at Mr. Lin Jinchuan.

Mr. Lin is undoubtedly a sufficiently cautious person.According to Tietou, Mr. Lin approached him three days ago, had a casual chat with him, and learned that Tietou and Shi Ran are now building a house for cicadas, but he didn't ask Tietou to help Shiran. Just expressing some interest, very interested in Tietou.The second time I contacted Tietou, the two talked about Cicada House again, and Boss Lin made an appointment with him for a specific meeting time.

Jinchuan Games is now the industry leader in the mainland. Who wouldn't want to have some relationship with the upper management?What's more, he is an iron head who is already in the game industry.

However, it wasn't until Mr. Lin really came to visit at this moment that Tietou realized that this was a ulterior motive.

He knew nothing about "Messiah", arranged a tea house for them, and asked Shi Ran what was going on when he led the way.

Mr. Lin saw it, and when there were only the two of them left in the tea room, he opened the futon and sat down. He smiled and said, "Mr. Shi really kept his promise. It seems that more people did not know about the game."

"I know that Tietou is discussing business cooperation with Jin Chuan." Shi Ran skillfully took the tea set and started to boil water. He has attended a lot of training these days, and he can handle both tea and flower arrangement, "Lin Don't worry, although Tietou is my friend, I have never forgotten that he is Jinchuan's collaborator."

"Mr. Shi is a smart man."

"Really?" Shi Ran smiled wryly, obviously he knew why Lin always came here, "If that was the case, you wouldn't be here today."

Boss Lin stopped talking nonsense, turned cold, and cut to the point: "I can't get in touch with Mr. Pei."

"We haven't seen each other these days." Shi Ran said lightly.

Mr. Lin had a vague guess in his mind: "Is it because of..."Messiah"?"

"It's already now, and I have nothing to hide."

Shi Ran handed the smelling cup to Mr. Lin, and the two of them held the cup in their palms, and both closed their eyes and sniffed the aroma of tea for a while.

Shi Ran slowly told what he saw in the game two nights ago.

Mr. Lin was a little surprised at first, but soon calmed down, and finally looked thoughtfully at the smelling cup in his hand.The cup has cooled down, but the aroma of the tea still remains.

"That's why I'm worried, the game's degree of freedom is too high, and the permissions given to the AI ​​have exceeded the standard... It's just that I didn't expect... I thought the relationship between you and your lover..."

Seeing Mr. Lin's hesitant expression, Shi Ran said: "I want to know why the game can have such a high degree of consciousness? Does the hidden danger that Mr. Lin mentioned earlier refer to this AI? Do you have any first aid measures? ?”

"The authority of the AI ​​is indeed higher than our expectations, including the game itself, otherwise I wouldn't get back what I sent." Mr. Lin showed a worried look, "Its body is a clone of the original Swiss Ark, and its consciousness exists. In the international server, the game's CD-ROM is just the game framework itself, or a key, which creates a door to the world and brings it from the server to each game."

"In this game, only two people can truly dominate the virtual world - the player and it."

Mr. Lin and Shi Ran sat in the tea room for almost an hour. He answered Shi Ran's many doubts, but in the end he couldn't get back the game.

In fact, if he asked Shi Ran for a game before he explained everything, maybe Shi Ran would give it to him.But now after hearing all the words, Shi Ran has only one thought in his mind, that is, he wants to find out what happened.

He has to figure out what's going on.

He needs to meet the 'Messiah', again.

It was already dark, Shi Ran sat in the empty game room, a little uneasy.He opened the window to let the moonlight and wind blow into the room, sat on Pei Haojie's gaming chair, stared at the CD-ROM drive on the table for a long time, and finally made up his mind, he took a deep breath, slowly inserted into the host, and then clumsily Put on a brain wave reader.

The dense data built a solid wall, programmed his senses, and submerged his consciousness instantly.

Shi Ran opened his eyes, the setting sun burned his eyelids red, and the sparkling river water in front of his eyes reflected a magnificent glow.He recognized this place almost immediately, a river that he used to pass by on his way to and from school, the night scene at dusk was particularly beautiful.

'He' just sat on the bench by the river, staring at the water in a daze... He always liked to do this when he had something on his mind.

Shi Ran looked at 'him' coldly, and finally walked in front of him: "Get out of my memory."

He saw 'self' smiled: "You are afraid of me, but not as scared as last time...I can feel that you came with doubts."

"Since you can read other people's brains at will, why don't you talk nonsense?" Shi Ran was not polite to 'myself'.

"It's not that simple, humans are very complicated things." The young man smiled and patted the other half of the chair, "There is a saying that human genes are like human codes, instructions written by God into the body of every creature , as long as this is understood, many behaviors can be deduced.”

"what do you want to say in the end?"

"When Pei Haojie first entered this world, he worked hard to clear the first world and defeated me standing at the end as the boss. Then he did an unbelievable thing...he didn't kill me, but rewrote me. instructions."

Shi Ran's eyes became colder and colder. In order to suppress all the emotions in his heart, he forced his gaze into the river.

"I forgot the role I played and what I should do. He molded me into another person according to his will. From then on, there are many memories in my head that don't belong to me...these all come from you and him shared memory."

"Enough!" Shi Ran suddenly stood up, "Messiah, don't tell me this anymore, what is your purpose?"

"I am not the Messiah, I am 'you'. In this virtual world, the created 'you'." The young man took Shi Ran's hand and said before he shook it off, "Don't resist me so much, Let me show you something you don't know!"

Two identical slender hands clasped together, and the flowing river in front of him gradually solidified, replaced by a familiar small room.

Shi Ran returned to their previous rental house.The succulents on the window sill are still there, the wind chimes are tinkling, and there is a nice scent of soybean candles in the room.

He remembered, this smell, he bought one a long time ago... Can Pei Haojie even remember this clearly?Shi Ran suddenly thought.

His vision changed from blurred to clear, and he saw a person sitting on the edge of the bed, with his back bent, his arms hanging on his knees, his fingers crossed in front of him, and his eyes were confused.

"We quarrel again, and I can't control my temper... I obviously don't think about it every time, and I don't know what's going on." Shi Ran stared blankly at Pei Haojie in front of him. He lowered his head and interlaced his index fingers Inserting black hair, "I'm sorry, I actually hate myself for saying these three words, and I can see that you do too! But every time after a quarrel, I don't know what to say except these three words. It seems that it is useless to say anything."

Shi Ran stretched out her hand uncontrollably, her fingers wrapped around Pei Haojie's hand in her black hair.

"Then hold my hand next time." He heard himself say.

As expected, Pei Haojie took his hand, but her eyes were still dodging: "We never quarreled before. Although we had quarrels, those were not quarrels, and no one really blamed anyone. We can make up by holding hands."

"Because you are like a child." Shi Ran felt a smile on his face.

"Yeah, I used to like this, but when I started living, I actually hated it. I hate that you always look at me like that, like I'm always naive. You work outside to make money, and I look like a wimp !"

Shi Ran caught off guard and patted him on the head: "Nonsense again! You don't know, actually you think I have a prejudice against you playing games, but I never have. You are so handsome when you are serious about making videos! You are not good at work. When I am busy, I watch every issue, and I especially understand why so many netizens like you, I always think again, will you always be so shining?"

Pei Haojie raised her head from the crook of her arms, her eyes really lit up: "Really?"

"real."

"Forget it." Pei Haojie quickly looked away again, Shi Ran heard him whisper, "...This is probably what I imagined about you."

Shi Ran suddenly understood.

When he said those words just now, he had no self-awareness at all, as if he was repeating an action that had been set by someone else.

Those were the words he could say five years ago, but not now.

What 'Messiah' showed him was the reappearance of the memory of 'it' in the game.

Now Shi Ran is it, it is Shi Ran.

Pei Haojie used to sit in front of 'it' like this, talking like this.