According to Nolan's description, in the most recent few cycles, the world has invariably been moving towards its end.

"Wasn't it always like this before?" Hao Ren heard the implication in Nolan's words and immediately followed up with a question.

"Before? In the very beginning?" Nolan thought for a moment. "It wasn't like this in the beginning. The earliest 'scripts' I remember were very peaceful. Although the world resetting was strange, the worlds after each reset were very safe. There were no wars back then, the world was peaceful, and usually quite prosperous—now that I think about it, apart from being a little boring, life back then was full of peace and tranquility, so tranquil it was almost sleep-inducing. Sometimes my family and I lived in a large house in the mountains, sometimes I was a peaceful and wealthy member of the petty bourgeoisie. I even remember being the daughter of a president and the princess of a small maritime nation… Those were all eras completely devoid of war."

Hao Ren listened in astonishment. He had assumed that every cycle of this world was filled with the chaos of war and the end of the world, but he never expected that Nolan's deepest memories were of a pastoral era. He paused and asked, "When did wars start appearing in the world?"

"I can't remember," Nolan said softly. "You know, it's difficult to remember precise dates in the cycle. I can only roughly estimate that it was in the middle of my memory… three or four thousand years ago, or even earlier, that each cycle of the world began to become dangerous. At first, there were scattered wars in the 'script', then natural and man-made disasters occurred when the reset was approaching, and later it developed into large-scale wars and even extinction-level wars. In the most recent dozens of cycles, without exception, the world has shown signs of heading towards its end before the reset, starting with a landmark catastrophe."

"The uncontrolled nanite swarm…" Hao Ren muttered to himself. "The event itself may be a false image, but it has symbolic meaning… Perhaps it represents the direction the world is heading, or some kind of 'main storyline'?"

"The world is an absurd stage play," Nolan said expressionlessly. "Perhaps the director of this stage play just happens to like disaster movies lately."

Nolan liked to describe the world as a stage and directly used "scripts," "director," and "plot" to describe everything she had experienced. Now, Hao Ren deeply agreed with this view. However, he had some other thoughts: "Have you tried contacting people from the 'real world,' or the 'awakened world'?"

"You mean those 'people' who control this stage from the outside?" Nolan looked into Hao Ren's eyes and suddenly smiled. "I've tried, many, many years ago, but it was useless. No one responded, no matter how much noise I made, even detonating nuclear bombs in cities and collapsing entire continental shelves. No one responded to me. They would only silently press the reset button and replace this broken stage with a new one. It's unrealistic to want to 'wake up.' We are all trapped here; we are part of this script. The people holding the script don't care about the little complaints of us characters."

"That sounds a bit like giving up," Hao Ren sighed. "If possible, contacting the 'awakened world' is the only way."

He felt that things were in a dilemma. In the real Dream Plane, he couldn't locate the position of Planet Zhohm. On this "false stage," he couldn't contact the real world, and if he wanted to wake up here forcibly, he could only sit up from the hibernation pod at home: some kind of sleeping rule prevented him from contacting the behind-the-scenes of this world, even though it seemed to be covered by only a thin layer of black veil, he couldn't grasp or touch it at all.

It was simply maddening.

When Nolan heard that Hao Ren was interested in the awakened world, she immediately issued a stern warning: "Don't try it rashly, and don't even think about it too much, that's how Hiddon went crazy. I tried it once before, and my brain was severely damaged. I spent four years lying in the hospital—this world must have some kind of mechanism to prevent us from leaving this place, some kind of mechanism that is impossible to resist."

"You said your brain was severely damaged?!" Hao Ren's heart skipped a beat. "So, this world will actively react to humans' thoughts of 'leaving'?"

Nolan was startled by Hao Ren's eager eyes: "What do you want to do?"

Hao Ren looked excited: "If we study this 'active reaction,' wouldn't that be the same as confronting the controllers behind the world?"

"I advise you to give up that idea immediately," Nolan frowned. "Not to mention how you would start, are you sure that the controllers behind the world would be interested in a small 'character'? I even suspect that awakened people like you and me who retain our memories are deliberately left behind by the 'director' just to increase the fun."

Hao Ren leaned back against the frame of the mountain bike, holding his head in his hands, and exhaled lightly: "If that's really the case, then that's a truly malicious 'director'."

Nolan's warning was of little significance to him. No matter who or what was controlling the world behind the scenes, "it" was unlikely to affect a spiritual body clone. Hao Ren was now very glad that he had been transmitted in through dreaming, and that he had an advanced Shirling hibernation device in the real world as a safety lock. He wasn't afraid of the world's counterattack. But before officially launching the "attack," he first had to find the key to being able to talk to the behind-the-scenes controllers of this world.

"The nanite swarm…" Hao Ren brought up this matter again. He thought of the mysterious voice he had vaguely heard when he entered the Northern Wasteland ruins, and his intuition told him that that was probably what he was looking for. "This world invariably heads towards its end in the most recent cycles, Nolan. Do you think this is simply because someone writing the 'script' has a malicious hobby?"

Nolan looked over curiously: "You mean…"

"Even if you like watching disaster movies, you should be sick of watching them dozens of times in a row," Hao Ren said slowly. "I'm more inclined to believe that the controllers behind this world don't have the ability to control the overall situation. Perhaps there was something wrong with their program, which caused the world to collapse after running for a period of time. You said that the first few cycles of this world were peaceful. That looks like a paradise to me. I don't think a 'person' who can create such a paradise world would suddenly have a drastic change in temperament and want to bring about the end of the world."

Nolan didn't say anything, just quietly looked at Hao Ren for a while. She thought that the man in front of her was too naive, but she had no intention of correcting anything. She believed that as long as Hao Ren experienced a few more cycles like her, and a few more wars, he would become like her.

Nolan had also been naive—and had died more than once because of that naivety. Now, she looked young, but her heart was already weathered and hardened. After the excitement of meeting a "companion" gradually faded, she shifted her attention away from the act of discussing the essence of the world, such a ethereal thing, and began to think about the next actions of the three of them.

"The situation in this cycle is worse than before. It seems that we were thrown onto the battlefield from the very beginning." Nolan rubbed her temples and said in a low voice, "If my memory is correct, this is the 'script': the space technology of this planet is in a distorted state. A huge 'Chosen Empire' controls all the cutting-edge technology and prohibits 'mortal nations' from launching high-orbit spacecraft into the sky. People who conduct space research privately are called extremist aerospace elements by this empire, and they are strangled like terrorists. At this time, there is a serious struggle for imperial power within the 'Chosen Empire,' and some technological data has also been leaked by progressive nobles. The other countries in the world are uniting to plot against the hegemon. Perhaps a world war will soon break out here, the scale of which will not be smaller than the Sixty Years' War in the last cycle."

"What's your identity this time?" Hao Ren asked casually.

"A free warrior who drives a modified car and rampages around," Nolan patted the large tire she was leaning against with her backhand. "In short, I should be a wandering bandit. This time, I came to help guard a secret base for a high commission, but I just abandoned my employer and ran away. There should be some trouble next. But don't worry, I'm used to it… I have to be in a mess every time the world resets. Retaining the memory of the cycle also comes at a price. I can't always integrate well into the new role."

Nolan shook her head with a wry smile, then suddenly remembered something: "Oh, right, let me remind you, you may also encounter Gray Fox's companions… Although I'm sorry, they may not be our companions this time. If they're hostile… try to make their deaths as painless as possible."

The corpse puppet terminal, who was squatting not far away and studying her toes, suddenly interjected: "Is it necessary to do this?"

"This is to survive," Nolan said expressionlessly. "Anyway, the world will be reset sooner or later. What's the point of keeping so many feelings? 'Naivety' is the first thing that should be discarded."