Chapter 419 The Truth of the World

Just when the atmosphere was just right, a voice suddenly interrupted from behind the two: “Did I come at a bad time?”

Both of them paused.

Ling Mo turned around and saw Monica with an expression like a good cabbage had been trampled by a pig, pitying the two of them.

He squinted his eyes: “If you have self-awareness, you should quietly leave instead of choosing to disturb us.”

Monica chuckled, “But I really have something important to tell you that might change your perspective on the whole world.”

Xia Xinyan returned to her original mood and asked, “What is it?”

“Does that mean I can stay?” Monica raised an eyebrow.

Ling Mo took a deep breath: “Can you stop with the nonsense when we’re talking business?”

Monica let out a laugh and leaned closer to the two: “Give me a chair, something comfortable.”

Ling Mo simply conjured a single sofa for her.

Monica settled onto the sofa comfortably, stretched, and opened her mouth: “When we were at that castle, I always felt something was off. I just confirmed it while examining that meat canister—uh… how should I put it? This Experiment Site is quite something.”

Xia Xinyan’s tone also took on a hint of impatience: “Stop beating around the bush.”

This girl really liked to drag things out. From her character, it didn’t fit her seemingly lofty status. Xia Xinyan truly disliked this aspect of hers.

Upon hearing this, Monica no longer held back: “Okay, I’ll get straight to the point. Brace yourselves—you’re both dead.”

Ling Mo: “?”

Xia Xinyan also didn’t react: “What?”

“Um… that might not be entirely accurate,” Monica thought for two seconds and continued, “You should be dead, but you’re not completely dead.”

“Can you use normal language?” Ling Mo frowned slightly.

Monica instead asked them a question: “What do you think this… this Dark Zone world really is?”

“Didn’t you say this world is a dimension similar to our original one? Then the two dimensions collided?” Xia Xinyan asked, confused. “Does that mean it’s a parallel world?”

“Exactly,” Monica nodded, “I used to think this Dark Zone world and your normal world were two dimensions that formed a twin world after a collision. Those two overlapping worlds, under an emergency protection mechanism, didn’t lead to destruction, but instead made this protection mechanism guide you to solve this tumor of a world as a game.”

After a pause, she shook her head: “But now, I suddenly realize that the reality you’re in is just a shadow of a world. To explain further… it’s like a shortcut in a computer, born out of another world’s essence. Although it became relatively independent after birth, if the original world is completely destroyed, the shortcut’s pointer will also cease to exist. At that time, this shortcut will become a useless file. Do you understand?”

Xia Xinyan mostly understood her meaning.

But she found it hard to believe the truth she expressed.

“You mean…”

“Exactly,” Monica nodded, pointing below, “This world is the original existing real world, and the so-called reality you speak of is merely a shadow detached before the world’s destruction. But because the shadow cannot completely exist independently, the two worlds formed this twin state. I really was deceived initially—well, mainly because I had never seen such a situation before. Tsk, I’ve learned something new.”

In fact, this truth had already hinted at several times before. For example, the Dark Zone world is the destructive version of the real world. In the Dark Zone, you can find anything that existed in reality, but the time of destruction was likely several years ago, which also suggests when this great disaster occurred.

What truly made Monica discover this issue was still that castle. Others might not feel it, but she could clearly sense that the castle was surrounded by a strong informational entanglement, which is the source existing to support the world’s operation, and after the world was destroyed, it infected this destructive aura—this could be easily inferred. It wasn’t only the castle that had this massive informational entanglement, but rather it was because this place had such a heavy informational entanglement that the demons in this area evolved so rapidly.

However, in this informational entanglement, she sensed all were the so-called informational streams from the reality world—under normal circumstances, this absolutely shouldn’t occur. Even if the parallel dimensions developed completely similarly, they are fundamentally independent worlds, and the informational stream is a unique special information flow for each world, akin to human DNA; it can appear extremely similar, but will never be identical.

And this Dark Zone world has an informational flow that is completely consistent with the reality world.

Combined with some clues found in this world earlier, Monica formed this conjecture, which is why she just went to verify with the meat canister—of course, not asking it, but probing into its soul to trace the origin. This ability can directly detect its entire race’s early state, although it’s quite damaging, so under non-essential circumstances, Monica usually wouldn’t use it.

But since it was a meat canister, it didn’t matter.

As for the detection result—she witnessed a world’s destruction firsthand.

The answer was self-evident.

The informational flows of the two worlds being completely identical was simply because that reality world was a shadow copied by the world’s protection mechanism at the last moment. Because it itself was not an independent world, it needed the Dark Zone world to provide the information flow to maintain existence.

“So, when you first entered the Dark Zone world and saw those wandering undead or zombies in the streets, they were actually you after death.” Monica had a somewhat enigmatic expression. “This truth might be a bit hard for you to accept, but… I still intend to tell you.”

Since this was such a truth, many things would be different.

Xia Xinyan fell silent for a moment, then calmly asked, “Then why are we still alive?”

“Because the world’s protection mechanism copied the entire world, including all the living beings in it,” Monica replied seriously. “Even if it’s a shadow, you are real living beings. Whether it’s your soul or body, it’s all consistent with the original world, so you can consider your actual birth date as the copying date, and the real you is already dead. But… according to the definition of life forms in creation science—if two beings share the same body, soul, memories, and everything else, then those two beings are the same existence, so you don’t need to get hung up on it.”

Xia Xinyan nodded: “Got it.”