The mont Spades’s hand pierced through Bai Liu’s chest, the heart Bai Liu had fastened to a blood vessel slipped out through his back and fell.
The heart, which had never stopped beating, sank into the blue-black depths of the sea.
Bai Liu’s eyes were half-lidded. He knew it was useless, but he still could not stop himself from reaching out, trying to catch the heart as it disappeared into the deep sea.
His slender fingers opened and closed weakly in the freezing seawater.
Spades grabbed Bai Liu’s ribs and lifted him upward. At the sa ti, he turned and chased after the heart, clearly intending to catch it and destroy it completely.
Bai Liu’s limbs spread lifelessly. Under that upward force, he slowly and passively floated toward the surface of the sea, which shimred with faint phosphorescent light.
The sun had already sunk below the horizon, leaving only a faint, silver-rimd glimr plated along the edge of the boundless seawater.
Glaciers and floating ice—souvenirs, or perhaps wreckage, left behind by a planet that had first frozen and then burned—brushed past Bai Liu as he floated on the surface, drifting away with the current.
The pure black sky held no clouds, only the rotation of countless stars in the universe. They gave off an intoxicating brilliance, dazzling and radiant, like crushed, large-carat diamonds or strings of pearls scattered across velvet.
It was as if all the luxurious, lingering things in this world blood with a heartbreaking, mad beauty at the mont of their destruction.
And that beauty was veiled by a pale green gauze spilling down from the southeastern sky.
That was the aurora.
The aurora shifted across the night sky, its fluorescent colors floating like the cheap curtain at the opening of a dream.
Bai Liu’s eyes were half-open. Both his ntal value and health value were falling drastically. As if he were hallucinating, Edmund’s aged voice rang in his ears, repeating his warning.
[Child, never use truth and falsehood to test the person you love. I once did the sa. I insisted on completing that experint, but the only conclusion I reached was—]
[They can tell the difference.]
[What exactly is the difference between a monster and a human? Even now, I still haven’t figured it out. Even if they possess the sa mories, the sa body, and the sa structure as us, like another version of us in a parallel dinsion, in the eyes of those who love us, they are still not us.]
[What is it that distinguishes them from us?]
[The experint I originally wanted to conduct was ant to explore whether these manufactured monsters could truly beco indistinguishable from humans through the Turing test, and what exactly made them different from us humans.]
[If they are the sa, then are we humans truly human?]
[Perhaps we are rely the sa kind of monsters placed on this planet, inside this ga. We carry mories injected by others, a species produced in order to march toward war and self-destruction—just as my superiors required to do with those monsters.]
[Then everything becos logical. I understand all the misfortune that has always befallen , my friends, and everyone around —because we were born this way. There is a being in a dinsion higher than ours, or perhaps sothing more fittingly called a God, who decided that this world’s fate would be so cruel.]
[If we are different, then when the machinery, the core, and the mories are all the sa, where do these differences co from? In a situation where even we ourselves cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, why can soone else identify the real us?]
[The people at Taishan Station gave the answer. Through you, I verified that answer once again. But I still do not understand why.]
[Where exactly does this difference co from?]
[Before you arrived, many guests ca here. I used them all for experints. So left halfway, and so remained here forever. Beneath every ice crevasse here, the “corpses” of those failed experintal guests are hidden.]
[The people at Taishan Station had their mories wiped and reloaded again and again, but no matter who the guests were, they could still recognize each other. Sotis, the guests could recognize one another as well.]
[But why?]
[Why can so people recognize it while others cannot? Why can the people of Taishan Station always recognize it, while the incoming guests cannot maintain such consistency?]
[I could not find the factor that affected the experintal results, so no matter how many tis I conducted the experint, I still could not control the outco.]
[Until I t Spades.]
[He was the fastest guest I had ever seen at recognizing his teammates. He was willing to talk to , and he gave the answer—intuition.]
[This is the strangest experintal variable I have ever heard. If my student handed an experintal report with those two words written on it, I would absolutely make him jump into the Ross Sea out of sha.]
[In the mories of Spades’s friend, I saw you, Bai Liu. You would conduct an experint a thousand tis more extre and more insane than the one I am doing now. You would use thousands of your own replicas to create an unsolvable situation in order to test another person’s perception of you.]
[I knew you would do this. And I believe you knew the consequences of doing it as well. But, like , you still wanted to see it one more ti. You still wanted to verify that result once more—]
[These Bai Lius have the sa appearance, mories, and core as you. You have even been alienated into one of these monsters, becoming the monster itself.]
[Can Spades still find you?]
[Thank you for finally letting know the answer to this unsolvable riddle.]
[I always thought it was the side acting as the human that identified the side acting as the monster. But in truth, that is not the case. Rather, it is the side acting as the monster that cannot provide the special emotional feedback the human side wants.]
[Even though you have already beco a monster, you love him, Bai Liu.]
[So you had no way to hide Tawil’s heart inside the bodies of the other “Bai Lius,” because that was a heart that belonged to you.]
[Your reaction exposed you.]
[Love turns you from a monster into a person. Love gives you a weakness. Love causes your heart to be gripped by him and left drifting in the deep sea. Love makes you stand out from thousands of monsters, becoming the most special monster to Spades.]
[And so, he found you.]
[But do not be sad, child. It is not fate that leads you toward your destiny, but love.]
[Love makes you part, but in the end, it will also make you et again.]
Huge sheets of ice lted and broke apart. The “corpses” of the pale monsters frozen inside floated on the sea, mingling with shattered ice as they drifted past Bai Liu.
Fine grains of ice condensed on his eyelashes, glowing fluorescent green beneath the aurora. Seawater washed back and forth through his empty chest cavity.
Soone erged from underwater.
Spades held Bai Liu by the waist and knees, lifted the seemingly unconscious Bai Liu, and placed him on the shore.
In his hands, he held two hearts.
One was crushed and ragged, yet still faintly beating.
The other was frozen inside a block of ice, fresh as if it had just been taken from a chest. This was the heart Spades had dug out from the body of one of the [Bai Lius].
Spades carefully thawed the heart.
“This is your real heart.”
Spades looked down at the motionless Bai Liu and placed the newly thawed heart back into Bai Liu’s body.
“Giving it back to you.”
Bai Liu’s body, which had been modified by Edmund, rapidly grew and connected its blood vessels to the heart. The muscles and skin over his thin chest healed in an instant, and his previously cold, rigid chest began to show a slow, weak rise and fall.
Spades turned around.
He took out the fuel and strong acid stored in the warehouse and, without any hesitation, began dealing with the other heart that was still faintly beating in his hand.
Amid roasting flas and the hissing corrosion of acid, the heart turned to ash.
Bai Liu’s frostbitten fingers twitched slightly.
His pitch-black eyes reflected the beautiful night sky, empty of everything.
At the mont the other heart was destroyed until it stopped beating, Bai Liu’s chest, which had just resud rising and falling, paused for an instant.
It was as if his heartbeat had stopped as well, following the complete stillness of that other heart.
[System Notification: Player Spades has destroyed the final corpse fragnt and achieved the True End route achievent. All players have cleared the ga. The dungeon is about to close...]
The snowfield collapsed behind them.
Bai Liu’s system panel popped out and automatically exited the ga for him. Spades knelt beside the ashes and the seemingly dead Bai Liu, tilting his head slightly as he gazed at this lting world of ice and snow.
Only after the Bai Liu beside him turned into a cluster of light and vanished did Spades stand, preparing to leave the ga as well.
He did not understand why he had to wait for Bai Liu to exit before exiting himself.
It seed to be a deep-rooted habit, sothing like intuition.
Spades felt as if he had watched this person exit the ga and turn into motes of light many tis before. Then he would sink into a long darkness, waiting for the next ga to begin so he could see this person again.
So this ti, he did the sa.
Just like the subconscious intuition that told him he had to co here and destroy all the corpse fragnts.
Spades vaguely sensed that the person who designed this ga was using these corpse fragnts and hearts, preparing to trap Bai Liu forever with these things, letting Bai Liu live as a monster, cold and alone in the snowfield for his entire life.
This was a very likely possibility.
Liu Jiayi was even glad that the person who had entered the ga with them was Spades.
Because no one else could have stopped Bai Liu from going mad.
If Bai Liu had entered the ga with other players and discovered that the main task here was to destroy corpse fragnts, then as long as one player found a corpse fragnt and destroyed it, the [True End] route would be triggered.
Even if those players and Edmund were killed, the ga could not be ended.
Because the ga was already on the [True End] route. Without reaching the final ending of destroying all corpse fragnts, the ga would not clear.
Bai Liu could also have directly exited the ga.
But by then, the ga would have beco reality and loaded into the real world.
After leaving [Ice Age], Bai Liu would likewise enter the [Ice Age] dungeon in the real world. In essence, it would be no different from remaining inside the ga.
And in the real world, once the thod of destroying corpse fragnts was already known, the complete destruction of these particle-phenonon devices would be inevitable.
The corpse fragnts would absolutely face the fate of being completely destroyed. Countless people would try every possible thod to make that happen.
Bai Liu understood very deeply that he could not remain the enemy of the entire world forever.
That was why, at that ti, he would have chosen to stay in the ga.
He used that thod to prevent this ga from ending, to stop the True End from arriving, and to keep the ga from loading into reality.
It could be said that this ga had been a trap designed specifically for Bai Liu from beginning to end.
The mont Bai Liu stepped into this ga, there were only two choices before him—
—Either beco a monster forever and remain in the snowfield.
—Or... destroy Tawil’s heart, destroy his only psychological emotion, his love, and his weakness. Beco cold and heartless. Beco cruel. Stop at nothing. Calculate everything. Then clear the ga as a winner.
Let Bai Liu turn from Bai Liu into Bai Six.
That was what the person behind the scenes had been doing all along.
Liu Jiayi sincerely gave thanks that the player they had encountered in this ga was Spades.
Because other players simply could not stop what Bai Liu wanted to do.
But Spades had the ability to win against Bai Liu.
As long as he won, Bai Liu would no longer need to choose.
As long as Spades destroyed that heart, Bai Liu would have no choice but to co out of the snowfield.
Liu Jiayi did not know where Spades’s obsession and intuition to destroy this heart had co from, or who had given it to him.
Although Spades’s intuition was very cruel to Bai Liu, destroying the heart of the person who mattered so much to Bai Liu.
But he had indeed saved Bai Liu.
Because he had completely destroyed Bai Liu’s only weakness, so that the person who designed the ga behind the scenes could never use that weakness again.
—
Author’s Note:
This part is a little convoluted, so let clarify it for everyone.
Essentially, it goes like this: Bai Liu is the final beta tester. After he tests a ga, that ga can go live. Therefore, in order to prevent the ga from going live, and because he doesn’t want to trigger the ga’s [True End], Bai Liu stalls inside the ga and refuses to leave, basically playing rogue. The developers can’t do anything about him and can only give up on the ga.
Then Spades forcibly made Bai Liu clear the ga.
That’s roughly how it works!
I’m sorry. This was originally supposed to end in the previous chapter, but I realized there was still a section of the plot missing, so I added it here.
Theater:
: Interviewing the person involved. Spades, do you have any thoughts on this heart-gouging action?
Spades, zoning out: ......
Bai Liu, smiling: I think he planned it long ago. When he said those things °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° at the Rose Factory, he was probably giving advance warning. I think it’s fine. I’m not very angry. It’s not the first ti he’s done sothing like this.
Spades, subconsciously: I’m sorry.
Bai Liu, still smiling: I’m not angry.
Spades: ......
Afterward, the person involved, Spades, reported to us that he felt a burst of killing intent at that mont.
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