Chapter 1 The Beginning

Zhou Ming returned to his bachelor apartment. Everything was exactly as he had left it.

Stepping onto the familiar, slightly worn floor, looking at the unchanging objects in the room, and listening to the whirring of the perpetually running computer fan, his thoughts gradually calmed. A subtle, indescribable feeling stirred in his heart. Zhou Ming stepped over the scattered clutter on the floor and went to the tightly closed window, looking at the constantly undulating white mist outside.

He stared at the mist for a long time, then reached out and pushed the window. As expected, it didn't budge. The flour on the windowsill and the deliberately stacked empty cans remained in their original state, silently conveying a sense of loneliness and stillness.

For a long time, he stood quietly by the window, seemingly gazing at the dense fog, but his mind was blank. After an unknown amount of time, he suddenly blinked, as if a stone statue had awakened, and turned his head to the side.

Beside the unmade bed, the computer monitor on the desk was faintly glowing. The "No Network Connection" prompt still popped up from time to time in the lower right corner. The notebook he had been using to record notes before he left was still tossed in a corner of the desk, a notebook he hadn't touched in a long time.

Zhou Ming walked over, sat down at the desk, and stared blankly at the empty screen for a while. Then he reached out and dragged the keyboard and mouse, which he had previously pushed into the corner, clicked on the browser, and casually typed a line of text into the search box: "Outside the fog, does the world still exist?"

Of course, the browser didn't provide any useful search results.

After pressing the Enter key, the cursor on the screen blinked a few times, followed by an error page saying that the network connection was interrupted and the remote server was not responding.

This result was naturally expected. Zhou Ming knew from the beginning. A long time ago, when the fog had just sealed off the room, he had used this dilapidated computer to try to contact the outside world in various ways.

He didn't expect anything different to appear on the screen this time. He just wanted to type that sentence out, without asking anyone or expecting any response.

Listening to the monotonous whirring of the fan, Zhou Ming took a breath and threw the keyboard and mouse back into the corner. Then he picked up the notebook, flipped to a blank page, bent down, and wrote carefully on it: "To the world outside the fog, greetings from the person in the room.

"Before long, I will arrive at this place on the other side of the door. It is a city-state located on the frontier. I am going there to confirm some things, but even without confirmation, I think I already know the answer, because in that bizarre world on the other side of the door, countless unimaginable things are happening in reality, and my intuition there is always very accurate.

"Based on this, I no longer expect a response from beyond the fog, nor do I expect anyone to come knocking on my door or window through that fog. I am still unsure what exactly has happened to this world, but perhaps... it is not me who has undergone a change, but you in my quiet, narrow little room.

"Everything is still the same as before. I have a bed, a sofa, a coffee table, a desk, and chairs. My wardrobe is next to the bed, and there is a large storage rack, most of which is still empty.

"I haven't cleaned the room in a long time. There's hardly any dust here. I know that most of the dust in human dwellings comes from human skin flakes and pollution caused by daily life, and I don't spend much time here.

"So most of this place is still very clean... but even without dust, this room seems a bit cluttered now, because I was in a hurry the last few times I returned to the room and didn't clean up before leaving.

"It's not good to be so messy all the time... If everything is as I think it is, I think I should make this room clean and tidy."

"Also... perhaps I shouldn't say this, perhaps saying these things is meaningless, but I hope you are all well outside the fog. Goodbye... Now I'm going to clean this room." Zhou Ming took a light breath, tossed the pen back into the pen holder, carefully looked at what he had just written, then closed the notebook and placed it in a corner of the desk.

Then he silently got up and began to carry out what he had planned in the notebook: cleaning and tidying up the room, starting with the slightly messy bed, folding the quilt, and arranging the pillows and sheets. Then he cleaned the things on the desk, the things on the coffee table, and then the wardrobe, bookshelf, and the clutter on the sofa and floor.

There wasn't much dust, and there was no need to mop the floor. He simply wiped away the few specks of dust on the surface of the furniture with a piece of paper, and then threw it into the trash can.

At the very end, Zhou Ming came to the window. He silently looked at the things on the windowsill. After standing for a long time, he reached out and put away the tools he had used to try to open the window, including the hammer and wrench, into a toolbox next to him. Then he put the stacked empty cans and other debris where they belonged.

Then he wet a paper towel, grabbed it with his left hand, and pressed it against the windowsill. He stayed in this position for a full ten seconds, finally took a deep breath, and slowly wiped the windowsill. The flour that had been used to confirm whether anyone had opened the window and entered the room was wiped clean by the damp paper towel. Now the room was completely clean and tidy.

Zhou Ming breathed a sigh of relief, calmly surveyed the room, confirming the results of his labor. Then he picked up a bag of garbage that he had just collected. The black plastic bag wasn't very heavy, because it mostly contained waste paper and empty cans, but when he picked it up, he still felt that the bag had some weight.

He carried the trash to the door of the apartment and opened it. The dark, churning fog surged as usual at the door. The fog seemed to hide all the secrets of the world, yet it was so chaotic that it couldn't be understood by reason.

Standing in front of these surging black mists, Zhou Ming hesitated for a moment, then raised his hand and threw the bag of garbage into the fog. At the moment the plastic bag left his hand, he felt a strong urge to pull the bag back.

It was as if those waste paper and empty cans were the only treasures left in the world, and he was the only gambler left in this ruined world, who had to desperately hold on to every gram of matter in the room.

However, he suppressed this impulse after all. He opened his hand and calmly watched the plastic bag fall into the other side of the door and disappear into the churning mist in an instant.

He knew that those things would not reach the other side of the door. Only he himself could reach that world as Duncan. Other than that, all matter would disappear into the churning mist when passing through the door.

Now those things that should be discarded had completely disappeared from the world outside the room. Zhou Ming wiped his hands and took a step forward, preparing to leave this place. On the other side of the door, Alice was still waiting for him for dinner.

But just as he was about to step through the door, a faint sound caught his attention. It was the sound of the computer fan suddenly speeding up.

Zhou Ming stopped instantly, retracted his steps, and looked in the direction of the sound. On the faintly glowing computer screen, the interface that had previously displayed the "Network Connection Interrupted" and "Remote Server Not Responding" prompts was flickering.

Then those prompt messages suddenly disappeared, and immediately after, the loading progress bar at the bottom of the page turned from red to green and began to move forward slowly.

Zhou Ming felt his heart pounding as if it was about to explode at this moment. A suffocating feeling filled his chest. The next second, he slammed the door shut and rushed to his desk in an instant.

The loading progress bar at the bottom of the browser interface was still moving forward. The faint green seemed slow but firm, spreading like wildfire. And on that originally blank page, there really appeared content that was being loaded. It was a picture.

Zhou Ming stared intently at the gradually emerging picture: the moon... it seemed to be a view taken directly from a position in space. The picture showed the moon floating in the dark universe, its gray-white surface covered with ring mountains forming ravines.

They were like many strange and contrasting patterns. Even if he wasn't an astronomy expert, Zhou Ming was very familiar with this classic image.

And he once again confirmed that the picture he had seen in Tiriang Bei's office did indeed depict the moon... the details were exactly the same. It could only be a drawing made by someone who had seen the moon with their own eyes, carefully sketching it up close.

Zhou Ming slowly sat down in the chair, leaned back, and stared at the moon image, which almost occupied the entire screen, with a frozen expression. After a long time, his gaze moved upward, to the line of text he had just entered in the search box.

"Does the world outside the fog still exist?"

He was silent. After a long time, he suddenly woke up from his statue-like state and quickly grabbed the keyboard next to him, typing new text into the search box: "This is a reply!

"Who gave this reply?!"

After quickly typing these two questions, Zhou Ming stared intently at the computer screen in front of him. However, no one gave a response. No new patterns or loading bars appeared on the screen. Only the cursor was spinning in place mechanically, like a silent and sluggish eye.

Apart from the gradually returning low, faint sound of the fan spinning, all that remained in his ears was the sound of his own breathing and heartbeat.

A moment later, the moon image on the screen was refreshed due to loading failure. The interface returned to being pale, leaving only a line of text: "Network connection interrupted or remote server not responding."