Chapter 200

“Gao Yuxuan” asked, “This is my first time taking part in a psychological experiment. They don’t erase our memories after it ends?”

He was genuinely confused.

Those memories had a profound effect on people. For example, the delight he’d felt the first time he saw “Zhao Yi” was entirely because the two of them had been inseparable best friends in the virtual world.

In reality, however, they were strangers.

The child’s voice was a little too loud. “Zhao Yi” stiffened, then turned and covered his mouth. “Keep your voice down. Don’t shout.”

He lowered his voice and explained to his little brother, “They’re supposed to block your memories. Normally, when you wake up, you won’t remember anything that happened during the experiment.”

“Gao Yuxuan” was just as quick-witted as he had been in the virtual world. “So...”

Zhao Yi said, “So this is actually... against regulations. I don’t know what went wrong on their end. But it’s best not to make a fuss.”

What if the pharmaceutical company discovered this operational or administrative error and came to erase everyone’s memories? What would happen to him and “Zhang Lesi” then?

Even “Gao Yuxuan” would forget the friendship they had formed.

Gao Yuxuan immediately clamped his mouth shut.

They didn’t find “Zhang Lesi,” but they did find “Li Jiangbing” and “Su Yu.”

Li Jiangbing’s figure was impossible to miss. He stood out so much that he could be spotted at a glance in any crowd.

The moment they saw that back, they both had the same premonition. They walked over, and sure enough, it was “Li Jiangbing.”

“Li Jiangbing” was delighted to see them too. He bumped fists with them and hugged them.

“Su Yu” smiled as well.

“Gao Yuxuan” looked from “Li Jiangbing” to “Su Yu.” “You two...”

“Li Jiangbing” gently took Su Yu’s hand. “We’re planning to get married.”

Su Yu didn’t mind that Li Jiangbing was a second-class citizen among the subhumans, and Li Jiangbing didn’t mind that Su Yu didn’t have much longer to live.

The fact that they had met through a mental-power experiment meant that fate had brought them together.

“Zhao Yi” struggled to hold back his tears.

“Gao Yuxuan” was young and had no hope of controlling his emotions. Tears were already rolling down his cheeks.

He opened his mouth. “I...”

“Zhao Yi” knew him too well. He immediately stepped on his foot to stop him, then said to “Li Jiangbing,” “Let’s exchange contact information.”

They touched their wrists, and the smart computers worn there added one another as friends.

“Li Jiangbing” said, “Are you looking for Lesi? You should ask at the service desk.”

“Zhao Yi” was afraid that reminding the pharmaceutical company that their memories hadn’t been erased would only make things worse, so he hadn’t dared to ask.

But Li Jiangbing said, “Jingshuo already went.”

“Gao Yuxuan” said, “Huh?”

Li Jiangbing added, “Don’t be surprised when you see Jingshuo. He doesn’t look much like he did in the virtual world.”

At the service desk stood a young woman named Jiang Cheng.

“I’m sorry, but we can’t disclose the private information of other experiment participants.”

“Is that so?” Song Jingshuo said, both hands in his pockets. “A hyper-realistic virtual world with more than ten thousand participants? That’s explicitly prohibited by law. And failing to block the participants’ memories is itself a violation.”

It was a threat.

But the customer-service representative wasn’t afraid. The people above had given her instructions long ago.

“I’m sorry for the misunderstanding. It’s just that this experiment placed a considerable burden on everyone’s brains, so we’ve specifically arranged a period of rest for all participants.”

As she spoke, the representative pressed a button. An announcement rang through the hall:

“Participants who need memory blocking to erase their virtual memories, please follow the guidance robot along the path marked by the green indicator lights. If you do not require memory blocking, a liability waiver has been sent to your smart terminal. Please confirm it on your personal terminal.”

Quite a few people stood up and followed the guidance robot along the green line of lights that had appeared on the floor to undergo memory blocking.

But many others remained where they were.

A considerable number of people were willing to retain the memories of those ten months.

So memory erasure wasn’t mandatory.

“Zhao Yi” let out a huge sigh of relief.

Only “Song Jingshuo,” standing in front of the service desk, frowned.

That back looked much the same as it had in the virtual world. Anyone could tell at a glance that it was Song Jingshuo.

“Gao Yuxuan” raised a hand and waved. “Jingshuo!”

His shout drew the attention of quite a few people. In the virtual world, “Song Jingshuo” had been Jiang Cheng’s second-in-command.

“Song Jingshuo” turned at the sound of his name and smiled when he saw the two young boys.

But “Zhao Yi” and “Gao Yuxuan” both froze.

Li Jiangbing had warned them in advance that they needed to prepare themselves for the possibility that the real person might not resemble their virtual counterpart.

Clearly, “Zhao Yi” and “Gao Yuxuan” hadn’t truly been prepared.

“Song Jingshuo”...

He was actually a middle-aged man.

“You know,” Jiang Cheng said, resting her chin on her hand with great interest, “Jingshuo is even more attractive like this than he was when he was young.”

The real “Song Jingshuo” was a fully mature man.

He wasn’t as lean as he had been in his youthful appearance, but he was still in excellent shape.

His face hadn’t changed all that much, yet it was obvious that he had lived through things. Perhaps it was because the brashness of youth had faded, leaving behind only a restrained bearing.

When he spoke with “Zhao Yi” and “Gao Yuxuan,” even his manners and diction were more polished than those of the Song Jingshuo from the “World.”

He really did look like the same Song Jingshuo, only fully grown and mature.

“He looks like he has good genes,” Jiang Cheng remarked.

She pulled up his records, and sure enough, he was not only genetically selected but had also received a remarkably high genetic rating.

How had someone like that ended up here?

A bankrupt business owner.

His résumé was exceptionally impressive.

In the “World,” he had been a financial elite. In reality, he was almost the exact opposite: a technician by training who had started an industrial business from scratch.

For a time, he had been tremendously successful.

So the guy hadn’t been putting on airs. The older man really had once been a high-level business executive.

The greatest mistake of his life had been bringing in outside investors because he wanted to expand.

A practical man had built his company from the ground up, but capital was speculative and bloodthirsty.

The tech-born entrepreneur had nearly been destroyed by financial capital.

In the end, the investors kicked him out of the company he had founded himself and left him saddled with debt.

“Song Jingshuo” asked, “You still haven’t found Lesi?”

“Zhao Yi” shook his head.

“Gao Yuxuan” said, “I heard not everyone is here. They’re leaving in batches. Maybe Lesi isn’t in this group.”

Young people really were optimistic.

“Song Jingshuo” had already thought of another possibility.

But there was no need to say it aloud. When you were young, you had to run into the wall yourself.

“Zhao Yi” asked, “Are you looking for Jiang Cheng?”

“Song Jingshuo” said, “Yes.”

Li Jiangbing hadn’t gone looking for Jiang Cheng. It was enough that Su Yu didn’t look down on him. He hadn’t expected everyone else to feel the same way.

There were no wealthy people among those who came to serve as drug subjects. But even the fallen genetically selected individuals still looked down on people like Li Jiangbing, a subhuman.

But then “Song Jingshuo” said, “I’m not looking anymore.”

He continued, “If I can’t find her, then I suppose we weren’t meant to meet.”

As he spoke, he stared at the enormous corporate emblem on the far wall.

There was the pharmaceutical group’s logo, but positioned above it was the emblem of a family.

The character was:

“Jiang.”

It was written in an archaic script.

“Song Jingshuo” was highly learned.

He recognized it.

His gaze grew deeper.

“Well, well.” Jiang Cheng’s lips curled up. “As expected of him.”

Uncle Jiang nodded. “In the virtual world, a ‘persona’ refers only to the identity assigned to someone by the system.”

But in this massive interactive consciousness matrix, what each person revealed through their interactions with others was their own mind and personality.

The intelligent people in the “world” could never be fools in reality, and those who were shy and introverted in the “world” would not be bold and uninhibited in reality.

That was why Zhao Yi and Gao Yuxuan had still hit it off at first sight in reality.

That was why Li Jiangbing and Su Yu still liked each other.

Song Jingshuo asked about their studies and encouraged Zhao Yi. “Go on. Look for her properly, and don’t let her slip away.”

Zhao Yi was also genetically selected.

Gao Yuxuan was a natural-born human. Natural-born humans were children born when an unpaired man and woman conceived through sexual intercourse, without undergoing genetic matching.

In the Capital Star Cluster, natural-born humans who came from elsewhere were all low-level laborers, doing the most menial work. But in the frontier regions, there were many natural-born humans.

The Jiang Consortium’s pharmaceutical research center owned the planet they were on. It was located in the frontier regions, which was precisely why they could find so many inexpensive human subjects for drug trials.

The site selection and planning had been clear from the very beginning.

But Gao Yuxuan was obviously one of those natural-born humans who had won the genetic lottery.

His intelligence was plain to see.

Most of the trial subjects were financially strapped, even desperately poor.

Someone like Zhao Yi was probably among the best of them—a university student.

He might be struggling financially at the moment, but he still had prospects for the future. At the very least, he had a brighter future than anyone else here.

Regardless of what Zhang Lesi was like in real life, she probably wouldn’t look down on Zhao Yi.

Unless...

Although Song Jingshuo was warm and easy to talk to, Zhao Yi and Gao Yuxuan still felt somewhat constrained.

After all, he was a genuine adult, while the other two were still students.

Only after they parted ways did the two of them finally relax.

Gao Yuxuan said, “We’re doomed. Jiang Cheng might be some old auntie.”

Zhao Yi: “Huh?”

Jiang Cheng: “...”

Gao Yuxuan continued, “Look, Jingshuo is an old man. Jiang Cheng gets along with him so well and they have so much to talk about. She must be an old auntie too. When we see her later, I’ll have to call her Aunt Jiang.”

Gao Yuxuan slapped his fist into his palm. “I knew it. Jiang Cheng can keep me completely under control. She’s just like my mother.”

“...”

In the office, Jiang Cheng watched the surveillance screens and ground her teeth. “You little brat.”

Logically speaking, there was nothing wrong with his reasoning.

The problem was the imbalance of information. Jiang Cheng had received targeted training from birth. She had been raised specifically to become the consortium’s administrator.

That was why she was so perfectly in sync with a middle-aged entrepreneur.

Jiang Cheng flipped through Song Jingshuo’s biography.

It was obvious that he was an outstanding talent.

Jiang Cheng smiled. “Tell me, if I gave him two choices, which one do you think he’d pick?”

Just then, someone ran past Zhao Yi and Gao Yuxuan.

“Robot, wait! Robot, wait!”

Song Jingshuo saw that person too.

Neither he nor Zhao Yi said anything. Gao Yuxuan was about to call out a greeting, but Zhao Yi stopped him.

The person called out to the robot, “Take me to have my memory blocked.”

Then he followed the robot away.

“Why did you stop me again?” Gao Yuxuan said. “Wasn’t that Brother Zhou? Why didn’t you say hello?”

Zhao Yi wanted to tell him the truth.

But the so-called “truth” was nothing more than a falsehood that had happened inside a virtual world.

Then what about love?

Zhao Yi suddenly felt afraid.

Love had to be real, didn’t it?

Look at Jiangbing and Su Yu. Their feelings for each other were real.