Chapter 56
In the dead of night, inside the production team’s control room, the staff members still working overtime were thrown into chaos.
Someone hurriedly ran to the break room and woke Goat up.
“Team leader, hurry and take a look! Big Boss Shen is causing trouble again!”
“Uh—no, maybe he’s about to pull off another godly move?”
Goat opened his eyes groggily. One second, he had still been dreaming a beautiful dream about getting promoted, getting a raise, and receiving a bonus. The next second, he was shaken awake, still feeling dazed and uncertain about what time it was.
“What happened? Is it time for work?” He sat up and let his brain recover.
“I didn’t hear the alarm.”
“Team leader, Big Boss Shen seems to be running back to the place where the accident happened during the day!” the staff member said anxiously.
“It’s 3:05 now. Still early morning. We called the director, but we can’t get through.”
Having just woken up, Goat’s reaction was half a beat slow. “Oh. If he’s going back, he’s going back.”
He asked drowsily, “What does he want to go back for? Is there a problem?”
Two seconds later, he abruptly jumped out of bed and ran toward the control room in his slippers.
“What’s the situation now? We deleted the data for that pack of wolves during the day, right? Have you restored it?”
The staff member hesitated and answered embarrassedly, “When I came out, they were trying, but they hadn’t succeeded yet.”
“You know too. Programs are easy to delete, but hard to restore.”
Especially because, after the director gave the order, they had been debugging from the afternoon to night and then into the early morning.
Debugging was not as simple as deleting all the data. When the virtual world was created, everything was connected: different plants, animals, soil, environment, and weather were all linked together.
Therefore, on the surface, the deserted island did not seem to have changed much.
But the actual workload was not small at all.
On top of that, the guests’ actions on the deserted island had been continuously generating new data.
How could it be as simple as saying one sentence and returning everything to the state it had been in before the wolf pack disappeared in the afternoon?
Besides, they could not be blamed.
The few of them who were still debugging were not that good technically.
Wasn’t he rushing over to find the person with the best technical skills?
Goat also thought of the key point, and for a moment, his scalp went numb.
“Go, go, go. Hurry back. Keep calling the director and ask him what to do!”
The team member who had come to wake him looked troubled. “We’ve called several times. I suspect the director turned on airplane mode.”
Goat’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Is he crazy? Turning on airplane mode while the show is airing?”
Had the nights been too “peaceful” these days and given Sun Xinping that kind of courage?
But now was not the time to say so much. The break room was only a few steps away from the control room.
Before long, when the two returned, they had not even pushed the door open when they could clearly hear the sound of keyboards being hammered inside.
Although, most likely, they were blindly busy.
Goat still felt somewhat gratified.
“Team leader, you’re here!”
“Brother Gao, we’ve been waiting for you so bitterly. This program won’t go back!”
The staff members who had been trying to patch the program saw their boss return, and their eyes instantly lit up with a biu.
Yes, Goat’s real surname was Gao. “Goat” was just a codename he had given himself.
Hearing the ghostly wailing and wolfish howling of his team members, the veins on his forehead throbbed.
He waved his hand and looked straight at the screen.
On the screen, Shen Jinfeng was still rushing along. His light, leaping figure seemed to instantly pull people into a splendid and elegant dream.
It was truly so beautiful that one’s eyes could stare straight.
After all, the first two times he had traveled like this—
The first time was to “outrun” the storm.
Everyone had been shocked by this move and had been wholeheartedly cheering for him to hurry back to the wooden cabin.
The second time was today, when he had heard the wolf howls and rushed back to save people.
At that moment, everyone’s reaction had been fear and a desperate hope that he would return quickly.
This time, it was only him.
Under the bright moonlight and dazzling stars, he leapt through the forest at night. That cold, mysterious, powerful aura almost seemed ready to burst out of the screen.
“No, where is he now? How far is he from the peach trees?” Goat snapped back to his senses and asked.
Now was not the time to admire and praise Shen Jinfeng’s skills.
“Team leader, I feel like we can just give up… I checked the distance. There are still a few kilometers, but at Big Boss Shen’s speed, that’s only a matter of minutes. Not even enough time to type a few lines of code.”
The person speaking stopped the fingers that had nearly been hammering afterimages onto the keyboard and rubbed his wrist.
Goat gritted his teeth. “How about we secretly extend the distance?”
“Move. Let me try.”
He had just sat down and placed his hands on the keyboard when the team member who had gone to wake him up bluntly complained, “Maybe just forget it? Big Boss Shen knows the way. For that short distance, how long he needs to fly, I feel like he knows perfectly well.”
“I keep feeling like Big Boss Shen is already suspecting the reality of our virtual world. He found unreasonable parts before. If this happens a few more times, and what originally takes five minutes to fly suddenly takes ten minutes or half an hour? Too fake, bro.”
Goat ignored the useless chattering of his team members who were directly ready to give up.
“All of you sit down and keep modifying the program,” he ordered. “Whether we can do it or not, we have to try our best.”
Every now and then, he glanced at Shen Jinfeng’s figure on the screen, who had drifted off somewhere unknown. His hands did not stop for even a moment, fully focused and racing against time.
Only, he still left a little space in his mind to think about how he should explain things to that idiot director the next day.
After all, the surveillance cameras were right overhead.
If these team members had not called him over, then fine, he would have known nothing.
But now that he knew and still did not struggle with all his might, was he waiting to be scolded and have his wages and bonus docked tomorrow?
Therefore, even though he knew perfectly well that this program could not possibly be changed back in just a few short minutes, he could not say it out loud, and he could not give up!
No matter what, he had to put on a performance.
Otherwise, why was he the team leader while the others were team members?
A working person still needed this much awareness.
The other team members did not know their leader’s thoughts. But since they had received the order, they could only fall silent and do their best to try modifying the program, restoring the wolves without affecting other settings.
But this was destined to be futile.
Because, indeed, less than five minutes passed.
Shen Jinfeng arrived beside the peach trees from daytime.
He withdrew the leaf rope and slowly landed from midair.
One peach tree had been picked two-thirds clean. Three peach trees had been picked until only one peach remained on each. This was what He Erwang had left after listening to him.
There were also a few peach trees they had eventually given up on and not picked.
Without question, this was the final point they had reached when walking in this direction that afternoon. It was the place where they encountered the wolves.
But now…
Shen Jinfeng raised his head and looked around at the surrounding peach trees, narrowing his eyes slightly.
Where were those wolves?
The seven wolves he had hung in the trees were now all gone?
Inside the production team’s control room, at some unknown point, the technical team members working overtime late at night had all stopped typing. They could not even remember to rub their sore wrists.
Someone took a deep breath. “Just a reminder, everyone. You can breathe now.”
Pfft.
His words seemed to flip some kind of switch.
For a while, the sounds of deep breaths rose one after another, enough to show just how nervous everyone had been earlier.
“Big Boss Shen definitely discovered it.”
“No shit. Big Boss isn’t blind. How could he not see a whole pack of wolves disappearing? I’m just wondering, did Big Boss come back specifically to look at the wolves? Why? Big Boss obviously isn’t the kind of person who would feel unwilling and come back to finish them off. And if you connect that to what he said to Qin Ye today—oh no, yesterday—it’s terrifying if you think about it carefully.”
“Hiss. But a normal person couldn’t possibly imagine that their consciousness had been dragged into a virtual world, right? No one would think their memories had a problem, that they weren’t in a real human body, or that there was something wrong with the surrounding world, right? That overturns cognition too much.”
“Exactly. It’s like how we’re sitting here chatting right now. If you told me I was fake and that my actual body was asleep in outer space, I wouldn’t believe it either. But in reality, who knows? Maybe our entire Earth is fictional too? Maybe all our perceptions are fake?” Someone shrugged and made a frightening joke.
“No, perception is real. But who knows whether this perception was constructed, then recognized by our brainwaves, causing the body to react? It’s just like how we create virtual worlds. I volunteered to enter one before, and I really couldn’t tell at all that it was a virtual world.”
These employees, originally sleepy but now stimulated into alertness, still carried a faint unease in their hearts. Because of their nervousness, their speech sped up as though they were brainstorming, as if they had proposed some constructive topic.
“So, even if the wolves disappeared, it’s not a big deal? Who would suspect it, right?”
“Haha, who knows.” The group laughed dryly and were amused by their own nonsense.
Goat was stared at by everyone, as if they were waiting for him to make the decision as usual.
…
Hard to say.
“I feel like a normal person wouldn’t suspect it, but Big Boss Shen is, in some sense, far beyond the scope of a normal person, right?”
The moment this sentence landed, the others saw that Shen Jinfeng did not remain standing in place.
Instead, he randomly went up a tree, probably, maybe, possibly the spot where he had hung a wolf that afternoon.
Sorry, because they did not remember either.
He looked carefully for a while and even reached out to touch the branch.
After some time, he jumped down from the tree again.
Shen Jinfeng walked beneath each tree where he had tossed wolves in the afternoon. He did not examine the branches again.
Instead, he looked at the ground beneath each one.
The wolves in the trees had all disappeared.
Logically, the only explanation was that they had woken up, climbed down from the trees, and left.
However, around every tree, not even a single stalk of grass showed any sign of having been crushed.
The soil around each tree was neat and firm, as though no heavy object had ever stepped on it.
Shen Jinfeng looked around and reconstructed everything in his mind, one by one: after hearing the wolf howls in the afternoon, when he had hurried back, where everyone had been standing.
He reconstructed the movements of throwing the wolves into the trees, and later, the movements and positions of everyone picking peaches.
He reconstructed the last glance back before they left.
Every plant and tree, the soil on the ground, the wildflowers in the forest, even the colors of the fruit on the trees—they were all incomparably clear.
The clean soil beneath several trees where wolves had hung, showing no sign of being disturbed, formed a stark contrast with the marks left behind by He Erwang picking peaches and the group running around in the afternoon.
Could it be that those wolves had not fallen from the trees but had all learned to fly?
Shen Jinfeng lowered his eyes slightly and stood in place. For a long time, he did not speak.
Watching from beyond the screen, the people waiting for his next move grew anxious and uneasy.
“Does Big Boss look like he discovered something?”
“Can’t tell. Right now, he’s alone, and he isn’t speaking. Even if he has doubts, they don’t show on his face. There’s no way to judge.”
“What is Big Boss going to do? Will he keep exploring farther into the forest?”
“I know!” Someone suddenly stood up and let out a high-pitched cry. “I guess Big Boss wants to observe where the wolf pack went, like their footsteps or something, and then catch up to look!”
“That makes sense, right? Maybe he originally just wanted to come back and check on the wolves, but once the wolves were gone, he would definitely become suspicious.”
Actually, this was not hard to guess at all.
Goat’s gaze was complicated, and in the end, he still complained aloud. “We’ve been screwed badly by Sun Xinping’s boring and unnecessary idea.”
The moment he said this, everyone else instantly fell as quiet as chickens and stopped talking.
That was right. The wolves had already been dealt with. Wouldn’t it have been fine to just let them hang peacefully in the trees?
But no, he had to do something unnecessary and make them delete the wolves’ data, even causing them to work overtime almost all night.
Now, great. The wolves had all disappeared into thin air.
There was no blood on the ground, no blood on the trees, the soil had not been crushed, and there were no wolf footprints around.
It would be strange if Big Boss Shen did not suspect something, okay?
But in the end, no one could have expected that in the middle of the night, past three in the morning, Shen Jinfeng would suddenly feel moved by some whim, take advantage of the darkness, and secretly come back alone.
Especially after he had promised Gu Shengsheng and the others that they would not come to the forest again.
He had actually sneaked over himself!
“What do we do now?”
“Cold salad… The director’s phone still won’t connect.”
Who knew how long passed? It felt as long as a century, but in reality, it was only a few short minutes.
The young man on the screen finally moved.
Shen Jinfeng raised his head slightly and looked toward the horizon. The corners of his lips curved faintly.
Immediately after, his body moved, and he flipped up onto the tallest tree within sight.
It was even taller than the peach tree He Erwang had climbed in the afternoon. It could not compare to the coconut tree from before, but it was still over ten meters tall.
He stood on the branch, turned, and took in all directions.
Sure enough, in every direction, three hundred and sixty degrees, all he could see were trees.
It seemed expected.
From waking up on this deserted island until now, he had entered this forest several times and had chosen different directions, walking some distance each time.
No matter which direction, no matter how far he walked, in all directions, there were only trees.
Therefore, this did not seem strange now.
However, logically, standing at his current height, his visible range should absolutely exceed five thousand meters.
From the seaside wooden cabin to here, it was over ten kilometers.
There was no need to test further. He believed that even if he flew out dozens of kilometers, or even hundreds of kilometers, it might still be the same result.
What he would see was scenery with some differences, yet assembled in an odd and strange way.
This forest was simply unbelievably large.
For such a vast area, he was not a native of this world. His mind was empty, and he could not remember this world’s specific geographical knowledge.
But Qin Ye had claimed to be fairly familiar with his own country and the surrounding countries.
Yet he could not judge which country on the map possessed such a forested coastal deserted island.
Most likely, that sea was the same too.
If he built a ship capable of long-distance sailing, would he drift on the sea for several months and still not reach a shore with human habitation?
Shen Jinfeng chose a branch and sat down.
A forest this large truly made him unwilling to let the others in the team come out alone or in groups.
If someone with a slightly worse sense of direction walked more than ten kilometers into this forest, they would probably never find their way back to the seaside wooden cabin again.
Because as long as they deviated slightly from the direction, they would continue walking, continue walking, and then discover: Eh, no, why couldn’t they get out?
They would have lost the way.
However, actually, it was still all right.
This forest was only large. Finding the way did not have added difficulty. There was no ghostly maze-like “walking into a wall.”
Shen Jinfeng was amused by his own speculation.
He relaxed and leaned backward against the branch. Casually, he plucked two leaves and discovered that the leaves were also unique in the world, not exactly the same.
He folded the leaves in half, blew the dust off their surfaces, then brought the leaves to his lips.
Then, in this silent night, he played a “song.”
In front of the screen, the few people who had all been prepared to wait for Shen Jinfeng to continue finding faults looked at one another, not understanding.
“I thought Big Boss Shen would go check on his ghost orchids too.” One staff member patted his chest in lingering fear. “I only just remembered that earlier, while debugging, although the director only asked us to check for dangerous wild beasts, I remembered that Big Boss Shen said in the afternoon that the ghost orchid’s growth environment wasn’t scientific.”
“I thought about it. Such an expensive flower—one plant alone is worth ten years of my wages—and we actually treated it so carelessly. I felt very guilty. So I specially searched the growing environment of ghost orchids and upgraded it a little… Good thing Big Boss Shen didn’t go.”
“?” The people who heard him spoke after the fact. “Is your brain short-circuiting?”
“Why mess with the ghost orchids for no reason? The wolves disappearing is still explainable, but the soil around the ghost orchids suddenly changing? Brother, could you be any more ridiculous? With a talent like you around, it’s a miracle we haven’t been exposed.”
Goat looked at him irritably. “No wonder you didn’t give up just now. When I came in, you were the only one still hammering away at the keyboard. Even after we all stopped, you were still typing. Did you finish patching it?”
The team member labeled brain-short-circuited covered his face in shame. “I don’t know either. I pulled out the afternoon video and changed the environment according to it again. It looked about the same, but changing things back and forth definitely had an impact. One ghost orchid seems to have wilted.”
Goat: “…Pray Big Boss Shen doesn’t go.”
“You ruined such an expensive ghost orchid!”
“All right, stop chatting. Your chattering paired with Big Boss Shen’s song is making my head hurt. I can understand Big Boss Shen being stimulated and unable to think straight, blowing a tune in the middle of the night, but why is he playing such an awful song?”
After Shen Jinfeng began playing the tune, everyone’s attention was drawn to him again.
But after listening for only a few seconds, they could not help wanting to cover their ears.
“What the hell, is this a sonic attack? How did he use a leaf to produce a sound like teeth grinding against steel?”
Not only did it sound like teeth grinding against steel, there were also sounds like bird calls, like torrential rain, like burning firewood, like wild beasts roaring, like fingernails scraping wood…
At times pleasant, at times piercing.
At times melodious, at times as if it had come specifically to torment people.
“Good grief, I finally know which window God closed for Big Boss Shen.”
“Casual performance, performed very well, but don’t do it again next time…”
“Laughing to death. I really thought Big Boss Shen was omnipotent. Casually grabbing a leaf and blowing sound from it looked quite proper too. I didn’t expect that once the tune came out, it would make me firmly believe that humans ultimately can’t be without weaknesses.”
Because this “song” was too unpleasant.
Late at night, in the entire world, at this moment, only these few people were the audience.
They truly could not hold back from complaining.
“I just don’t know whether this part will be released later. Based on our director’s nature, in order to cover up his own decision-making mistake—the wolves being gone—he probably won’t release it. So I wonder if anyone will believe me if I leak it online tomorrow.”
Goat listened to the few of them laughing and complaining, but he frowned tightly.
“Could Big Boss Shen’s tune have some other purpose? He isn’t someone who would do something for no reason.”
“Team leader, you’ve mythologized Big Boss Shen! You think everything he does has meaning. He’s just playing a tune.” The others thought about it, but still did not take it seriously.
This “song” lasted nearly five minutes before ending.
After Shen Jinfeng finished playing, he did not keep the leaf. With a light flick of his hand, the leaf drifted down to the ground with the wind.
This was a beast-controlling tune.
As for why he knew such a tune, that had to be credited to his indescribable experience in a beastman world.
This tune had been something he carefully created after becoming the leader back then, according to the traits of various races. It had a strong attraction and summoning power toward all kinds of wild beasts, especially fierce beasts.
Using sound to command beasts. Using sound to hypnotize the will of beasts.
Later, when he went to other worlds, he had also tried this tune.
Perhaps because each world’s operating rules were different, the effect in other worlds was no longer that good. It could not make wild beasts submit to him just by relying on the tune.
But it still had some use, more or less.
At the very least, gathering fierce beasts that heard this tune was no problem.
For example, the wolves that had disappeared but might still exist.
For example, if this forest still had other wild beasts.
…
But clearly, five minutes passed. Aside from some birds being awakened by him and curiously circling around him—
There was not even a hair of any fierce beast or wild beast.
Heh, it really was strangely safe.
Shen Jinfeng sighed.
The truth seemed to be presented before him so clearly that it could not be clearer.
This retirement world did not seem that simple.
Or at least, the environment he was currently in was absolutely not ordinary and not real.
Their team had collectively drifted at sea for three days, yet they had been so lucky that not a single one of them died in the ocean. After waking, the distance between them had no more than a ten-meter margin of error.
At the very beginning, the food and fresh water left behind had almost exactly been enough to fill all of their stomachs.
The phone was about to turn on, and then the battery suddenly broke again.
Plants that did not conform to natural growth laws.
A fruit medley of tropical and temperate fruits.
The ancient tomb belonged to the flower-growing country, while the island’s features were more like somewhere overseas.
An endless sea, an endless forest.
There were southern crops and northern animals.
A sudden typhoon with no warning.
An inexplicable wolf pack that should not have appeared, and then its equally inexplicable disappearance.
…
There were so many suspicious points that it was practically like a leaking sieve. It was only that he had probably been bewitched before and had actually failed to notice.
Or rather, even if he noticed, he had treated them as accidental phenomena and let them pass.
Shen Jinfeng lay on the tree, and a faint melancholy rose in him.
What a pity that he could not drag 888 back and beat it up.
He slowly clenched his fist. That unreliable system had failed to become reliable even at the very last time!
Too excessive!!!
I wonder if he’ll tell his teammates that the world is fake? XD