Just as Si Yi’s fingertip was about to hover over the “Delete” confirmation key—
“Wait!”
Fu Songcheng suddenly shouted, a trace of panic uncharacteristically entering his voice.
Si Yi’s finger stopped dead, millimeters from the key. He turned his head, looking at Fu Songcheng with a face full of confusion.
“What is it? There’s another missing node?” Si Yi asked.
“Si Yi,” Fu Songcheng’s voice was terrifyingly low, “this database contains all players’ data—including attribute values and skills.”
“Right, that’s why it has to be deleted—”
Halfway through, Si Yi suddenly realized something. “Bai Mu’s teleport skill, Yu Huaiting’s area-lock, even my skill—all the abilities we use are granted by this game system’s code. Once the database is deleted, the system won’t be able to load skills and data.”
The entire plaza fell into dead silence in that instant—an even more suffocating silence than before.
Fu Songcheng took a deep breath. “If we delete the data, we’ll immediately lose all our skills. We… none of us can get back.”
Chen Ke felt as if a heavy hammer had struck the back of his head; he staggered back half a step.
Keep the data, and Bai Mu could open the teleport gate, they could go home—but this data would be a locator bomb that could detonate Blue Star at any time. Source Star would follow this thread and devour Earth completely.
Delete the data, and Blue Star would be safe, everyone who’d gone back would be safe.
But these dozens of them would be thoroughly reduced to ordinary people without any power, forever trapped in this abandoned space.
The air seemed to solidify.
Not a single person spoke. All eyes converged on Si Yi’s hand suspended in midair.
Caught between a rock and a hard place.
“What if we go back first?” Lu Xiao’s voice broke the silence. “If Bai Mu opens the gate first and we all go back, then Si Yi remotely issues the delete command from Blue Star—would that work?!”
“No.” Si Yi smiled bitterly. “Blue Star can’t use instance skills. The delete command has to be here, manually confirmed.”
Which meant he had to stay in this abandoned game, and after everyone else had left, personally press that delete key.
And once pressed, he too would thoroughly lose his skills, forever exiled in this data wasteland without life or hope.
Silence.
A long, maddening silence.
Who would make this decision?
Who would bear this cost?
Having come this far, there wasn’t a single person who didn’t want to go home.
Only after enduring endless slaughter, betrayal, and despair did they know how precious life on Blue Star was.
If someone was destined to stay here, it absolutely shouldn’t be any of them—they’d already given far too much.
But fate was always so unpredictable and cruel.
Si Yi slowly withdrew his hand. He lowered his head, making it impossible to see the expression on his face.
“You all go first.”
Si Yi suddenly spoke, his voice very soft, yet unusually clear in the deathly silent plaza.
He lifted his head, and on his face hung a smile so bright it was almost glaring. “After you leave, I’ll delete the data. Actually, as long as I stay, that’s enough.”
Xu Qingyao abruptly stepped forward. “What nonsense are you talking about?! If we stay, we stay together; if we go, we go together!”
“Stop making a fuss.”
Si Yi waved his hand with a smile, shrugging with feigned ease. “There’s still so much to wrap up on Blue Star, right? Hurry back, you all.”
“But that way you’ll be trapped here yourself!”
Lu Xiao couldn’t control her emotions either. “Without skills and data, you won’t even have the most basic system protection! Will the rest area’s minimum living supplies even be issued to you?”
Bai Mu looked at Si Yi and delivered her final verdict: “You’ll starve to death.”
Si Yi froze for a moment, then laughed exaggeratedly. He slapped his thigh with unusual cheerfulness. “Why don’t you wish me well? Aren’t there plenty of empty taverns and shops in the rest area? There must still be lots of supplies left by those NPCs.”
“Besides, even if there’s no food, I can farm! I’m pure Chinese blood—farming is a talent carved into my genes! Self-sufficiency, right? Being a carefree farm owner isn’t so bad, is it?”
He spoke and laughed as if genuinely planning a beautiful pastoral future.
“It’s fine,”
Si Yi looked at everyone, the smile on his face growing brighter, but deep in his eyes hid a trace of deep attachment and barely perceptible fear. “You go back first. I can keep my own ID, right? People who don’t want to die will find a way to live no matter what.”
Seeing him so cheerful, everyone instead felt their hearts clutched by an invisible giant hand, aching so much they couldn’t breathe.
The more he pretended nothing was wrong, the more it proved he knew better than anyone what staying here meant.
This wasn’t a temporary parting—this was a sacrifice with no way back.
“Begin, Bai Mu.”
Just then, Fu Songcheng suddenly turned around, his back to Si Yi, his voice cold and hard without a shred of warmth, unswayed by emotion.
Chen Ke looked at Fu Songcheng in disbelief. “You really plan to leave him here alone?!”
Fu Songcheng didn’t look at Chen Ke, his hands unconsciously clenching into fists at his sides. “There’s not much time. Aren’t we rushing to send people back precisely because we’re afraid Source Star will reconnect to the game? Bai Mu, open the gate.”
Bai Mu stood frozen. She looked at Si Yi, an indescribable sorrow and despair in her heart.
Why must someone bear everyone’s fate?
She felt her hands were covered in blood. If she opened this gate, she’d be the executioner who personally buried Si Yi.
“Go, go, stop dawdling!”
Seeing the atmosphere growing heavier, Si Yi waved his hand with feigned impatience. “Even if we go back, we’ll be working like beasts of burden every day, paying off mortgages and car loans. Who wants this crappy job! I’ll stay here—no clocking in, no watching the boss’s face. Staying in the instance is pretty good.”
He said “pretty good,” but the smile on his face was already close to a grimace.
He was truly afraid.
He was afraid of the dark, afraid of loneliness, afraid of the dead silence of being forgotten by the whole world.
He was even more afraid that he wouldn’t last until starvation, that he’d go mad in endless despair first.
“If you don’t leave now, I’ll delete all the data!”
Si Yi reopened that red deletion interface, his finger hovering in midair, threatening viciously. “If you don’t go, I’ll press it right now! Then the gate won’t open, and you’ll all stay to farm with me!”
Hurry and go.
The moment he’d spoken of his skill, this fate had been written.
Hurry and go. Go home.
Finally, Bai Mu turned her back to everyone and raised her hands, trembling.
“Let’s go.”
Bai Mu’s voice carried a thick sob. As her skill activated, the intense spatial fluctuation warped the surrounding air.
Yu Huaiting said nothing, cooperating at just the right moment—his hands thrust forward, locking onto everyone except Si Yi.
Si Yi stood in place, watching those gradually receding figures, and the smile on his face finally couldn’t hold, collapsing completely.
Tears slid down uncontrollably, but he bit his lip dead, not letting himself make a single sound.
Goodbye, Engineer Fu.
Goodbye, Bai Mu, Lu Xiao, Chen Ke.
Goodbye, my Blue Star.
Si Yi closed his eyes, his finger pressing down on the red “Confirm Delete” key without hesitation.
Just as his fingertip was about to touch the virtual key, Fu Songcheng activated the pocket watch, slowing the flow of time.
He whipped around and charged at Si Yi!
“Delete!”
Fu Songcheng issued the command to Si Yi.
Si Yi’s mind went blank, and entirely on instinct, his finger pressed heavily on that red key.
The instant the system’s cold notification sounded, the surrounding space began to collapse. Bai Mu’s channel let out a piercing wail, its edges flickering madly, ready to disintegrate at any moment.
And in the “delay” between the command being issued and the system beginning to execute the erasure—
Fu Songcheng had already charged before Si Yi.
He reached out and gripped Si Yi’s shoulders dead, tightly, his fingers almost digging into Si Yi’s collarbone from the force.
“Fu—” Si Yi’s eyes flew wide in shock.
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