The apocalypse begins with a dungeon game.

Chapter 123 Saying Goodbye: Will We Really Meet Again?

[Brother Xing, stop being so mysterious at a time like this, I'm getting so anxious.] Shen Yuansheng felt utterly hopeless.

Li Can herself was also feeling a bit constipated. [The good news is I saw Xiao Guai's finger twitch just now; he'll probably wake up soon.]

He had planned everything meticulously, but he forgot to consider the fact that time was constantly slipping away.

However, no one can be blamed for this. He had just put the [Mirror of Past Lives] into the gashapon shell, and he was still somewhat unfamiliar with how to use it.

It's not his home turf anymore.

He himself is still trapped in the memories of his former owner.

Yang Mo: [The bad news is...]

Based on the hints given when entering the mirror, I calculated that the second memory will be slightly longer than the first, and so on, reaching its maximum duration in the third scene.

Nevertheless, this scene now only has about ten minutes left.

We should be able to witness firsthand the monster waking up and its reaction after hearing the recording from the camera.

And that was it.

Not long after Li Can's text comment ended, Xiao Guai began to move. He was seen dazedly supporting his head with one hand and slowly sitting up.

The blood congealed on his face, forming a dark red scab that snaked along like a struggling centipede.

After waking up, he seemed to have forgotten something. He sat there for a while to calm down before finally slapping his forehead and remembering.

"Ouch...that hurts."

"Damn it, I almost forgot, I smashed my own head."

The little monster staggered slightly, looking down at his palm, where bloodstains seeped from the back of his head.

His face lit up with an expression of utter fascination, a mixture of excitement and restraint, until he finally stood behind the camera, holding onto passing tables, chairs, and walls, before calming down.

He carefully pressed the power button, then switched to the photo album and video, and opened and played the saved file.

Not long after, his own voice, from his first recording session, could be heard inside the room:

"I don't know who you are or where you're from, but if you have no malicious intent or want to make a deal with me, please cooperate with me by recording this for the next while..."

"..."

Then came a muffled groan, the sound of the hammer striking a watermelon in the summer, accompanied by the splashing of juice.

"Clang!" The hammer fell to the ground.

"..." There was only a brief moment of stillness in the room.

Then the first voice, a completely unfamiliar male voice, rang out.

His suppressed smile, which had been curving downwards, began to change, gradually turning upwards until it opened up, allowing him to breathe in and out through his mouth.

A pair of eyes, having undergone a pupil transplant, involuntarily widened.

Even as the sunlight pierced his eyes, he didn't care; the scorching heat made his heart beat faster and faster.

Li Can nestled in the upper left corner of his chest, able to directly sense his intense emotional state at that moment.

The little monster's heartbeat was clearly like thundering war drums.

"Bang bang bang!"

"It's done, so you really exist? Who are you...?" the little monster asked the air.

He looked down at his body and touched his head, seemingly wondering which area Li Can would be in.

To his surprise, the number of voices in the camera suddenly increased from one to four.

The little monster's hard-won calm was shattered again. He took a deep breath of oxygen, feeling the sensation of his nasal cavity and lungs being fully irrigated.

"Are there so many people living inside my body?" He inexplicably raised an arm and looked down at his armpit.

It was completely empty there.

He shook his head again, as if wondering if he was really mentally unstable or had a problem.

He even pulled out the business card Xiaoqi had given him from his pocket again, somewhat lost in thought.

Shen Yuan: [Damn it, the city lord has left me confused and starting to doubt myself.]

"The end of the city..." He was making some feedback as he followed the progress of the audio.

His expression gradually turned strange after hearing Li Can's psychological analysis of him.

"Although your considerations are somewhat off-track, I am indeed very interested in your current situation, and I will accept the collaboration you have proposed."

"I haven't been to any very far places since I started growing up, so it seems I need a car now."

The audio continues playing until the last segment.

The four people inside the monster's body were all intently observing his reaction.

Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time, and they weren't able to have a second conversation.

The golden ocean of particles encompasses everything in the world until it merges with it, and everything eventually dissipates.

In the empty mirror space, only the little monster's calls remained in place.

"Don't go!"

The sound lingered in everyone's ears for a long time.

In the de-constructed area, the monsters remained in a forward-leaning, grabbing posture, their brows furrowed.

His eyes were filled with unease and fear at the prospect of losing what he had just reaped.

Everything froze.

Shen Yuan: [I feel a strange pang of sadness. The city lord just contacted us, learned that we were inside his body, and then said goodbye.]

The thought that our next meeting would be in Act Three, during his youth, struck me deeply.

It felt so long...

Although he is a semi-perfect human, he ages and matures very slowly. Surely he wouldn't still be waiting for us to return after all these years...?

Yang Mo was also feeling a bit down. Ever since Li Can announced that time was running out, he had also felt a sense of urgency about not being able to finish.

There always seemed to be something tangled up inside me.

If it were me, from his perspective, I would wait indefinitely.

[Our conversations revealed information about the future. He's a smart person and should know that we're undergoing a three-stage memory journey through the mirror.]

Li Lan: [He said he needs a car to go out and find the boundaries of this world. I guess he won't be very idle in the coming days; he's likely to be on the road most of the time.]

[It's even possible that by the time we enter the third act, he's already explored everything for us and is waiting for the answers.]

As Li Can listened to everyone's explanations, his gaze lingered on the frozen image of Xiao Guai in his youth.

We are now in intermission between Act II and Act III.

The little monster's body remained in the state it was in during its final farewell.

For them, it was just a brief farewell.

He would spend countless days and nights studying the mysteries of the existence of the little monsters...

With that in mind, Li Can reopened the two gashapon capsules, [Mirror of the Past] and [Coordinates], that he had collected in his consciousness space and began to examine them.

This is all thanks to the city lord's innovative, high-tech methods.

Could his original intention in doing all this have been because of the appearance of his group? Li Can felt a chill run down his spine as he thought about it.

It's that sense of destiny again.