Part 3: The Offering to the Firmament
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The so-called "royal robes" were a one-piece, matte-black flight suit. Uncle Fu, like a priest dressing a condemned man in his final finery, meticulously fastened every buckle. The fabric was cold, carrying the clean, chemical scent of industrial synthetics as it hugged Ruby's body. When he zipped up the final metal zipper on his chest, the cold touch and sharp click made him feel less like he was getting dressed and more like he was being sealed into a humanoid container built for an experiment.
He didn't look like a champion. He looked like a monkey about to be strapped to a rocket and sent into space for some cruel physiological test. He could already picture tomorrow's headlines: "Appalling! Famous Gaming Company Uses Innocent Player as Lab Rat for Publicity Stunt!"
He followed Uncle Fu out of the spring-warm stateroom and back onto the deck of the Black Pearl. The moment the door opened, the world switched channels, jumping from an elegant chamber piece to a live death metal concert.
A pitch-black AgustaWestland AW109 helicopter, like a giant, carnivorous insect of metal and shadow, was perched in the center of the ship's stern helipad. It had no navigation lights on; the moonlight simply flowed over its cold, riveted metal skin, reflecting a deadly, merciless glare.
It was a cold, black throne to the heavens.
The downdraft from the rotor blades could no longer be called wind; it was a solid wall of air, constantly pushing forward. It sucked the moisture from the river's surface, atomized it, and then, laced with the chill of the upper atmosphere, slammed it indiscriminately against Ruby's face and body. His messy hair was instantly ravaged as if by a thousand invisible stylists wielding hairdryers on the highest setting, blowing away the last vestiges of the firewall he called "sanity."
He instinctively looked back. Through the thick, soundproof glass of the massive stateroom window, he saw Gao Qiong standing in the warm light. She calmly raised her teacup to him, a faint smile playing on her lips. Her figure was distant and hazy in the warm glow, like a queen enthroned in her heavenly kingdom, watching with a smile as her bravest knight rode out into the coliseum.
The cabin of the AW109 was filled with a cold, metallic smell mixed with aviation fuel. There were no luxury sofas, only two rows of simple seats made of alloy frames and nylon webbing—everything sacrificed for extreme weight reduction and functionality.
Ruby was shoved into a window seat. Next to him sat a man built like a grizzly bear—Gao Qiong's "instructor." The man's face was alight with an almost fanatical excitement; he looked like he could punch a rhino into the ICU.
"Ready to fly, champ?" the instructor's voice came through the tactical noise-canceling headset. The roar of the engine was filtered out, but the constant vibration was like a thousand drumsticks beating against his eardrums and internal organs.
You're the champ, your whole family are champs! The word "champ" now sounded like a poison-laced taunt.
"Relax, Ruby." Gao Qiong's voice also came through the headset. Electronically processed, it was still calm and clear, but with a distant, detached elegance. "Think of it as an opening cinematic, only this time, the rendering engine is the real world. Soon, you'll experience a freedom more real than any VR device could ever offer."
Freedom? I don't want your damn freedom! I just want to go home! I swear I'll never complain about your overpriced skins again! I never should have acted cool and said, 'Sounds pretty cool'! Right now, all I want is my mom's tomato and egg noodles! Triple tomato, double egg, and an extra sausage on the side! Please!
But he couldn't say a word. Physiological fear, like a high-voltage current, had short-circuited his entire nervous system. He looked down through the window. The Oculus River was a cold, silver ribbon. The skyscrapers had shrunk into plastic toys discarded by a child. The entire city of Runzhou, the land that held all twenty-two years of his life, was now just a silent, glowing circuit board spreading out beneath his feet.
SHIIIING—
The cabin door was slid open with one effortless pull from the instructor.
The void, just three feet away, opened its black, silent maw.
A gale of wind instantly flooded the cabin, carrying the thin, frigid air of ten thousand feet, like a million invisible ice-knives slashing at him. The wind shrieked like a banshee's song, and he felt as if his very soul was being ripped from his body.
"Three!" the instructor began the countdown, his voice filled with the excitement of someone about to sprint to the finish line of a buffet.
"Two!" Ruby's mind was a complete blank, yet one absurd thought flashed with perfect clarity: The store's books from last night... I don't think I balanced them. Is Mom gonna think I stole the cash and ran?
"One! We have liftoff!"
Ruby wasn't sure if the instructor's giant hand had pushed him, or if his own muscles had spasmed in absolute terror, launching him from his seat.
Either way, the next second, the world flipped.
The earth was above, the stars below.
"AHHHH—!"
A scream, instantly ripped to shreds by the wind, burst from the depths of his throat and was swallowed by the infinite roar.
Time stretched, twisted, and then lost all meaning. Weightlessness—pure, untethered weightlessness—seized him like the darkness of deep space.
He saw the instructor not far above him, adjusting his position in the air with the grace of a seasoned fish, even giving him a thumbs-up.
Thumbs-up my ass! I'm about to get fragged!
Ruby screamed internally. He desperately tried to recall the instructor's brief pre-flight instructions, his hand fumbling frantically behind his back for the red ripcord that represented all of his hope.
One pull... Nothing! The ring felt like it was superglued to the pack!
A second... He put his whole body into it, the ring didn't budge!
A third... He used both hands, throwing his entire weight into it. As he yanked, a sharp pain shot through his fingers as if they'd been crushed by invisible pliers, but he didn't care. The damned ring, like a bastard mocking his incompetence, remained stubbornly in place.
The sound of the wind in his ears went from a howl to a roar, and finally to a soul-tearing shriek.
Death.
For the first time, the thought was sharp and concrete in his mind. Not a "GAME OVER" screen, but a cold, physical process that was about to happen to him. He would hit the ground like a rock, and then it would all be over.
But... is this really how it ends? Like a joke?
The convenience store would be sold to someone else. The game account named "Ruby" would be quietly deleted by the system one night. The new mechanical keyboard he was paying for in installments—the delivery guy would call tomorrow, but the line would forever be "the number you have dialed is no longer in service."
And then, he thought of CoCo.
In the final seconds before he was swallowed by the beast of the Earth, he remembered her. He saw her in a black wool coat, sitting quietly by the window in the university library. The afternoon sun filtered through the glass, casting a warm, golden halo on her long, dark hair.
He could waste an entire afternoon in the library, pretending to read some philosophy book he didn't understand, just to steal glances at her. He had run all over the city on the night of its release to get her a copy of her favorite author's new book, all for a polite, distant "thank you."
And yet, all his clumsy, self-important efforts had earned him was the sight of her back as she left for Italy. In the story of her life, he wasn't even a supporting character; he was just part of the blurry, erasable background.
No!
I—WILL—NOT—DIE!
Whether the roar exploded in his mind or truly broke through the shackle of the wind, he didn't know.
The next moment, the ear-splitting shriek... vanished.
The world, as if a mute button had been pressed, went silent.
He stopped.
He was suspended in the air, a puppet held by invisible strings in the center of a pitch-black stage.
But this wasn't the euphoria of survival; it was a deeper dread. He felt something inside him "awaken," like an ancient machine, sealed for millennia, being forcibly switched on. A massive, incomprehensible flood of information, like a burst dam, washed over his pathetic brain, a brain filled with twenty-two years of convenience store life.
Who am I?
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On the ground, in the bridge command room of the Black Pearl.
Gao Qiong stood before a massive monitoring wall. On the main screen, the figure hanging motionless in the air was like a miracle, or a glitch in reality. A waterfall of data streamed down the side of the screen as blaring red alarms echoed through the room.
"Alert! Target's vitals are anomalous! Heart rate dropped from 180 BPM to 75 instantly! Target... target has entered an unpowered stationary hover!"
"My God... that's not a thermal updraft! Sensors are detecting an independent, weak-form repulsive field! He's... he's rewriting physical parameters!" a technician stared at the screen, his voice trembling with manic excitement.
Uncle Fu stood behind Gao Qiong, his eternally calm face showing shock for the first time. "It's him... The heavens have eyes! The Lingfeng bloodline... has not been severed!"
Gao Qiong said nothing. She just stared at the lonely figure on the screen, her eyes blazing with a heat that seemed capable of incinerating everything.
"Plan B," she finally spoke, her voice cold, decisive, and utterly without hesitation. "Put him to sleep. We can't let him leave with a memory that doesn't belong to him. It's not time yet."
"Yes, Miss."
High in the sky, a palm-sized, shadow-like micro-drone slipped silently from the clouds, approaching the figure suspended in the night.
A faint, almost invisible blue arc of electricity flashed from the drone's front, striking him precisely on the back of the neck.
The connection to the sky, that feeling of oneness... was instantly severed.
Everything went dark.