Life Game In Other World
Chapter 616: Ways to Resist Pollution (Long - , Requesting Monthly Pass)

Chapter 616: Chapter 616: Ways to Resist Pollution (Long Chapter, Requesting Monthly Pass)

The dim light illuminated the oppressive road ahead.

The invisible pollution that spread across every inch of space was like a muffled drum hammering on people’s hearts, beating over and over.

Zhang Yusi looked up at He Ao ahead of her, then lowered her head to gaze at the bloodstained road beneath her feet.

They had only walked out a little over a hundred meters, and the corridors they passed were mostly empty, destroyed areas or completely damaged electronic equipment.

And in this span of a hundred meters, Zhang Yusi deeply felt the meaning of He Ao’s words that "pollution is everywhere."

With the death of the Sea Anemone Monster, that intense pollution shock gradually faded, and for a very short time, Zhang Yusi thought everything would return to its unpolluted state.

But as time ticked by, she gradually realized that people should not be too naive.

If there is loud noise ringing in one’s ears, then the subtle noise can go unnoticed.

Yet, when the loud noise ceases, for a brief moment, one might feel that the world has quieted down.

But the world does not become quiet, the subtle and minute noise still echoes in the ears, becoming even more jarring as the surrounding environment falls silent.

Zhang Yusi was in such a state now.

Every few steps she took, the world before her eyes would flicker briefly, and some illusory images would superimpose on the real scene, disrupting her perception.

Sometimes she heard inexplicable calls or laughter, other times it was like passing through a bustling marketplace full of people, yet this busy market had no corresponding hubbub and was as silent as a ghost realm. And as she crossed this market, it was as if someone was whispering in her ear.

These "things" did not guide her perception as deliberately as before; often, they were like flashes, gone in an instant.

But these chaotic scenes made it increasingly difficult for her to distinguish between reality and fantasy.

For a moment, she even thought that all of this was just a wild dream, and she was still in that cramped lab in Beidu, conducting her tedious experiments.

The absurd visions before her were not relics and pollution but rather,

an indication that she had gone mad.

Throughout this overlay of reality and illusion, the short distance of a hundred meters felt as lengthy as a marathon.

"Empty your mind, don’t think about anything, don’t think about anything at all,"

the calm and composed words pulled Zhang Yusi from her chaotic thoughts.

She looked up, towards the figure of He Ao in front of her.

He Ao didn’t look back but continued to advance at a steady pace, his steps even and firm, like the bell tolls of a mountain temple, calling Zhang Yusi back from her wild and chaotic thoughts.

"Calm down, don’t doubt yourself,"

He Ao continued, "and don’t contemplate what these chaotic things are. This mild pollution can enhance your discernment because they cannot create a completely ’real’ illusion. You can still tell what is reality and what is a hallucination. Focus on reality and stabilize your thoughts."

He Ao turned his head, looking at Zhang Yusi, "The most important thing is to never forget who you are,"

He turned his head back and continued forward, "If you encounter pollution that you truly cannot resist, imagine yourself as an idiot who doesn’t think and only remembers their name. You might indeed become a real idiot, but an idiot has a name, and they won’t forget who they are."

"Mm!"

Zhang Yusi nodded as if she understood.

Following He Ao’s steps, she began to empty her mind, searching for indications of the real world within that flickering, bizarre illusion.

Actually, once one has the right direction, features of the real world are not hard to find.

Because Zhang Yusi herself had a basic understanding of the real world, this anchored her thinking and naturally led to her conception of what the real world should look like.

Which scenes are illogical, or should not appear.

For example, the specter that flashed before her eyes just now, in this dark relic environment, a pale boy running towards her with a balloon.

Such a thing is illogical.

Beyond scenes and phenomena, she also concluded problems with her own perceptions, like which whispers were not in her ears, but in her mind, shouldn’t make a sound, or determining whether the breeze that brushed her arms was real or a sudden hallucination.

All these myriad details made her understanding of the real world increasingly clearer.

The illusions affecting her had not disappeared, and the things disturbing her cognition had not concealed themselves, but her mental and thought states were becoming more and more lucid.

She was gradually finding the boundary between reality and fantasy and beginning to work out the trick to maintaining clear thought.

Stay focused, reduce thinking.

Of course, this reduction in thinking did not mean a uniform abandonment of thought; instead, it meant maintaining a singular focus of mind in the presence of illusions, and sustaining a higher frequency of thinking when in reality.

Although this method was somewhat uncomfortable and hard to get used to at first, thanks to her intrinsic ’Researcher’ Talent’s super-high cognitive ability, she soon adapted to it.

Her originally somewhat heavy and slow steps gradually regained their lightness.

And He Ao, walking ahead, breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing these light footsteps.

In fact, simplifying thought as a method of resisting contamination was mentioned in the training of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Federal Bureau of Investigation requires investigators to keep their thoughts simple when facing contamination erosion, which can decrease the probability of being contaminated and maintain rationality.

The so-called idiot method could be said to be an extreme case of this simplification approach, which is to abandon all thought in the face of irresistible contamination and imagine oneself as an idiot who only remembers their name, to extend the duration of rational thought.

Although in such extreme circumstances, this method really wasn’t very meaningful.

The method He Ao taught Zhang Yusi was actually not purely about simplifying thoughts; that simple method was much less effective against high-level contamination because under such heavy pollution and interference, it wasn’t possible for the contaminated to empty their minds just because they wanted to.

Chaotic murmurs would naturally engender chaotic thoughts.

So faced with this situation, resistance, rather than ’avoidance’, proved more effective.

And the only thing that could resist thought was thought itself.

Hence, He Ao not only taught Zhang Yusi to ’simplify,’ but also deliberately guided her to ’focus.’

Indeed, this method of guiding focus was an ’immature’ method of resisting contamination.

This approach did not originate from memories of Copy World characters but was deduced by He Ao himself after revisiting Jess’s experiences.

Jess was a very special ’Copy World character’; his specialty lay not in his experiences, but in his condition.

He constantly faced direct contamination from a Higher Being and even naturally had insane thoughts in his mind.

But he had not gone mad.

In a sense, Jess was akin to a ’demigod’; although he himself was weak, he could directly enter madness to peer into the Truth.

Although he couldn’t maintain basic thinking in his mad state, nor could he truly control the madness, and the truths he saw couldn’t be remembered.

Yet, with such a frail body, he was able to peer into the deepest truths of the world, and in such closeness to the Truth, he had not gone mad.

Jess relied on his yearning for the once beautiful world and his hatred for the Mysterious Person to maintain the last vestiges of sanity amidst the deepest madness.

This reminded He Ao of a type of being, the ’Angel.’

In Rock City’s Elijah’s underground library, He Ao had read a book titled ’The Radiant Sanctuary.’

It mentioned that all Angels were indescribable monsters, the Divine Being’s minions.

But from the knowledge he had, there was a contradiction to this assertion—the Captain of Dawn City, an Angel who had maintained human form.

In subsequent murals documenting the history of the Fountain of Youth, He Ao had also seen the traces of human-shaped Angels. The one who called himself ’Wizard,’ an Angel, buried the Fountain of Youth after defeating the puppets controlled by it.

This meant that at least towards the end of the Era of the Great Cataclysm in the Copy World, some had already mastered the method of ascending without transforming into monsters.

He Ao did not know what ultimately caused all the original Angels to turn into monsters, but it didn’t exclude the influence of the insane truths of the world.

And Jess was someone who had resisted the contamination of these truths.

His method of resisting contamination seemed to hinge on some kind of indomitable obsession.

However, this obsession couldn’t be replicated, and He Ao had no desire to replicate it. So he tried to dilute this obsessive attribute; combining it with previous characters’ experiences and the core principles of thought simplification, he summarized this method of focus.

After all, an obsession, in a sense, is also a form of extreme focus.

Of course, he didn’t know if this method was truly effective.

So he merged this method with the technique of simplifying one’s thoughts and shared them both with Zhang Yusi.

Of course, he didn’t directly tell Zhang Yusi to concentrate; arbitrarily focusing is ineffective. There must be a definitive point of concentration that can lead to true clarity of thought.

He Ao took a clever approach and set the real world as this point of focus.

Zhang Yusi, troubled by contamination, naturally longed for a truly peaceful world, and He Ao harnessed this desire to help her better concentrate her attention.

The actual focus is not important; what matters is maintaining a true sense of focus, an almost obsessive dedication to what one desires.

And the final result was somewhat beyond He Ao’s expectations.

Zhang Yusi’s Talent Sequences greatly enhanced her cognitive abilities, and coupled with her inherent intelligence, she quickly grasped the essence of concentration and dynamically adjusted her thoughts.

In a very short amount of time, she managed to emerge from her contaminated state, becoming increasingly lucid.

He Ao had thought it would take some time before the effects would become apparent.

As it turned out, this method of concentration was indeed very effective.

He Ao vaguely sensed that he had touched upon some abnormally secret knowledge.

"Minister He,"

Zhang Yusi, with her mind increasingly eased, finally took the time to observe her surroundings. Her gaze swept over the corridor’s damaged machinery and the jumbled wires,

"If this is really a spaceship from a ruined civilization, is there a chance we might encounter any living remnants of its people on this ship?"

"I don’t know."

He Ao shook his head.

After so many years, with such strong contamination, it’s highly unlikely that there are any survivors, and even if there are, they might not be human anymore.

Zhang Yusi also knew deep down that it was unlikely.

She let out a soft sigh.

In this quiet space.

Without human life, the spaceship of ruins might as well be a tombstone floating through space.

A tombstone of a civilization.

The two continued forward a few more steps. Above them, the dim light grew fainter; among every five lights, four were broken, the remaining one flickering on the brink of extinction.

Zhang Yusi turned on her flashlight, illuminating the darkness around them.

The two assumed a staggered position, with Zhang Yusi walking ahead and He Ao following behind.

As they continued, the contamination around them became even more intense, with all lighting in the corridor obliterated; the lamps had all been destroyed.

They could only rely on the glow of the flashlight to move forward slowly.

The damaged mechanical devices all around occasionally emitted sparks, indicating they still had some vitality left.

He Ao used the scattered glimmers from the flashlight to scan the environment.

In this dark region, there appeared to have been some fierce battle, with the remnants of destroyed robots scattered all around.

Most of these robots were not weaponized combat ones but were cleaning and engineering robots instead.

Broken mechanical arms and toppled barrels of wreckage were seen everywhere.

In contrast to the mechanical debris, the ground was covered with thick, dried-up, dark-brown bloodstains.

However, despite the abundance of bloodstains, there were no human remains to be seen.

In fact, He Ao had noticed this from the moment they arrived.

In this ’scene’, there were bloodstains everywhere, but not a single place bore the remains of a human skeleton.

Suppressing his thoughts, he continued forward.

The further he went, the more stacked robot debris there were.

Because they had to constantly get past the robot debris blocking their way, the two of them slowed down significantly.

Zhang Yusi swept the gaps between the robot debris with the beam from her flashlight.

For some reason, she always felt something lurking in the gaps between the dark robot debris, watching them.

In that instant, a white sword light flashed over her head.

The flesh spider that leapt from the gaps in the darkness was bisected by this stroke of the sword, falling to the ground as blood splattered onto the robot wreckage.

At the same time, pairs of crimson eyes surged out from the gaps in the robot debris.

"Run forward."

Zhang Yusi hadn’t even reacted before she heard He Ao’s shout.

Without any hesitation, she dashed forward following He Ao’s direction.

In the pitch-black corridor, the red flesh spiders poured out incessantly from between the robot wreckage, swarming like a tide covering the sky and the earth.

Sharp metallic limbs clattered on the ancient machinery, producing a jarring, unnerving sound.

He Ao’s sword light frequently flashed, cleaving the encroaching flesh spiders in two.

His sword moved extremely fast, sometimes slicing four or five spiders with a single stroke.

"Minister He, I think I see light up ahead."

Zhang Yusi moved past a mechanical wreckage, glanced ahead, and quickly shouted.

With a heavy pistol in her hand, she kept firing, knocking down the flesh spiders that dared to show themselves in front.

Her reaction speed wasn’t as fast as His Ao’s, but she didn’t face as much pressure either. Relying on careful observation and anticipation, she was often able to attack before the flesh spiders ahead could make their move, mostly keeping the path ahead clear.

"Let’s go."

He Ao, walking beside her, split another flesh spider with his sword.

The two of them moved quickly, reaching the bright doorway in an instant. Just then, a flesh spider suddenly leaped from a gap, aiming for Zhang Yusi’s cheek.

The bright flashlight illuminated the underside of these flesh spiders, which wasn’t a flat belly but rather a mouth full of sharp teeth, wide open.

Almost simultaneously with the creature’s leap, Zhang Yusi raised her pistol and aimed at the center of the monster’s gaping maw.

Accompanied by a crisp gunshot, the flesh spider was violently flung away.

One after the other, the two figures entered the brilliance.

In a flash, the bright light illuminated their field of vision, even blinding them momentarily as they had become accustomed to the darkness.

And those flesh spiders, like a tide behind them, quickly retreated as soon as they touched the edge of the light.

Seeing this, He Ao frowned slightly.

"Minister He, look."

At that moment, Zhang Yusi suddenly exclaimed from beside him.

He Ao turned, following Zhang Yusi’s line of sight.

To their right was a massive rectangular viewing window.

At the moment, the two of them were standing right beside this window.

A magnificent, shuttle-shaped object that took up half the view from the window appeared in He Ao’s