Doomsday Wonderland

As the grand prize was busy restoring Yu Yuan's imprint, Lin Sanjiu found herself alone again.

The grand prize seemed to have some sort of worry about her, as if he feared that the moment he took his eyes off her, she would turn into a dinosaur and stomp away. The fog-like anxiety on his face made her feel both slightly amused and tearful.

"I'm fine." She knew that she had been mentally affected by the shock from Nüwa, and it was inevitable that people would be concerned about her. "I'm not going to run around. I'll just stay here in this underground space. What's there to fear?"

Ji Shanqing looked at her and seemed to decide not to voice his concerns, only repeating his instructions seriously. "Alright, although I won't be able to respond to you verbally, I'll always be by your side."

"I know." Lin Sanjiu patted his hand, smiling in assurance.

After deleting all nine rooms, she realized in hindsight that she could try to make contact with the people above ground while she still had control. Wasn't Marcie originally in this area? If Silvan was still on this planet, she could pass a message to him through a game, right?

But to create a game, she would need rooms. Even with control over this core machine, Lin Sanjiu had to follow its internal rules. She opened a basic and simple room, bringing out a comfortable single chair for the grand prize so he could concentrate on restoring Yu Yuan's imprint. She then spent a quiet moment thinking about the kind of game she should design that would be harmless yet able to make contact with specific targets.

Regardless of using a template or not, the game must possess the essence of a game.

She thought for a while, coming up with some ideas, only to reject them herself. To find Marcie and Silvan through a game meant asking the posthuman participants to look for them since the game itself could not move. But what if someone didn't look? Or looked half-heartedly and didn't find them? She was reluctant to punish players but hoped they would try their best to find them, so it seemed that rewards were the only way. Lin Sanjiu glanced at the grand prize, who was sitting in the armchair. His eyes were bright as if filled with stars, immersed in the world of data, working to complete Yu Yuan's analysis as quickly as possible.

Generally, the rewards in a game were relative to punishments. For instance, if a punishment for failing a level in a game was to receive a high-voltage electric shock, the reward for passing would be an item to prevent the next shock. This wasn't a real reward; without the initially created harm, no one would need such a reward.

Everything in a game, whether matter, energy, or conditions, was written on paper and then projected onto the surface. It could only appear within the game, and even this function was limited by the amount of text. If she wanted to create something not in the text library, she would need to find it from the outside world, convert it to text, and send it down as a template in the text library.

Thinking it over, Lin Sanjiu realized she had no rewards to offer.

Upon reflection, it was not surprising. The purpose of text was to enable this core machine to continuously create games, not to create new matter like the Veda. Trying to invent a reward that posthumans desired from thin air was indeed too forced.

Following this thought, Lin Sanjiu inevitably thought of Lily. The girl was still trapped in an elevator car, confined to three characters. Lin Sanjiu searched through her eye interface but found no possibility of reversing text into a living person. Perhaps Yu Yuan might have a way after analyzing the core machine, but she had a vague feeling that this hope was slim.

Sighing softly, Lin Sanjiu typed a line of text.

Everyone who enters this place

The underscore signified that she would later describe and define the place.

will receive a task to find the target person.

The time limit is until either the searcher or the search target is teleported. There is no penalty for failure, and the reward for success is

She slowly typed "a feast of designated gourmet dishes," then deleted it. Then she typed "physical restoration treatment," and deleted that as well. She needed to make the reward appealing to most people, but even the condition of "surviving safely in the game until teleporting" was not much of an offer now. After all, all the games outside had been canceled, and the world was left with only posthumans wandering the vast land; it was not particularly dangerous. If it's not very dangerous outside, why stay and be limited by rules?

Lin Sanjiu furrowed her brow, taking deep sighs, feeling like an author facing a creative block. She sighed, paced the room, nearly smashing the keyboard, but the paper was still blank. She knew it was her self-created annoyance. Who made her unwilling to drive others with fear to serve her will?

What posthumans most desired was to settle down, free from the suffering of wandering and teleportation. There was a way to achieve this effect.

Lin Sanjiu stared at the blank screen that only had two lines of text, thought about it, and finally brought up the card-sized elevator car, flipping it several times.

Now that she had control over the entire core machine, she could access the underground space, white paper, and the surface. She could try to write "Lily" on the white paper and project them onto the planet's surface. After being projected onto the surface, without the limitation of the game NPC identity and without having to act according to the script, what state would Lily be in?

Could she continue to live in her own identity, in her own way, as she had before?

It seemed that she would only know by trying.

Lin Sanjiu took a deep breath, deleted the text she had just written, and undid the card conversion of the elevator car. Looking at the tightly closed elevator doors, she put on her metal gauntlet—without the obstruction of textual power, she quickly tore open the elevator doors.

The three large characters for "harmony," "hundred," and "union" stood serenely in the pale light, just as she had seen them last time.

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