After finishing the docuntary comntary, Jiang Ran was deeply shaken.
What the hell.
What even was all this?
He found it hard to believe this could really be history.
From the very beginning—from that natural disaster in 2028 that supposedly destroyed Earth’s environnt—everything had started to feel strangely fantastical.
But after reading the entire article, he finally understood what Mr. Puppe’s true idea had been.
At first, Jiang Ran had assud he might really have been so kind of savior.
Or perhaps just soone who had handed human civilization a slow death—a utopian illusion built on self-deception.
But in reality, it was neither.
Mr. Puppe’s ultimate plan was to push humanity into an evolution beyond the species itself, into an entirely new form of life.
In rough terms, perhaps: the flesh is weak, take the leap, let the spirit ascend.
This was expressed vividly in a speech transcript by Mr. Puppe attached in the article’s appendix.
The speech read:
“Space is too vast, the speed of light too slow, and the human lifespan too short. Under such limitations, the only future before us is black despair.
People always fantasize that one day they will sail into the depths of the cosmos, but the truth is that humanity will most likely go extinct before ever taking even half a step beyond the solar system.
It is not that we must leave, but civilization’s future should not be this. If humanity is ultimately dood to remain trapped in the solar system forever, then there is almost no difference between that and going extinct right now—it is nothing more than prolonged self-numbing indulgence.
The super-disaster of 2028 has sounded the alarm for us. Our thoughts should not remain imprisoned in fragile flesh. Instead, we must challenge ti itself, challenge the universe, and seek a new evolutionary path for human civilization.
Within the virtual digital world, there are infinite resources, infinite happiness, infinite joy, and at the sa ti—endless possibility.
My hope is that while people build peaceful lives here, they will also fully exploit the advantages of the digital world, developing unimaginable technologies, unmatched systems of thought, and the fruits of entirely new lifeforms.
Humanity cannot remain forever in the virtual world, just as it cannot remain forever locked inside the solar system.
This is only a temporary shelter, never an eternal paradise.
If we were able to step in from the outside, then one day, once we are ready, we will also be able to step back out from here.
Thirty thousand years is a very long ti—long enough for every miracle to happen.
I sincerely hope that thirty thousand years from now, humanity will be able to hand in a perfect answer sheet.”
According to the records, this speech had been broadcast globally inside the virtual digital world after all humans in the outside world had gone extinct.
Jiang Ran could definitely feel the all-or-nothing resolve in it.
Perhaps Mr. Puppe really did hope that, through the entirely new lifeform of digital existence, humanity would advance toward a higher stage of evolution and one day break back out of the virtual world to continue onward into a farther future.
To be fair, the idea itself was good.
Even kind of stirring.
Not to ntion, Puppe really had saved the entire world’s population from disaster.
Otherwise, humanity would have gone extinct back in 2028.
Jiang Ran lifted his head from the tablet.
He looked out the window at skyscrapers piercing into the clouds and smiling crowds everywhere below.
He wasn’t a social critic.
He had no way to judge whether this beautiful utopian virtual world was truly better than the exhausting reality of economic decline and daily hardship in his own era.
But if the super-disaster of 2028 really had happened, then there had never been a choice to begin with.
Either die.
Or beco digital life, co here into this utopia, and join the glorious evolution.
And yet—
Jiang Ran felt a faint sense of wrongness.
Because—
[In the original future trajectory, there was no disaster on Earth in 2028 at all!]
Before this latest future-world shift, he had gone to the 2045 future prison several tis.
At that ti, the Magician Qin Feng had been waiting for execution on the chopping block, Peng Biao in the neighboring cell had been planning a prison break, and tens of thousands of people had been cheering in the execution grounds.
Earth had been completely fine.
There had been no poisonous atmosphere.
No blazing heat scorching the land.
None of it.
None of these things had existed.
Human civilization and Earth’s environnt had both been perfectly intact.
So why—
Why, after Wu Yuanzheng’s death and the dissolution of the Mutual Aid Society of Regrets, had a planet-destroying super-disaster suddenly appeared out of nowhere in 2028?
That made absolutely no scientific sense.
A spaceti butterfly effect causing the 2045 future world to change—Jiang Ran could completely understand that.
That was reasonable.
But there was no way the death of a single Wu Yuanzheng could sohow brew up a global extinction-level disaster three years later.
Unless—
Jiang Ran swallowed.
“[Unless this natural disaster was man-made, deliberately triggered by soone with ulterior motives.]”
And when he linked that to the many baffling coincidences from before—
Why had Puppe happened to perfect consciousness upload technology right before the natural disaster?
Why had he already established giant data centers, built the virtual world, and laid out robotic factories in advance?
The answer seed almost too obvious.
The pri suspect behind this disaster could only be—
Jiang Ran lowered his finger onto the tablet, touching the na that had repeatedly appeared throughout the records.
Puppe.
Thunk.
The tablet gave a vibration response.
A contextual nu popped up under his fingertip with options such as Search, Translate, Copy, and Zoom.
Right beside the translation option, it directly displayed the English rendering:
Puppe
Hm?
Jiang Ran stared at the familiar English word.
It felt like—
He had seen it sowhere before.
He imdiately tapped the translation option to check whether “Puppe,” beyond being a transliterated na, carried another aning.
The page refreshed.
The result appeared instantly.
Jiang Ran’s breath caught in his throat as he stared at the translated Chinese aning on the screen—
[Puppet]
Suddenly!
The surroundings changed violently.
The library’s desks, chairs, and bookshelves began flickering madly, vanishing one second and reappearing elsewhere the next. So of the models even overlapped, like the kind of texture glitches common in video gas.
The people around him abruptly turned into mosaic-colored blocks, blending into nearby colored objects and stretching against one another.
The ceiling and floor suddenly disappeared.
Jiang Ran did not fall, but he could clearly see the lower floors below twisting into several writhing streams of pedestrians.
The image was exactly the sa as what had happened several tis before.
Like a frozen computer.
Like a graphics card malfunction.
No.
It wasn’t like one.
That was exactly what it was.
Now that it was certain this was a virtual world built on servers, those glitches and errors could only an the computer program—or the hardware itself—had developed faults.
Needless to say, the black-screen reboot was about to happen.
Jiang Ran hurriedly raised his wrist and checked the watch—
September 17, 2045, 10:39:11 AM.
Ah!
The entire world plunged into darkness.
Nothing could be felt.
Nothing existed.
Even thought itself was forcibly suspended.
There was only emptiness.
A few seconds later.
The sky was bright and cloudless.
Vehicles layered through the air like schools of fish.
The scent of sweet bread drifted into his nose.
A child ran past holding a lollipop.
“Sir, would you like to try our new orange juice?”
Behind him, the pretty waitress in a maid outfit approached with a smile.
“It’s free.”
This was already the fourth rollback loop Jiang Ran had experienced.
As always.
As always.
Not the slightest deviation.
Perfectly morized.
He ignored the waitress in front of him and let his mind race.
So that was it.
The na Puppe was rely a direct transliteration of the English word.
And the true aning of Puppe—
was [Puppet].
This was the codena ntioned in Li Jinghang’s diary.
Wu Yuanzheng had once told Li Jinghang that Cheng ngxue’s mories had been extracted through consciousness upload by [Puppet].
[So that’s it.]
Jiang Ran murmured.
In an instant, the logic beca crystal clear.
No wonder the future world of 2045 had undergone such enormous changes after Wu Yuanzheng’s death.
Because [Puppet] Puppe and [the Father] Wu Yuanzheng seed to have stood on opposing sides of so larger conflict.
As long as Wu Yuanzheng remained alive, Puppe was destined to fail.
No matter what consciousness upload plan or virtual world plan he attempted, everything would collapse.
But if Wu Yuanzheng died—
Then no one would be left to stop Puppe.
He would be free after 2025 to massacre, arrange, and expand the digital life and virtual world plan however he pleased.
By the sa logic, the super-disaster of 2028 was most likely also orchestrated by Puppet Puppe.
That kind of power filled Jiang Ran with fear.
Could this also be Lilith’s handiwork?
No.
Probably not.
If Lilith truly possessed the power to destroy Earth itself, then why would Puppe ever have been suppressed by Wu Yuanzheng in the first place?
If he could destroy the planet, could he not simply kill one old man?
There had to be another secret hidden in all this.
But why would Puppe trigger the great disaster of 2028?
Could it really be—
just to force enough humans into the virtual digital world as digital lifeforms, he was willing to destroy the entire Earth and coerce all humanity?
That was insane.
Completely anti-human.
Compared to that, Qin Feng kneeling on the execution platform awaiting beheading had truly been wronged.
It should have been Puppe forced onto that block instead.
Still.
Looking at it from another angle, it was very possible Puppet had never even survived to 2045 and had been eliminated early by the Father.
Suddenly.
Jiang Ran rembered the news report he had seen on the shopping mall’s giant screen during his last future trip:
“Today is the death anniversary of Digital World Resident No. 002, and also the founder of our beautiful world, Mr. Puppe.”
That was how the anchor had phrased it.
Which made things even stranger.
First.
Inside the virtual digital world, everyone was data.
How could death even exist here?
Not to ntion, Puppe was the creator of this world.
He should possess the highest authority here.
Who could possibly kill him?
How could he die at all?
Second.
There was sothing even more unbelievable.
The news anchor had said Puppe was Resident No. 002 of the digital world.
But if he had personally created this world, how could he only rank 002?
A chill ran through Jiang Ran’s chest.
He couldn’t help frowning.
“Then who… is Resident No. 001? The very first inhabitant of the virtual world?”
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