The game screen turned black and white, and a Game Over surfaced across it. Ji Zhao did not look at it any longer; he swiveled the gaming chair around toward the white-haired man behind him.
"If this is all some lie, and this Game Over was what you were after, then can you at least let me die knowing why?"
"You're overthinking it." The white-haired man shook his head. "I did guess you wouldn't trust me entirely, but hearing that as your opening line still stings a little... After all, you may be the last person in the world with any chance of understanding me."
Ji Zhao said, "The world has turned into this in the space of a few short hours. I consider anything I might think perfectly reasonable... And what did you mean by that last part?"
The white-haired man smiled. "Let me start from the beginning... My surname is Liu. Liu Qing."
"I'm Ji Zhao." Ji Zhao drew a deep breath. "Kindly get to the point."
"I know... you must be tired of waiting by now."
In ancient years, great beings drew upon their authority to create nine special artifacts, which are called "Vessels." Many years later a great war broke out, all of it unknown, and the nine Vessels were scattered into the boundless worlds. Two of them were swept to Earth: the first called the "Mirror," the second the "Bell."
The "Mirror" has two faces. One reflects the real, the other reflects the false. Turn the Mirror over and the two exchange places: the real becomes false, and the false becomes real. In other words, reality becomes a game, and the game becomes reality...
Yet the Great Dao numbers fifty, Heaven's reckoning takes forty-nine, and one always slips away for man. The Vessels too move by some hidden law: at the moment the Mirror turns, it leaves behind a single thread of life. Thus one person in the world can remain untouched by the "Mirror" and hold to the state of the real — and that person, who embodies the "thread of life," is able to enter the other side of the Mirror and turn it back, restoring everything to what it was.
Liu Qing's voice fell away, and a long silence settled over the room. He did not press; he knew Ji Zhao needed time.
A full several minutes later, Ji Zhao forced a few words out of his throat.
"...So you're saying I have to cross over into this game and find the Mirror?"
"Precisely."
"I see. A wonderfully clear and simple main quest. So... does the Mirror choose its person at random?"
"No."
"Then why was it you last time, and why is it me this time?"
"That is complicated to explain right now. Later."
"...This Mirror you speak of — is it the Mirror of Illusion and Reality I clicked on?"
"That's right."
"And if I hadn't clicked it?"
"The world would have been destroyed. That sliver of life that leaks through is not absolute; if the one it falls to fails to seize it, then it is all over, and you would not even have the chance to enter the other side of the Mirror and rewrite any of it... Naturally, I was going to see to it that you clicked."
"The bird?"
"Yes. A minor spell."
"...Give me a moment."
Ji Zhao had already taken several minutes, but he needed a little more time even so.
"You do need a moment." Liu Qing gave a small smile. "When we first learned of all this, it took us a long while to accept it too. Though you should come to it faster, since after all..."
He looked out the window. "The world has already turned into this."
Ji Zhao looked out as well. The world was growing blurrier by the moment, the "graphics quality" dropping and dropping, with only he and Liu Qing still as they had been. However badly he wanted to argue against what Liu Qing had said, not a word would come... Or rather, having seen this with his own eyes, no matter how absurd Liu Qing's explanation might be, Ji Zhao could only choose to believe it.
"You said you were the last one," Ji Zhao said suddenly. "And earlier you said the Mirror would swallow the world. So which is it — did you fail, or did you succeed?"
"By the result, I failed," Liu Qing said. "Ordinarily, that world would not necessarily become the 'real' forever, since the Mirror starts up again according to laws no one understands. But this world would have become the destined 'false' the moment I failed... Except that one thing changed all of it."
Ji Zhao said, "The Bell!"
Liu Qing nodded. "A good guess. Only a Vessel can affect a Vessel... The Bell's full name is the Bell of Echoes, a Vessel for traveling through time. Two ringings make one cycle of use: the first ringing records that point in time, and the second returns you to it."
Ji Zhao asked, "You failed, so you rang the Bell?"
Liu Qing shook his head. "I didn't ring it... someone else did."
"Someone else can ring it?!" Ji Zhao was startled.
"Ordinarily they cannot, just as not everyone is qualified to turn the Mirror over. The only ones qualified are you and I, granted that one thread of life by the Mirror... along with any descendants we leave behind after entering the Mirror."
"You failed because a descendant of yours rang the Bell?!"
Liu Qing said, "By the result, yes... but in fact, no. I obtained the Mirror early on and could have turned it at any moment — yet from beginning to end I never once intended to. I carried it on me instead, to stop my descendants from turning it... But a man may guard against one thing and not against a second. I searched for the Bell all that time and never found it; my descendants found it instead, and rang it... That was my failure. For this world, I suppose it was a kind of success."
Ji Zhao was shaken. Liu Qing had found the Mirror early and had not turned it?!
Why?!
Wasn't this a flat-out traitor to the entire planet?!
Ji Zhao lowered his voice. "Why would you do that?"
Liu Qing smiled slightly. "You're calmer than I expected. I had braced myself to be cursed at... As for why, the answer is simple. I lived only thirty-two years in this world. But setting aside the tens of thousands of years that came after, by the time I obtained the Mirror over there I was already eight thousand nine hundred years old. You ask me why — is that span of time answer enough?"
"...Are you joking?" Ji Zhao's face was blank. "Trapping twelve billion people in this world and turning them into falsehood — that was your choice?"
"Don't put it that way." Liu Qing smiled. "By that reckoning, my side had eight hundred trillion human beings."
"They're fake! Never mind eight hundred trillion — eight hundred of any number you care to name would still be fake!" Ji Zhao slammed the desk. "You said just now that I might be the last person in the world with a chance of understanding you. This thing you want me to understand — it isn't the act of sending all twelve billion of these people into the abyss, is it?!"
"Calm down." Liu Qing was still smiling. "There will be time enough to curse me once I've finished... So, Ji Zhao: to achieve your ends, would you stop at nothing?"
Ji Zhao stared at him. There was something terrifying in his eyes, as though he meant to swallow Liu Qing whole and flay him alive.
After a good many breaths, Ji Zhao gave a sudden cold sneer, then began slowly to speak — about something that seemed entirely unrelated.
"There's a village out in the middle of nowhere. The bus comes once every half hour. Open a delivery app and the nearest place is a cake shop twenty-odd kilometers away. In that village there is an old woman who makes her living weaving straw hats, and she is terribly frugal... Leftovers get reheated and eaten, and what remains of those is left over again. Even when a little mold has grown on them, she heats them up, pretends she hasn't seen it, and swallows them down."
"This old woman's grandson went away to work and earned the first wages of his life. So that his grandmother could eat a little more healthily, he bought a cheap refrigerator and sent it home."
"The refrigerator had a sensor light inside: on when the door opened, off when it closed. But the old woman's eyes and reflexes were not sharp, and she knew nothing about appliances. She thought the light was burning all the time."
"At night she grudged the cost of electricity and did not want to light a lamp — but without light she could not weave. So she thought: with that light in the refrigerator burning away like that, wouldn't it be a terrible waste not to use it? And so she opened the refrigerator and wove her hats by the light inside."
"The refrigerator had an upper and a lower compartment. The lower one was too cold for her to bear, so she could only use the light from the upper. But every chair in the house was a low little stool, and the light in there was never strong to begin with, so she had to stand while she wove... She put on her thickest clothes and stood in front of the refrigerator, shivering, squinting at the straw hat in her hands, doing her cheap labor by that feeble light, terrified of making the smallest mistake. Half the night, standing like that — until the electricity bill came and all but destroyed her life."
"That old woman is my grandmother... My grandfather died early. My father was in a car accident. The woman I share blood with dumped me on my grandmother, took the money, and ran. My grandmother raised me alone."
"Liu Qing — would I stop at nothing? That is my answer."
TL Note: The Great Dao numbers fifty — a classical formula holding that of the fifty threads of fate, Heaven only ever grasps forty-nine, so that one always slips free; it is the standard Chinese way of saying no doom is ever perfectly sealed.