Irreversible - Chapter 33

Chapter 33: An Adorable Angel (Part 3)

When the night draped itself in starlight and the surroundings fell into a profound silence, 0820 woke up within a dormant pod filled with nutrient solution.

Lin Shi, standing before the CROSS main console and clutching a bath towel, practically sprinted over, her face alight with pleasant surprise. “Boss… Boss…”

0820 took the towel, wiped the excess liquid from her face, and asked calmly, “How is it? Any good news?”

Lin Shi’s face was flushed, her eyes shimmering with excitement. “Yes, yes… Yes!”

As Lin Shi excitedly dashed back to the CROSS console, she spoke to 0820—the thirty-six-year-old Gu Xizhou: “Come and look quickly. Although it was only for a split second, Miss Zhiyi’s brainwaves showed a slight change.”

“Her consciousness briefly appeared within the virtual entity.”

Gu Xizhou’s eyes widened. “What? Really?”

As if seized by a sudden frenzy of joy, she lunged toward the console, frantically searching for any news regarding Su Zhiyi’s changes. “Where? When was it?”

Lin Shi stood behind her, the eyes behind her lenses glowing with happiness. “It was exactly 23 hours ago…”

Twenty-three hours ago…

That was the night she had temporarily occupied the body of the 1122 Little Gu Xizhou to give Su Nanfeng a thrashing. Did Zhiyi sense something? Did she also feel that something was wrong with herself?

Gu Xizhou’s internal ecstasy was beyond words. Ignoring her physical condition, she immediately sat at the console, sliding across the screen to review the massive amounts of cluttered information.

Within that string of garbled brainwave code, she intermittently deciphered a line of text: I come from the future… I am here to help you…

Gu Xizhou whipped her head around to look at Lin Shi, her expression one of utter shock. “She didn’t wake up in that world as a merged part of the virtual entity; she’s like me—retaining her own consciousness, awakening in that virtual world as a separate ‘individual’.”

How did this happen? Why was it like this?

Her consciousness had not merged with the 1122 data. According to Lin Shi’s algorithm, Su Zhiyi’s consciousness was supposed to be poured directly into the data of the 1122 virtual version of Su Zhiyi. Why had this situation occurred instead?

Lin Shi was also excited, but she managed to suppress her emotions and maintain her professional composure. “It must be a system bug. It caused her to wake up as her own consciousness, just like you.”

“But no matter what, this is incredible news.”

Yes, it was monumental news.

Gu Xizhou turned her head, her gaze piercing through the corridor toward the other laboratory. There, lying in a dormant pod, was the wife who seemed as though she would never wake up. A surge of bitterness washed over her heart.

Zhiyi…

If she woke up last night and decided to help the 1122 Su Zhiyi, yet today she didn’t make the 1122 Su Zhiyi stay away from Gu Xizhou… does that mean…

Does it mean she truly has no hatred left in her heart?

Gu Xizhou’s eyes reddened instantly. Beside her, Lin Shi was hyper-excited, beginning a non-stop analysis: “She likely believes she has returned to the past, so she wants to help ‘herself’ have a better future.”

“There is too much standing between you and Miss Zhiyi. She probably couldn’t accept her family hurting you, nor could she accept the things you did.”

“Though personally, Boss, I think you were an agent of divine justice, Miss Su Zhiyi is still a member of the Su family after all. More importantly, she might have always felt you were using her, that you didn’t love her…”

Lin Shi reached a point of peculiar excitement. “Perhaps if you can make her feel love… perhaps her will to live can be sparked. She might accept herself, accept you, and it’s not impossible that she might actually wake up.”

Lin Shi was extremely invigorated; “love” seemed to be a major breakthrough for her research.

CROSS used quantum algorithms to build a system that transmitted human consciousness into a virtual world. In that world, virtual entities lived as if they were truly part of a breathing, living world.

But it was only “as if” or “just like”.

Gu Xizhou and Su Zhiyi had entered so many times, but only this time did it feel like the virtual world had truly come to life.

Gu Xizhou’s head was buzzing; she could no longer hear Lin Shi’s words. She took a deep breath and stepped toward the adjacent lab.

Under the bright corridor lights, wrapped in her bath towel, she came to Su Zhiyi’s dormant pod. Staring through the glass at that pale, fragile face submerged in nutrient solution, her heart throbbed with pain.

The gentle, refined woman in her memory was now like a perfume lily with its life force drained—dehydrated and soaking in a nutrient tank, leaving behind only a shell of a body.

Because of the jump from the building, her spinal cord’s central nervous system was damaged, resulting in high-level paralysis. Even if she woke up, Su Zhiyi would spend the rest of her life in bed.

But it didn’t matter…

It didn’t matter…

As long as she was alive, as long as Gu Xizhou could still smell her pheromones, she was willing to do anything.

Gu Xizhou quickly cleaned up and sat with Lin Shi at the CROSS central station to analyze Su Zhiyi’s segment of data. The good news made Gu Xizhou very happy; she even ate a little more of her boxed meal.

As the two discussed 1122, Gu Xizhou thought back to her second entry into the simulated world and asked a question out of confusion: “When I exited the pod the first time, was the 1122 world still running?”

Lin Shi nodded, giving a firm answer. “Yes. To ensure authenticity, the time progression in the virtual world remains synchronized with our reality.” Lin Shi added with a hint of pride, “If it wasn’t realistic enough, Miss Zhiyi wouldn’t believe it, right?”

The doubt in Gu Xizhou’s heart vanished. She nodded in understanding. “That’s true…”

Thanks to Lin Shi’s meticulousness, Su Zhiyi’s numb, frozen consciousness finally showed signs of fluctuation.

Regarding the settings, Gu Xizhou thought of Yan Qing. “By the way, that classmate in the 1122 class named Yan Qing—do you have her data? Why don’t I remember there being a student named Yan Qing in our class back then?”

Lin Shi thought carefully before answering, “To build such a realistic virtual world, we need the archives and databases of billions of people. It’s possible that before Miss Zhiyi awakened, a deviation occurred in the world. I’ll look into this person’s trajectory later.”

Gu Xizhou nodded, finished her meal hastily, and stripped off her clothes, preparing to enter the dormant pod again.

Lin Shi grabbed Gu Xizhou, looking at her thin, pale face with great concern. “Boss, you just came out. Such continuous consumption is going to be too much for your body to handle. Besides, your rut is coming up soon. Why don’t you wait until after the rut to go back in?”

At the beginning of the last century, a global plague broke out. It resulted in a condition where if an Alpha marked an Omega, or engaged in excessive intimate exchange with the same Omega, they would likely enter a rut one week after the Omega’s heat.

Gu Xizhou had contracted this rutting condition when she was thirty. She had not marked Su Zhiyi, yet she had unfortunately become an Alpha with a rut.

Before Su Zhiyi jumped, she could rely on intimacy with her to pass the rut. But after the jump, as her body functions withered along with her silenced consciousness, Gu Xizhou could only get through by using pheromone suppressants extracted from Su Zhiyi’s glands.

Pheromones are, in a sense, the source of life for an Omega. If the body remains dormant and the glands wither, and if pheromones are constantly harvested, even with CROSS maintaining her, Su Zhiyi wouldn’t be able to hold on in the nutrient tank for twenty years.

The situation for Gu Xizhou, as an Alpha, was even worse. Without Su Zhiyi’s pheromones, she would lose her mind during the rut and eventually die in an outburst, like any wild beast that has lost its mate.

Of course, for an Alpha, this situation is easily solved. One only needs to mark another Omega and spend their heat together to fix everything.

It was obvious, however, that Gu Xizhou was completely unable to mark anyone else. She couldn’t even bring herself to mark Su Zhiyi, let alone another Omega. This meant that when Su Zhiyi’s life faded, if Gu Xizhou was unwilling to live on and mark someone else, she would reach the end of her life right along with her.

Their lives were bound together by the entanglement of pheromones. It seemed to be the destiny of their souls.

To sustain Su Zhiyi’s life, Gu Xizhou had not harvested too many pheromones over the years. During the three-day rut, she usually only used one suppressant on the most severe second day. On the first and last days, she endured solely through willpower. Since Su Zhiyi had entered the nutrient tank, Gu Xizhou’s health had deteriorated daily.

An Alpha without an Omega is like a fish that has lost its source of water, flopping alone in a dried-up pond, destined to die one day under the agony of the blazing sun.

Lin Shi knew this well. For years, as she and Gu Xizhou calibrated CROSS, it was not just to complete research but also to save Gu Xizhou. After all, back then, it was Gu Xizhou who had saved her from a mentor who was plagiarizing her academic results and suppressing her.

If possible, she still hoped Gu Xizhou and Su Zhiyi could have a happy ending.

Her concern was obvious, but Gu Xizhou, blinded by joy, said dismissively, “It’s fine. There are still two days, right? After two days, if anything goes wrong, you can just wake me up directly.”

Now that she knew Su Zhiyi’s consciousness was truly attached to the virtual entity, she didn’t want to wait a single moment. Even if it was a false world, she wanted to see her Zhiyi again.

Her excitement was too vivid for Lin Shi to stop her. Lin Shi could only compromise: “Alright. If something really happens, I’ll wake you up.”

“Yes. Remember, you must.”

A moment later, Gu Xizhou lay back in the nutrient tank, linking her consciousness to the virtual world. Searching for the brainwaves originating from the same source as hers, she descended into the 1122 body.

She knew that when she woke up this time, she would see a brand-new world.