When Lily opened her eyes, along with the wind wrapped in grit that struck her cheeks, there was a distant howl, like the mournful whimpering of wolves.
For quite so ti, she stood under the grey, overcast sky, taking everything in with her eyes but feeling as if she had fallen into a dry, hollow well, unable to stir any thoughts, ideas, or emotional ripples. She still had so self-awareness, knowing that she was standing stiff as a pole, but beyond that, everything was empty and vague.
From sowhere ca a faintly familiar voice. "Lily? Can you hear ?"
She slowly turned toward the direction of the voice, discovering that she was holding sothing resembling a walkie-talkie.
"I can hear you." Once the consciousness that was once part of a person returned to her, she furrowed her brows and thought for a while before asking, "Lin Sanjiu? Is that you? Wasn't I... Wasn't I in an elevator?"
"It's . Long story," Lin Sanjiu replied with a weary smile.
How much ti had passed? To Lily, it felt like she had just woken up from sleep and was no longer in the elevator, but Lin Sanjiu's voice sounded so fatigued, as if she had suddenly aged several years.
As Lin Sanjiu told her what had happened, Lily listened while surveying her surroundings. She had seen the environnt earlier, but only now did she really register it. She was standing on cracked stone bricks, with grass sprouts squeezing out from the gaps. Hundreds of ters away sat a crumbling, old, low building, its bricks and tiles seeming ready to fall off the crooked fra. The intermittent sobbing was coming from the wild grass behind the iron gate in front of the building.
Listening to the other side's flowing narration, Lily shivered and looked up at the oppressive grey sky.
She and Lin Sanjiu were not close, having only experienced urgent monts in the ga together, but now the narration coming from the earpiece was so candid and blunt that it was frightening. Lin Sanjiu was so honest that it could even be considered cold. It was as if... so invisible human rules had been dissolved by so force, and the other party no longer had the consciousness to interact with people.
For example, Lin Sanjiu was now telling her openly, "Walk around and see if you feel the sa as when you were alive before."
"I've already... What do you an 'when I was alive before'?"
"You were converted into text," she answered slowly. "Now you're just a projection of the text. You were only three stagnant characters then, and I had to put you back into the text conversion program, fully integrating you into the underground ga space. This is the thod I thought of to restore your human form, so I didn't put you in a ga, just on the land. If you still feel more like an NPC rather than a living person, then you'll never beco human."
Lily opened her mouth, still without a reply. Just understanding it rationally was hard enough, let alone accepting it emotionally.
Keeping communication open, she walked towards the low building, bewildered about how to feel. This place might have once been a ga site, with the blood spilt here turning into layers of black mud-like filth over the years. Perhaps a car nearby was leaking gasoline, filling the air with a pungent sll.
"I feel fine walking. My body moves just like before." Lily still lacked a sense of reality, not feeling that deep within so layer of the earth, her text was written on a piece of paper, rooting her sowhere. "I've reached the front door of this building. Soone's crying here—"
Her words were cut short as she inhaled sharply.
"What's wrong?" Lin Sanjiu asked. She didn't sound worried, probably because Lily was now just a projection of text, unable to be hard like a living person—the only way to hurt her would be to edit or delete her text on a piece of paper.
"I... I can't go through," Lily replied, her hand trembling as she touched the iron gate. It was cold to the touch and covered with a layer of rust. "Why... There's clearly flat ground behind the door, and it's not locked, but I just can't get through."
She tried but couldn't even lift her leg.
"It seems that the range of the text projection is limited," Lin Sanjiu said with a sigh. "I wrote the text in one place, so you can only move within a certain range near that location."
"Hold on, wait a minute," Lily said, turning around, feeling horror envelope her bones. It was as if soone had peeled back a corner of the sky. "Are you saying that I'm trapped in this... few hundred-ter radius for the rest of my life, imprisoned?"
"If you don't like this place, I can change it for you," Lin Sanjiu said softly.
Change it? Move to another place in this wilderness and remain imprisoned? Wandering around and around within a few hundred ters, forever seeing but never able to reach the human world, forever trapped in this ghostly prison?
"Moreover, it's not for the rest of your life," Lin Sanjiu continued. "If no one deletes your text, you will exist as long as this core machine does, whether it be a few decades, a few centuries, or forever. All are possible."
Lily felt she was about to suffocate. She no longer needed to eat or sleep, and she would have to aimlessly sit in this small piece of land forever—she still felt alive, but it was precisely this feeling that made the thought unbearable.
"I... I..." She knew she couldn't be angry with Lin Sanjiu, as it wasn't her fault, but words failed to describe her emotions. When she finally ca to her senses, she found herself half-fallen on the ground, clutching the iron railing of the gate, and sobbing. "I don't want... I don't want to be like this..."
Her voice seed to startle soone in the grass, and the crying from behind the gate gradually faded. Lin Sanjiu waited patiently for her to catch her breath before calmly saying, "Then... I'll think of sothing else for you. My plan to find my friends must change now too..."
Lily listened blankly as Lin Sanjiu's voice disappeared from the other end of the communicator, feeling as if she'd been thrown into a deep dungeon all alone.
A rustling ca from the grass, and a posthuman crawled out, dragging his body forward with his hands, his lower torso empty and legless. He looked up at Lily, saying in a hoarse voice, "Was that Lin Sanjiu? Did I hear wrong? Was that really Lin Sanjiu? Can she create gas now?"
Before Lily could answer, the man bowed his head, a small sob bursting from his throat.
1
"Please, ask her to reopen the ga,"he said, whimpering. "The ga was almost over... when it disappeared along with mylegs."
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