GBT Chapter 129

Jiao Bai felt a suction force enveloping him as soon as he heard the electronic voice, pulling his soul out. He floated in a void of white space, standing upright, surrounded by eight interfaces.

These were his eight friends, eight personal cards.

Each card had four lines of text: “Character Name, Age”; “Established Attributes”; “Degree of Obsession”; “Strategy Guide.”

In the upper left corner of each card was their original avatar and the name of their group.

In the next second, the avatars suddenly magnified, occupying the entire card.

Eternal Guardian [Love and Divinity] – A cat stretches lazily, its front paws reaching straight out.

Unforgettable Lifetime [The Most Familiar Stranger] – Pikachu sways from side to side.

Unforgettable Lifetime [The Most Familiar Stranger] – A harp seal lies softly, motionless.

Never to Disappoint in This Lifetime [Dearest Family and Friends] – The Cheng Mountain tea garden is lush green, with dragonflies flying and playing among the tea leaves.

Never to Disappoint in This Lifetime [Dearest Family and Friends] – A rainbow is brilliantly colorful.

Unforgettable Lifetime [The Most Familiar Stranger] – A wedding certificate shows half of an exquisite youth’s face, and the other half is blank.

Never to Disappoint in This Lifetime [Dearest Family and Friends] – An ant scratches its large head.

Predestined in This Life [Confidant] – The deep sea is calm and waveless.

Jiao Bai’s gaze unconsciously swept forward from the last card avatar. All the avatars changed. Waves sounded from the deep sea, and the surface gained a layer of red-orange hues, as a red sun slowly rose. The ant straightened its slender waist, waving its thin legs at him. Golden wheat ears floated down from the wedding certificate. The rainbow smiled at him.

The dragonflies in the Cheng Mountain tea garden all took flight. The harp seal wiggled its round body and raised its bright black eyes. Pikachu looked over timidly. The golden-eyed white cat stopped stretching, blinked, and suddenly pounced toward him.

Jiao Bai opened his arms involuntarily.

Then, the cat really landed in his arms, and he was dumbfounded.

A cat?

Me?

Me and a cat?

Jiao Bai mindlessly petted the cat. He suddenly sensed something and abruptly looked up, gazing towards the space above his head.

There was another card above.

Player Name, Age: Jiao Bai, eighteen years old.

Established Attributes: A wildflower blooming in thorns, a small blade of grass growing in mud, tiny but not weak, strong and resilient, never retreating once a goal is set. If plunged into darkness, burn the soul to illuminate the path ahead, until dawn arrives.

Degree of Obsession: Undetermined.

Strategy Guide: Use mystery as the hook, respect as the bait, patience as the rod, and he will take the bait and enter the net of his own accord.

The avatar in the upper left corner of the card was a patch of dark night bushes, with a very faint and weak green glow on one of the branches.

That avatar covered the information underneath, expanding to fill the entire card.

The firefly on the branch took flight, using its own light to create a beam, cutting through the dark night.

[The player’s established attributes are self-perfected, and the character card avatar will only appear after the task is completed. The image on the avatar depends on the most touching scene in the player’s heart.]

Jiao Bai’s eyes moved down, his gaze falling on his ankle. He had tattooed a firefly on his body, and his soul had one too.

His arms emptied, the cat disappeared, and all the cards vanished.

Almost simultaneously, a task interface appeared in front of Jiao Bai.

Player Jiao Bai’s task completion rate: 100%.

Character Card: Jiao Bai.

Friends: 8.

Jiao Bai’s pupils reflected the data panels of his eight friends and their world houses. They automatically opened, and he discovered that Qi Yi Liao’s world house had loaded successfully, and his emotional experience was him.

The world consciousness had lost, so it adjusted the settings according to Qi Yi Liao’s changes, instead of him cooperating with the settings.

Fireworks burst out on the task interface, one after another, exploding into a sea of dazzling flowers. This was the standard mode for celebrating a player’s completion of a task.

Jiao Bai was not impressed: “Little Helper, it’s time to reveal the truth. I want to know the origin of the task, your position, and why I transmigrated here.”

He had started questioning his death and transmigration some time ago.

Perhaps it was several years ago, when he was first tortured, his soul separated from his body, and he discovered that the state of his soul was not his own, but the original owner’s.

“I am Wang Chuqiu,” Jiao Bai asserted control.

[Player Jiao Bai has triggered a hidden gift package. Task details are being activated, five, four, three…]

Jiao Bai’s face filled with “What the hell.” He was afraid the answer he was given after completing the task would be unpleasant. And it truly was.

[Activation complete, loading complete, please be informed.]

[Player, please listen carefully to the following details.]

[You are the protagonist of the original version of the world of “Broken Wings,” Wang Chuqiu, also Jiao Bai.]

Jiao Bai was stunned.

What the hell? He was afraid that the answers given after the task would be unpleasant, and it truly was.

The task details were that “Broken Wings” was not just a comic; it was a world.

In unexplored planes, there are countless comic worlds, countless players, countless accounts, countless Little Helpers, and countless targets to be conquered or waiting to be conquered.

And every comic in the task world domain is created by people from higher-dimensional worlds.

Those people are called—World Architects.

When the author wrote the initial outline for this comic, the first thing they wrote well was the protagonist, Wang Chuqiu, a character tied to the upper class like a dog in a collar, yearning for freedom, stubborn, refusing to accept his fate, and ultimately having his wings broken by various forms of cruelty until he died. His background was that he was a child of the Qi family who had been lost. The names Chuqiu and Shuang foreshadowed the concept of identical twins.

There were several options for the protagonist gong, which weren’t decided so quickly. The emotional storyline hadn’t been conceived yet. The author only wrote the attributes of a few important characters and some plot points, trying to proceed.

However, the author frequently encountered stumbling blocks when writing the protagonist shou’s storyline outline. Subconsciously, they weren’t satisfied with the Wang Chuqiu setting, feeling that it was difficult to write and would definitely be restrictive later on. The white lotus cannon fodder Li Jue, paired with the character draft of Shen Er An, provided more room for the “scum gong cheap shou” dynamic to play out.

The author preferred Li Jue and unconsciously added more scenes for him during the outlining process, unwilling to let him die early, delaying his demise again and again, causing him to develop an independent awareness of his emotional storyline, namely an obsession with Shen Er An. Furthermore, he replaced Jiao Bai as the protagonist.

Therefore, the author went with the flow, discarding the initial outline and writing the original protagonist shou Wang Chuqiu as a tool character who went offline the earliest, having Qi Shuang kill him in a car accident, making it the beginning of the main storyline. They modified, refined, and strengthened the line between Li Jue and Shen Er An, with most of Li Jue’s other emotional entanglements being borrowed from parts of the original outline, with appropriate deletions and adjustments.

This resulted in the Li Jue x Shen Er An scum-and-cheap BE, a dog-blood-soaked “Broken Wings.”

The task details end here.

“Because the important characters in the comic wanted to start over, so they did. But their combined thoughts were too strong, causing this world to have problems, failing to rewind, and instead directly returning to the initial version, right?” Jiao Bai’s reaction was not very strong; he had guessed most of the direction.

[Yes.]

As the electronic voice sounded, Jiao Bai’s world house finally opened. The Jiao Bai of the first iteration, who was Wang Chuqiu, in the moment when he was killed by Qi Shuang’s car, lying in a pool of blood and looking back on his short life, tragic and laughable. At the moment of closing his eyes, he erupted with a strong desire—if only life could start over.

Jiao Bai felt a thick sensation, as if he wasn’t a soul but a physical entity: “Then how the hell did I, a paper man, have a previous life?”

[Your real world, your so-called previous life, is the author’s conceptualization for the next comic in the series. They directly used the initial version of your “Broken Wings” setting, changed the name, and intended to make it a series.]

Jiao Bai: “…”

The protagonist of the next comic saw the previous comic in a bookstore and shouted about the dog-blood plotlines in the comic. It truly was a series.

[The world enabled the initial version, so you were summoned back.]

Jiao Bai chuckled. Novel. This glass-hearted assistant actually used honorifics with him, without warning, like it had epilepsy. He looked again at his world house, which he hadn’t closed.

After all this, the summary was: the original self in “Broken Wings” had returned to the self from “Broken Wings Extra.”

—Leaving with a car accident and returning with a car accident.

Jiao Bai asked the Little Helper: “Then who are you?”

No response.

Jiao Bai didn’t have the patience to wait slowly; he shouted irritably, “Speak!”

The electronic voice said: I am the initial version of the world consciousness.

Jiao Bai was stunned.

So, his task, eating dog blood and breaking dog blood, was a battle between two world consciousnesses?

[As your task completion rate continues to increase, my energy becomes greater. In a sense, you gave birth to me; you are my father.]

Jiao Bai: “……???”

I can’t give birth to such a glass-hearted son!

[Sorry, after the comic world returned to its initial version, the first-iteration world consciousness was still frequently interfering with the characters’ plotlines. I had to use some means to assist you and oppose it.]

Jiao Bai was numb. No, his soul was numb.

The Little Helper, or rather his son, said that the initial version of this world’s character settings, plot lines, and emotional lines were fragmented, incomplete, and disorganized. Jiao Bai pieced together the initial version and the first iteration, reorganized them, and created new plots with his own faith and willpower, perfecting the entire world framework.

And the author’s two series of works merged in Jiao Bai’s consciousness, thereby causing him to have the experiences of his previous life, know the plot of the comic, embark on the task path from the perspective of a reader, become an independent personality, and rewrite his own ending.

Jiao Bai suddenly remembered one thing: “When I first came in, all the transmission error warnings were just a trick? The 0/20 for my boyfriend was to make me feel, when encountering terrible things, a sense of relief that it was already good enough to have dealt with eight friends?”

The Little Helper was silent. Jiao Bai cursed.

A frame popped up on the task interface, the background showing Jiao Bai’s appearance.

—The inspirational index of the world of “Broken Wings” is as high as 100+, and has been loaded into the template library for players to learn and consult, encouraging players in adversity to continue moving forward.

Jiao Bai: Heh heh.

[Task data verification complete]

Jiao Bai suddenly felt a jolt; it was coming. The pit he had dug for himself would finally be thrown at his feet, with no way to retreat.

[The player is about to undergo a death evasion.]

Jiao Bai remained still for a long time, his soul twisted: “Death what? The requirement I made at the beginning was for my friends’ memories to be collectively cleared!” That way, he could escape and live freely. He could get to know those he wanted to get to know again, and never see those he didn’t want to see again. That’s what he thought at the time. Later, he realized he was shooting himself in the foot, but he had still figured out how to kick the stone away.

What was this now? Could death evasion even be used? This dog-blood trope could really make someone cough up old blood!

[The names of your groups are all emotional summaries of your friends’ feelings for you. If they have their corresponding memories taken away, forgetting your existence, then where would the love and hate come from? This violates the initial intention and rules of the task.]

“Then why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

Jiao Bai had completed the task and wasn’t afraid of being whipped anymore. He was furious and shouted out the words he had held back for several years: “I have never seen anything more glass-hearted than you!”

The Little Helper had a temper. Although it didn’t issue a violation warning, it also stopped addressing him with “you.”

[Players who achieve victory will receive compensation for the losses caused by the rules.]

Jiao Bai’s face straightened: “Okay, please tell me.”

[The compensation is that players will receive a massive amount of our company’s specially made ‘Chrysanthemum Spirit.’ We will deliver it irregularly by express delivery.]

Jiao Bai sneered: “Do I need that stuff?!”

He said this with a guilty conscience; he actually needed something that sounded magical just by hearing the name.

But he still wanted other compensation.

The Little Helper didn’t say a word, clearly refusing to compromise.

Jiao Bai temporarily changed the question: “I am the protagonist of my original world. If I don’t go back, will the world collapse?”

[That series only has a beginning; it’s an unfinished project. After you left, a new protagonist has already replaced you and rebuilt the world structure.]

Jiao Bai: “…” The seventeen years of his life were just a comic opening. It was fortunate that he had a good mentality and had experienced a lot, otherwise these few truths would have driven him crazy.

“I don’t want to do a death evasion,” Jiao Bai changed his tactics, sighing weakly, “Little Helper, help me.”

The Little Helper didn’t react.

“We’re on the same side. The world consciousness could be eliminated. In addition to the cooperation between you and me, the self-awakening of my old pervert also made a corresponding contribution, right?” Jiao Bai said, “There should be more compensation in this area.”

Jiao Bai waited for a long time before hearing the Little Helper’s voice.

[Sorry, this is a mandatory process after the player completes the task.]

The subtext was that there was no way to circumvent this rule.

Jiao Bai’s soul was ancient: “Alright then, death evasion it is. Can’t I keep my body?”

[No]

“Even if the memories of the task targets can’t be cleared, you said that when I completed the task, this body would be restored to its optimal state, but now you’re saying to change bodies. You’re lying to me. Is there anything you said that is true? Is this what you mean by, I am your father?”

[……]

“What’s with the ellipses? Quickly help me apply to your superiors!”

Jiao Bai floated back and forth anxiously. He knew clearly that even if he didn’t change bodies for the death evasion, there would definitely be obstacles preventing him from recognizing Qi Yi Liao and the others. But he still wanted to fight for some benefits under unfavorable circumstances, just a little.

He was used to this body. Some things wouldn’t disappear with restoration; he didn’t want to change.

After an unknown amount of time, an additional character card appeared in Jiao Bai’s view.

[This is your barrier card]

Jiao Bai looked at the photo on the card and listened to the Little Helper say that this person was a second-year student in clinical medicine at a medical university, who had just died suddenly from too much pressure. This was the body he would use to be reborn, but now he didn’t need to move into it, but he still had to use this identity.

However, he didn’t need to have this person’s memories implanted, because the barrier card would always be with him, intelligent, and could recall corresponding data according to his thoughts.

With the barrier card, he would completely change into another person in the eyes of others. Not only his appearance and height, habits and hobbies, but even his blood type and DNA couldn’t be found to be abnormal.

This was the ultimate version with beauty filters fully enabled.

The barrier card could shield many of the traces Jiao Bai had left over the years, except for his personality.

Because his current complete personality was created by himself, not the data of this comic, it couldn’t be changed.

[When you wake up, the timeline will be pushed forward five years. You will have a seamless connection to your master’s graduation in your academic career]

Jiao Bai pursed his lips. It sounded very good, saving him the time of reading an undergraduate degree and allowing him to acquire knowledge. When he woke up, he would directly graduate with a master’s degree, but… Qi Yi Liao would be in his late thirties, and five years would pass. Wouldn’t he be forty? What could he still do? How many five years could they afford to waste?

“Can’t the timeline not move?”

[We need time to test the world’s data and repair the loopholes]

“If you have to use a time machine, then can it be one year?” Jiao Bai took a step back, “The person on my barrier card is currently a sophomore, and after one year, I will also be a sophomore. It can also work in terms of time.”

[Please wait.]

[Okay]

“Thank you,” Jiao Bai rubbed his face, “Then how do I do a death evasion while keeping my body?”

[The World Architect has prepared a backup body for you to use for death evasion, and your own body will be placed in a place to sleep and repair.]

Jiao Bai asked: “Will I die completely?”

[Completely]

Jiao Bai couldn’t imagine how he would die. This was an unchangeable fact. He was more concerned about the follow-up, whether he could come back as soon as possible: “Do your barrier cards have any glitches?”

[According to the data in the case library, there is a certain probability that barrier cards will have bugs.]

Before Jiao Bai could be happy, he heard a mechanical reminder.

[Player Jiao Bai, you will be using death evasion mode in ten minutes. Please be prepared]

Jiao Bai’s brain went blank in an instant. He returned to his body and looked at Qi Yi Liao, who was still sleeping soundly while holding him. The invisible countdown in his ears made his tongue bitter.

As a player, Jiao Bai’s journey was about to end. The Little Helper initiated a farewell speech for him, filled with a monotonous sense of ceremony.

—You go against the dog-blood background setting of the first iteration of “Broken Wings.”

—You move forward in reverse.

—Wherever you go, there is vitality.