Chapter 0: The Grand Finale (1)
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Who am I?
Where am I?
What am I doing?
Why do I feel like I’m floating in space, gradually drifting away from Earth in a cloud of existential despair?
So cold…
…
You see, after slaying the Broad-eyed Heavenly King, Lin Nan’s memories of entering the game as an NPC were revived, but ever since Frost North Snow, who dates back thousands of years, seized her body, everything about Lin Nan got trapped in her mind like a bad case of mental claustrophobia.
It’s like Lin Nan became a side character in Frost North Snow’s life story, with the main personality squeezing her into the last remaining corner of the mind, making it nearly impossible for her to take control back.
Drifting in this dark and endless void for what felt like eons, Lin Nan slowly began to grasp her predicament.
At this moment, she could only see flickers of the world outside through Frost North Snow’s eyes and hear muffled sounds that were as clear as mud.
But after listening to Many’s analysis, she couldn’t help but be astounded.
She never expected Frost North Snow to be so patient; she was like a hunter with the endurance of a sloth, lying there for days on end but only springing into action when her prey showed up.
So, the mystery arises: how did Lin Nan, the side character, come into existence?
What on Earth happened when Frost North Snow crashed onto Earth?
As it stood, Lin Nan was merely a fragment of a memory, much like data stored on a hard drive.
All those twenty-some years in the real world made her who she was, along with all her good and bad habits.
Without those, Lin Nan wouldn’t even exist in this world.
She dived deeper into Frost North Snow’s mind, desperately seeking clues tied to her origins.
Finally, in a shadowy corner, Lin Nan stumbled upon a fragmented memory that seemed to explain everything.
Way back when, Frost North Snow staged her own d*ath to leave the Asking Dao Continent. However, the passage between the two hives was as stable as a wobbly table, akin to a bee wanting to traverse several kilometers between two different hives of varying species—an obvious struggle.
When Frost North Snow finally landed in Earth’s dimension, she burned up nearly all her energy, practically turning her body into confetti in the process, leaving only a tiny blob of mental energy packed with memories.
To survive, she made a snap decision to possess a human infant, effectively freezing her memories solid to prevent them from exploding into the kid’s mind one day and causing a mental breakdown.
And that baby was Lin Nan.
Frost North Snow’s consciousness blended perfectly with the blank slate of the baby boy—karma at its weirdest.
After that, Lin Nan behaved just like any other child, showing no signs of being controlled by an ancient entity from another dimension.
He grew up blissfully and then embarked on the arduous journey of student life.
After graduating college and landing a job, his parents started stressing about his marriage. Lin Nan, however, wasn’t in a rush; he figured he’d milk his youth for all it was worth. Plus, finding a suitable girl in the big city was about as easy as herding cats.
Just when he thought life would trudge on like a never-ending slice-of-life movie, the very first virtual reality game, “The Way of Inquiry,” hit the market.
Fueled by his love for gaming, Lin Nan was among the first to snatch up a Game Pod.
Little did he know, the company behind the game had ties to a lower deity that was the first to enter this dimension.
Although the lower deity had left eons ago, the loyal crew still yearned to bridge the gap between their hive and the realm of the gods.
The lower deity had left behind a hefty tome for the cultists, filled with secret codes revealing its true meaning—getting it too easily made it hard to believe it was real; it had to be wrapped in mystery. The harder they worked to discover it, the more they believed in its authenticity.
In the lower deity’s words, another dimension was a divine realm where anyone could become a god and live eternally.
After hundreds of years of study, the cultists discovered the secrets in the scriptures were not fiction—they really did find a passage that opened up somewhere on Earth. They spent decades figuring out its appearance patterns and, when the portal appeared, they blasted a signal through, hoping to connect to that shiny divine realm.
To their sheer excitement, after several tries, someone on the other side responded.
Want to step into the world of the gods? Sure!
Want to become a god? No problem!
But first, they needed to keep expanding the portal to accommodate larger, more energized life forms in an exchange.
Thus, the next generation of the lower deity’s followers founded a gaming company and eventually came up with the so-called virtual reality game “The Way of Inquiry.” In truth, the Game Pod served as a temporary transport device shifting human bodies to the Asking Dao Continent since everyone on Earth carried the lower deity’s genes, allowing them to hop back and forth.
After a series of trial and error, they finally uncovered a stable route and steadily amplified the game’s capacity.
To keep their operation under wraps, once someone vanished into the Game Pod, it would lock shut tighter than a clam, making it impossible for outsiders to uncover the truth inside.
As for the subsequent release of simpler game helmets, the mechanics were even more straightforward. By that time, the company had already prepped for a massive influx of humans into the Asking Dao Continent. Before that day struck, they’d managed to develop a virtual reality game that synchronized almost perfectly with that realm.
Players using game helmets were genuinely playing a game—not frolicking in another dimension.
Until the day arrived when they were all hurled into the Asking Dao Continent, facing daunting survival challenges.
And there lay Lin Nan, enthusiastically diving into the Game Pod as one of the first official players.
But the moment Lin Nan transported to the Asking Dao Continent, the memories of Frost North Snow hidden deep in his mind began to rattle violently, resonating with her mother, the East Sea Underground Palace.
Frost North Snow had been missing for a century. And since time in the two dimensions operated on different clocks, voilà—chaos ensues.
The East Sea Underground Palace had always regarded Frost North Snow as its most magnificent creation. But ever since her disappearance, it had been as if it lost its soul.
Although it created Lu Nan Yu afterward, that failure masquerading as a boy didn’t bring comfort; it just made the palace even more nostalgic for its lost daughter Frost North Snow.
So, when Lin Nan appeared on the continent, the East Sea Underground Palace quickly discovered him and snatched him up into his mother’s belly—right into the Sighs Temple.
After a month, Lin Nan’s body was reformed into Frost North Snow.
Yes, that’s how the second Frost North Snow came to be.
