Who Is God?

"Ye Lin, did you think of something!?"

He Zheng asked excitedly. When Ye Lin nodded in confirmation, hope rekindled in his heart like embers flaring back to life.

Good! He knew the kid hadn't just been spacing out!

"I did think of a few things, but I need to confirm something first. In the Death Exam, once a question is issued, there will always be an answer, right? Even if the question changes midway?"

He Zheng froze at the question, then nodded firmly without hesitation.

"Yes!"

"No matter how difficult it is, the system always gives us a chance to survive. I've even heard people say that, theoretically, as long as you find the answer, everyone can survive-even in supernatural scenarios!"

"Ye Lin, have you figured out how to kill all the Species!?"

Ye Lin neither confirmed nor denied it, but He Zheng's assurance dispelled the last trace of doubt in his mind.

"Yes and no."

Ye Lin spoke as he thought, quickly putting his explanation together.

"The base is too big. Even setting aside whether we're capable of it, what if some Species are hiding in a corner somewhere? So unless we can destroy the entire base, we can't kill them all."

"You mean... there might be a self-destruct mechanism here?"

He Zheng blurted it out, instantly recalling the movies he had watched. Right. If there were bombs here, it might actually be possible.

The moment he finished, Ye Lin rejected his guess.

"No, there isn't. Even if there were, it would have to be a nuclear bomb. But I don't think those 'gods' could withstand a nuclear explosion, and the system didn't ask us to kill all of them."

"Besides, if we actually detonated a nuclear bomb, we'd die too."

"Then what exactly do you mean?"

He Zheng looked bewildered, and the others were equally confused.

Thud, thud! Thud, thud!

Heavy footsteps thundered down in the distance.

A "god" was moving.

Everyone's expression changed. As though something had set him off, Wang Yuanyang suddenly stood up and aimed his gun straight at Ye Lin.

He hadn't understood a single word from beginning to end. Gripped by fear, all he wanted now was to get out of here.

"Are you all fucking insane!? Why are we still wasting time listening to his bullshit!?"

"If he really had a solution, he would've told us already!"

Wang Yuanyang swore furiously, constantly turning to look at the door. At that moment, he felt he was about to lose his mind!

"Fuck you! Let him finish!"

Thump!

Furious that Wang Yuanyang had dared threaten Ye Lin with a gun, He Zheng kicked him to the floor.

Although he didn't know what Ye Lin was trying to say either, everything he had seen of him so far convinced him that Ye Lin would never make baseless claims!

All his hopes rested on Ye Lin. If Wang Yuanyang went berserk, he might as well be trying to kill him.

"Huang Liang!"

Zhao Cheng hurriedly drew his gun, instinctively pointing it at He Zheng.

Although they were all in the same boat, deep down, he considered Huang Liang, who had been leading them all along, one of his own. Ye Lin and the others were a separate group.

"Everyone, stop! What are you doing!? You want to fight among yourselves at a time like this?"

Huang Liang hurriedly pushed Zhao Cheng's gun down.

Seeing that Wang Yuanyang had lost all reason and was still trying to get up and fight, he could only rush over and restrain him.

"Ye Lin...!"

"If you really have figured something out, I hope you'll tell us directly instead of pursuing some other agenda!"

Not wanting a confrontation, Huang Liang gave Ye Lin that "reminder" with a grim expression.

His attitude toward Ye Lin was complicated. He believed Ye Lin had probably thought of something, but Ye Lin was also a convicted killer serving a heavy sentence. He had remained wary of him from the start.

Recognizing Huang Liang's suspicion that he had ulterior motives, Ye Lin chuckled, unbothered.

"I'm telling you all this because I need you to understand, then trust me completely and do what I say."

"After all, you probably won't be able to accept the answer."

"We have enough time, but that might change if someone interrupts me again."

Huang Liang's expression stiffened. He took a deep breath and looked at Ye Lin.

"Go ahead!"

"As long as the solution works, I'll do it, whatever it is!"

"Good."

Ye Lin nodded, meeting Huang Liang's eyes.

"Where do you think we are right now?"

Where?

Huang Liang froze, then quickly blurted out his answer.

"Some underground research base. Maybe a military facility, possibly somewhere in North America. No... we might not even be in our own timeline. No country has technology like this."

Neither their precise location nor the time could be determined.

After answering, Huang Liang stared hard into Ye Lin's eyes. He didn't know why Ye Lin had changed the subject.

To his surprise, after hearing his answer, Ye Lin's gaze became incredibly complicated, as though even he couldn't accept the truth.

"No. We're not underground, and we're not on Earth."

"We're on..."

"Venus."

"More precisely, we're in the atmosphere, seventy to ninety-five kilometers above Venus's surface."

"What!?"

Everyone was horrified. Huang Liang and He Zheng alike stared at him as though he were insane.

"Ye Lin, what the hell are you talking about!? This is clearly an underground base! How could we be up in the sky!?"

They couldn't comprehend a single word he was saying. If he had said they were in a parallel world, they could have understood that.

But how could this be Venus, let alone its atmosphere?

Unable to imagine being high in the sky on a planet as hellish as Venus, even He Zheng couldn't accept it.

Having anticipated their reactions, Ye Lin remained calm and spoke quickly.

"Shocking, isn't it? When I thought of it, I couldn't believe it either. But it's the truth."

"If you want evidence, I'll give it to you."

"Sulfuric acid, low temperatures, the sudden suction, the pyramid structure, the oxygen supply system, and the rotating 'rooms.'"

"First, sulfuric acid."

"Initially, I thought the sulfuric acid was there to defend against the Species. But there wasn't any on Huang Liang's side."

"And Venus's atmosphere happens to contain sulfuric acid solutions with concentrations of seventy-five to ninety-eight percent."

"Of course, that's a stretch. It isn't enough to prove anything."

"Then there's the second point: low temperatures."

"Again, I originally thought the system deliberately made the combination lock cold enough to give our fingers frostbite, to increase the difficulty."

"But coincidentally, the temperature at an altitude of around eighty kilometers on Venus is about minus seventy-six degrees."

"And the suction that appeared after the door opened was very much like a pressure imbalance caused by a damaged airlock."

"Air pressure!?"

In the corner, Hu Jia suddenly stood up, his eyes full of shock.

He hadn't meant to interrupt Ye Lin. This was something he had wondered about too.

As the last one through the door, he had seen how the suction appeared. At the time, he had also thought it might be some kind of physical phenomenon, but he had never examined it closely.

Once Ye Lin said it, realization struck him, and he understood instantly.

"Yes! I thought it seemed like that too! All the sulfuric acid-no, even the air was sucked away!"

At the same time, He Zheng turned deathly pale as he remembered the frost-covered door.

"What else?"

Huang Liang frowned, gesturing for Ye Lin to continue.

Unlike He Zheng and the others, who had experienced these things, he hadn't seen any of them.

"Third, the pyramid structure."

"If we really were underground, the base should be shaped like an inverted triangle. Wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, to minimize pressure. Assuming a symmetrical structure, the scenarios on the same level should be identical. But clearly, the upper section doesn't have that much space. To keep us separated, the system could only put you on the next level down."

"But if the base is on Venus, the situation is completely reversed. Venus's atmosphere is dense. As long as the bottom is large enough, the base can float like a boat on water."

"Fourth, the oxygen supply system."

"The air here is stale. At first, I thought a complete power failure had caused problems with the ventilation. But the power works normally in both the Armory and the hibernation area."

"That means the oxygen here simply isn't being replenished."

"Fifth, the rotating rooms."

At that point, Ye Lin suddenly stopped. The reason was simple: he didn't need to explain this one. With his professional training, Huang Liang had certainly seen something similar.

"An artificial gravity device... a centrifuge!"

"Those rotating rooms are used to simulate gravity!?"

Huang Liang's expression changed drastically, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

Ye Lin didn't need to say any more. He even understood why Ye Lin had been so concerned about a single drop of water!

The drop fell more slowly because Venus's gravity was only ninety percent of Earth's.

The rotation here wasn't particularly fast, and the gravity it generated was only enough to bring the total to around ninety-five percent. That small increase in gravity would only make sense on Venus.

Venus. They really were on this hellish planet...

Huang Liang turned his head stiffly.

At that moment, he felt as though he could see through the walls to the world outside.

It was a dense, oppressive expanse of murky yellow, with thick clouds of sulfuric acid churning endlessly through the atmosphere.

Blue-white lightning stretched across vast distances, vaporizing the sea of acid.

Acid rain that had persisted for hundreds of millions of years shrouded the entire world, yet could never extinguish the fires on the ground.

"So..."

"So what do we do...?"

Unable to put his shock into words, Huang Liang felt as though he were aboard a tiny, precarious boat that might be torn apart at any moment.

He couldn't understand how Ye Lin had worked all this out. Only now did he truly realize what the ** in that file meant.

"Haven't I already told you the answer?"

Ignoring everyone's reactions, Ye Lin let out a soft breath and casually pointed beyond the door.

"Since we're on Venus, all we need to do is damage the airlock. Every Species will be sucked outside and die in the sulfuric acid clouds."

"And those 'gods' have stronger bodies, so they won't die as quickly after being sucked out."

The solution was exceedingly simple, yet it struck everyone like a blow to the head.

After a brief daze, Zhao Cheng came to his senses, his lips trembling and his mind a jumble.

"Then... what about us?"

"How do we survive? And how do we damage the airlock?"

After one shock after another, he could no longer think.

He could imagine the scene. Once the airlock was damaged, the pressure difference between the inside and outside would turn the entire base into a balloon, with air rushing out. The Species would die instantly after being sucked into the sulfuric acid clouds.

But what about them? What were they supposed to do, and how could they damage the airlock?

The base was enormous and built entirely from alloy. Breaking through by force was impossible, and they didn't know where to find the airlock.

Looking at everyone, Ye Lin smiled, a trace of self-mockery in his expression.

"That's simple. So simple that it's actually exactly the same as the previous answer."

"Come to think of it, I should've realized it long ago."

Ye Lin suddenly picked up the glowing ring from the table and held it in front of himself.

"Actually, from the beginning, I've been wondering what those murals meant. I wondered whether they were hinting that we needed to find a particular god, or imitate a god."

"After all, that line in the hint pointed us in a very obvious direction, and it really was useful."

"'People forgot where the gods came from, but remembered what they looked like...'"

"But I thought it was too simple. Hu Jia's conclusion was wrong too, and using the glowing ring wasn't right either, so I gave up on that idea."

"But..."

Ye Lin looked toward the doorway, where the Species were clawing frantically at the door, shrieking like evil spirits.

"Maybe the answer really is that simple."

Seeing that the others still didn't understand, he simply picked up the glass from the floor, placed it over the glowing ring, and held them in front of himself.

"Don't you think I look a lot like someone right now?"

As his words fell, Huang Liang's pupils abruptly contracted. In an instant, his hair stood on end, and his scalp felt as though it were exploding.

To him, Ye Lin holding the glowing ring and glass in front of his face looked as though he were wearing a luminous face mask.

Remembering the first picture he had seen, and the box in that picture, his head rang, and he could barely stay on his feet.

He knew. He knew what the answer was!

"Looks like you've figured it out."

Ye Lin nodded and lowered the glowing ring.

"The system explicitly told us there were gods here. It even gave us eleven murals to show us what they looked like. But the ones in the Hibernation Pods aren't gods, and the people in the base don't look like them either."

"Then who else could they be?"

As he spoke, a strange gleam flashed through Ye Lin's eyes.

He asked the question and answered it himself.

"Come to think of it, it's a fascinating story."

"In this world, or on this timeline, humans landed on Venus at some point."

"To study how to survive on Venus, or whatever else they were up to, they conducted genetic experiments here."

"When they first built the base, conditions were primitive. They had to wear protective gear to conduct their experiments."

"And the Species were the first test subjects."

"Humans in spacesuits were like creators to the Species. From the moment the Species came into being, that image was etched deep into their genes."

"They feared them, revered them, worshipped them as gods."

"So."

Ye Lin smiled.

"So, as long as you connect those three questions-how to survive, what to find, and how to kill all the Species... the answer becomes obvious."

"God is the Astronaut."

"Find a spacesuit. Open the airlock."

"Game over."

The answer was so simple it seemed absurd.

But on closer thought, whether they wanted to kill the Species or survive after the airlock was damaged, this seemed to be their only option.

In the silence, Hu Jia suddenly rose from a corner and stammered:

"B-but if that's true, then why did that line say... people had forgotten where God came from?"

"If God is the Astronaut, the people here couldn't possibly have 'forgotten'..."

Everyone froze, then turned to Ye Lin together. Hu Jia's question had reminded them, too.

It seemed inconsequential, but there was indeed a flaw in the logic.

Ye Lin fell silent for a moment, then smiled:

"That's why... I said this story was so fascinating."

"Maybe the people here haven't forgotten. Maybe we're the ones who forgot."

"From the very beginning of humanity, perhaps we, too, have seen 'them.'"

"It's just..."

"We took them for gods."

Ye Lin lowered his head to look at the pictures carved into the floor with bullets.

Christ, Buddha, the Saint, Apollo...

These gods originated in different civilizations and were found in every corner of the world. Yet people had all, independently, drawn rings behind their heads.