Love, death, and false man

Chapter 2.2. The Real World

9/11—19:10
The electrical noise from the operating equipment caused Fang Yan some tinnitus. He took off his headphones and felt a sudden acid reflux, as if his stomach was cramping, and a strange feeling in his throat.

That's pretty weird.

It wasn't that Fang Yan was being paranoid; the man's previous statement was very absolute—that he was unwilling to come out—but his attitude changed instantly after he revealed the name of the Soul-Sucking Master.

Does the Lord of Souls truly exist?

Fang Yan finished typing and pressed Enter hard.

But the other party did not reply for a long time.

Fang Yan pressed his temples and suddenly felt dizzy without warning. He felt a sweet taste in his throat and a warm sensation above his lips. When he touched it, he found it was dark red blood.

Immediately afterwards, blood dripped heavily from his nose onto the keyboard, forming splattered blood spots.

"Fuck your mother! I'll fuck your mother!"

His consciousness quickly blurred. He tried to stand up by supporting himself on the table, but he completely fainted and collapsed, falling heavily onto the keyboard and knocking off several blood-stained keycaps.

……

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……

The rusty exhaust fan whirred weakly, noise began to appear on the picture tube screen, and the radio had a poor reception, sputtering and crackling static.

The light in the enclosed space was dim. In addition to an old-fashioned CRT television and radio, there was a high-lumen desk lamp on the iron interrogation table. The strong light illuminated Fang Yan's wax-like pale face as he slumped in the interrogation chair like a lump of mud.

A solemn, dark figure with a human-shaped silhouette sat ahead.

Those fingers reached out towards Fang Yan, some pressed against his forehead, some pried open his eyelids, and some held flashlights and shone them into Fang Yan's eyes.

Fang Yan's severely withered and emaciated appearance showed only the haggardness and desolation of a dying person, and his shrunken, turbid pupils revealed intense fear in response to strong light.

"Fuck...you motherfucker."

Fang Yan was extremely weak. His lips moved almost imperceptibly, and his voice sounded like a dream. His vision was also blurry, and he could only see the bright light from the desk lamp and the silhouette of a person in an officer's uniform.

“My informant on Earth in 2030 discovered you. You must be very confused right now. Take it slow.”

It was a hoarse adult female voice, and she pushed a glass filled with purified water towards us with her fingers.

This glass of water is completely out of place with the atmosphere of the entire space. Like a mirage in the desert, it gleams with a crystal-clear luster, extremely pure.

Severely dehydrated and thirsty, Fang Yan instinctively drank it all down. His consciousness gradually cleared, and he struggled to lift his eyelids to scan his surroundings. It was an enclosed space of no more than fifty square meters. Apart from the desk lamp, the only external light source was the beam of light constantly being cut by the exhaust fan blades.

Sitting in front of her was a woman in a black officer's uniform and a military cap. Her back was very straight, even somewhat unnatural, like a robot. Her long black hair was curly, and she seemed to be blind in one eye, wearing an eye patch.

Fang Yan struggled, believing he was being mind-controlled. The room was sparsely detailed and very disorienting. He frantically gave himself psychological suggestions that this was a hallucination and he needed to wake up, but his body was as if it had been injected with anesthesia and he couldn't move at all. It was like throwing a punch in a dream, without generating any strength.

"Don't let me run into you in real life, or I'll kill you."

Fang Yan threatened in this way.

But the officer remained unmoved.

"It seems that you have regained some of your language ability, so let's start verifying the information now."

Fang Yan, 17 years old, is a student at Binhai No. 6 Middle School, currently in the first semester of his second year of high school. His parents work abroad year-round, and he lives with his maternal grandfather.

During the summer job of deep-sea fishing, the captain withheld wages, and through a word game, canceled the basic salary of 5000 yuan, and instead paid wages of 0.6 yuan per kilogram of squid caught.

Hatred and suspicion escalated the conflict, and in order to help your uncle, you were forced to participate in the battle between the illegal employees and the captain's forces, killing a total of six people.

Wow? Quite impressive.

The officer marveled, noting that even among all the powerful units that were not controlled by the Soul-Sucker, this was a rather unique existence.

Fang Yan was enraged. This was like having one's thoughts exposed; dissecting a person's memory was like dismembering their spirit.

He knew he was being mind-controlled and his memories were being read; the threatening text messages were actually real. But he had no power to resist and was completely at the mercy of others.

"This is also a false memory you implanted, isn't it? This isn't real, it's a virtual environment. So what if I die... I'll fuck you."

Fang Yan swore, his voice still weak, using profanity to mask his inner fear. When he spoke of death, there was a clear lack of confidence and his voice trembled.

"Based on the information we have so far, there are no signs that your memories have been altered. As for the virtual environment, you are only half right. There is no completely virtual world. Even video games have the necessary operating files and servers. The place you are in now is based on real physical existence, not some ethereal illusion."

"Where am I?"

"This is classified information. My authority only allows me to disclose classified information to members of the Salvation Army. You must swear an oath to join the Salvation Army before I can tell you."

"The Salvation Army?"

"Look here."

The officer picked up the remote control and turned on the CRT television. It seemed that the television did not have an audio output function, so a radio was used instead. The picture was very blurry and full of noise, and the radio was extremely noisy, with half of it being static.

Fang Yan squinted, feeling a strange sense of terror. The television was showing images of mushroom clouds from nuclear explosions and genetically modified unknown creatures, as well as places resembling concentration camps and barbed wire, including unidentified pipelines and equipment, and human experiments. It wasn't as if his eyes and ears were receiving those signals, but rather they were being directly imprinted into his brain, just as the woman had said, transforming abstract concepts into concrete forms.

The officer's words did not stop there.

"Just as you see, the Lord of Souls hijacked the communication devices of almost all time and space through the gravitational wave virus, resulting in the existence of this technology in your era. He actually controls almost all of humanity in the past and future. Almost all thoughts are exposed in front of him, and he extracts energy from all souls."

Fang Yan received the signal with blank stares, looking as if he had undergone neurosurgery to remove the frontal lobe. He didn't even swallow, and saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth. However, as the information was being implanted, he slowly began to understand.

In relativistic mechanics, the inertial mass of an object is divided into rest mass and relativistic mass, and the relationship between the two is the mass-velocity relationship, also known as the mass-increase effect.

The reason why time cannot be reversed and the speed of light cannot be surpassed is that as an object's speed gets closer to the speed of light, its mass tends to be infinite, but there is no force that can drive an object with infinite mass.

However, objects with rest mass cannot be accelerated to infinity.

In Fang Yan's current era, among all the things discovered, there is only one thing that has no rest mass and contributes nothing to the density of matter in the universe: the photon. However, photons also have kinetic energy and mass when they are in motion.

But there is another hypothetical particle, namely the gravitational particle.

In the future, such particles have been discovered, and it is possible to accelerate these particles and send specific things back to the past, but at a great cost, often in units of bytes.

It is so obvious that using gravitational waves to transmit neural signals, or computer viruses, is the most efficient way to alter all historical events, past and future, in the course of the universe.

"As you can see, in the future this technology will be abused, and the Soul Eater will be the number one terrorist, even becoming the de facto ruler of the entire universe's history."

The consequences are distortions of time and space, and the failure of causality and physical rules. Once human consciousness participates in this process, the existence of every free will can change the course of the universe, thus possessing terrifying energy.

These free wills can be understood as the soul, which theoretically can even reach 10^69 joules, and the Soul-Draining Lord, as the axis of the process, gradually approaches infinity in power.

We need you, Fang Yan. You are a very capable person and have the potential to become a soldier.

What would happen if I didn't join the Salvation Army?

Fang Yan just wants to study hard and get into university. He has never had sex before, and yet he has been dragged into such a complicated situation.

The officer did not immediately answer Fang Yan's question.

"The reason you received the threatening text messages is because you are too assertive and were detected by the Soul-Sucking Lord's henchmen in 2030."

The threatening text messages are automatically generated by a program to drive you to a mental breakdown, thus allowing the program to better control your brain. You should be thankful you met my informant early on. Right now, only an automated program using satellite search is paying attention to you. If you were targeted by the Soul Eater's henchmen, the fake humans, you would either die or become one of them.” “Subjectivity?”

"Everyone has subjectivity and objectivity. In theory, society and humanity are symbiotic. However, after the development of evaluation systems and disciplinary systems, people are often made into objects of society. Most people never develop subjectivity in their entire lives and do not have free will. The Soul-Sucking Master can easily manipulate them and extract energy."

Because of a series of unforeseen events, largely during your summer vacation, you reverted to a primal, savage state, where your subjectivity temporarily suppressed your objectivity. In your words, mind control's influence on you will be weakened. If you are willing to erase your subjectivity and return to objectivity, then the Soul-Sucker won't affect your life; it's just that you might be found by the police.

After the officer finished speaking, Fang Yan swallowed hard, realizing that his actions did not rule out the possibility of being shot on the spot.

"Free will?"

"It's a very broad concept. I have a blue capsule and a red capsule here. If you take the blue one, it'll be like having a dream. If you take the red one, I'll show you the real world."

The officer spread his hands, revealing two capsules.

Fang Yan, however, did not buy it.

"Fuck your capsules, fuck your Matrix! How am I supposed to know if this isn't an even more insidious and roundabout form of mind control? You're just a lackey of the Soul Eater, completely unable to distinguish between truth and falsehood..."

Fang Yan held his head in his hands, his voice trembling slightly. He would rather go back to that fishing boat and kill again. He simply couldn't bear the psychological pressure, the psychological suggestion, the terrifying mental burden, and the torment of self-doubt. All he wanted now was to go home.

The officer wasn't angry. She had seen too many crazy people. This high school student's mental fortitude had already surpassed that of most people; in fact, it was almost ridiculously strong.

"Unfortunately, this cannot be disproven; you can only choose to believe it. This is human civilization; trust is the only way to stay away from the dark forest theory."

"Red capsule, free will... Is joining the Salvation Army also a form of freedom? What's the difference between that and the Soul Eater? False people... Do false people kill each other?"

"You are really smart. One of your main tasks is to disguise yourself as a fake human. You will continue to lie low in the high school you attend and live your life according to the predetermined trajectory of the script of the satellite compilation program controlled by the Soul Master."

During this time, provide intelligence to the organization you serve, the Salvation Army. The vast majority of those controlled by the Soul Eater are not threatening and cannot be considered false; they are simply normal people living according to a set program. If you encounter a true false person, we need you to kill them, thereby weakening the Soul Eater's power.

"Does it mean, without being exposed, to hunt down fake people... a time-space agent?"

"That's certainly true, very apt. Clearly, you understand everything."

"last question……"

Fang Yan looked at the capsule in the officer's hand and added, "I killed someone. The police are looking for me, and also my youngest uncle."

"Fighting against the Lord of Souls requires immense energy, so you don't need to worry about that at all."

The officer said calmly.

Fang Yan appeared to be able to speak logically and clearly, but in reality, he was quite confused and conflicted. After a moment's hesitation, he swallowed the red capsule.

“I have sworn allegiance to the Salvation Army, now can you tell me where this place is?”

"This is one of the servers the organization will deploy on Earth in 2030, located in a high-latitude region of the Northern Hemisphere. Given your current rank, I cannot tell you any more."

"So what should I do next?"

Fang Yan was extremely confused. He had to go to class the next day and didn't know how much time had passed outside. If he went home too late, his grandfather would scold him. The dance hall usually closed at midnight, and he had to get home before his grandfather returned.

“Bringing you here also carries a certain risk. Given the current situation, it's impossible to provide you with basic training.”

You must strictly adhere to the following three military rules.

The first rule is that you cannot talk about the Salvation Army.

The second rule is that you still cannot discuss the Salvation Army.

As for the third point, you must unconditionally eliminate the fakes.

Other matters can be discussed once you survive. Just know that the more imposters you deal with, the more attention the organization will pay to you, and the more abilities they will grant you. I will summon you periodically.

The female officer stood up, her posture even more solemn than any honor guard Fang Yan had ever seen, and gave Fang Yan a perfectly standard military salute.

"Private Fang Yan, I wish you good luck in your military career."

……

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9/11—19:11
Fang Yan felt as if he had been suffocating for ten thousand years. He suddenly raised his head, gasping for breath, and looked around in fear, his head throbbing with pain.

He instinctively covered his eyes, feeling an extremely strange burning sensation on his retina, as if some kind of text had been tattooed on them.

The Salvation Army has already generated an electronic target on him.

He saw something strange in his eyes.

[Code: CGX-4469]

[Rank: Private]

[Soulfire Strength: 1214 Joules.]

[Soulfire Characteristics: None.]

You do not have sufficient permissions to view more content.

Please abide by the Salvation Army's rules; the Savior is watching you.

Fang Yan seemed like a severely schizophrenic patient, experiencing double vision and his nose was still bleeding.

Several bystanders were watching, and the network administrator who arrived was at a loss and dared not step forward to help.

"Shall I call an ambulance for you?"

The female network administrator had never dealt with a similar incident before.

But just as the female officer's informant, the professor of optoelectronic communication at Binhai University of Technology, said, when Fang Yan's gaze swept over the female network administrator, words jumped out of his eyes, marked above her head, reading her instantaneous thoughts.

[Damn it, the manager isn't here either. What if he dies here?]

Should I call an ambulance?

She was a little anxious and kept asking questions.

Fang Yan's gaze swept over the other people, the other guests surfing the internet, and his thoughts instantly transformed into words that jumped out of their heads.

This guy's on drugs, isn't he?

It's good that everyone is alright.

What's wrong with people these days? Not a single one went to help. Luckily, he woke up and is alright.

Fang Yan looked at his computer screen and found that the chat window with the professor of optoelectronic communication was still there, but all the previous chat history had disappeared. He hurriedly sent a message, but it showed that the account had been deactivated.

The professor's last words were...

May you have great success in your military endeavors.

(End of this chapter)