Somewhere Three Years Ago

Time: Three years ago --

Location: A ward in a hospital in S City.

Looking at the white ceiling in front of him, Mu Gaohan felt a wave of despair.

He had been staring at this monotonous scene for who knows how long, as if it had never changed in his entire life. Countless times, he tried to close his eyes or turn his head, but his stiff neck showed no sign of movement. Perhaps he would spend the rest of his life facing this pale white expanse.

Mu Gaohan is in a vegetative state. He was admitted to this hospital three weeks ago after a car accident. When he first opened his eyes and saw the white ceiling of the hospital, he felt that life was so wonderful. But now, he only feels helpless.

There was no other reason than that, although his life was not in danger, he had forever lost control of his body and become a vegetable. If that were all, perhaps things would not be so bad. If he were just in a coma and spent the rest of his life unconsciously, it might be considered a kind of luck. The worst thing was that Mu Gaohan could clearly feel what was happening around him, and through the slits of his eyes, he could also vaguely see the outside world.

He could hear sounds, however faint, and he could feel his body, the coldness of the glucose being injected, and the strange intrusive feeling of the nutrient solution being poured into his stomach.

However, he will never be able to recover further.

He was still conscious, but unable to do anything. This was probably the most despairing thing. For more than a moment, his heart was screaming wildly. Various discomforts in his body tormented him, and his inability to move tormented him, but he was helpless.

Was this how he was going to live his whole life? He couldn't remember how many times he had thought this in despair. Just as he was wallowing in self-pity, the sound of a door opening caught his attention.

Every day, the nurses would come to his ward three times to check on him, change his IV fluids, or simply come for a walk. Mu Gaohan had become so familiar with the exact time the nurses came each day that he remembered it perfectly. But this was clearly not now, and the footsteps sounded like they weren't coming from the same person.

Could someone be coming to visit him? The thought flashed through his mind, but Mu Gaohan immediately dismissed it. It was simple: he was an orphan with no relatives or friends. He had just quit his job in another city, wanting to start anew in this unfamiliar place, when he unexpectedly got into a car accident. He was unlucky enough to be in that situation. No one would come to visit him.

Sure enough, he heard a strange man's voice in his ears.

"Is this the last one?" the man said.

"That's right," the other woman said, "This is the last one. If this doesn't work either, you should give up on that pipe dream."

The man scoffed, "Hmph, how could you possibly understand my grand ideas?"

The sound grew closer and closer. Soon, Mu Gaohan saw the faces of a man and a woman standing in front of the hospital bed, looking down at him. His vision was very blurry, so he couldn't make out the features of the two faces, but he felt genuinely happy.

The next moment, however, the actions of the two people puzzled him. The man was holding a helmet-like object, which he handed to the woman beside him. Then, the man lifted his head, and the woman put the helmet-like object on his head. The helmet obscured his vision, and Mu Gaohan's vision was instantly plunged into darkness. The next second, he heard the sound of some kind of electronic device being activated. Immediately afterward, he suddenly felt a buzzing in his brain, and a feeling of falling into Abyss permeated his entire body, causing him to lose consciousness.

Suddenly, his vision brightened, and his consciousness returned to him. To his surprise, he found himself in a pure white space, surrounded by pure white colors.

Where was he? He looked around in surprise, and then he found that he could move his neck. Then he found that he could move his whole body.

A surge of joy welled up inside him. Oh my god, could he be healed? As he thought this, he glanced at his body. He was wearing a wrinkled suit, the same suit he had worn on the day of the car accident.

This puzzled him. Hadn't the doctor cut off his clothes during surgery at the hospital? And what kind of strange place was this?

Just as he was wondering, a voice suddenly rang out behind him.

"Hello, Mr. Mu Gaohan, right? It's funny to see you. To be honest, I thought you were like those other people before, that you had already lost your consciousness."

Mu Gaohan turned around abruptly and found two sofas in the pristine white space. On one of them sat a man in his fifties or sixties, holding a wine glass and raising it towards him.

Between the two sofas was a table laden with a fine Western meal: steak, toast, cream of mushroom soup, and a huge lobster in the center, its bright red color looking incredibly delicious, nestled among a few lettuce leaves and lemon.

"Please sit down. I bet you haven't eaten in a long time. Please enjoy your meal and don't be shy."

"Then I won't stand on ceremony."

As Mu Gaohan spoke, he sat down on the sofa, looking around with suspicion and uncertainty.

He didn't hesitate for long. He hadn't eaten or drunk anything for far too long, and these days he had been relying entirely on intravenous nutrition to stay alive, so he ate without hesitation.

The food was delicious, although it had a strange taste, as if it would melt in your mouth. Mu Gaohan ate all the food on the table in one go before he gradually recovered.

"I bet you have a lot of questions, right? Where is this place? Why are you here? And who am I? Hehe, don't worry, I'll answer them all for you." The man said as he poured Mu Gaohan a glass of wine.

The man seemed very wise; before Mu Gaohan could even speak, he had already voiced the question in Mu Gaohan's mind.

"First, let me introduce myself. My name is Li Mingfei, and I'm the owner of a game company. Have you heard of 'brainless games'?"

Mu Gaohan nodded. "Light brain games, also known as holographic virtual reality games, have been one of the hottest topics online in recent years. It's said that some people have already researched them and even conducted some small-scale tests, but for some reason, they haven't been widely promoted. I've heard of them, but weren't they supposed to still be in the experimental stage?"

Li Mingfei nodded. "That's right, but it won't be long before it starts operating. In fact, the game's technology is already mature. There are just some details that need to be negotiated with government departments, so it can't be publicly launched yet. However, small-scale applications have already been implemented. In fact, what you are in right now is an independent virtual world. How about that? Pretty realistic, isn't it?"

"This... this is a virtual world?" Mu Gaohan glanced around in surprise. Indeed, such a pure white world could only be explained as a virtual world. He touched his body. "It really feels real." The next second, he suddenly realized something, and his face turned deathly pale. "Wait a minute, if this is a virtual world, then I'm still lying in a hospital room?"