novelraw Chapter 189 The King Descends From Heaven
Chapter 189 The King Descends From Heaven
“Damn! This door just opens with a push?”
Behind him, Sang Biao came in cursing. “If I’d known that earlier, I wouldn’t have wasted so much money forging identity cards!”
The anomaly happened at that exact same moment.
“Lagged, lagged, lagged, lagged, lagged, lagged.”
The moment Sang Biao stepped through the doorway, he suddenly flickered back outside the door. He stepped forward, snapped back. Took another step, snapped back again.
Just like that elderly woman who, no matter what, couldn’t get onto the bus that day, Sang Biao was now trapped in the same endlessly repeating moonwalk, forever unable to actually step into this room.
At the same time, the silver door turned transparent, then pixelated, then black—
Outside, the amusement park itself began collapsing as a whole. The giant pendulum and the roller coaster fused together. The Caimaos started duplicating wildly, and in the blink of an eye they filled the entire space. Their clothes and skin vanished instantly, their bodies sticking together into a grotesque gigantic meatball.
Jiang Ran understood immediately.
The 39 minutes and 11 seconds limit had arrived.He hurriedly shook his head and looked up at Cheng Mengxue floating in midair.
Xiao—
He wanted to call out, but no matter what, no sound would come out.
He couldn’t even see the hand he had tried to raise. Presumably, his upper body had vanished just as inexplicably.
But this time, he noticed something different.
The whole world was collapsing at the exact 39:11 mark—
Yet Cheng Mengxue, suspended in the sky, showed no abnormalities at all.
She was still wearing Hangzhou No. 1 High School’s spotless uniform.
There were no texture glitches anywhere on her body.
No afterimages.
Nothing distorted.
In the next instant, the hundreds of millions of silver streams above her head snapped apart, turning into glowing threads that cascaded down like an avalanche.
At the final moment before the world completely broke apart, the girl widened her eyes and shouted downward with all her strength:
“Jiang Ran!”
Ah.
The screen went black.
Everything vanished.
Nothing could be seen.
Nothing could be heard.
Nothing could even be thought.
Just like a movie paused mid-scene, every character frozen there, utterly powerless.
A few seconds later.
Vision returned.
The sunlight was dazzling.
A little boy ran past holding a lollipop.
The scent of cake filled Jiang Ran’s nose.
In front of him was a waitress girl enthusiastically selling orange juice to pedestrians.
“Xiaoxue!”
The shout that had been jammed in his throat finally burst free.
Jiang Ran stood frozen in place, breathing hard.
He lowered his head and looked at his reappeared hand, turning it over several times.
Everything was normal.
He was back.
Sure enough, the moment the 39 minutes and 11 seconds limit arrived, the virtual world had collapsed and restarted again.
Now he had returned to 10:00 AM.
He absolutely had not seen wrong.
Behind that silver door as tall as heaven and earth, the girl floating in midair was none other than the childhood sweetheart he longed for day and night—
Cheng Mengxue.
Before this, Jiang Ran had indeed suspected that Resident 001 of the virtual world was very likely Cheng Mengxue.
But never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that he would see her in the most mysterious, highest-authority room on Floor -42—
A room even Puppe himself could not enter.
Because—
That line of English had clearly indicated that this room was the […]
Central Control Zone.
By normal reasoning, if it was a control zone, then there should have been electronic machinery or operation consoles inside, right?
At the very least, even if what appeared was the “Puppe treasure” Sang Biao kept ranting about, or the supreme authority controlling every permission in the system, that would still have made sense.
But why—
Why was the room completely empty?
With only Cheng Mengxue suspended in the air, as if she had been asleep for years?
“I think… there’s still something wrong with the way I’m thinking.”
“This is a virtual world. My logic needs to open up too. I can’t let myself be bound by the rules of reality.”
Jiang Ran closed his eyes and recalled every clue he had seen and heard.
“Today is the death anniversary of Mr. Puppe, Resident 002 of the digital world. We mourn deeply.”
“In 2023, Cheng Mengxue was critically injured in a car accident. Puppet assisted the Magician in extracting her memories.”
“No one knows who Resident 001 is. Even Mr. Puppe always speaks vaguely about it.”
“It’s said that beneath this museum, there’s a room even Puppe himself can’t enter!”
“He once mentioned in an interview that the designation 001 might actually be this world itself.”
“Puppe’s treasure must be in the most secret room! That’s the authority of supreme control! I’m going to become the king of the digital world! Digital King for short!”
“I am the sinner of human civilization—3911. So this is where everything ends.”
“Caimao meow~ Caimao meow~ adorable little meow meows~ everyone come play! It’s super fun here! Welcome to~~~~~ Hang City Paradise!”
“Jiang Ran!”
Little Cheng Mengxue, wearing a white dress, hands on her waist, stomping her foot, teeth clenched, glared at him:
“Year after year you keep putting it off! When are you finally going to take me to Hang City Paradise!?”
For a moment, countless fragmented lines of dialogue snapped together like puzzle pieces, gradually forming one complete picture.
Jiang Ran felt as if enlightenment had struck.
He slowly opened his eyes.
[…] Cheng Mengxue is both Resident 001 and this digital world itself!
He arrived at a conclusion that was almost as obvious as a face-up card.
There was no need to explain Resident 001.
As early as June 2023, Cheng Mengxue had already undergone consciousness upload surgery.
No one in the world was more worthy of the serial number 001 than her.
—
As for why Puppe had always remained vague about the 001 designation, the root reason was simple.
He did not want the world to know Cheng Mengxue existed.
He did not want the world to know the truth behind the virtual digital world.
From the standpoint of motive, Puppe had most likely hidden it all in order to maintain the stability of the digital world.
After all, there were still plenty of people like Sang Biao—people with ulterior motives, eager to seize authority and ascend the throne.
Puppe could guarantee that he himself would not abuse power or become a dictator king.
But in the digital world, permissions meant everything.
It was impossible to guarantee others wouldn’t be tempted.
So the best method—
Was concealment.
Secondly.
It was no longer hard to infer that Puppe was not actually the highest-authority being in this virtual world.
The mere existence of a room he himself could not enter proved that its owner’s permissions had to be above his.
And from the realistic structure of every other part of the virtual world, it was clear Puppe was an extremely rule-abiding person.
Even though this world did not actually need sewers or ventilation ducts, he had still created them for the sake of realism.
So with that kind of personality, there was no way he would have allowed flesh-and-blood Caimaos or the absurd underground amusement park on Floor -42 to exist.
If he could allow that, then what was stopping a dragon from suddenly flying in and burning Donghai City to the ground with a single breath?
Unfortunately—
Facts were facts.
Those impossible things beyond common sense truly did exist beneath the museum on Floor -42.
Which meant Puppe was equally helpless about them.
His permissions were completely incapable of controlling this place.
The only thing he could do was bury these absurdities deep underground and seal them away.
That also explained why the Museum of Human Civilization had never been open to the public, and why access walls sealed it from every direction, preventing anything from entering.
“So the bizarre scene on Floor -42 really is exactly what I guessed before.”
Jiang Ran narrowed his eyes.
[…] That bizarre Hang City Paradise, and the living Caimaos, all came from Cheng Mengxue’s imagination.
Cheng Mengxue had never gone to Hang City Paradise, so naturally she could not imagine its real appearance.
When Cheng Mengxue died in the car accident, Caimao had only been explosively popular for half a year.
So naturally she also couldn’t imagine all the new designs released over the past two years.
No wonder Jiang Ran had always felt that the Caimaos on Floor -42 looked strangely plain.
Most of them were basic models.
There were none of the eye-catching later designs like Rice-Cooker Caimao, Spacetime-Particle Caimao, or Mob Boss Caimao.
Because—
Those fancy variants were all released later.
Cheng Mengxue, who had tragically died young in 2023, naturally never had the chance to encounter them.
“Then now, only the final question remains.”
Jiang Ran straightened and looked up at the brilliant blazing sun overhead.
Inside that room at the far end of Hang City Paradise—
Cheng Mengxue floated in midair, with countless silver-thread-like streams pouring from above her head, densely extending upward into some unknown destination.
That sensation—
It resembled the World Tree from Western mythology.
Its towering roots connected every corner of existence, forming the world itself.
Perhaps the billions of silver streams above Cheng Mengxue’s head worked by the exact same principle.
Taking into account the English carved into the silver door—
Central Control Zone.
Then the answer practically revealed itself.
[…] Does this virtual world exist inside Xiaoxue’s brain?
“Or…”
“Did Puppe use Xiaoxue’s memories and consciousness as the […] foundation to construct the entire framework of this virtual digital world?”
After thinking it through, Jiang Ran believed the second possibility was more likely.
No matter how he looked at it, the first idea was too unrealistic.
He had already checked the library records.
This virtual world currently contained more than 3 billion people.
Of those, 2.4 billion came from the consciousness uploads of human survivors after the great catastrophe.
The remaining 600 million plus were entirely new lives born and raised within the virtual world.
At one point, some scholars had proposed naming these new lives born in the virtual world […]
virtual lifeforms
…to distinguish them from humans who had once possessed physical bodies.
But Puppe had directly vetoed that proposal.
He had always insisted on the unity of the human species.
Whether they were former Earth-born humans or new lives born in the virtual world, all of them belonged to the same category:
humanity.
No distinction should ever be made.
What’s more, within at most 150 years, the final remaining […]
Earth-born human
…would also die within the virtual world.
From that point on, the continuation and development of human civilization for the next vast 30,000 years would be handed entirely to those children.
So returning to the point—
Jiang Ran simply did not believe Cheng Mengxue’s tiny little brain could possibly contain the fully detailed lives of 3 billion people.
The human brain had only 100 billion neurons total.
That wasn’t even as many as the transistors on a top-tier PU chip.
How could it possibly perform calculations this complex?
“Besides… Cheng Mengxue’s brain was cremated together with her body.”
That was the most decisive evidence of all.
If this was a virtual world, then it had to have some real physical carrier in reality.
Otherwise, what was the point of all those data centers Puppe had prepared in advance?
So comparatively speaking, the second theory was far more reliable.
“The foundation Puppe used to build this virtual digital world was Xiaoxue’s memories and consciousness. That’s why he said 001 is this world itself. That description isn’t actually wrong.”
“And precisely because Xiaoxue is the deepest, most fundamental architecture of the virtual digital world, her permissions are the highest. Naturally, that’s why even Puppe cannot enter the room on Floor -42, and why he’s equally powerless against that surreal amusement park.”
At this point, the logic had become clear.
But the fundamental problem was still unresolved—
What exactly was 3911?
And what was causing this world to reboot every 39 minutes and 11 seconds?
And furthermore—
What state was Cheng Mengxue actually in within this world?
From the way she had looked at him and shouted “Jiang Ran” at the very end, it wasn’t hard to tell that Cheng Mengxue still remembered him.
And she seemed to exist in a state of both free thought and free personal agency.
So—
Could he get the answers directly from her?
No matter what, driven by his longing for his childhood sweetheart, Jiang Ran was already desperate to set out again.
That mysterious Floor -42.
That mysterious amusement park.
That mysterious room—
He had to go there one more time.
“Sir!”
“Sir!!”
The sweet voice of the maid-dressed waitress once again pulled Jiang Ran’s thoughts back to reality.
He turned and looked at the worried girl.
“Sir… are you okay?”
The girl asked with genuine concern. “You’ve been standing here in a daze this whole time, and your expression keeps changing. Are you feeling unwell?”
“Would you like to try our shop’s new fruit juice? It can help calm your mood!”
“…All right. One cup.”
The shock and reasoning just now really had consumed quite a few of Jiang Ran’s brain cells.
As the saying went, haste made waste.
He had already mapped out the most time-efficient route in his mind.
After finishing this orange juice, he would immediately begin another pseudo-speedrun without stopping.
The waitress beamed and filled a huge cup of orange juice for him.
“If you like it, feel free to come back anytime for a refill!”
Jiang Ran took the juice and walked toward the flying motorcycle by the street.
Gulp gulp gulp—
He drained it in one go.
Swinging a leg over the bike, he wiped his mouth.
“Let’s go.”
At full speed, reckless as if he didn’t value his life, Jiang Ran sped forward.
A few minutes later, he arrived above the Museum of Human Civilization.
The moment he spotted Sang Biao sneaking around suspiciously below, he immediately dove downward, squeezed the brakes, and stopped the flying motorcycle right behind him.
“Get on,” he said in a low voice.
“Huh?”
Sang Biao turned around in confusion. “Who the hell are you!? Get lost!”
“Sang Biao.”
[…] “You don’t want Puppe’s treasure to get snatched by someone else, do you?”
Instantly.
Sang Biao froze, his fat hand still jammed halfway into his waistband.
He stared at Jiang Ran in confusion.
“Y-you… who the hell are you?”
“No time to explain.”
Jiang Ran patted the back seat.
“Get on now. Every access wall inside the museum grounds has failed. Time is limited. If you want Puppe’s treasure, then listen.”
“I’m giving you 5 seconds. Come or don’t come. Honestly, bringing you along is brotherhood. Leaving you behind is my right. If you don’t come, I’m going alone.”
As he spoke, he raised a hand and began counting down.
“5—4—”
“To hell with that!”
Sang Biao flew into a rage and yanked out his pistol with a snap, aiming it at Jiang Ran.
“I’m destined to become the Digital King! You think I’m gonna take orders from some little punk like you!? Riding around on a busted bike acting all high and mighty! Even dogs wouldn’t—”
“Ride!”
The moment he sat on the flying motorcycle’s back seat, Sang Biao raised a fist high.
“The one riding is the flying motorcycle!”
“By the way, little bro—you even knew my second brother was in the sewer and my third brother was scouting the vent shaft? You know me better than the parasites in my intestines!”
Jiang Ran sighed into the roaring wind.
“How many times have I told you not to use internal organs as metaphors?”
“What do you mean how many times? This is literally the first day we’ve met! But heh, already as close as brothers!”
—
Sang Biao wrapped his arms around Jiang Ran’s waist, completely attached.
At the very moment he had been about to pull the trigger, this sworn brother from another mother had accurately named every single one of his plans and knew the museum’s underground area like the back of his hand—
He was basically a divine reinforcement descending from the sky.
As he spoke, he pulled a forged identity card from his pocket.
“So according to what you’re saying, if even that final room Puppe himself can’t enter has lost its access wall, then these cards are useless now too.”
“Damn, I paid a fortune to forge these! The guy who sold them to me said he could modify backend data and that these identity cards had access permissions one level above even Puppe’s!”
Heh.
Jiang Ran laughed speechlessly.
“Telecom scams really exist in every era. Use your brain and think. Does that even sound possible?”
Sang Biao immediately tossed the fake cards into the air.
“Fine, brother. Don’t worry. Once I become king of the digital world, I definitely won’t mistreat you. I’ll give you a whole continent to manage!”
“I’m full from eating that promise already.” Jiang Ran’s ears were practically calloused from hearing it.
“Oh, now you’re getting picky?”
Sang Biao looked troubled, then finally gritted his teeth and made up his mind.
“All right! I was originally gonna give you Africa—but since you’ve helped me this much, Europe’s fine too! It’s all ocean over there anyway—”
“Please shut up already!”
Jiang Ran cut him off.
“Focus. Which ventilation shaft is it?”
Sang Biao pointed below.
“Right there! Third Brother went in through there!”
The motorcycle accelerated downward.
After the two dismounted, they immediately crawled into the ventilation shaft.
Under Sang Biao’s guidance, they found the place where there had once been an access wall—
And where now, there was nothing.
“Right here.”
Jiang Ran took the lead, positioning himself to slide.
“3, 2, 1, go!”
The two of them kicked off the vent wall and gradually accelerated downward.
Sure enough, that fat Third Brother’s information had been correct.
The spiraling ventilation shaft led all the way down.
There were several branching passages leading to other floors in the middle—
But Jiang Ran ignored every single one.
His target was only the deepest floor.
After sliding at high speed for a full minute, they spotted something wedged sideways in the straight tunnel ahead—a chubby body blocking the passage.
“Third Brother?”
Sang Biao’s dynamic vision was excellent. “Brother! That’s my guy up ahead! At this speed there’s no way we can brake!”
“Brake for what!?”
Jiang Ran shouted back, “Just take him with us and keep sliding!”
“Ow!”
The Third Brother who had been jammed crosswise in the duct got knocked upright and snapped directly into line with Jiang Ran. The three of them linked together like a little train and continued plunging downward.
“Big brother!?”
The fat Third Brother stared in shock. “What kind of formation is this!? Why are you guys down here too!? And who’s this guy!?”
“Then you’re Fourth Brother now too!” After all the spiraling loops in the ventilation shaft, Sang Biao was seeing stars and couldn’t be bothered explaining.
Finally, they reached the very bottom of the ventilation shaft.
Boom!
The three of them smashed through the plastic grate and tumbled out.
“Hiss—”
Jiang Ran rubbed his aching head, shoved aside the foam-mouthed Third Brother, and staggered to his feet.
“Waaah! New guests, meow! Welcome, welcome!”
“Caimao meow~ Caimao meow~ welcome, guests, meow meow meow!”
“Welcome, welcome! Welcome to Hang City Paradise!”
“What would you like to ride? What would you like to ride! Every attraction here is super fun!”
Just like before, groups of gigantic Caimaos came running over in cheerful packs, hand in hand, singing and dancing while showering them in flower petals.
Sang Biao inhaled sharply in a scream.
Thankfully, Third Brother was still foaming at the mouth and temporarily unconscious.
As for Jiang Ran, he had long since gotten used to this.
Ever since realizing this amusement park—and these Caimaos—were all manifestations of Cheng Mengxue’s imagination, he no longer felt any fear.
Instead, he felt a strange sense of warmth.
“The roller coaster!”
He directly dragged Sang Biao toward the Caimaos. “We’re taking the fastest roller coaster straight to the silver gate at the end of the park!”
“Wait—bro bro brother! Can you slow down a little!?”
Sang Biao finally couldn’t take it anymore.
Ever since meeting this little brother, everything had felt like it was being played in triple-speed fast-forward. Nothing ever stopped.
“Are you in such a hurry to reincarnate!? Is the world gonna end in a minute or something!?”
And yet—
Under the urging of the wildly excited Caimaos, he still had no choice.
The meowing mascots hoisted them overhead, their stubby legs running at full speed as they stuffed Jiang Ran and Sang Biao into the roller coaster, terrified they might change their minds.
“Departing, meow! Maximum speed, meow!”
Whoosh—
Rocket launch.
After the overloaded roller coaster screeched to a halt, Sang Biao spun out of it like a ballerina and collapsed in circles.
“Brother—I know you’re in a hurry—but do you really have to be this in a hurry—blegh—”
Jiang Ran had already ignored him and sprinted straight toward the silver gate that curved into the sky, slamming his palm against it.
The gate, as if weighing trillions of tons, still slid open to both sides with utterly impossible lightness.
Jiang Ran didn’t even wait for it to open fully.
He squeezed through the gap and rushed toward the girl floating in midair—
“Xiaoxue!!!”
He shouted with all his strength.
Suddenly—
The previously slow and stable silver light streams rippled like stones thrown into still water, waves radiating outward.
BOOM————
The girl in the school uniform trembled.
Her eyes slowly opened as she looked at the familiar man below.
“Jiang… Ran?”
Her voice was soft.
A little weak.
As though she had been trapped in a very, very long dream.
Yet the moment she opened her eyes, nothing had changed.
The closest boy in her world was still standing beside her.
But—
Why was she floating in midair?
The instant that realization struck her, the hundreds of millions of silver strands above her head snapped apart, drifting down like shattered glass.
Freed from the tethers of those streams, Cheng Mengxue fell downward in pure freefall—
Only to land lightly on the ground like a dragonfly touching water.
“Jiang Ran!”
She ran toward the boy who felt unimaginably familiar, intimate, and trustworthy.
“Xiaoxue!”
That single cry needed no further words.
In that instant, Jiang Ran understood.
This was Cheng Mengxue.
The most real Cheng Mengxue.
Without the slightest doubt.
Unlike when he had first met Li Yini, where suspicion and caution had clouded everything—
This time, just one look.
Just one call of his name.
He was one million percent certain.
Sure enough.
The real thing was real.
The fake was fake.
Even if this was only a virtual digital world—
The short-haired girl running toward him was still the childhood sweetheart from whom he had long been separated.
“Jiang Ran! This—”
Suddenly, Cheng Mengxue stopped, stunned.
At this moment, the silver gate had fully opened, and the scenery outside lay entirely before her eyes.
That was—
An amusement park?
The sky?
The sun?
Was this… outdoors?
She had always assumed this was indoors.
And then—
In the blink of an eye, something unbelievable happened.
The ceilings of all 42 floors above them vanished instantly.
As Cheng Mengxue lifted her head to look upward, it was as though someone had selected every building layer above them and pressed delete.
Every single thing obstructing the view disappeared.
Sunlight.
The sun.
White clouds.
From this hundred-meter-deep viewpoint, the sky above and the “sky” above Floor -42’s amusement park connected seamlessly.
From here, it was like looking up from the bottom of a well—
They could directly see the surface.
“Careful—”
Jiang Ran immediately pulled Cheng Mengxue behind him.
He had no idea what had caused this sudden change, but the laws of physics were fixed.
The 42 floors above them had vanished—
But all the trees, fences, landscaping, paving stones, and everything else on the surface still objectively existed.
And now, all those surface objects—
Along with the security robots patrolling the museum courtyard—
Were plummeting from above straight toward them.
BOOM!!!!!
BOOM!!!!!
BOOM!!!!!
Objects falling from over a hundred meters smashed apart on impact, sending clouds of dust through the room.
“Intruder detected! Attack mode!”
“Intruder detected! Attack mode!”
“Intruder detected! Attack mode!”
Security robots and patrol drones lit up red and swarmed toward them from all directions.
“What the hell is happening!?”
Only now did Sang Biao come stumbling in through the silver gate. “Why’s everything collapsing!?”
Bang bang bang! Bang bang bang!
The security robots that had crashed to the ground began climbing back up, red lights glowing in their eyes as they opened fire.
“Xiaoxue! Come with me!”
There was no time to think.
Jiang Ran grabbed Cheng Mengxue’s hand and retreated toward the amusement park and the Caimaos.
Hm?
Suddenly, among the rubble, he spotted an old friend—
The shared flying motorcycle he had parked by the roadside earlier.
So that was it.
Once the 42 floors above had disappeared, everything on the surface had fallen down here.
Naturally, that included the flying motorcycle.
Luckily, material science in this virtual world was incredibly advanced.
And the bike had also been fortunate enough to land across two landscaping trees—
So aside from a few broken plastic pieces, it was still perfectly functional.
“Xiaoxue! Get on!”
The tacit understanding between childhood sweethearts was something Sang Biao’s ragtag crowd could never compare to.
Cheng Mengxue didn’t hesitate for even a second.
She immediately leapt toward the flying motorcycle.
Jiang Ran righted the bike, waited for Cheng Mengxue to sit on the back seat, then twisted the throttle all the way open and shot straight toward the blue dome above.
“Holy shit! I’m not on the bike yet!”
Sang Biao shouted from below. “What about me!?”
“Brother Biao! Disaster’s here! Every man for himself!”
Bang bang bang bang!
Enraged, Sang Biao instantly emptied an entire magazine.
But the flying motorcycle was far too fast.
Not a single bullet hit.
“Fuck your mother!”
He roared curses after them. “You piece of shit! You dare screw over your big brother like this!? Tomorrow I’m stealing your sister-in-law! I seriously misjudged you!”
“Find me a sister-in-law first!”
That was the final line drifting back from the sky as Jiang Ran rode away at full speed—
However.
The crisis was far from over.
For some reason, the “sky” above this amusement park had now bizarrely merged into one with the museum sky outside.
As a result, hundreds of patrol drones pursued them like a swarm of bees.
The instant the flying motorcycle burst out onto the surface, hundreds of red laser sights swept over and locked onto Jiang Ran.
And yet, coincidentally, every one of those lasers behaved like a perfect outline artist.
Each beam precisely avoided Cheng Mengxue.
The red targeting dots dyed Jiang Ran’s whole body crimson—
Not a single one landed on Cheng Mengxue.
“Careful!”
Cheng Mengxue realized it instantly.
She stood up directly from the back seat, wrapped herself tightly around Jiang Ran, and used her own body to shield him from the lasers.
Just as she expected—
The instant she embraced him, all the targeting lasers vanished.
But then—
BOOM!
A solid shell slammed into the motorcycle’s engine, blowing the vehicle apart and hurling Jiang Ran and Cheng Mengxue into the sky.
“Jiang Ran—”
“Xiaoxue!!”
The drones’ precision calculations made sure the explosion itself didn’t injure either of them.
The angle was almost miraculous.
The blast’s recoil happened to prop Cheng Mengxue upward on the seat cushion, leaving her suspended in the air—
While Jiang Ran lost all support and began falling.
Bzzzz—
A drone swooped down.
A rescue harness looped beneath Cheng Mengxue’s arms, suspending her safely.
As for Jiang Ran—
No one came for him.
Instead, as his freefall acceleration increased, countless lasers locked onto him.
Even more shells and bullets poured down in overwhelming numbers.
His vision turned crimson as the laser points “pinned” him into a falling hedgehog.
“Jiang Ran—!”
Cheng Mengxue, hanging helplessly in midair, screamed in despair.
She watched as Jiang Ran dropped to within 2 meters of the ground.
Another second and he would be smashed into bloody paste.
Countless shells and bullets were already almost upon him.
In the next instant, he would be blown apart into smoke and fire.
Tears burst from her eyes.
Fury surged through her.
Grinding her teeth, Cheng Mengxue shouted with every breath in her body:
[…] “STOP!!!!!!!”
Silence.
A terrifying, inexplicable silence.
The entire world became utterly soundless.
If even a single needle had fallen to the ground, it would have sounded deafening.
Jiang Ran had already closed his eyes, prepared to die.
But—
Several seconds passed.
The imagined impact with the ground never came.
He felt no pain.
He heard no explosions.
What was going on?
Had the 39 minutes and 11 seconds limit arrived?
Had the virtual world rebooted again?
No.
Impossible.
Even without a watch, his sense of time was still intact.
This infiltration through the ventilation shaft had saved a huge amount of time.
There was no way it was 10:39:11 yet.
At most, it was only around 10:30.
Then what—
What exactly was happening?
His breathing quickened as he slowly opened his eyes.
Instantly—
His pupils dilated.
His scalp went numb.
Less than 1 centimeter from his face, a huge shell hung in the air.
Frozen.
Around him, countless bullets were also suspended, forming a ring.
Everything—
Everything was motionless.
The bullets had stopped in midair, floating in complete violation of every physical law.
The flames still burning from the shell’s tail had petrified in place, without the slightest flicker.
Even more horrifying—
It seemed even light itself had been severed.
Dozens of laser beams aimed at him had been intercepted mid-flight, cut off in the air, no longer advancing.
He turned his head.
The streams of vehicles flowing like schools of fish in the sky were utterly still—
The traffic of the entire city had become a single frozen painting.
The videos playing on distant skyscraper walls had paused too.
Puppe’s black-and-white portrait silently watched over the motionless world.
Hundreds of drones in the sky had stopped spinning their rotors, yet showed no sign of falling, merely decorating the blue sky like ornaments.
Mechanical guard dogs sprinting across the ground.
Security robots mid-stride.
All frozen in impossible poses.
Even the national flags flying above the Museum of Human Civilization no longer fluttered.
A bird that had just taken off from a flagpole remained suspended in the air, wings unmoving.
What shocked Jiang Ran most of all—
Was that he himself was also floating in midair.
Under the acceleration of freefall just moments ago, another fraction of a second would have turned him into a bloody pancake.
But somehow—
The laws of physics had failed.
His freefall had halted abruptly, stopping half a meter above the ground.
Without question.
[…] The entire world’s time had stopped.
“Jiang Ran!”
Above, the drone carrying Cheng Mengxue was still slowly descending.
The instant her canvas shoes touched the ground, the rescue harness automatically released.
The binding straps popped open.
Her face was deathly pale with shock as she ran toward him, too panicked even to fix the school uniform that had been tugged upward by the straps.
And in that exact moment, the laws of physics returned to Jiang Ran’s body.
Thunk.
He dropped the final half meter to the ground.
Fortunately, it was too short a fall to hurt.
Looking at the weapons still glaring at him from the sky, he didn’t dare stand up carelessly.
He rolled several times across the ground until he reached a safe position, only then rising to his feet.
When he turned back to where he had just been hovering—
It formed an image so absurd it was almost funny, except it absolutely wasn’t.
The red laser dots that had been targeting his body still hung in the air.
The light itself had stopped there.
So after he moved away, those dots perfectly outlined the silhouette of his former pose.
It looked like a full-body holographic mold of himself.
“Jiang Ran!”
Cheng Mengxue came running over, breathing hard.
It was obvious she still hadn’t recovered from the shock.
She immediately grabbed his arm and checked him up and down.
Only after finding a few minor scrapes did she finally let out a relieved breath.
“Thank goodness. You’re not hurt.”
Then Cheng Mengxue turned and stared at the completely unfamiliar scenery around them.
The utterly frozen city.
Her eyes filled with confusion.
She swallowed, voice trembling.
“J-Jiang Ran… weren’t we supposed to be taking the college entrance exam today?”
“You suddenly dragged me out toward the suburbs, and then a car hit us—”
“But, but…”
Her brows knitted tightly, unable to make sense of the situation no matter how hard she tried.
She turned to look at him.
“This place…”
“What is this?”