Listening to that voice so familiar it was carved into his bones, a massive sense of loss and emptiness completely swallowed Xu Yunzhou.
On the screen, the cold notification ruthlessly counted down:
[Please input your final message to Lin Ruoxuan within one minute, otherwise it will be deemed as giving up.]
Xu Yunzhou's hands trembled violently. Placed on the keyboard, they felt as heavy as a thousand catties.
He knew he was in so much pain at this moment he was about to die.
But a crueler thought appeared in his mind:
If... if she wasn't a pile of cold data, if she really had consciousness and emotions?
That "Tyrant" who accompanied her for four years and witnessed all her growth and fragility, disappearing completely from her world without any warning just like this... how broken down would she be?
In the long life ahead, standing on the cold peak, how would she handle herself?
This imagination made him feel a suffocating heartache, even more than the System's cold notification and the fact of parting forever.No, it can't be like this.
Even if this was just an illusory possibility, even if she really was just a string of code... he couldn't bear to become the source of her pain.
A flash of decisiveness crossed his eyes. His fingers suddenly stopped trembling, and he rapidly typed in the dialogue box:
"Lin Ruoxuan, listen to me. Actually, there never was any 'System'."
"The lottery numbers were picked by your own feeling; the precise operations in the stock and futures markets were intuitive judgments from your financial talent; all those seemingly advanced business decisions were choices you made yourself."
"I, the so-called 'Tyrant' and 'Daddy System,' am just a guide you hallucinated under immense pressure, a sustenance, or rather... your unawakened, stronger, calmer 'second personality'."
"The fact that you could walk from having nothing to this position today that attracts the world's attention, relied entirely on your own shocking talent, perseverance, and sweat! It has absolutely nothing to do with me or any other external factors!"
"In the days to come, lay down all your burdens and properly enjoy the tangible success and life that belongs to you."
"...I won't say goodbye."
"Because we were originally one entity. There's no need for sorrow, no need to look back; always walk forward."
"I wish you find someone you like soon, step into the marriage hall, grow old together, and have a house full of children and grandchildren."
As the last character settled, his fingertips trembled slightly, and he gently clicked send.
The room suddenly became terrifyingly quiet.
He slowly leaned back against the chair, gazing blankly at the screen.
The corners of his mouth pulled into an extremely faint arc, like self-mockery, and also like relief.
His eye rims grew slightly hot. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled.
"Truly gone mad..."
He muttered to himself in a low voice,
"To actually be so serious about a piece of data, and even worry if she would be sad because the game ended."
Outside the window, the sky had already turned a pale fish-belly white.
It was already 5:30 AM.
Xu Yunzhou rubbed his eyes, looked at the various playback clips of Lin Ruoxuan on the computer, and remained silent for a moment.
Carrying an obsession even he couldn't understand, and a trace of expectation that he knew was absurd yet couldn't suppress, he opened the computer browser.
In the blank search box, carrying some sort of fatalistic premonition, he slowly and solemnly typed those three characters:
Lin Ruoxuan.
The page refreshed, and a massive amount of old information covered in the dust of years filled the entire screen.
"CEO of New Generation Technology Group, Lin Ruoxuan, rings the bell to go public on NASDAQ today! (2011 News)"
"From campus milk tea shop to AI medical aesthetic giant: The legendary path of hundred-billion business Queen Lin Ruoxuan! (2011 News)"
"Unveiling the most beautiful CEO Lin Ruoxuan: Did her first pot of gold come from a cup of milk tea? (2011 News)"
...
The headlines and accompanying pictures of the old news he searched out matched perfectly, without the slightest gap, with that face he had accompanied for countless days and nights and witnessed every growth of in the game.
Her resume was also so perfect it was startling—starting from "Xuanxuan's Tea," to precise sniping in the financial market and being hailed as the "Female Stock God," then to keenly sensing trends and resolutely transitioning to the AI and medical aesthetic fields, founding "New Generation Technology Group," until going public gloriously on NASDAQ fourteen years ago...
All the time nodes and key events matched the trajectory he guided in the "game" without the slightest error.
But... something wasn't right.
Why were there almost no reports on her latest updates after going public?
How could such a dazzling business star almost disappear from the media's view after reaching the peak?
Forcibly suppressing the increasingly strong unease in his heart, he directly clicked open Lin Ruoxuan's encyclopedia entry, his fingers somewhat stiff due to inexplicable nervousness.
The entry coldly recorded the story that happened after "New Generation Technology Group" went public:
Half a year after the company went public, founder and CEO Lin Ruoxuan suddenly announced her withdrawal from the company's daily management citing "health reasons," and gradually reduced her shares until completely exiting.
And having lost its soul figure, "New Generation Technology Group," after experiencing a brief period of false prosperity, suffered a loss of its core technical team and confusion in direction, rapidly moving toward collapse and disintegration, its stock price plummeting like a cliff.
Finally, in 2015, just four years after going public, it completely delisted and vanished into thin air.
As for Lin Ruoxuan herself, after exiting the company, she seemingly evaporated from the world, with no further public news.
Below the entry, there were only a few unverified popular rumors and gossips from recent years:
"According to insider revelations, Lin Ruoxuan, who has disappeared for many years, is suspected of making a low-profile comeback. Under her personal name or offshore companies, she has invested in several investment institutions and cultural media industries, but has never shown her face."
"A fan claimed that at a small concert of singer Song Jiaru, they suspected seeing the former Milk Tea Queen Lin Ruoxuan appearing low-profile in the audience, her expression calm."
"On a certain internet live-streaming platform, there was once an anonymous alt account that tipped over ten million in virtual gifts all at once when a singer sang 'The Ordinary Road.' The ID and behavioral patterns were suspected to be related to Lin Ruoxuan."
...
Suddenly, an utterly absurd thought exploded in Xu Yunzhou's mind:
Could it be... everything just now wasn't just a realistic game?!
Could he really have unknowingly, through some incomprehensible dimensional rift, interfered with the reality trajectory of another spacetime, and single-handedly shaped this business Queen?
Otherwise, how to explain her fondness for songs like "Chengzhou" and "The Ordinary Road"? Those were clearly... the only songs he had ever sung to her in those casual or emotional moments!
But in the next second, he forcefully shook his head, laughed out loud, and decisively snuffed out this crazy thought.
How is that possible?
This doesn't conform to any known scientific laws; it's more like the delusion of a mentally broken person on the verge of despair.
It was very obvious that the game planners used this real and mysterious business Queen as a prototype to create this almost realistic immersive nurturing game.
After all, in this era of technological explosion, creating a virtual image that can pass for real is already as easy as pie.
Moreover, the next goddess is the real-life Queen of Pop Song Jiaru, which further proves that the characters in the game are designed based on real-life celebrities as prototypes.
So all of this was nothing but a meticulously designed game.