Chapter 1368
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Chapter 1368 “Virtual Reconstruction”
Night falls.
“A nice group of youngsters.”
On a distant hilltop, Li Kengqiang sat atop a huge boulder, leaning back on his hands, his floral shirt fluttering in the evening breeze.
Dark toad-shaped sunglasses rested on his nose bridge, hiding his expression, only his lips curled slightly upward.
Nie Jinshan, dressed in a Zhongshan suit, stood tall like a sturdy pine at the mountain peak, his gaze fixed on the direction of the bonfire, and spoke calmly,
“Do you miss them?”
“What?”
“Your brothers.” Nie Jinshan glanced at him, “The you from back then and the Lin Qiye of today are exactly the same…”
The usually frivolous and slick Li Kengqiang fell into rare silence. He sighed, lying back on the boulder, his eyes beneath the sunglasses staring at the brilliant stars in the sky.
After who knows how long, he finally spoke slowly:
“Old Nie, do you know what’s the hardest thing for me since becoming a spirit?”
“Loneliness?”
“No, it’s that I damn well can’t get drunk!” Li Kengqiang couldn’t help but curse. “This spirit body, no matter how much I drink, I can’t get drunk!
I want to be like these kids, able to drink freely until wasted… even if just once.”
Li Kengqiang took a deep breath and muttered in a voice only he could hear:
“That way, I could see them again in my dreams…”
Nie Jinshan said nothing. He gave Li Kengqiang on the rock a deep look, then turned and walked away.
After a long while, a voice finally drifted to Li Kengqiang’s ears,
“…Take good care of them.”
The cold wind swept across the silent mountain peak, and Li Kengqiang lay motionless on the boulder, like a drunken corpse.
…
The next day.
Lin Qiye carried a basin and toothbrush to the clear stream, where Bai Li Pangpang and Cao Yuan were already crouching, having finished washing up.
Just as Lin Qiye squatted down, he heard Bai Li Pangpang’s puzzled voice from beside him:
“Old Cao, did you hear any strange sounds last night?”
“Strange sounds?”
“Like… like, something really creepy, as if someone was singing in my ear…”
To the side, the corner of Lin Qiye’s mouth twitched almost imperceptibly.
Cao Yuan thought carefully, “No, I didn’t hear anything.”
Bai Li Pangpang scratched his head, and somewhat stubbornly asked Lin Qiye beside him, “Qiye, did you hear it?”
“What did you say? Speak louder!”
“…Never mind.”
After washing up, they returned to the underground air-raid shelter to find Li Kengqiang wearing toad sunglasses standing at the entrance, curiously examining the new equipment inside.
“Brother Gun.”
“Wow… you guys have set this up nicely. Is technology outside this advanced now?” Li Kengqiang patted the automatic massage chair in the corner, tentatively sat on it, then jumped up startled when hard lumps suddenly rose from the backrest, “Fancy, really fancy!”
Lin Qiye spoke with an amused expression, “Brother Gun, we’re all ready. What are we training today?”
Li Kengqiang scanned everyone, “Follow me.”
…
Half an hour later,
Li Kengqiang led them along a rugged mountain path, finally stopping in front of an extremely spacious valley.
Rather than a valley, it was more like a small basin surrounded by mountains. The flat area in the center was at least half the size of a prefecture-level city. With the broad view and surrounding mountain peaks as backdrop, humans seemed as insignificant as ants.
“What’s such a spacious area for?” Bai Li Pangpang looked around, asking the others beside him quietly.
“Probably some kind of chase exercise? Or physical training?” Lin Qiye pondered, “But at our level, we shouldn’t need to train physical strength anymore…”
For those below the “Chuan” level, their spiritual power is relatively weak, and even when using forbidden relics, the effect is quite limited, so physical fitness plays an important role in daily combat, and the lower the level, the more pronounced the effect.
But for Lin Qiye, let alone just a valley, even going from the easternmost to the westernmost point of the island would take at most ten seconds using [Somersault Cloud].
As everyone looked on in confusion, Li Kengqiang slowly came to a stop.
“Everyone, are you ready?” He turned to look at them, a smile curling at the corner of his mouth.
“Ready for… what?”
Snap!
Before Lin Qiye and the others could ask more, Li Kengqiang snapped his fingers lightly, and the scenery around them changed rapidly!
The flat ground covered with weeds beneath their feet suddenly transformed into uneven stone-paved roads. On both sides of the desolate plain, buildings sprang up one after another. The sky changed, the mountains disappeared, and everything around became unprecedentedly unfamiliar.
In the blink of an eye, they had moved from the island to the center of an urban area.
Ring-ring-ring!!
The dense sound of bicycle bells brought Lin Qiye and the others back to their senses.
Numerous bicycles shuttled along the road. As far as they could see, almost everyone was wearing lake-blue clothes and pushing bicycles. These young people walked out of distant factories, chatting and laughing as they moved slowly under the shade of trees.
The sound of old radios broadcasting, street vendors calling out, distant foghorns humming… all reached their ears from various parts of the street.
Lin Qiye and the others stood by the roadside, looking at the bare, vintage buildings around them, falling into deep confusion…
“Ahem.”
A light cough came from beside them. Li Kengqiang, dressed in a floral shirt and bell-bottom pants, perfectly blending into the surrounding environment, was smiling at them.
“Brother Gun… what’s going on?”
“Don’t worry, this is a memory reconstructed in your consciousness using my forbidden relic.” Li Kengqiang took out eighty cents from his pocket, bought a pack of cigarettes from a vendor, and lit one at the corner of his mouth.
He took a deep drag, exhaled the hazy smoke, and continued unhurriedly,
“My forbidden relic is sequence 048 [Virtual Reconstruction], which can recreate scenes I’ve experienced in a specific target environment.”
Safety Qingyu thought for a moment, “Scene recreation… similar to watching a movie?”
“No, it’s not that simple.” Li Kengqiang chuckled, “All scenes I reconstruct are ‘corrected’ according to my cognition and memory… simply put, everything here has thoughts.”
Li Kengqiang held his cigarette and pointed to the vendor who had just left,
“For example, that cigarette seller just now – in my original experience, I didn’t buy cigarettes from him, but in the reconstructed scene, I made the ‘buying cigarettes’ change, so he sold me cigarettes based on my subconscious concept… Every person you see here, every event you encounter, will change according to your actions. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“…So it’s not like watching a movie, but more like an open-world game?” Safety Qingyu pondered thoughtfully.
