Global Collapse-Chapter 641 - 609: Time Management Master Gu Beng Beng_1

"So you were having secret conversations behind my back?" Gu Mian scratched his chin.

Lu Yi laughed. "We just happened to run into each other, so we took the opportunity to discuss some matters."

"What matters?" Gu Mian inquired.

"About you, about this world, about their world, and… about Earth."

The worlds within instances were all derived Low-Dimensional Worlds. Two people from different Low-Dimensional Worlds, discussing a higher-dimensional world, all while in Jin Hu's hospital—a place supposedly filled with love and hope. The mere thought of that scene is rather amusing, Gu Mian mused.

Gu Mian curiously asked, "Did the conversation yield any results?"

Lu Yi shook his head. "We don't even know why this world was created, nor why the game began. If I hadn't ascended to this position, I wouldn't even know that I'm in a Low-Dimensional World."

He said this without any reservation, even with Teacher Slaughter nearby.

Gu Mian spared a glance for the little pink figure. Teacher Slaughter's expression was starting to turn vacant.

"Speaking of the Low-Dimensional World," Gu Mian began, "how did you realize you were in one?"

He had asked Chu Changge this question before.

The answer Chu Changge had given back then was "errors."

'Errors' appeared in the world, which were then corrected. This led to severe discrepancies in people's memories. They remembered the 'error,' but in reality, only the corrected version—the 'correct chapter'—existed.

After that, the intelligent ones began to question the authenticity of the world.

Lu Yi was unaware that Gu Mian was pondering Chu Changge's words. He sat in his chair, watching the fireworks still crackling outside the window, and began to speak of the signs that had appeared in this world.

"Déjà vu... At first, someone would experience a peculiar feeling, as though they had lived through the current events before. For instance, we might be meeting for the first time today. You and I are sitting here, chatting, but suddenly you find this moment familiar, as if it had already happened.

"Then, more and more people experienced this phenomenon, leaving everyone baffled. So, we coined a specific term for it: 'déjà vu.'

"At the time, we didn't connect déjà vu with the Low-Dimensional World. That changed when someone, while constructing an underground cave to imprison Lower Class People, discovered a set of ruins in a subterranean corner. That was about ten years ago.

"The entrance to these ruins was in a large forest. Initially, the person didn't think anything was amiss. However, as he explored deeper, he was shocked to find that the ruins consisted of countless identical buildings."

No sane person would construct a vast cluster of identical buildings in the caverns beneath a primeval forest, Gu Mian thought.

Lu Yi continued, "When the ruins were discovered, only building debris remained. But the person keenly noticed the anomalies. The patterns on the debris, the smudges on the broken plaster, even the textures on the exposed bricks—they were all identical. It was like they were copied and pasted.

"If you picked up any piece of broken debris, you would inevitably find countless identical fragments in the underground cave, right down to the cracks. It was then that we realized this was the 'corpse of the world.' We understood that our world could be manipulated at will by others. At that moment, we knew: this is a Low-Dimensional World."

The corpse of the world…

Gu Mian repeated the phrase to himself, a thought crossing his mind. "Loading a previous save?"

Lu Yi looked at Gu Mian and nodded. "Correct, like loading a previous save."

"It's like playing a game," Lu Yi explained. "At a certain point, the player might be dissatisfied with the current situation and decide to load a previous save, returning to the past. The characters in the game would lose their memories of this skipped period, and the game world itself would revert to that earlier point in time. Perhaps we had constructed magnificent buildings or created astonishing works of art after that point, but the moment the save was loaded, all of it would vanish without a trace.

"This is also the reason for our déjà vu. We might have experienced this very moment countless times, but we don't remember. Only in a fleeting instance does our brain resonate strongly with our past self from that exact time. Then, the feeling of familiarity immediately vanishes under the world's oppressive influence. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

"And that underground cave"—he was referring to the one he mentioned earlier—"was a BUG."

A BUG. Gu Mian nodded in agreement. Being able to leave traces despite the world reloading a save definitely sounds like a BUG.

"That place is still affected by the world reloading saves," Lu Yi went on, "but the world can't completely erase the traces in the underground cave. Each time a save is reloaded, the structures underground collapse further, yet they don't vanish entirely. After each reload, a new, identical structure appears upon the old ruins. Through countless reloads, the site became a vast field of ruins. It wasn't until we discovered it that we realized our world had reloaded saves countless times."

Gu Mian frowned. "When you discovered the cave, was there still an intact building inside?"

Why only that place could leave traces when the world reloaded was a question. Gu Mian suspected that building might hold the secret to the Low-Dimensional World.

"Yes," Lu Yi confirmed. "When we discovered the underground cave, there was indeed an intact building standing amidst the ruins. To be precise, it wasn't just a building; it was a temple, about two stories high."

A temple? Could it be…

"An Evil God Statue?" Gu Mian asked. Is this Evil God trying to make a cameo in a TV drama or something? Popping up to remind everyone of its existence time and time again.

Lu Yi nodded. "Yes."

So it seems the Evil God Statue was what affected that area, Gu Mian thought. To be able to interfere with the world's save reloading... this Evil God isn't as pathetic as I imagined.

"You didn't move it to suppress the forbidden area afterward, did you?" Gu Mian thought of the Evil God Statue in the forbidden hospital area.

"Of course, we wouldn't dare touch the intact one," Lu Yi said. "But there were quite a few damaged statues among the ruins."

"So, you pieced together the broken statues and moved them into the forbidden area?"

"Yes, that's right," Lu Yi replied. "We collected all the Statue Fragments we could find and cleaned up the entire area, leaving only the one intact temple…"

No wonder that statue looked so dilapidated when I first saw it, Gu Mian thought.

Then, he considered another issue. "So, if what you're saying is true, your world hasn't undergone a save reload spanning a very long period for quite some time. Specifically, after someone discovered that underground cave, you haven't experienced any further long-duration save reloads."

"Why do you say that?" Lu Yi asked, puzzled. "Is it because we still remember the underground cave? But that memory itself could be from after a reload. Perhaps many years after we first discovered the cave, the world reloaded a save. Then, following the original trajectory, that same person discovered the cave again, and thus we 'regained' the memory of it."

"No," Gu Mian suddenly stood up and drew a horizontal line on the dust-filled windowpane. "Look, this line is your world's timeline."

He marked a point in the middle of the line and circled it, making the line somewhat resemble a number line with a zero point.

Lu Yi stared at the line on the window. "So this point is when we discovered the statue?"

"No," Gu Mian dismissed his interpretation. "That point is when the statue was created."

He then marked another point not far to the right of the zero point and labeled it 'X.' "This is when the statue was discovered."

His finger moved further to the right, marking a point beyond 'X' and labeling it 'Y.' "This is now."