Chapter 65
Yin Nian followed Thunder Unit all the way to their base. Xiao Jin and Ah Kong finally realized that there were traces of strange ambiance between their captain and Yin Nian from the way they interacted with each other. When Captain and Dr. Yin walked together, the whole atmosphere turned strange.
Xiao Jin went up and asked in an embarrassed tone, “Captain, have you known Dr. Yin before? I mean before you met him in Hope Base.”
Zhang Zhiyin had yet to think about how he should explain when Yin Nian was already perceptive and answered directly, “Yes, I grew up with your captain when I was young. Something happened in the apocalypse and I lost him. At that time in Hope Base, he wasn’t very happy, so he pretended not to know me.” This remark was extremely ambiguous, and the pause in the middle of the sentence implied infinite secrets.
Xiao Jin suddenly remembered that Dr. Yin was also a space ability user.
He instantly understood as if he had comprehended something.
Within two days, everyone received a secret order; transfer the captain of the Thunder Unit and the selected 12 elite members back to the alliance headquarters, the Deputy Manager would stay behind to take care of the rest.
Others wondered what had happened and made guesses in succession but Zhang Zhiyin suddenly realized that the original plot had already reached this point, Yun Lietian was likely to be dead.
In the main plot of the game, it had been introduced that Yun Lietian led his team to an abandoned city occupied by zombies in the west to search for something, resulting in his death. At that time, the leader of the Cloud Sky Alliance, Yun Lietian, was still the strongest human in the Human Alliance. He had the strength nearly of a Level 9, and his followers were also powerful Level 7 ability users. Thus, the mysterious city was then called “Fallen City”. Players had predicted that the map of “Fallen City” and the hidden instance on the west side of the Valley of the Extinct Dragon would be opened at the same time.
After that, the successor of Human Alliance, Yun Lietian’s son, Yunchu, who was originally at the peak of Level 7 would implement a series of measures to stabilize the alliance. One of the first measures was to secretly recall the elite forces of the twelve teams and turn them into the sharpest swords they could have in their hands.
After receiving the news, Zhang Zhiyin chose twelve people and left by themselves. The others, led by Chen Guang, remained in the station. Yin Nian naturally followed him.
That night, Zhang Zhiyin was tidying up in his room. Yin Nian suddenly appeared out of nowhere and leaned against him. “Zhiyin, it’s time to go back and drink pumpkin juice for the evening.”
Zhang Zhiyin had not responded yet when sleepiness abruptly struck. He closed his eyes and fell into darkness. When he opened them again, it was already bright.
Yin Nian leaned over him and said quietly, “Good morning, it is still me when you wake up. Whatever the world is, you will always see me.” He had a very proud look. He kissed Zhang Zhiyin stealthily before he got out of bed and went to wash up.
It was Saturday, and Zhang Zhiyin could rest. Yin Nian still had to work overtime for half a day longer. He could only come back when it was 3 p.m.
Zhang Zhiyin did not forget that Yin Nian said in<Tomorrow> that he wanted to drink pumpkin juice, so he got up and went to the nearby supermarket on foot to buy fresh pumpkins and other daily necessities that he lacked at home.
When he was making the payment, he got a call from Dayi asking him to meet for lunch.
Zhang Zhiyin bowed his head and thought about it. Anyway, Yin Nian would not be back until noon. Recently, because of Boss, he didn’t get to meet his friends, so he happily agreed.
Dayi asked him to a private restaurant near his home. They booked a small compartment and the atmosphere was quiet.
Seeing him coming, Dayi poured a cup of tea and asked him to order food. He never talked much, which made him look like he had loads of things in his mind.
When the dishes were served, he put down his chopsticks and looked at Zhang Zhiyin, slowly saying, “That Yin Nian at your side is not human. Zhiyin, looking at our years of friendship, you can consider that I have no loyalty toward you and had pitted you, you can blame me all you want but this time you have to let go, quickly pull out of this matter.”
The amount of information was a bit large, Zhang Zhiyin did not respond for a while.
He knew that Yin Nian was not human, but how did Dayi know? Where did the ‘pitted you’ come from? What did ‘pulling out of this matter’ means?
Dayi drank a mouthful of liquor, looked at Zhang Zhiyin and laughed bitterly. “I haven’t told you that your Yin Nian is a special kind of artificial intelligence. I am a member of its research team, and my mentor is the main person in charge of this project.”
Dayi gave a brief account of the origin of Yin Nian to Zhang Zhiyin, which was mostly what Yin Nian had said to Zhang Zhiyin at the beginning.
“Initially, we could track down yn427, that is, your Yin Nian, and find him active in the game where Dr. Y exists. He is in an overactive state, just like human beings when they are caught in love with their hormone overproducing, then I noticed your connection with him.”
Zhang Zhiyin was shocked when he heard this. He thought of many details that he used to ignore.
There are only two close friends around him, Dajia and Dayi, who knew that he played <Tomorrow> and fanatically liked the boss. Normally, his colleagues at work didn’t even know that he went home to play games.
When he first showed the tendency of looking for Yin Nian every day and interacting with the virtual image in the game, Dajia tried to prevent his unhealthy and abnormal behavior by taking him out to sing K, watch movies, eat with friends, introduce girlfriends, and so on. But although Dayi initially expressed a disapproving attitude, he always inadvertently gave something like “Everyone has some special hobbies which are normal”, “There is a famous XX who likes to collect beetles”, “The hobby of Zhiyin is no big deal, anyway, it does not affect his normal work and life”, “much better than Internet addicts.” ‘Well, he only went online for up to two hours a day anyway,” and so on.
Among them, Dayi was the oldest, most educated, most experienced, most prestigious and always rational among them. As a result, over time, they all regarded this as an irrelevant hobby of Zhang Zhiyin. No one paid special attention to it anymore, which indirectly encouraged Zhang Zhiyin to insist on his brushing action.
“When I found out, I made attempts to let others copy what you did, but when others and even the weak AI that were simulated chatted and hugged the image of Y in the game, yn427 did not even appear. He showed an disdaining attitude. It was unlike the times when he was facing you with such an active state. I was so enthusiastic at that time because I thought that I was contributing to the cause of human science and was taking another unprecedented step in the history of human science. I didn’t expect the result would be like this.”
