Global Collapse

Chapter 665 The Escaped World and the Collapse of Travel
The fat man recalled his experiences in the old world and sighed, "The prototype of that world was actually a just, loving, and harmonious society. I never would have guessed."

“The difference between ideals and reality is always huge,” Gu Mian said. “When I was a child, my wish was to be a lucky person.”

"It's clear that your hopes have been dashed, doctor."

The fat man continued to look at the train conductor's simple notes.

“There is a person in the old world called ‘Divergent’ who often rides in my car. He is very mysterious and doesn’t talk much. The reason I’m focusing on describing him is because this NPC looks like a big shot. You can go to the old world more often to find this NPC, instead of thinking about how to mess with my car every day.”

The "you" mentioned in the train conductor's description refers to Gu Mian.

When the train conductor was writing "Seven Great Historical Events of the World," Gu Mian didn't notice that he had included some personal opinions in the book.

Next is an introduction to the Fourth World.

"The Fourth World, its name is unclear. The corresponding stations are the fifth station, Crazy Game City, and the sixth station, Church of the Bones..."

The driving instructor didn't know the name, but Gu Mian did. The Fourth World was called Paradise, a very fitting name.

"This world is adjacent to the old world, and its level of perversion is just as high. I've heard that there's a very clear class division in it, dividing people into upper and lower classes. I always feel that the Fourth World and the old world have some connection. To some extent, the two worlds are similar in nature. If the old world continues to develop, it might also form a complete class division system."

"There's a famous NPC in the Fourth World, everyone calls him the Evil God. He often comes to my place for a ride and likes to jump around in other worlds. It seems that the Evil God was hunted down by the upper class of the Fourth World a few years ago, but now no one can kill him."

"He said that the initial setting of this world was highly centralized, oppressive, and hedonistic, which is not as good as the old world. At least the old world once wanted to develop in a better direction."

"In addition, this evil god has a particular fondness for creating strange and quirky items, and he also likes to throw his own statues around everywhere. It is said that there are at least eight hundred to a thousand statues that he has thrown into various worlds."

Gu Mian was well aware of the evil god's penchant for throwing statues; he had seen evil god statues in more than one instance.

Looking at the train conductor's description of the first four worlds, the fat man said, "Why does it feel like these worlds get more and more bizarre as we go down?"

That's certainly true now.

The first world is the most similar to Earth and is relatively uneventful. The second world also has a low degree of alienation. Starting from the third world, the old human realm, the plot takes a sharp turn for the worse.

The original human race initially wanted to create an ideal world, but something went wrong, causing the entire world to move in the opposite direction, and everyone was driven to extremes by the world's influence.

The Fourth World goes even further, with its initial premise being one of high centralization and oppression. Judging from the name "Paradise," the people in this world find pleasure in it.

From this perspective, the degree of alienation in the following worlds should be even higher.

However, this trend took a turn for the better in the Fifth World.

"I know the name Fifth World; it's known as the Escape World. The corresponding station is the Seventh Station, the Ruins of the Cursed Village. Don't let the strange name fool you; I would call it the most normal world. The high-level NPCs there are all kind, friendly, and helpful."

"Although it is right next to the Fourth World, it is not polluted at all, and the people inside are all normal. The only drawback is that this world is quite dangerous, and there are quite a lot of ghosts inside."

"As for why this world is called the Escape World, I asked its NPCs, but I didn't get an answer. However, I feel that they are not very satisfied with their world."

Just by looking at the site corresponding to the escape world, "Ruins of the Cursed Village," you can tell that this is not a safe world.

But at least it's a normal worldview, not tainted by the old human world and paradise.

"The Sixth World, name unknown. The corresponding stations are the Eighth Station Sandbox Game Planning Department and the Ninth Station Haicheng Municipal Film and Television City. I heard that this world is quite fragmented, and it has all kinds of dungeons, from transforming into Snow White to fighting monsters to personally taking an exam to solve advanced mathematics. It has all the dungeons you can think of."

"There's a lot of fun here, and it's relatively safer compared to other worlds. Many easy dungeons with little challenge come from this world, making it a paradise for casual players. Of course, casual players may not be able to find dungeons in this world."

"This world feels very fragmented, lacking a unified worldview, like an unfinished, inferior product." Gu Mian didn't know the name of the Sixth World either, so it seemed she would have to ask other NPCs.

The following is an introduction to the Seventh World.

"The Seventh World, Ragnarok. A rather famous world. I heard it was originally a perfect world, and it didn't have this name. But for some unknown reason, this world began to change until it was on the verge of collapse. I heard a long time ago that the Seventh World was about to collapse, but I don't know why it only collapsed today..."

The train conductor was unaware of Earth's curse, nor of Lucky's actions in the Seventh World. Gu Mian had asked him, and he didn't even know that there was an NPC named Lucky in the Seventh World.

“My car never goes to the tenth station before. It’s a rule from the higher-ups. They say the Seventh World is very fragile, and any variable could cause it to collapse, so they’re prohibiting anyone from entering… I don’t know what that green dwarf was thinking, actually making me take you to the Seventh World.”

Gu Mian silently looked at the words on the booklet and felt that this train conductor had really smuggled in a lot of personal information, all of which he wrote when he wasn't paying attention.

"I don't know what the game's higher-ups were thinking, but they actually reopened the train dungeon just to take you to the Seventh World. Well, with your help, the Seventh World has achieved a wonderful ending."

These words were written in a very messy hand, and it was clear that the train conductor was in a great hurry when he wrote them.

Gu Mian was also a little puzzled. Since the lower-dimensional world knew that he would pose a threat to Ragnarok, why did they still let him into that world?
Could it be that the game's higher-ups took pity on him and couldn't bear to see Chu Changge and the others die there?

Gu Mian thought this was unlikely.

Normally, to prevent a series of world collapses, lower dimensions should desperately try to stop him from entering the seventh world. Earth, however, should desperately try to send him into the seventh world in order to cause the world to collapse together.

But the reality is quite the opposite: Earth does not want him to enter the Seventh World, and the lower dimensions do not prevent him from entering the Seventh World.

This is a point of contention.

Gu Mian continued reading and found that there was only one sentence left below.

"That's all I know. I haven't hidden anything. Please don't come again."

Even at the end, the train conductor didn't forget to express his humble wish.

The fat man looked at the train conductor's creation and said, "It's like reading a reading comprehension passage; it's making my eyes hurt. Let's have spinach and tofu stew for dinner tonight!"

Gu Mian didn't know how the fat man connected reading comprehension with spinach stewed tofu. He rubbed the pages in his hand: "The train conductor described the general worldviews of the seven worlds. Did you find anything in it?"

The question wasn't directed at the fat man; his head was filled with nothing but food.

Chu Changge was already sitting on the sofa next to him: "There are some things I feel are that these seven worlds complement each other, rather than being completely independent."

"That's right," Gu Mian nodded.

In particular, the old human world and the paradise world are highly similar in nature.

Just like the train conductor said, if the old people in the area were to develop further, it might become like a paradise.

Furthermore, Luck in the Seventh World also said that the seven worlds are like a rope, inseparable.

"From the first world to the fourth world, the degree of alienation increases step by step, but starting from the fifth world, this alienation stops and the world begins to develop in a positive direction."

"This is like a history of development. In the first half of this history, people chose the wrong path. They kept moving forward on this path, developing from the old human world to paradise, forming an extreme society."

"Until someone discovered something was wrong with this path and bravely left... I think that might be the origin of the name 'Escape World.' This world is probably a world that escaped from paradise."

I've calculated that there's about a million words left to go before it's finished. If I start writing 10,000 words a day from now on, I can finish it this year!
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(End of this chapter)