Chapter 69

Earth and Blue Star weren't quite the same. Blue Star's insect-mother invasion had happened twice, while Earth's false-god invasion had only just begun; the intensity wasn't on the same level.

The false god hadn't even successfully invaded and taken control of Earth — so what was he talking about, controlling every mind?

Liu Zhiyi asked back, "How would you do it?"

"You're right," the boy answered. "At Earth's current concentration, it really can't be done."

It was the first time Liu Zhiyi had heard the word. "Concentration?"

"For those invading alien creatures, not every planet is fit to live on," the boy explained. "Just as people can't survive where there's no oxygen, just as a deep-sea fish can't survive in shallow water."

The boy: "But an invading creature can remake the environment, raising the concentration of certain substances, so the environment becomes fit for it to live in."

Liu Zhiyi caught his meaning.

"The dungeons are remaking Earth's concentration?"

"Yes." The boy tipped his head up, the black yarn of his mouth pulling wide as if in a smile. "As the concentration rises — that is, as the dungeons expand — the bosses inside grow stronger and stronger… and more and more of the false god can get in."

Liu Zhiyi drew a sharp breath.

The boy: "Worse, this thing is tied to human feeling, and even merges with local gods to make itself local, harder to spot. Against an opponent like this, how do you think we fight back?"

The question left Liu Zhiyi's mind blank; she'd drifted with the current for most of her life, and maybe been a little active only around graduation and work.

So facing a question like this —

she didn't know how to answer, or what to do.

The boy: "Honestly, we were lost for a long time. No one had been through a false-god invasion before; no one knew what was right or best to do."

As he spoke, the yarn on his face kept shifting, as if frowning, as if sighing.

The boy: "With so many lives at stake, we had to find the surest method — to keep more people alive."

Hearing this, Liu Zhiyi felt there was some sense in it, even understood his thinking a little.

"Until we met Ms. Jin — the transmigrated woman on Blue Star." The boy looked up at the sky. "I suddenly had an idea."

Liu Zhiyi: "What idea?"

The boy: "The insect-mother's invasion list — do you know of it?"

Liu Zhiyi thought a moment. "Is Earth on that list?"

"Yes." A wistful expression showed on the yarn face; the boy sighed. "Even if we beat the false god this time, what about the next?"

The boy: "When it comes to facing an invasion by outside creatures, Earth's ability to fight back is still too poor."

"You…" Liu Zhiyi paused, looking at the child's watch on her wrist. "want to keep the dungeon ability?"

The boy: "I want everyone to have this ability."

Liu Zhiyi startled, but thinking it over, she found it wasn't surprising.

She even agreed with the boy's thinking more.

If the false-god problem could be solved while keeping the ability, that would be quite good.

Liu Zhiyi asked, "How would you come to have it? If the concentration's too high, the false god lands."

The boy: "I believe everything has a solution; when something can't be solved it's mostly a lack of ability — and ability needs time to develop."

Liu Zhiyi nodded.

She felt that too; on the dungeon problem, the authorities had actually reacted fairly fast, taking this uncanny awakening and datafying it into a game, so that clearing dungeons had guidance and goals for her, and she wasn't so lost.

But that alone wasn't enough.

All told, the time was too short — not enough time to analyze the mechanism of the false-god invasion, or how to counter it, and finally control it.

The boy: "That's where Ms. Jin gave me the idea. Dungeons develop so fast because people are emotional; control people's swings of feeling at this stage, and you buy enough time to face the outside invasion with one heart."

"My ability is a bit special."

As his words fell, Liu Zhiyi saw transparent thread after transparent thread fall from the sky.

One of them landed on her arm.

At the mere touch, her whole arm went numb, then lost its strength, lifting on its own beyond her control.

The boy: "It may have to do with my character. I like to make plans in advance; I don't like things that fall outside the plan."

Liu Zhiyi saw a body-anomaly alert pop up on the task bar of the child's watch.

[Body Anomaly: Marionette.]

The boy: "This ability is quite handy for controlling other people's feelings."

Liu Zhiyi stared at her "raised" arm.

The boy: "It doesn't hurt. Feel for yourself."

As the words fell, Liu Zhiyi's arm swung up and down twice.

It really didn't hurt.

But the feeling was very, very strange.

Liu Zhiyi tried to force it, but the arm wouldn't move at all.

No sensation, as if the arm were someone else's.

In that instant, Liu Zhiyi felt fear.

The boy: "About that feeling — and with strings hung on your head, you won't even have excess emotion. It's painless."

Even knowing rationally that, by the cat's ideology, this choice wasn't surprising, being treated this way by the cat in reality —

Liu Zhiyi was still shocked, and a little grieved.

"…You want to hang strings on my head?"

"I'm sorry."

The boy lowered his head, the black yarn of his mouth turning down, beads of water hanging on his black-bean eyes, as if he were about to cry.

As his words fell, the transparent thread on Liu Zhiyi's arm snapped.

The boy: "I didn't mean to hurt you. I only wanted you to hear my ideology — if you could agree with it, better still."

Liu Zhiyi let out a long breath.

"Do you think I'd agree?"

The boy wiped the water from his face, the fluffed-up yarn of his hair going limp and flat against his head, thoroughly downcast.

"…No."

The truth was that hearing his theory, Liu Zhiyi really had wavered for a few seconds.

But after her hand had been lifted by the string, her thinking suddenly changed.

That feeling of being controlled was hard to describe — no pain, no itch, just no sensation, like watching someone else's arm.

A loss of the sense of one's own existence.

You don't notice it when you have it, but once it's gone the feeling is completely different.

In that moment, Liu Zhiyi knew she couldn't accept a life of being controlled.

Liu Zhiyi: "My life right now isn't much good either, but I don't like the feeling of being controlled."

The boy cocked his head. "Honestly, I can't understand it."

Liu Zhiyi realized his thought-circuits weren't quite like a normal person's; she'd had this feeling before, but never as strongly as now.

Liu Zhiyi: "You like the emptiness of being hung on strings?"

The boy asked back, "Isn't it the same for everyone? I think it's quite good — you can know more clearly what you want, what's the right thing to do…"

Liu Zhiyi straightened up and drew a sharp breath.

At last she understood what Shen Songyue meant by the cat having no normal person's feelings.

"You don't understand."

"I didn't understand before." The boy holding the cat looked up. "Now I do."

He stroked the cat's head, and amid the meowing, cradled it under its forelegs and held it up before Liu Zhiyi.

Big black buttons were sewn on the yarn cat's head for eyes, and the button-eyes reflected her face.

The boy: "Your picking up a part of my body was actually an accident."

—Hum.

Liu Zhiyi's body swayed a few times; she looked down — the tremor came from underfoot.

The boy: "I know not everyone will accept an ideology like mine, or people wouldn't have come to kill me — and, afraid I'd left something in reserve, cut me into so many pieces."

—Whoosh.

Wind blew, gathering the dark clouds, the sky darkening bit by bit.

The boy: "I did leave something in reserve. Between the real world and the dungeon there's a membrane; it's not easy for pollutant factors to cross it."

The boy: "But the natives can move through it freely, and even bring things out."

Liu Zhiyi looked sharply at the child's watch.

—Rumble.

Lightning and thunder in the dark clouds, raindrops pattering down from the sky.

The rain was fine and dense, drop after drop, looking like thread after thread falling from the heavens.

No — it was thread.

Liu Zhiyi looked up.

The boy: "Players who come out of a dungeon are infectious too. They can raise the concentration of the environment around them, and once the concentration reaches a certain point, a new dungeon is born — which is one reason the false-god invasion can't be thoroughly solved."

In the dark clouds Liu Zhiyi saw scattered points of light, like the glow of streetlamps.

No — they were streetlamps.

The reflection of a city showed in the dark clouds, and the rain-threads joined into that reflection.

And this city, Liu Zhiyi knew better than any other, because it was the place she'd grown up.

In that instant, Liu Zhiyi felt a fierce anger.

"What are you doing?!"

"I told you." The boy's tone was even. "Making people no longer have swings of feeling."

"I hate accidents." The boy let go, and the cat ran meowing to Liu Zhiyi's feet. "After a dungeon is sealed there are some disasters, natural and man-made; they're random, but that doesn't mean you can't nudge them a little. Yiling District's location is a bit special — a small earthquake belt runs right through it."

The boy: "I had my colleagues place my body on Yiling District's fault line."

—Hum.

The ground shook again.

Liu Zhiyi stared dumbly at the city overhead, watching the streetlamps go out one by one.

"This will kill a lot of people…"

The boy: "It won't. A sealed dungeon is isolated, and the residents nearby are evacuated. I don't want to kill anyone."

—Rustle.

Liu Zhiyi heard the sound of cloth being shaken open.

As if someone had drawn a curtain, an unseen black cloth slowly covered the sky above the city.

This scene, like covering something with a cloth, made Liu Zhiyi think of Shen Songyue's ability.

The boy: "But if you put on a show you have to see it through. We need a great many people to know an earthquake happened."

Liu Zhiyi's lips trembled; a guess flashed through her mind.

"You want… to infect the whole city of Yiling?"

"There's no help for it — the higher the concentration, the stronger my ability." The boy shook his head and consoled her: "Once the number of people hung on strings is enough, fewer people running wild in their heads, the concentration will drop."

Liu Zhiyi: "Let me go back."

The yarn of the boy's mouth wavered up and down a few times.

"Shen Songyue really had it right — you'd be very angry."

"So?" Liu Zhiyi shot back. "Don't you do whatever you want? What's my anger to you?"

"It really is nothing to do with anything."

The boy said.

"But somehow, after you sewed on this toy head your mother made, seeing you angry, I actually feel a pang in my heart."

"I want you to be obedient, want to control you with strings, but I'm afraid you'll be angry, and when you really are angry, I feel uncomfortable."

He rattled on for a long stretch.

The boy: "Feelings really are a terrible thing — they cloud a person's judgment."

Liu Zhiyi couldn't be bothered with his nonsense.

"I want to go back to Yiling."

"That won't do," the boy said. "Yiling isn't safe right now."