Chapter 7: Who is Stirring Up Trouble Behind the Scenes? (Part 2)

In the blink of an eye, everyone had left, and Sun Cheng was the only one remaining in the spacious office.

Feeling down, he stood still in the same spot for quite a while before sighing, closing the office door, and walking toward the desk at the very back.

This office, which was not very large, was the workspace the school had provided for their temporary use when they first applied for the school's startup support.

Although the office only had a few desks and five desktop computers with mediocre configurations that the school had lent them, it was simple yet cozy; Sun Cheng and his team had created many beautiful memories here.

Unfortunately, none of it existed anymore.

Walking with a lonely expression to the desk he used to frequent, the high-end laptop his roommate often brought was long gone, and the few scattered documents left behind were covered in a thin layer of dust.

It seemed it hadn't been used for some time.

He lightly drew a line across the desktop with his finger, feeling the rough texture of the dust on his fingertip. After a long silence, Sun Cheng finally pulled a flash drive from his pocket, his eyes flickering.

"Please, don't let it be what I think!"

He muttered under his breath, more like an attempt to comfort himself.

Sun Cheng quickly gathered his thoughts, walked to a nearby desk, and without even sitting down, started the computer.

If he remembered correctly, the computers provided by the school were pre-installed with a domestic Chinese-localized Linux system based on Microsoft XP. Later, because some team members weren't used to it, a few seemed to have been switched to Win7, but none of that affected what he needed to do.

First, he entered safe mode. Utilizing the computer science ability that had suddenly appeared—one he himself hadn't even figured out yet—Sun Cheng earnestly began to scan the computer in the office.

"Nothing? Could it really be my imagination?"

Still filled with doubts, he opened the other computers one by one. After checking them all in turn and failing to detect the Trojan horse he had found on his own laptop, Sun Cheng returned to stand before the first computer he had opened.

After hesitating for a moment, still feeling suspicious, he finally took out the flash drive and inserted it into the computer, preparing to install the system from the drive onto this machine to verify his hypothesis.

Forty-some minutes was quite a long wait.

Perhaps because his eyes had been fixed on the computer screen for so long, Sun Cheng clearly felt a bit of Xuan.

He rubbed his dizzy forehead, but his hands did not stop. Once the computer finished installing the system, he quickly set himself the highest permissions. At the same time, he entered the C drive, and in just over ten seconds, he found that inconspicuous Trojan folder among the numerous system files.

Instantly, Sun Cheng's face sank, and fragments of memory he had previously ignored surged forth.

"A-Cheng, I fully support you in wanting to build a career. You know my family's situation; I can't help you much financially. If you don't mind, let me be your assistant!"

"... Don't mind that it's not much money, A-Cheng. These seven thousand yuan are what I begged for everywhere, putting aside my pride; it should be enough for a while... Don't refuse... Hey, you're just too stubborn... Fine, let's just call it a loan from me, okay..."

"Speaking of borrowing money, a few days ago I heard a classmate in our class mention a campus loan platform. It seems they have preferential terms for student startups. I don't know if it's true or not!"

"Hey? Even the repair shop couldn't find any problems? Why don't you just reinstall the system? Here, I happen to have a classic XP system installation package..."

The more he recalled, the more he felt that those words, which had once moved him so deeply, were full of suspicious points. Sun Cheng felt as if a heavy stone were pressing on his chest, and the sense of Xuan lingering in his head grew even stronger.

"My head hurts so much. Is this the aftermath of last night's hangover?"

In just a short while, his vision began to blur. Even as muddled as he was, Sun Cheng realized something was wrong with his body. He pulled over a stool and sat down, intending to rest for a moment to see if he could recover.

He didn't expect that just after closing the computer and pushing the keyboard aside to lean on the desk, the feeling of Xuan would press in on him step by step, and his eyelids would grow heavy along with it.

As a result, before he had been lying there for even a few minutes, everything went black before his eyes, and he passed out completely.

"What's going on?"

As soon as he opened his eyes, Sun Cheng discovered that he was no longer in that office located in the school's old campus, but in a strange yet familiar water-blue Spherical Space, and he couldn't help but shout out loud.

Unfortunately, even though he made the motion of shouting, he heard no sound himself. Recalling the sense of emptiness from losing his body, he finally realized what had happened to him.

"A Spherical Space radiating water-blue light, unable to feel my body... could it be that everything that happened last night wasn't a dream?"

A flash of inspiration struck his mind, and Sun Cheng's expression shifted slightly.

To verify his guess, he, now like a ghost, hurriedly looked up toward the center of this Spherical Space. Sure enough, he clearly saw two light screens of the same size standing upright, one on the left and one on the right, in the center of this mysterious space.

He hurried to float toward one of the light screens. As soon as he approached, he saw the figure of a young man slumped over a desk appear on the previously dim screen.

"The office, it's me!"

Suppressing the excitement and unease in his heart, and having had the experience once before, Sun Cheng roughly realized that some changes had occurred to him, though he couldn't yet determine if these changes were good or bad.

Last night, because he had been too anxious, Sun Cheng hadn't observed the light screen carefully.

Now, because he was certain he could leave this place, he no longer felt the urgency of the previous night and stared at the light screen in front of him with interest, carefully examining it. Soon, he saw something in a corner that he hadn't noticed last night.

Those were two sets of numbers, which looked quite regular, each preceded by a star-shaped symbol of a different color: Blue Star: 65/1000, Red Star: 51847:56:12.

The top set of numbers was one thing, but Sun Cheng stared at it for a long time without figuring out what it meant.

However, the set of numbers after the Black Star kept decreasing with his breathing, just like a countdown.

Staring at it carefully for a while, Sun Cheng vaguely grasped it, so he calculated silently in his heart for a moment and arrived at a rough figure: "36 days? Does this have any special significance?"

The available information was simply too scarce. Even after racking his brains, he couldn't guess what these two sets of numbers meant, so he had to give up on further research. He turned to look at the light screen carefully for a while longer, and only after confirming there was nothing else on it did he float, somewhat disappointed, toward the other light wall nearby.

Swish!

As if sensing his arrival, as soon as he approached, the other light wall lit up, and an image that was not unfamiliar to Sun Cheng was projected onto it.

"That's the office of the Yanjiu Zhongxin I broke into last night? Why is it still this image? Could it be that since I suddenly passed out in that office last night, nothing has changed there?"

The light screen clearly displayed the same scene Sun Cheng had seen last night: a mechanical figure the size of a three-head-tall child slumped over a chair.

After checking carefully again, he soon found two sets of numbers in a corner of this light screen as well.

One set of numbers was the same as the one on the other light wall, with a Blue Star in front and 65/1000 behind it, while the second set of numbers was different from the previous wall. Behind a White Star symbol, a brand-new set of numbers, 1/1, appeared, leaving Sun Cheng, who was trying to analyze something, feeling even more at a loss.

"It seems I wasn't dreaming last night, but what exactly is this place? What has happened to my body? Could these two light walls really represent two worlds? What should I do? Should I go and verify it?"

Although his subconscious kept warning him that everything he was encountering now was not only amazing but also terrifying—not to mention the sheer pseudoscience of a person being able to travel freely between two worlds—just the memory of how he was nearly crushed to death by Barricade in the other world last night proved that this adventure was not only risky but would also endanger his life!

He swallowed hard, his gaze fixed firmly on the light wall in front of him.

Being a young man after all, after hesitating for a while, he still couldn't resist the desire for this heaven-sent opportunity.

Seeing him look hesitantly at the other light wall nearby, he gritted his teeth and, without looking back, rushed into the light wall in front of him.