Chapter 1 Evening Glow

The glow of sunset was gradually fading away, and the last sliver of golden light from the sun, before it sank behind the mountain, slanted into the cave where Hao Ren and Nolan were temporarily hiding, casting mottled and shifting light and shadows over everything within. Nolan leaned against the large tires of the mountain bike, half of her body bathed in the setting sun, the other half hidden in darkness. She exhaled. "Where to begin... I can't even remember when I first realized something was wrong with this world. Maybe thousands of years ago? Or even earlier. The earliest image I have in my memory is of vacationing with my family in the countryside of the Southern Hemisphere, and then somehow waking up as a warehouse keeper for some company... There's no point in tracing back those distant events, anyway, it's just a constant repetition of messy experiences. Sometimes I die in an accident, and after I'm resurrected, I find that the world has completely changed. Sometimes, like today, there's no death, but the whole world suddenly changes, and in the blink of an eye, I have a new identity and new teammates. I don't even know if my perception of the passage of time is real—maybe all of this happened just a few hours ago, and the starting point of all the worlds is just a few hours ago... But that doesn't matter."

Hao Ren listened quietly, his mind filled with too many questions, yet unable to sort them out. He simply asked whatever came to mind. "Is there any pattern to the world resets?"

"No pattern," Nolan shook her head. "Sometimes it resets every few decades, sometimes it changes within a few years. The shortest reset cycle I remember was two years, and the longest was nearly two centuries—I died twice during that time, and when I woke up, I found that the world stage was still continuing, only my identity had changed. At that time, I was surprised and naively thought that this reincarnation had finally stabilized, but on the afternoon of my second resurrection, I encountered the reset."

Hao Ren nodded. It seemed that this world wasn't using Nolan's death as a reset switch. If the world remained stable for too long, Nolan's reincarnation during that period would become a resurrection with a change of identity, like a game character logging off and then logging in with a different account in another place. In that case, although this girl was special, she shouldn't be the root cause of this chaotic world.

"After each reset, everyone and everything in this world gets a new identity and 'setting.' Relationships, international relations, world situation, culture, religion, even the technological model changes," Nolan saw Hao Ren lost in thought, and assuming that this person, experiencing a "conscious reincarnation" for the first time, was confused, she casually explained, "I've also studied maps and found that the topography of the entire world changes. Sometimes there are several continents on the planet, and sometimes there's only one supercontinent. The changes in plants and animals also exist, but the magnitude of the changes is not too large, always those species in random proportions, at most with changes in distribution areas... But you probably don't understand this, you're retaining your memory for the first time, you haven't accumulated much knowledge yet."

Nolan had experienced tens of thousands of years of reincarnation, and the amount of knowledge she had accumulated was astonishing. She could probably be an expert and scholar in any field, so it was normal for her to digress to ecology. Her taciturnity in the Gray Fox Mercenary Group was only because she couldn't find anyone to confide in, and now she was clearly treating Hao Ren as a companion.

Hao Ren shook his head. "It's okay, I also know a little bit about ecological issues, a little bit. Anyway, according to what you're saying, this world is a bit like a sandbox game? Let's assume there's a director or program behind it all, controlling everything. Each time, it draws some materials from a resource library to generate a 'world'?"

"You inferred that from the plant and animal forms I just mentioned?" Nolan looked at Hao Ren with some surprise. "I didn't expect you to be so knowledgeable. You're right, I've thought about it that way too, this world really seems like a program that constantly generates maps automatically... But even if these things are true, it's useless. We can't control them."

Hao Ren didn't hear what Nolan said in the last sentence, because he was thinking about some deeper, world-view-transcending issues. He was sure that he was currently in the Dream Plane, which meant that there was a real world outside this "Zom" planet. He thought of Hiddon's diary and Ulanov's epiphany before his death. If this world was virtual or fake... then where was the interface between it and the real world? Since Hiddon and Ulanov could suddenly realize the illusion of the world, it meant that this virtual world was not perfect, and there must be some incongruity!

"Population!" Hao Ren suddenly raised his head and looked at Nolan. "Does the population change after each reset of this world?"

Nolan was a little puzzled. "Population? What does that have to do with it?"

"Hiddon once said that this world is fake, and Ulanov said something similar before he died," Hao Ren explained. "If the world is fake, do you think the people in the world are real?"

Nolan's eyes widened slightly. "You suspect that the other humans in the world are NPCs (non-player characters)?"

"No, I think they're all real," Hao Ren waved his hand. "That's why I'm asking you about the population. According to your situation, you'll be resurrected and reborn after you die, which means that there's no 'cache' function in this world's 'mechanism.' Every real human, after death, will immediately appear in another place in the world with a new identity. So, if everyone in this world is real, then the population shouldn't change each time the world resets. As the world develops, humans are born, age, get sick, and die, and the total population won't change. But if the total population of the world is different each time it resets, then it means that at least some of the humans are NPCs, and the number of real humans should depend on the minimum population in a reset cycle."

Nolan looked at Hao Ren in surprise. "Is this really your first time experiencing a 'reset'?"

"Why are you asking that suddenly?"

"You've considered these questions very deeply, and you've clearly considered them in a very calm and thoughtful manner," Nolan looked at Hao Ren with suspicion. "I didn't think so deeply in the first few reincarnations. At that time, I was only thinking about how to live a little longer—but you seem to think that all of this doesn't matter at all."

She had half a sentence in her heart that she didn't say: This analytical attitude is just like an outsider.

Cold sweat broke out on Hao Ren's forehead, and he thought that this girl's senses were truly terrifyingly sharp. He forced a smile and diverted Nolan's attention. "Ahem, that's not important, just treat me as naturally thick-skinned. If it really doesn't work, you can continue to treat me as a madman..."

Nolan: "...I really haven't thought about the population problem you mentioned, but your thinking is novel and very reasonable. I haven't paid special attention to this population problem, but I've occasionally seen reports on population surveys before. I think the population in each reset cycle of this world shouldn't change much... Perhaps they're exactly equal. After all, the world is vast and there are many humans. Population censuses can never be accurate. As long as the 'program' behind this world moves its hands a little, it can make humans unaware of the constant and unchanging state of the world's population."

Speaking of the end, she twitched the corner of her mouth and showed a mocking smile: "And each time this world will only last a few years, a few decades, time is not enough for people to find anything abnormal."

Hao Ren frowned: "So the humans in this world should all be real... just thrown into a constantly refreshed sandbox stage?"

He was truly feeling a bit of a collapse of his worldview at this time. He realized that his previous exploration and wandering in this world was meaningless. The truth of this world was hidden beneath a layer of bizarre bubbles, the so-called Nanomachine Swarms, the Northern Land Ring Tower, and the World War were actually just a stage play. Thinking of this, he laughed self-deprecatingly: "Tsk tsk... I was full of enthusiasm, trying to figure out if the nanomachine swarm runaway sixty-five years ago was the key to the problem. The result is that after all this effort, let alone the key, it's not even a problem—it didn't even happen..."

"No," Nolan suddenly interrupted him, "This event is probably really strange."

Hao Ren: "Huh?"

"In the most recent resets, the world's trajectory has shown a similar trend," Nolan said with a serious face, "No matter what the initial world setting is, it will eventually evolve into a global war, a weapon runaway, a round of world doomsday. Last time it was the Nanomachine Swarm runaway, the time before that it was global nuclear bomb runaway, and before that it was satellite weapons being tampered with by AI... The scripts are slightly different, but the final process is almost exactly the same—the whole world is heading towards destruction."