Shen Ci, the second-oldest player in the standings, is famous throughout the server for his "teammates worshiping the heavens and having boundless magic power".
Gu Wang, who was at the bottom of the standings, was out of the circle with the idea of "get in first, take pictures, die and then try again".
In the special season, the system tied the two into a fixed team.
Points will be deducted for not cooperating? OK.
Downgrade without communication? OK.
But the system doesn't know——
Every time Shen Ci's heart beats faster, he can predict his death in three seconds.
The closer Gu Wang gets to Shen Ci, the more unlucky he becomes.
Everyone thought they were getting a "rivals-turned-partners" script.
No one knows that the game itself is a code written to eliminate them.
——"System, you created two conflicting bugs. Who do you want to delete now?"
Purpose: If the whole world says you are wrong, do you still want to continue to love?
Shen Ci is the "heart" created by the system, and Gu Wang is the "cleaner" who is set to destroy him. Every beat of their hearts was consuming each other's lives, and every time they got closer, the system's murderous intent increased. The whole world has been telling them from the moment they were born: You should not love each other.
But it happened that these two "shouldn't" people held hands in the crack of the mirror, kissed in front of the wedding coffin, and hugged each other in the collapsed memory maze and said "I don't regret it."
This story is written——
You were designed to be lonely, but you still chose to embrace.
You were made to kill, but you learned to protect.
The system can write your code, but it cannot write those three seconds when your heart beats faster.
The infinite game is a huge cage, but what really traps people is never copies and monsters, but the default program of "who you should be." Shen Ci did not form a team for the first six years because he was trapped by the data that "all teammates will die". Gu Wang kept taking pictures because he was trapped by the inertia of "I won't live long anyway". Zhou Huai collects other people's emotions but never feels them because he is trapped by the obsession that "data is more reliable than people".
They can win in the end not by points, skills or rankings, but by something that the system can never quantify -
Sincerely.
Sincerity was Shen Ci's subconscious tug when he pushed Gu Wang away. It was Gu Wang who really said in front of the train conductor, "Exchange his life for the lives of everyone on the train? Why?" It really is the moment when players all over the world press "Option C" in front of the screen at the same time. It's really what Ah Jiu said when he took off the 009 badge, "They are different, they have warmth."
This world may be written in code, but the people living in it are made of flesh and blood. Systemic rules can trap the body and cannot trap one person's impulse to be nice to another person. And all impulses added together are love.
It doesn't make sense, it has no formula, it can't be replicated, but that's why - it's the only thing that can break the system.
At the end of the story, Shen Ci's white hair has not turned black, and Gu Wang's left hand is intact in reality. They sat on the real rooftop and watched the sunset, and the camera was full of photos of the two of them. There are no task prompts, no countdowns, and no "Intimacy 5%" pop-ups.
Only the wind, the understatement in the breeze——
"From now on, I'll click the shutter, hold an exhibition, wait for you to get off work, and have dinner together."
The kind of ordinary people in the future.
And this is what they exchanged for all their lives and all their sincerity.
Loving you is not something the system says.