"Given that the overall probability of survival is fixed, if I live, that means someone else has to die. I might even have to actively kill innocent people to eliminate threats... Under that premise, how should I choose?"
"Who's been feeding you this nonsense? Instead of wasting time thinking about this and that, you'd be better off memorizing more walkthroughs and training your puzzle-solving skills."
"So what's the answer to that question?"
"There is no answer. Just follow your heart. Next time someone asks you something like that, slap them twice and see if they're still spouting nonsense."
"..."
Eerie Investigation Bureau, Jiang City Branch.
Ning Xu left the medical ward and headed straight down the corridor, turning into a small room that few people ever visited.
The plaque on the door reading "Archives" was covered in a thin layer of dust, but once she pushed it open, the room inside was clean and orderly.
A massive monitor refreshed the activity on the game forums in real time. Various interaction logs scrolled across the screen, while posts containing relevant keywords were singled out and highlighted in red. The program automatically began analyzing the posters' IP addresses.
After encountering supernatural events, many people always assumed they were the protagonists of some story—or, at worst, one of the rare few who had risen above the ordinary masses. Unfortunately, from the moment these "protagonists" came into contact with the extraordinary, they had been under the Federation's watchful eye.
"The Federation is watching you." This phrase had originally been a novelist's alarmist exaggeration, but with the advancement of technology, reality had long surpassed it. [Note]
As the real-name registration system on the internet became more comprehensive, virtually anyone who left a trace online would enter the Federation's official field of vision, bathed in the