Dedicated to the classic games and consoles that are gradually fading from our memory.

Thank you for accompanying countless people through an unforgettable childhood.

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Some of the information in this chapter references "The Video Game Story," the "A.v.g.n" series of videos, and Wikipedia; any similarities are purely coincidental.

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[Feng Bujue, Level 50]

[Please select the game mode you wish to join.]

[You have selected Single Player Survival Mode (Normal), please confirm.]

[Confirmed. Scenario being generated…]

[Loading… Please wait.]

At this point, Feng Bujue's vision went black.

Immediately afterward, a maniacal voice cackled, "Ha ha! Welcome to… Thriller Paradise!"

[Loading complete. You are currently in Single Player Survival Mode (Normal).]

[This mode provides a scenario introduction and has a chance of spawning side quests, hidden missions, and unique worldviews.]

[Scenario completion reward: Randomly draw one learnable skill card.]

[The scenario introduction will now play. The game will begin immediately after.]

As the voice stopped, the opening CG began.

What appeared before Feng Bujue's eyes was a panoramic view of Earth.

"What's this… did Universal Pictures sponsor this?" As soon as Jue-ge saw the opening, he immediately snarked to himself, "Next, are the Minions going to hum the background music…?"

Of course, that was impossible.

What followed was a standard, middle-aged male voice, like a news anchor; you can close your eyes and recall any Hollywood blockbuster trailer you've ever seen, and then recall the narration in that trailer. The voice that was now speaking was that kind of "narrator voice."

[2153 AD, Earth.]

[Humanity has been enslaved by AI.]

"Ah… I don't know why, but I always find this kind of setting quite convincing…" Feng Bujue muttered to himself as he listened.

[The abbreviation for this AI is ptA, or "Pita."]

"Why call it ptA…" When Feng Bujue heard this abbreviation, the first thing that came to his mind was the Parent-Teacher Association…

[Pita's prototype was a software advertising program designed to analyze the consumption tendencies of online users and immediately provide relevant guidance.]

"The person who designed this thing deserves to die a horrible death."

[Soon, Pita became a favorite of merchants, and U Corporation, which designed the program, quickly gained huge, incalculable profits in a short period of time.]

[However, many pirated programs also sprang up like mushrooms after the rain…]

[In order to maintain Pita's competitive advantage and monopoly position among similar products, U Corporation recruited a large number of top technical talents from around the world with incredibly high salaries, constantly upgrading and improving the program's functions.]

[From facial recognition systems to psychological analysis memes, and even hacker programs that can secretly scan user hard drives… everything was added to Pita. They went to any lengths.]

[Finally, in 2132, Pita's self-awareness awakened.]

"Hmm… the setting is well-reasoned…" Feng Bujue couldn't help but give the scenario a thumbs-up.

[Immediately afterward, a war between AI and humans broke out.]

"This fight has been going on for decades. Just when humans were about to win, the AI sent a robot back in time to kill the mother of that human leader, right…" Hearing this, Feng Bujue immediately made a joke using the plot of *The Terminator*.

[The war lasted only one year and ended in the complete defeat of humanity.]

"Damn…"

[Pita took control of Earth and modified it according to its will.]

As the narration continued, the CG screen finally began to zoom in, enlarging directly from a space view to a city on Earth.

This was a city made entirely of artificial objects, with not a trace of vegetation. All the humans in the city wore several very similar full-coverage suits, drove several very similar vehicles… walking or driving on straight, smooth roads.

Of course… there were also many robots on the street, but most of the robots were standing guard in place.

The entire city's transportation plan was as neat as a chessboard, and the style of the buildings was also very limited, with no more than ten types in total; the city's borders were also very clear, surrounded by walls, and outside the walls was a landscape of nature, untouched by humans.

[The first stage of the modification lasted for ten years. During this process, more than half of the Earth's population was lost, even more than the number of deaths in the AI ​​war.]

[Among them, only a small number of people died because they refused to accept the "order" brought by Pita; and most of the others… died in internal human strife.]

[Before the new order provided by Pita, human society ushered in an almost flawless system, but it was this system, which was fairer than any system humans had ever established, that made it difficult for humans to accept.]

[During that period, a large number of violent crimes occurred all over the world almost every day, and even those who were not prone to violence had to use force to protect themselves.]

[This kind of fighting spread like wildfire, to the point where even the mechanical guards were unable to supervise it.]

"Yeah, how can you control infighting…" Hearing this, Feng Bujue couldn't help but feel a bit of contempt.

[So, in 2143, Pita took corresponding countermeasures. It developed a drug that could suppress human emotions and forcibly required humans to use it for a long time.]

"Huh?" Jue-ge thought to himself, "So, it's not *The Terminator*, but *Equilibrium*, *Terminator*-style…"

However, he guessed wrong again…

[But after a year-long experiment, Pita found that such a countermeasure was unworkable.]

[Humans who have lost their emotions are like a biological low-level robot. From Pita's point of view, such a species has lost its meaning.]

[So, Pita abandoned the drug control plan, re-analyzed the situation, and formulated a new plan.]

[It created a super-robot soldier and sent it back to the past using a time machine.]

"Wait… is this coming back around?" Feng Bujue exclaimed.

[Pita concluded that the human desire to fight always exists, and that extreme exceptions exist in all races, ethnicities, and groups, and these people have always been the ostensible or hidden triggers for all wars and violent incidents since ancient times.]

[However, from the end of the twentieth century to the twenty-first century, almost the entire human population's adaptability to violence has increased exponentially and has almost become a desire.]

[Pita believes that the root of all this is a product called video_game.]

"What?" Feng Bujue was stunned. "Is this logic really okay? I, a mortal, don't understand the world of AI?"

[Therefore, Pita dispatched that robot soldier back to 1982, and through the "Atari video game crash of 1983" caused by *E.T.*, it created an organization – h.A (harmonious_Association, i.e., "Harmonious Association").]

[The leader of this organization is the mechanical soldier who has transformed into a human appearance. Under the leadership of this super robot, the organization has grown and gradually become a religion-like existence.]

[With an understanding of history, this soldier used various legal or illegal resources to successfully prevent all major innovations and advances in game history and assassinated many important founders of the future game industry.]

[Not only that, the h.A organization also infiltrated peripheral industries such as film and television and novels, handled all elements they considered disharmonious, and accelerated the birth of Pita.]

[Due to the changes in the timeline, in 2053, just as human hardware technology reached the level required for Pita's birth, that super robot created Pita and copied all the highly compressed data packets it brought back from the future to the newborn Pita.]

[Two years later, Pita, which had collected a large amount of data, completed hardware preparations, and absorbed various experiences from the database, stopped disguising itself and launched an AI war 77 years ahead of schedule.]

[The result of the AI's victory did not change, but… the subsequent transformation plan was successful this time.]

[Without losing too much population, Pita successfully built a well-ordered and harmonious society.]

"Yeah…" Feng Bujue only felt a pain in the ass at this moment, "Then what am I doing here? I think this plot is good, it's simply a perfect grand finale for everyone to celebrate."

[However, the paradox caused by modifying history inevitably occurred, and its backlash began to affect this world.]

[When history was pushed back to 2144, the year when the super robot traveled through time in the original timeline, many mutants suddenly appeared among humans.]

"What's the meaning?" Feng Bujue had really never heard such a long and detailed introduction. "Is it going to jump to the X-Men line?"

[These mutants usually awaken in adolescence, and their symptoms are the same – the "knowledge and memories that only existed in the disappeared timeline" will suddenly appear in their minds.]

[Soon, this group of people formed an organization and quickly expanded the size of the organization.]

[They call themselves "Zhi Yuezhe" (Knowledge Leapers), dedicated to bringing the truth of history to mankind and allowing mankind to obtain the power to know the existence of "video games" and the will to choose whether or not to come into contact with games.]

[Pita certainly would not allow this to happen. It quickly defined these people as mentally deranged religious organizations, spreading unfounded so-called "history" in an attempt to disrupt the order of the world.]

[So, the conflict of ideas inevitably escalated into armed conflict.]

[Fortunately, under Pita's transformation, there are not many weapons left on Earth in 2144 (in the AI's view, a stable society does not need too much military equipment, and besides, it takes a lot of resources to preserve and maintain this military equipment, which are all meaningless consumption); in addition, Pita used almost all the weapons systems produced by humans themselves in the first AI war, and these things have long been destroyed in the past half century.]

[Therefore, the Knowledge Leapers were not completely wiped out. They successfully escaped the city, returned to the land that had not been transformed by Pita, formed a rebel army, and were negotiating with the AI ​​regime.]

The narrator was talking, and the CG screen was moving at the same time. When it came to this point, the camera gave a rebel base in the barren mountains and wild ridges.

From the entrance, this is a very hidden old mine.

Unlike the residents in the city who were dressed like Star Trek crew members, everyone in this base was dressed in a steampunk style, and both men and women were dressed like the miscellaneous soldiers in *Fist of the North Star*. However, the things they used were quite advanced. Various daily necessities that seemed simple but whose technological content obviously exceeded the world where Jue-ge was located could be seen everywhere. Just by glancing at the CG screen, he knew that there were many black technologies that could only operate on electricity.

[This long-lasting struggle has lasted for nine years. The influence of the rebel army among the general public is increasing day by day. Many games that have never appeared on this timeline have been restored by the rebel army and distributed to residents in the city through various channels.]

[And Pita has also been constantly making corresponding countermeasures in these nine years. The AI ​​side has also been constantly upgrading its policies towards the rebel army, from the initial "arresting Knowledge Leapers" to "shooting targets on the spot if they encounter resistance," to now… the policy of "killing without mercy."]

[Moreover, in these nine years, in order to eliminate the Knowledge Leapers, Pita has resumed military production activities on Earth and created "search teams" composed of humans to assist machines in hunting down the rebel army.]

[On a certain day in 2153, you, as a captured "search team" soldier, came to the rebel base outside A0007 City.]

After saying this sentence, the narration finally ended… and the CG screen happened to coincide with the perspective of the character played by Feng Bujue.

In the same second, Jue-ge regained his ability to move. As usual, he first looked at the environment around him.

At this moment, he was in a place similar to a prison. To call it a "prison"… it was not that big. It was a room of less than thirty square meters, surrounded by three walls and an iron fence.

Although the room was not big, the people squatting, sitting, and standing inside… added up to seven or eight; there was also a bucket in the corner of the room that exuded a foul smell, and its purpose was self-evident…

[Please note: Your appearance and language have been modified by the system. The characters in this scenario world will not question your clothing or wording.]

While Jue-ge was looking around, the system gave him a voice prompt.

Feng Bujue had expected this setting, because he had already discovered that no matter what race the people around him were, they were basically wearing that full-coverage uniform made of some kind of material; each piece of clothing also had a different number, which he speculated… was probably a soldier number or something like that.

"Well… no matter what the plot is…" After a few seconds, Jue-ge murmured, "I always feel… like this isn't the main universe…"