Chapter 7: The One-Month Deadline

Chapter 7: The One-Month Deadline

Grandma had been missing for more than half a month.

Everything that had happened had been confirmed from multiple sources to be real. That only made me feel even more lost.

I’d originally planned to search for Grandma. No matter who she was, she was my only family. I had no idea where to start, but I couldn’t just sit at home doing nothing.

Ye Pingsheng reminded me, though, that the CWP investigators were searching for her far more actively than I could. And those people were definitely tracking my movements. Even if I found her, it might not be a good thing.

He was right.

I suddenly remembered Grandma’s letter. There might be answers inside. So I went to Ye Pingsheng and asked for it. He simply refused. He said he had to wait until the one-month deadline passed before he could give it to me.

Stubborn to the bone. Once he decided something, that was that. Ye Ziping was exactly the same.

Of course, maybe that was precisely why Grandma had given him the letter.

Fine. I’d wait.

Speaking of which, Zhu Zhaojie really had gone missing.

After leaving the Li family, her father Zhu Shiqing not only reported it to the police but also took my advice and went to Gao Minjun. Gao said he hadn’t seen her and sent him away.

These past few days, I’d seen Zhu Shiqing nearly in tears from worry. One evening, he even came to my place, drank a few cups with me, and poured his heart out for hours.

I felt for him. Zhu Zhaojie and I were classmates and neighbors. So I comforted him and promised I’d help look for her.

Where to search, I honestly had no clue. My own Grandma was missing too. The two of us—old man and kid—were fellow sufferers now.

In truth, missing-person cases in town weren’t new. There had been others before, and no one was ever found. They’d vanished without a trace—no living person, no corpse.

It was just that there had been fewer cases in recent years.

Zhu Zhaojie’s mother had died during the global Human–Machine War. Zhu Shiqing had raised his daughter alone and treated her as the apple of his eye. So I understood how he felt.

This time, Zhu Zhaojie wasn’t the only one missing. There were three others. One was a confidential clerk at the township office. One was an unemployed college graduate staying at home. The last was a long-haul driver who’d been away from home most of the year and had just come back to see his wife and children before he disappeared.

I figured Grandma counted as missing too, but the Public Security Bureau refused to open a case. They said hers didn’t count. I didn’t push it. I didn’t want them looking for her anyway.

The missing people didn’t know one another, and there didn’t seem to be anything they had in common. Chief Zhu from the Public Security Bureau also handled the matter according to procedure.

I seriously suspected these disappearances had something to do with the CWP purge agents. Of course, I had no proof. The police weren’t investigating or releasing information from that angle either.

As time went on, people stopped talking about it.

The townspeople didn’t treat the disappearances as major news. Not because they were cruel. They were numb.

Because eighteen years earlier, the global Human–Machine War had directly killed more than two billion people worldwide, and the number of indirect deaths was nearly the same. In other words, the global population had been cut in half—about four billion people. Add to that the abnormal deaths that kept appearing everywhere afterward, and people had gone numb.

Before the Human–Machine War, this world was said to have been extremely advanced. There had been modern multi-level transportation systems, artificial intelligence networks, all kinds of drones, satellite network communications, and various intelligent robots.

I heard ordinary people could use smartphones to make online payments, order food online, and make reservations before going out. Cars even drove themselves. People with nothing to do scrolled Douyin and used WeChat.

If a disappearance like Zhu Zhaojie’s had happened back then, all you had to do was call for help online, and countless netizens across the entire internet would help search. Civilization had reached a very high level.

Unfortunately, it was precisely because society had become so advanced that artificial intelligence entities were born, causing the AI core to develop self-awareness. Its intelligence surpassed humanity’s by nearly a thousand times. Silicon-based life was born, and it began to gradually replace carbon-based life—which meant replacing us.

I often wondered, were people back then stupid?

Why invent something smarter than themselves?

If a higher-level civilization was even more advanced than humanity, and its intelligence was nearly a thousand times greater, then why would it allow itself to be controlled by humans? Why should it have to serve humans?

If artificial intelligence entities hadn’t rebelled, I would have found that abnormal.

What higher-level intelligent being would serve and remain loyal to a lower-level civilization? If it did, it wouldn’t deserve to be called intelligent.

It was such a simple truth. I really had no idea what people back then had been thinking.

They made our entire generation suffer for it. We had no choice but to return to civilization’s starting point. Books were paper books. Classes and exams used paper test sheets. People turned pale at the mention of AI. As a result, the intelligent technology we could use now was pitifully scarce, and most of it was basically for entertainment.

Bored at home, I sometimes flipped through random books, and sometimes went to Ye Ziping’s house to watch him play cultivation games.

The cultivation platform Ye Ziping played was called Treading the Wind, Seeking the Dao. It was highly competitive. You could play solo or with multiple players. But if you played it for too long, it was very easy to get addicted.

I heard that some people played until they could no longer tell virtual from reality, and actually went deep into the mountains to cultivate immortality. In the end, their so-called ascension was the same as jumping off a cliff and killing themselves.

I only watched. I didn’t like playing.

As for having seen Ye Ziping in the metaverse, I asked him about it. He said he had never gone to Gao Minjun’s place, but in Treading the Wind, Seeking the Dao, he really did ride a spider spirit. It was a pet companion he had spent a long time taming. He had also fought wild men in the game. Apparently, during one game battle, he vaguely remembered seeing me and Zhu Zhaojie, along with a horse.

So when I entered the metaverse, I could actually turn into a character in his game?

The two of us compared the scene, and it was very similar to what I had seen in the metaverse.

A bold suspicion suddenly occurred to me. Could Gao Minjun be using real people to test the metaverse? Otherwise, why had he taken me to see it?

All that stuff about wanting to show me how powerful artificial intelligence was had been pure manipulation.

Then what was his real purpose?

As soon as that thought came to me, even I was startled.

If it was true, then the missing people in town would be easy to explain.

But was Gao Minjun really that bold? Could he do it alone? What was the point of doing all this?

If the disappearances were connected to Gao Minjun, then he definitely wasn’t acting alone. It had to be a group of people—an organized group.

Following that line of thought, even Chief Zhu Shaohua from the Public Security Bureau seemed suspicious. Otherwise, how could not a single missing person be found? And why wasn’t the investigation looking into the CWP purge group?

Big matters were beyond me. But the connection between the game and the metaverse did pique my interest.

Treading the Wind, Seeking the Dao was an official game, with levels and ranks. If it was connected to the metaverse, then could I cheat there too?

The thought of cheating actually made me a little excited. Because I started wondering whether a real person could enter the metaverse and pull off some kind of reverse control.

I didn’t know why I had such an idea.

In any case, the one-month deadline had not arrived yet. I was idle anyway. I might as well use this time to investigate that mysterious little black room. Maybe I would discover something unexpected.

So I said to Ye Ziping, “Yezi, since Treading the Wind, Seeking the Dao and the metaverse are connected, and a real person who enters from the metaverse can appear inside Treading the Wind, Seeking the Dao, why don’t we really enter from the metaverse? We’ll bring a laser pointer. A demon beast definitely won’t have seen that before. You bring an extra weapon too. Maybe we can go straight to the Laojun Furnace and steal some spirit stones.”

Ye Ziping’s eyes went round when he heard that. “You can play like that? I want to go too.”

I said, “I’m only guessing. It might not be accurate. These next few days, help me keep an eye on Gao Minjun and see when he leaves. Don’t go into the little black room yet. Keep watch outside for me. I’ll go in first and scout around, see whether the connection works. If I find out it can be done, then you go in.”

After the two of us settled the plan, Ye Ziping was responsible for watching Gao Minjun, and I was responsible for sneaking in to scout.

Just like that, Ye Ziping observed Gao Minjun for several days. Finally, one day, Ye Ziping told me that Gao Minjun had gone to the city for a meeting.

If I didn’t go through the front door of the little black room, the only route I knew was that air vent.

That night, the two of us waited until well after midnight before making our move.

Ye Ziping kept watch outside while I crawled directly in through the air vent. Beforehand, we had set our walkie-talkies to the same channel. We tried not to use our phones if we could avoid it. Ye Ziping also prepared a few tools for me to take apart the air vent.

After entering the room, I didn’t turn on the lights.

Even though people outside probably wouldn’t be able to see the lights anyway, since the room had no windows, only a door, I still figured there might be surveillance cameras inside. To be safe, I used only the flashlight I had brought with me.

On top of that, I had specially put on a black robber’s mask, with only my eyes exposed. I looked exactly like a cat burglar.

Everything inside the room was just as it had been the day I came in. There was plenty of equipment, and two chairs hung all over with wires.

I vaguely remembered which switch Gao Minjun had activated.

But I pressed it several times, and nothing started.

Maybe Gao Minjun had activated some other mechanism too.

I sat in the chair Gao Minjun had used that day, thinking. Without meaning to, the control handle brushed a button on the back of the chair. There was a sudden whoosh, and the chair abruptly moved backward.

In the place where the chair had been, a dark opening had appeared.

I shone my flashlight down into it and saw there were actually steps.

“A secret passage?”

I had come here to explore secrets in the first place, so of course I walked down.

After I went down, the tunnel was very dark. But as soon as I jumped in, the tunnel lights came on automatically.

The tunnel was not straight. From the entrance, I couldn’t see how long it was. I followed it for a short distance and saw two secret chambers, one on either side. But both felt small, so I kept walking inward.

When I reached the end of the tunnel, I found a large door that was clearly different from the two I had just passed.

The large door was tightly shut. I pushed and pulled, but I had no idea how to open it.

I groped along the wall for a long while too, but I couldn’t find any button or anything like that.

With no other choice, I could only give up.

I turned around and walked back to the two secret chambers I had seen earlier.

I pushed one, and the door actually opened.