The living dead of Exile City?

Jiang Ye was about to ask Lord Leopard more questions.

But Lord Leopard’s eyes narrowed, and the eerie glyph patterns around his eye sockets shifted, giving off an unusually sinister aura.

Under that grim atmosphere, Lord Leopard curled his lip and smiled, “Kid, you’re a curious one, huh?”

As he spoke, he meaningfully glanced at Song Jie with the corner of his eye, then, with complete self-assurance, said:

“Show me your Data Panel.”

emmm…

Being asked to reveal his Data Panel was not unfamiliar to Jiang Ye.

When Wang Lingling and Gao Chang had formed their “mutual aid group,” every member had to display their Data Panel and register their gifts.

But now…

Even though he was still only a clone, Jiang Ye was not prepared to submit.

After all, this Zhou Qiming clone of his possessed an SSS-tier talent!

Although that weird SSS-tier ability, Holds Grudges, seemed to have no real worth.

Still, it was an SSS-tier.

Jiang Ye thought for a moment, then pressed his hand to his brow and took out the black scale Xiao Hei had given him.

He showed the black scale to Lord Leopard and politely asked,

“Is this acceptable?”

Lord Leopard’s gaze landed on the scale and his pupils contracted sharply.

When he looked at Jiang Ye again, it was like he’d seen a ghost!

His palm slammed down hard on the desk, shattering the sheet of ice-skin practice material into icy shards.

His whole body tensed as if facing a mortal enemy!

Jiang Ye remained calm, casually pressed the scale back into his brow and raised an eyebrow, “Well?”

Lord Leopard drew a deep breath, apparently forcing himself to control his emotions, while appraising Jiang Ye from head to toe.

After a long moment, he asked in a low voice, “Do you know what that scale represents?”

Jiang Ye actually didn’t know, though he could guess: “It represents status and power?”

“That’s not wrong…” Lord Leopard’s mood improved somewhat, but his face remained taut as he went on to explain, “It means you can go straight to Exile City, even into the inner city!”

The moment those words came out, nearly every gaze in the classroom fixed on Jiang Ye.

The newcomers in the first two rows might not yet understand what Exile City implied, but Lord Leopard’s shocked tone made them share his surprise.

A few veteran players scattered in the back rows were drawn by the voice;their looks toward Jiang Ye were likewise ghostly.

Jiang Ye keenly caught an especially intense stare.

When he scanned that gaze, he saw a sullen youth with dark skin and a face full of scars.

That youth’s look was gloomy but laced with a greedy hunger.

It was as if he might rush forward at any moment to snatch Jiang Ye’s scale.

In fact, he actually moved toward Jiang Ye.

Ignoring the unspoken rule among veteran players of yielding the best first- and second-row seats to newcomers, he sat down in the second row to Jiang Ye’s right.

Disregarding Lord Leopard’s displeased look, the sullen youth spoke straight to Jiang Ye:

“Do you… still have a spot for Exile City?”

emmm…

If the youth had simply withdrawn his dark eyes, Jiang Ye might have worried about trickery behind his back.

But the kid came straight up and stated his intention.

Jiang Ye considered briefly, then raised an eyebrow, “You want to go to Exile City?”

Before the sullen youth could answer, Lord Leopard said helplessly, “Who doesn’t want to go to Exile City?”

“Even we Student Council members have some privileges in the school, but basically we’re not free! Every day we scramble to survive, and we can’t even rest peacefully in sleep!”

“But once you get into Exile City, all your time is your own. At least you can sleep properly!”

Freedom?

Jiang Ye blurted, “Do you mean if we go to Exile City, we can take off the Prison watch?”

“Uh…” Lord Leopard looked even more exasperated, “Of course that’s impossible.”

“The ‘freedom’ I mean is only that you can arrange your daily time as you please. As for the Prison watch, it seems once you spend a day in the Land of Exile, you can’t take it off.”

As he spoke, he thought his statement sounded too absolute, then hurriedly added, “Of course, freedom has a price;Exile City has drawbacks.”

“If you lack strength and background, living in Exile City affords no dignity.”

“Some people, clearly without the ability to survive in Exile City, resort to dodgy tricks to get a slot… even if they get in, life will only be harder.”

That last sentence was clearly aimed at the sullen youth.

But the sullen youth remained unmoved, fixing his determined gaze on Jiang Ye.

Jiang Ye considered him for a moment and bluntly asked, “Why are you so set on going to Exile City?”

The sullen youth was silent for a moment and was about to speak when Jiang Ye added, “If it’s a fabricated lie, there’s no point in saying it.”

At this, the sullen youth fell silent again.

This time his silence lasted even longer;his eyes—almost as dark as Xiao Hei’s—stared steadily at Jiang Ye, weighing something.

Finally he spoke in a low voice, “Because—”

“I have a dream.”

“……”

Jiang Ye was momentarily speechless.

Still, as the saying goes, anyone with a dream is impressive.

He respected that, “Go on.”

The scarred youth’s eyes looked exceptionally pure against his weathered face.

He said with firm conviction:

“I was once ‘pardoned’, then re-offended. During that time I went to the normal cities outside the Land of Exile.”

“Of course, the result was I was not accepted by those normal cities and was violently expelled.”

“With nowhere to go, I had to return to the Land of Exile and remain a criminal.”

“But I am not resigned to that.”

“I believe no player expelled by normal cities can accept it.”

“Some give up their dream of a normal life in a normal city;others rack their brains trying to completely wash off the ‘smell of exile’.”

“The so-called ‘smell of exile’ is picked up from taking an Exile Fruit or eating human flesh.”

Jiang Ye understood instantly. Although he had never directly smelled it, he had, through the Grudge Memory skill, smelled such odors from memory more than once.

At the time he had thought it was just the Exile Fruit’s smell.

Now he knew those who ate human flesh also carried that scent.

So this odor was essentially the scent of sin, and it served as a mark.

Marked with this scent, one cannot enter normal cities.

He mulled this over while the sullen youth continued:

“To wash away this scent, some are willing to replace their blood, to cleanse their bones… eventually becoming ‘living dead’.”

“Unfortunately, those living dead still carry the exile scent and are still rejected by normal cities.”

There was a tone of derision in the sullen youth’s voice as he spoke.

Jiang Ye followed up naturally, “So you are different from them?”

“Yes, I am different!”

The sullen youth’s determined gaze once more ignited that same feverish intensity he’d shown toward Jiang Ye before.

He inhaled deeply and said in a low voice:

“The night I was expelled by a normal city, what came to mind was what I learned of Marxist communist thought…”

He paused there, leaving Jiang Ye with a loaded look.

Jiang Ye was taken aback!

Marxist communism?

Come on…

Marxist-Leninist-Mao theory-type stuff was actually a required college course.

Jiang Ye had not been to university and hadn’t systematically studied it.

But one vivid example stuck in his memory.

It went like this—

Suppose a boss supplies the means of production.

With ten thousand employees, they create five million in value each month.

How much salary should the boss pay those ten thousand employees?

Jiang Ye thought an unscrupulous boss might pay three to five thousand each. A conscientious boss might get employees to earn over ten thousand a month.

Either way, the boss would take the lion’s share.

The answer the example gave was— 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

All employees split the five million equally!

That is, five thousand each!

The method was simple…

Overthrow the boss!

Because according to communist thought, the “means of production” are common property!

Kill the boss, and all employees produce together and split the gains evenly.

By the same logic, if some huge capital hoards mountains of wealth…

That hoarding itself is a crime!

The proletariat should unite, overthrow the capitalists, then share everything equally.

So these ideas, from the capitalist perspective, are dangerous.

And right now, hearing it from this sullen youth, the implication was clear…

His so-called “dream”…

Was revolution!

Revolution against whom?

Revolution against the normal cities’ normal humans!

Normal cities expel criminals, right?

What if you made everyone into criminals?

If “innocence” ceased to exist,

Then none would be “guilty.”

Just like justice and injustice, if one concept disappears, so does the other.

So…

This kid’s idea was truly audacious!

However, Jiang Ye frowned and pointedly asked,

“What does that have to do with whether you go to Exile City?”

“According to Lord Leopard’s words, with your strength, even if you went to Exile City, survival might be an issue…”

“On what basis do you imagine you can achieve that dream?”

The sullen youth shook his head: “One person like me cannot accomplish such a grand feat.”

“So I’ve already communicated my idea to the Boss in Dreamland.”

“But the Boss told me—”

“If I can get into Exile City, the Boss is willing to give me the chance to make my dream come true.”

“And now, that chance might depend on you.”

As he said this, the youth fixed his eyes on Jiang Ye, his gaze sincere.

Song Jie and Lord Leopard and the other veteran players were stunned.

This youth’s proposal was simply too bizarre!

They had never suspected there was someone this crazy in their school!

Faced with that maddened look, Jiang Ye felt a strangely peculiar thought arise in his chest.

It was as if the direction of this whole matter lay in his hands.

Or more accurately, the Boss hadn’t actually given this youth the opportunity.

Instead, he had handed the choice to Jiang Ye.

As if something fate-like was at work…

Determined to what?

Wait!

Jiang Ye suddenly realized that if this were truly Day One or Day Two of Doomsday Apartment,

then he would be living within history, actually creating history!

But history…

He had heard of some time paradoxes asserting that even if a time machine existed, people could not return to the past.

Because if the past were changed, the future that extended from that past would collapse.

If the future no longer exists, how could you have traveled back from it to change the past?

So…

Was their “time travel” genuinely violating paradoxes?

Or did paradoxes themselves have unknown operational loopholes?

Science fiction had long explored that operational space.

The most common explanation was parallel universes.

Some sci-fi returns to the past and changes history only to branch off a new parallel universe.

Other sci-fi assumes history cannot be changed.

Those who travel back and desperately try to alter events usually fail and end up fulfilling history instead.

For example, a modern person who didn’t know who Zhao Gao was might, as if predestined, become Zhao Gao in history.

Or the famed “time-travel son” Wang Mang still could not outdo the child of destiny.

It all seemed as if fate dictated everything.

Jiang Ye mulled over both possibilities: parallel universes and predetermined history.

The parallel-universe idea fit neatly with his earlier concept of a fourth-dimensional world.

That is—

The three-dimensional world he occupied could merely be a projection of a four-dimensional world.

Conversely, the entire four-dimensional world would be composed of all its parallel three-dimensional worlds.

Exactly how those parallel worlds stitch together into a higher dimension remained unknowable from a strictly three-dimensional perspective.

Predetermined-history, on the other hand, implicated temporal nihilism.

Temporal nihilism claims time does not exist;it is a human illusion.

Thus, the past, present, and future coexist—like a finished film.

Like a fixed three-way foil, everything is already compressed and predestined.

Your consciousness simply resides at one node, and that node is your “present.”

From either viewpoint, Jiang Ye and the others’ time-transcending experience could be creating a new parallel universe, or their consciousnesses might be jumping to a past node and treating it as the present.

Either way—parallel worlds or predestination—Jiang Ye need not fear much.

If it’s parallel worlds, he cannot change another world’s future;

if it’s predestination, he likewise cannot change the future.

But if it’s predestination…

He could at least try to infer what that “destiny” entailed!

The first thing worth predicting was—

Would this youth’s dream come true?

If his dream succeeded…

Then every normal city would turn into a Land of Exile…

Would the whole world then be shrouded in mist?

From a historical backward inference, perhaps his dream indeed came true!

The Doomsday Apartment of later ages could indeed exist amid a world full of mist!

So…

Jiang Ye suddenly asked the veteran players nearby:

“Among the talents you know of, is there such a talent as Light Element Affinity?”