Enlightenment
"Starlight is fake."
Gao Gong muttered to himself.
He had fallen into an extremely strange state.
This state wasn't quite like "sudden enlightenment." Compared to the various changes in perspective, perception, and even the nature of life brought about by ascension, this state didn't involve any transformation on that level.
If he had to describe it, it was more like a "rewrite" of his self-perception.
That's right. This state was very similar to the one that had afflicted some unlucky fellow named Luo Ji when he realized the Dark Forest theory.
And profound truths often didn't require particularly complicated principles.
Gao Gong recalled scene after scene from his journey since transmigrating—from the Iron Sand Desert, to leaving Cracked Star, and then to the present; from the miserable state of smuggling into the City That Never Sleeps, to the perfect fulfillment that came after successfully ascending; from when he had first been the owner of a cybernetic prosthetics repair shop and met his first player, Baozi, to the countless billions of players under his command...
The scenes flashed past like frames from a movie. Considering the strength of Gao Gong's nervous system, these "frames" were even clearer than 4K.
Sometimes, Gao Gong even suspected that the experiences in the "game" were the real ones, while the so-called "offline" world was actually the false one.
But after "unboxing" Ji-jie offline, he felt that this matter was probably real too. Under such circumstances, reconstructing his self-perception was unavoidable.
Between online and offline, which one was real?
Which parts of the experiences from his "previous life" overlapped with those of this life, and which didn't?
Was his behavior driven by his own will, or manipulated by some "invisible big hand," such as the system?
Under normal circumstances, Gao Gong wouldn't have fallen into