Hyperdimensional Projector

"Did you take it, A-Zhu?" Lu Shuhang asked with a helpless tone.

Hearing the chirping teases from the surrounding colleagues, the youth's face reddened slightly, and he lowered his hand.

"Alright, alright, I know you don't like taking photos, but I just wanted to record a bit of our life together," Xiao Xinzhu said briskly. However, when she looked at the developed photo, she tilted her head with a puzzled expression. "?"

"What's wrong?"

Xiao Xinzhu's gaze was frozen on a corner of the photo. Behind the youth, she saw a strand of golden hair, with a small portion of a young girl's face hidden in the shadows. Was that the blonde girl who had just passed them by?

"The shot didn't turn out well. Do you want to take another one?" Lu Shuhang asked.

"Ah, it's nothing." Xiao Xinzhu shook her head and pursed her lips, leaning her head against Lu Shuhang's shoulder. She knew he didn't like taking photos and didn't want to trouble him further. "This one is actually quite nice. I won't bother you anymore. Life always needs a few surprises, after all."

As she spoke, Xiao Xinzhu shared the photo of their daily life to her social space, just as she usually did.

As the vice president of Assassin's Creed, her social space naturally received a lot of attention, and it didn't take long for many netizens to comment.

[: So sweet, sweet, sweet.]

[: Sister Xiao is beautiful today as well.]

[: What a beautiful relationship, I wish you both the best!]

[Yulan: Stop being all lovey-dovey with Old Hang. Sister Xiao, come back to the Oasis quickly! The people from Golden Navigator are blocking us in the wild, and we're about to lose our ground!]

Reflecting the congratulatory comments from the netizens in her eyes, the girl smiled gently. Then, a comment flashed past her peripheral vision, catching her attention.

[: Wait, look at the one in the corner. Doesn't she look a lot like Dark Gold Rose?]

It would have been fine if no one had mentioned it, but as soon as the point was raised, the comments section instantly exploded.

[: Hiss, now that you mention it, there really is a resemblance!]

[: It's not just a resemblance, that's her! I just compared them, and she's exactly the same as the great Dark Gold Rose in the game!]

[: Is the great Dark Gold Rose in Red Heaven right now?]

[: This background looks a bit familiar... it's the Northern Bank!]

For some reason, a sudden chill crawled up Xiao Xinzhu's spine. Fearing she might bring trouble to others, she quickly navigated through her settings and deleted the post before more people could notice, then logged out of her social account.

Her anxious and uneasy appearance caught the attention of the youth beside her.

"What's wrong, A-Zhu?" Lu Shuhang asked.

"Nothing, it's nothing. Let's leave quickly."

Her mind in disarray, Xiao Xinzhu shook her head and took the youth's hand, quickly disappearing into the bank lobby.

The Curtain Net has a memory.

This post was eventually forwarded by quick-witted netizens, and before long, it caused a massive uproar online.

Inside the land-air vehicle, Xu Xiaoyou had a faint, ominous premonition. It didn't stem from the shattered crimson clouds, nor did it come from herself; as she traced back through her memories, she eventually locked onto the camera of that girl in the bank.

By instinct, she had already avoided the camera's flash in advance, so she shouldn't have been caught in the photo. Was she just overthinking things?

Beside her, Akabane Tsubaki had appeared listless since leaving the underground vault, leaning her head against the car window and lost in thought. Usually, she would have pulled up the curtain at this time to look at new and interesting snippets.

Xu Xiaoyou closed her eyes, deciding not to think too much about it for now.

It was already evening by the time they returned to the Fountain of the Gods. Akabane Tsubaki stayed in the room alone, while Xu Xiaoyou took the elevator to the Oasis Club on the 13th floor, where there were immersion pods provided by the Dream Company.

Upon entering the club doors, she found that almost all the club members in the lobby were staring intently at the light curtain in front of them. It seemed some major event had occurred in the Oasis again.

Xu Xiaoyou didn't pay much mind to it; she simply wanted to return to the dungeon as quickly as possible.

With that thought, she hurried to the front desk to register and activate her credentials, then walked through the corridor and entered her assigned immersion room, closing and locking the door behind her.

A precision instrument resembling a crystal coffin lay flat in the center of the room, emitting a faint blue glow.

'Beep.' Xu Xiaoyou placed her membership card on the sensor, activating this dream-wanderer device.

As the deep blue liquid filled the interior of the immersion pod, the lid opened, and a hiss of cold mist spilled out. Xu Xiaoyou didn't take off her clothes, stepping into the pod with her boots on. The magical sensation made her eyebrows twitch slightly.

There was no feeling of being soaked in liquid on her legs; instead, it felt as though they were wrapped in a slightly cold gas, similar to the sensation of stepping into a ball of cotton.

Xu Xiaoyou lay down entirely into the immersion pod, and the soft coldness gradually turned to warmth. She discovered she could actually breathe freely in this liquid. As the lid gradually descended and closed, she shut her eyes.

Her consciousness dipped into the deep sea at that moment, the world flipped, and all things began to reconstruct themselves.

"Welcome back to the Oasis, Player 0E3604."

A gentle female voice echoed with the prompt, and Xu Xiaoyou opened her eyes as the train scene came into view.

A rumbling sound surrounded her ears, accompanied by a dazzling white light and a sharp buzzing noise before she could see her surroundings clearly.

A dim ceiling, a narrow space, and a quiet atmosphere. Several figures wearing green sterile suits were standing around a surgical bed. They held up their rubber-gloved hands, looking at one another, their gazes passing between glass lenses.

No one knew if they should be the one to break the silence.

She seemed to be in.....

An operating room?

It looked like this surgery had not yet officially begun.

Wait, Xia Li was already supposed to be dead. Then who was the subject of this surgery?

Xu Xiaoyou couldn't help but feel confused.

Pale light fell as a girl lay on the cold surgical bed, her body covered in infusion tubes.

She was attached to various life-monitoring devices, and her pulse and heartbeat were weak to the extreme.

"Doctor, are you alright?" someone asked.

"We have already injected her with the akabane thorn substance, but the antibodies don't seem to have taken effect. We now need to cut open her heart to extract tissue samples for analysis....."

"Who is she?" Xu Xiaoyou asked.

"Doctor, I don't understand your question."

"I am asking you, who is the test subject lying on the hospital bed?"

The girl's words sent a startling chill down their spines.

The group exchanged looks, unable to understand why the doctor, who had previously agreed to the experiment with such pleasure, would have such a massive change in expression. What they understood even less was the nature of her question.

This test subject had clearly been hand-picked by the doctor herself, so why would she ask such a thing?

Xu Xiaoyou gently lifted the dust sheet, and a familiar face entered her vision. The blue-haired girl looked very weak, her dress as white as snow. Dark red patterns crawled across her face, and her sky-blue hair was spread out beneath her. She looked like a broken porcelain doll, her life teetering on the edge of shattering.

It was Tang Qing, her research assistant.

Xu Xiaoyou recalled the clues she had first found in the laboratory: Tang Qing had also been a part of the Winter Project.

The girl's vital signs had all dropped to the freezing point. Regardless of whether this surgery ultimately succeeded or failed, her end was destined to be only one thing.....

"Doc... tor, I'm so cold..." the blue-haired girl's dry lips quivered, her voice almost inaudible. "Can... can you hold my hand?"

"I want... to feel the doctor's warmth."

"I'm so scared... When I'm alone, I'm really so scared. Please don't abandon me."

The girl's hopes were destined to go unanswered.

"I can't hear... any voices anymore. Can you give me a warm embrace?" Tang Qing reached out her hand, pausing slightly in the air before gently curling her fingers.

"I don't want to disappear in loneliness."

Xu Xiaoyou remained unmoved, silently watching the hope in the blue-haired girl's eyes extinguish. The dashed lines on the life-monitoring display turned into a flat line, and a long electronic whine cut through the heavy, dead silence.

One person silently observed Xu Xiaoyou's expression as beads of sweat the size of beans rolled down his forehead, and he covertly reached toward the alarm device.

"Doc..." Before another person could finish speaking, a bright lancet was already buried in his neck. His pupils dilated rapidly as he collapsed to the floor, a pool of blood spreading beneath him.

"This woman is crazy, watch out!"

Before the man could press the alarm, a lancet pierced through his wrist, pinning him to the wall, followed immediately by a spray of blood from his throat.

Xu Xiaoyou pulled the last lancet out from another person's chest, bringing with it a spray of blood. In the blink of an eye, no one remained alive in the operating room except for her, and a cold silence spread through the darkness.

Her fingertips traced through the air, and she indeed found the item she was looking for in her inventory: the "hyperdimensional projector."