Chapter 511.1: The Same Choice

Where... Where is this? Who am I?

Amid a hazy mist, Jiang Xuezhou opened her eyes and stared blankly at the pale fog surrounding her.

Suddenly, a sharp pain pricked at her brow. She raised her index finger and pressed it to her forehead. In that moment of contact, blurred memories gradually began to clear.

The first thing that came to her was her own name, followed by her birthdate. The surrounding scenery also changed, what was once a thick fog turned into a vast snowfall.

"It's a girl..."

"... Brain cell activity looks good, physical fitness is solid, hormone levels normal. She’s a promising candidate."

"Thank you, doctor!"

"No need, just doing my job."

"She looks a bit like you."

"Then... let's name her Xuezhou."

"If only she could get accepted..."

Fragments of memory flashed through her mind like a slideshow.

She saw two kind, smiling faces, then watched those faces frost over with age, their expressions slowly shifting to sorrow.

"Mom... Dad..." she whispered softly.

It felt as if she had returned to her childhood.

Back then, her family lived in hardship. Her father went around scavenging for a living, and her mother worked in a garment factory. Their food came from potato fields that could grow even in cold climates, but the livestock belonged to the Scientific Committee and were managed locally. Most people didn’t even see a full portion of meat in a week.

There was one path to a better life.

Any family that could produce an apprentice would receive massive subsidies from the Scientific Committee, a fortune envied by every citizen. Her parents could move into a bigger home, and her older siblings could be reassigned to easier posts.

Everyone dreamed of it.

And for the lucky apprentice, life would become prosperous and carefree. They would no longer be burdened by mundane tasks unrelated to research.

Wait...

Hadn't she already passed the evaluation?

She had even become a Researcher, the dream of countless apprentices... A trace of fear flickered in Jiang Xuezhou’s eyes.

How... How did I come back?

Beyond what she could see, she remembered nothing else. Some unknown force had frozen part of her memory, restricting its flow, allowing only fragments to leak out, as if being dissected for analysis.

"Answer me," A voice echoed in the void, bewitching and resonant. "Think carefully..."

"Besides your closest kin, who is the most important person in your life?"

The most important person besides family?

Confusion flashed across her eyes. It seemed... Such a person didn’t even exist.

After joining an exploration team, people came and went constantly. She had grown used to leaping from one phase of life to another, slowly forgetting those she met along the way... including her parents and siblings, whom she hadn’t seen in years and who might still see her as a source of pride.

If she thought about it like that...

Her life seemed utterly meaningless, nothing more than a perfectly designed program that had run smoothly so far.

She was just like an NPC...

To her surprise, she had assumed the voice in the void would share her disappointment. Yet it seemed rather pleased with her lack of resistance.

Someone on the margins of society was undoubtedly easier to replace than someone standing in the spotlight.

Few people had strong memories of her.

No one would be surprised by any oddities or changes, making replacing her too easy.

It was so easy it made one question whether replacing her was even necessary.

Then, the scene around her changed again. A frigid wind swept past her neck, making her shiver and clutch her frostbitten arms before crouching to the ground.

Only then did she realize she was naked in the snow. The endless blizzard threatened to bury her entirely.

In the distance, clusters of eerie green light shimmered, like the eyes of some alien creature, or the ghostly fire leading to hell.

Maybe... This was her end.

Like the countless explorers who had stepped into the ruins in a daze, only to die in silence with confusion and regret... She, too, was just another cog in that dull fate.

Just as she was about to close her eyes and accept her fate, a figure emerged from the thick snowfall.

He wore a pitch-black exoskeleton. The ballistic plates on his chest were dented inward. The howling wind clearly affected him and each step he took was a struggle.

Who is he?

Even the voice in the void sounded confused this time and gave no answer. The figure called out to her. "Hey."

A look of panic crossed her face. She forgot her frozen body and collapsed backward onto the cold snow. “Don’t come closer...”

"Don’t give me that. How long are you planning to sleep here?" The man stepped directly in front of her, ignored her reaction, and grabbed her arm.

Jiang Xuezhou instinctively tried to resist, but the man didn’t care. He yanked her up forcefully. "Time to go."

That was the last thing she heard.

The scene around her changed like the view from a train window, and the world built from her memory fragments instantly collapsed.

In the blink of an eye, she seemed to arrive in another world. The blocked memories surged back like a tide.

Like being dragged from the deep sea back to shore, her incomplete senses returned with her gasping breaths. As if at that moment, someone removed the headset from her head.

"Ah!" Jiang Xuezhou cried out in shock, shrinking back against the wall and hugging her arms. Only then did she realize she was fully clothed.

Her pale cheeks quickly turned the color of a tomato. Luckily, the person who removed the neural device wasn’t even looking at her.

"That should do it, right? I’ve done my best." Night Ten glanced at Yunyi beside him.

Yunyi put away her tablet, nodded, and smiled. "Yes, the disconnect was successful. You did great."

"Really?" Night Ten gave the red-faced girl in the corner a skeptical look and muttered, "She looks like something’s still off about her head, though..."

Yunyi paused and raised her eyebrows. "Maybe... She’ll be fine after a while?"

According to Zhuang Lan, if someone didn’t have strong mental strength, removing the neural link forcefully could trigger a split personality unless disconnected properly.

That meant using the headset to connect with the memory extraction system, entering a dream built from her memories, and letting her wake up on her own.

Night Ten hadn’t wanted to go through all that trouble, but the “Saint Granny” from Ideal City said they couldn’t just leave the girl behind.

So, to avoid messing up the questline, he had no choice but to grab a headset with a universal interface from the recreation room and co-op link into Jiang Xuezhou’s memory instance.

Apparently, she had a long nightmare filled with alien creatures, mutants, and marauders.

Earlier, he counted she had cleared at least six levels.

But the final level ended so simply that he felt like he didn’t do anything and all he did was pull her a little. Once that was done, she woke up...

He thought there would be some sort of boss battle and the quest would last a little longer. Shame it didn’t...

Right... Before he entered her memory instance, he and Yunyi had already disarmed the timed bomb stuck to the floor-to-ceiling window.

As it turned out, it was a tactical nuke with a 10-kiloton yield.

As it was planted near the reactor, the Enlightenment Society’s intentions were clear. They intended to erase the entire place after extracting its data.

As Jiang Xuezhou slowly pieced together what had happened, she loosened her grip on her collar and lowered her head. Her cheeks were still red as she mumbled, "... Thank you."

"No need to thank me. I just gave you a hand. If you want to thank someone, thank her." Night Ten jerked his chin toward Yunyi. "She did most of the work, I couldn’t make sense of any of that code."

Jiang Xuezhou nodded shyly and murmured another soft thanks.