Doomsday Wonderland

For the first time, Lin Sanjiu was standing from the perspective of a bystander, watching a disaster slowly take shape before her eyes.

To Zhou Xian, she was an audience and a sounding board; Lin Sanjiu's existence seemed more about witnessing his inspired design rather than genuinely offering any opinions. He became excited, saying, "The more important and recent the personal experience, the more difficult it is. Don't you agree?"

Lin Sanjiu couldn't nod; she just stared at him wide-eyed.

"That way, even if they don't watch the first short drama, they still can't avoid the problem the second time," Zhou Xian said, laughing heartily. He winced as he pulled at a wound and inhaled sharply. "Hmm, besides personal experiences, we can also add other elements. Like what they plan to do, recent goals, people they know..."

"People they know?" Lin Sanjiu asked quietly.

"For example, I could ask if someone from their memory is a friend or an enemy," Zhou Xian said, his expression serious as if discussing a math problem, no hint of mischief. "If it's a woman, we can also ask who among them is her lover."

Lin Sanjiu shivered, asking, "But can you actually access their memories? How... how can this be done?"

"How can you still not understand so much?" Zhou Xian said, shaking his head. "With this state, how will you write the game later? If you can't write it, how will you survive here?"

Could it be that only by writing out a game could one continue to live?

That being said, perhaps the game makers were also forced to do so, constrained and driven by rules, forced to create disaster after disaster. Not forgetting her role, Lin Sanjiu took a small breath and said, "So, I still need Big Brother to guide me."

Zhou Xian grunted in acknowledgment. Rather than worrying about how Lin Sanjiu would survive, he seemed more willing to show off his knowledge.

"I can't read their memories, and I don't need to," he explained. "Look, I'll type some text here."

Lin Sanjiu watched as he highlighted the phrase "screen begins to play a short video/image" and added a note to it, writing, "For the first viewing, a segment of the player's life experience or memory will be projected onto the screen."

"This is..."

"I wrote it briefly to demonstrate it to you," Zhou Xian said, removing his hand from the keyboard. "But you should understand my meaning, right? After I set this condition with text annotation, I don't need to search through the player's memories one by one; otherwise, I'd be exhausted. This annotation is a... um, operating mechanism. Under this mechanism, it's you who project your memories onto the screen."

Seeing Lin Sanjiu staring at the screen without speaking, he further explained, "It's like someone saying 'bear' to everyone. Whether they think of a black bear, brown bear, or cartoon bear is their business. Similarly, I set it here, specifying that they project a memory or experience, and what exactly gets projected is determined by the player's subconscious response." freewebnoveℓ.com

In other words, the more important and recent it was, the more likely it was to be thought of first.

He added, "When writing games in text, this is a very practical general principle; you must remember it."

Lin Sanjiu nodded, indicating that she understood, and said hesitantly, "There's... something I don't quite understand."

"What is it?"

Asking this question was a big risk for her. If the answer to this question was something that a newcomer should have known long ago, how would she explain herself?

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Lin Sanjiu hesitated for a moment but still asked, "Can't we just let them pass through simply?"

"What do you mean?" Zhou Xian was taken aback, as if she had just spoken in Latin.

"If it's a short play that has nothing to do with them, then the future players can easily pass."

Zhou Xian blinked his one good eye, retorting, "Wouldn't that be boring?"

Now it was Lin Sanjiu's turn to be at a loss for words. Letting others pass easily meant creating less pain and death in the world, which was a very clear principle, yet it seemed quite inappropriate to mention it here.

She stopped talking, just slightly lowering her eyes, pretending to be very honest, hoping that Zhou Xian would continue speaking. She could feel Zhou Xian sizing her up, and when he opened his mouth, his voice was slightly tense.

"Do you want to write simple games? Are you afraid of getting trapped in your own game?"

It was a probing question—she couldn't arouse his suspicion.

"Didn't you say that I won't enter the games I write myself?" she quickly responded.

Zhou Xian's expression relaxed a little, and he sneered. "What's wrong with you? Trying to accumulate virtue? Why do you care if those people can get out or not?"

"No, in case I enter someone else's game in the future," Lin Sanjiu said, not forgetting to lower her voice. "I'm afraid that I won't be able to get out. Aren't you worried?"

Zhou Xian seemed satisfied with her explanation and nodded. He appeared to be one of those people you often saw in a post-apocalyptic world: if you talked to him about morals, he would think you're hypocritical; if you talked about kindness, he'd suspect ulterior motives—only when you spoke from a self-interest perspective would he understand.

"Since you don't understand anything, I'll explain it to you," Zhou Xian said, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, lighting one, and continuing through the smoke. "On the surface, the rule is that after ten months we'll be sent out, and for the remaining four months, we'll be drawn into someone else's game. But we are the chosen ones, the game makers. We have a head start over ordinary posthumans, so we won't be helpless."

Lin Sanjiu thought he would tell her that as long as they maintained a gap in numbers, their stay would be somewhat extended; this was information that Yu Yuan had told her through [Migratory Letters]. Speaking of which, she wondered how he was settling in that female corpse. Asking the Veda to squeeze himself out and stuff himself into another body seemed very unnatural to him.

Unexpectedly, Zhou Xian didn't mention that.

"We're not just tools for writing games, having to develop games every week. It's so much, it's a headache. Where to find inspiration? You know, most of our games are adapted from provided templates, with location restrictions. After a while, you'll get familiar with these templates. If you know the prototypes, won't you avoid them when you go out? As long as you don't get involved in the game, you won't trigger one game after another. If you can't hide for four months, then it's a waste if you die."

Lin Sanjiu slowly exhaled.

Being able to avoid suffering for oneself doesn't mean one must cause others pain. There must be a link here that she still didn't know. Zhou Xian and Edgar Allan Poe both mentioned that their games were written according to templates, so it's likely that the templates themselves were limited, forcing people to write brutal scenarios.

"Sometimes, we even exchange information to see what games each of us has written recently. Isn't that the same as telling you the answers? There's nothing to be afraid of," Zhou Xian said, and Lin Sanjiu suddenly looked up.

Given her current role and identity, she couldn't yet ask, 'Who wrote the Apartment Game?'