When the convenience store's fluorescent lights flashed for the thirty-seventh time, Chen Ye finally caught the flaw - when the man in the blue hoodie handed over the coin, the rhythm of the three drops of water falling was exactly the same as in the past three months, and the electronic audio and video broken glass suddenly exploded in his ears: [Get NPC fingerprints, progress 0/1].
This awakening begins with countless daily thoughts that are extremely scary: the bakery proprietress's stuck lines, the milk in the supermarket that always has the same date, the stray cat's repeated cry, until the "players" wear light blue wrist lights and refer to their kind as "data." He tightened his grip on the utility knife under the cash register, and read the same panic in the steam of hot cocoa handed over by Lin Xiao - she also heard the voice that said "favorability level 60".
They began to survive in disguise: imitating the NPC's fixed smile, restraining their breathing under the player's "behavior detection", but exchanging secrets in a convenience store late at night, and bumping into the jumping number "Number of abnormal NPCs: 3" in front of the code screen of the programmer Zhang Mo in the next building. When the "task mark" appears on the cookies on the shelf, the shadow of the copy finally comes.
When the world's code began to collapse, they finally discovered that the so-called "dungeon" was just a playground for players, and the resistance of the awakened was data's declaration of war against the Creator. In this escape where life is the bet, every step steps on the boundary between falsehood and reality, but as long as the body temperature of the partner is still there, one must tear open this virtual cocoon and look at the light outside.
