Doomsday Wonderland Vol. 12: New Game Launch [Complete]

1530: Looking Back or Not

A dark, roaring tidal wave suddenly leapt into the sky before their eyes, sweeping toward the earth to engulf everything in its path. Wherever it existed, there would soon be no world left to stand—

Lin Sanjiu abruptly closed her eyes and, upon opening them again, found herself drenched in sweat, realizing that she was still seated in the silent universe, with nothing having happened, and judgment not yet come.

Nüwa's words just now seemed to carry with them a trailer of ultimate destruction, striking into Lin Sanjiu's mind without warning, making her believe for a moment that she was about to be consumed, destroyed, obliterated. Now, she couldn't even control her body, trembling uncontrollably.

No, she wasn't afraid of death.

She had often imagined the world after her death—or rather, the many worlds—Black Market bustling with people, a small tea stall filled with groups sipping their drinks, travelers gazing at the swaying Truth Mushrooms in the distance. Even if she no longer existed, everything she had witnessed, touched, and breathed would continue; she never thought the world that had once contained her would become meaningless, that her existence itself would become meaningless.

The most terrifying thing is not one's own death, but the extinction of meaning.

'Nüwa is really not human anymore,' she thought. How could a human face the eternal, indifferent, lonely silence of a future devoid of meaning? In the vast universe, in the end, only she remained, still remembering humanity, still remembering the million-year journey of humanity, but these memories were no more meaningful than a gust of wind.

Only a non-human being could, from an outsider's perspective, become the final tomb of human memory.

Taking a deep breath, Lin Sanjiu's nails dug into the flesh of her palm, forcing herself to calm down.

Perhaps even Nüwa couldn't bear the emptiness of the future, so she gave herself two choices.

In terms of intelligence, she might not be as good as many, but Lin Sanjiu wasn't stupid.

Ten righteous people didn't mean she could only find ten. From Nüwa's retelling of Abraham's words, it was clear that ten was the minimum limit Abraham had obtained after repeated questioning—it sounded like nonsense, but if there were even twenty or thirty righteous people, it would be unreasonable to save only ten of them.

The question was, what is righteousness? What did it mean to not look back?

She seemed to have been lost in thought for a while, but when Nüwa moved again, Lin Sanjiu felt that the sound of her last sentence hadn't even faded away. She looked up to see Nüwa turning slightly, looking at the dark universe on their left, sighing.

"The conditions of the new game launch are much gentler and more tolerant than the Garden of Eden," she said, her expression focused, as if that darkness was etched with all sorts of people like prehistoric murals. "Those selected for the launch cannot be called good or bad; at first, they were just the most ordinary, mundane people. Even Lord Tremors, who wanted to kill you quickly, would protect a woman who looked like his mother; even the most callous people were loyal and hardworking. Even though they were raised like vermin to this point, if we were to advocate for them, none of them are purely evil."

Lin Sanjiu silently waited for her to continue.

"Is everyone really bad?" Nüwa asked softly, as if asking neither Lin Sanjiu nor herself. "If you think about it carefully, it doesn't seem so. During the time I watched the new game launch, there were people kinder than the ones you see now. I remember one whose game was 'Rescue Station'. The players would become volunteers, helping those physically and mentally injured after coming out of other games... Those being helped would repay the rescue station with materials, and the volunteers would use them to save more people. Help one person, get one point, and the volunteer could stay at the 'Rescue Station' for a day. Being a volunteer at the rescue station is certainly better than being a player in the elephant room, isn't it?"