The unconventional welcoming ceremony concluded in deathly silence. The officer, adorned with the rank of a junior lieutenant, took them to an auditorium capable of accommodating thousands. Inside the auditorium awaited countless doors, each around two meters tall and one meter wide, made of metal and marked with numbers from 0 to 500.
Like Xia You, a considerable part of the crowd felt bewildered, yet no one spoke a word. Clearly, the actions of that lieutenant earlier were premeditated, and similar warnings had been used on every group of people before entering the auditorium.
"Everyone, choose a door," a young yet authoritative voice commanded from the central loudspeaker positioned in the middle of the hall.
The lieutenants leading the group first saluted, then, one after the other, drew their sidearms and loaded them. This signified that anyone who disobeyed orders would be shot on the spot.
Doors without handles, dark and looming, stood before each individual.
In the crowd, the look in everyone’s eyes was complex, filled with curiosity, caution, and hesitation.
Xia You stood at the forefront of the crowd, her heartbeat growing fiercer, her blood furiously rushing to her temples. Someone pushed her from behind, and staggering, she had no choice but to step forward from the crowd. Turning around, Xia You surveyed the circle of people. Not a single face showed anything unusual.
The lieutenant pointed the muzzle at her. Move forward or take a bullet.
Xia You glanced at all the doors, and subconsciously pushed open the first door marked with the number "0."
Hardly had she approached the door when a "beep" sounded, and a smooth female voice came from nowhere:
"Dangerous items scan complete."
"Pupil authentication complete."
"Electronic devices scan... Please remove any portable electronic communication devices."
Xia You took out the mobile phone from her pocket, the only familiar object by her side, which was also confiscated. In fact, whether the phone was confiscated or not didn’t make much difference. Once she entered Rand, her mobile phone had lost all signal.
"Check complete, welcome to the intelligent game - ’Military Road.’" The woman’s voice rang out again. The opaque door started to become transparent, turning into a mirror that couldn’t reflect anyone’s image.
The successive changes even made the lieutenants maintaining order behind her start to get nervous.
Xia You’s hand barely touched the mirror when her body began to blur.
Within the crowd, gasps rippled through. From the now quiet loudspeaker came the sound of a microphone dropping, followed by the same male voice: "Hurry, put the brain scanner on her."
The mirror door vanished, and Xia You disappeared with it.
"What on earth is that thing?" The lieutenant who had escorted Xia You over holstered his gun, surprised that the first one to enter was a woman.
"The higher-ups claim it’s the latest combat simulation developed by the National Security Department. Our generation of soldiers has never experienced a real war. That’s why the top brass specially created this virtual world. These people are all participants in the experiment," a lieutenant in the know explained.
Following Xia You’s precedent, the lieutenants were extra cautious, fitting every person entering "Military Road" with a tiny brain scanner the size of a nail shell, responsible for reporting everything happening in the game back to the National Security Department’s central computer for the next two months.
But what puzzled the National Security Department was that for a full three days and nights, after connecting the brain scanner, the computer screen, measuring a hundred square meters in both length and width, displayed nothing but endless darkness. This darkness was also the environment Xia You found herself in after stepping through that door.
Virtual, yet incredibly real darkness.
Endless and indefinite darkness, enough to bring many to the brink of collapse. It is said that most people in the world die in the night, as death and darkness both possess an unknowability, forming an inseparable connection in the human subconscious.
"The brain scanner for Subject No. 4 has malfunctioned," twenty-four hours into the first day, the Experimenter carrying the No. 4 brain scanner lost all vital signs. The Lieutenants taking shifts to monitor the screen thought it was just a malfunction of a single brain scanner and did not record the room number that popped up.
By the thirty-sixth hour, the room numbers missing brain scanner signals had become two, and the computer screens were still pitch-black.
After forty-eight hours, the number of brain scanners without signs of life had jumped to twenty.
The trackers could no longer sit still. By the time the news reached Lin Yi, the Lieutenant Colonel and second in charge of the National Security Department’s project, it was already noon on the third day.
"Reporting to the officer," a Lieutenant responsible for collating data reported, "the malfunctioning brain scanners... the number of Experimenters who have lost vital signs has risen to fifty."
Brain scanners produced by the Hua Country Research Institute could not possibly malfunction without reason, and to have as many as fifty malfunctions indicated that those inside may have truly lost their vital signs.
"Fifty," Major Lin Yi mused, the voice of a young man transmitted through the speaker was his, his eyes narrowing dangerously, this number, if it were to increase further, would render his project report unwritable.
The trackers didn’t say anything more, cautiously staring at the blackness on the screen.
Deployed by the military, the "Military Road" operational system was, plainly speaking, just a simulation software. If this fact were publicized, it would likely stir a round of criticism from the military’s conservative forces.
The experiment, a full-scale simulated battlefield test, how exactly does it operate? Would it be like Counter-Strike? CrossFire? Or is it merely a realm to test human endurance in darkness? What kind of training results can it really bring?
"It’s the third day, the third day since we entered ’Military Road’." Xia You spread her hand out in the darkness, raising her third finger, surrounded by pitch-black. Her other hand had been on her pulse the whole time. By relying on tens of thousands of heartbeats, she had calculated the accurate time.
After making contact with the door and losing contact with those people, she was plunged into this boundless darkness.
From initial curiosity to panic and now to a dead-like calmness, Xia You was surprised to find her brain and eyes had actually adapted to the darkness around her.
"I have to keep going, can’t be scared off," Xia You silently told herself countless times, her brain spinning like a rapidly whirring top, recalling everything that had happened over the past few days. It was like a ten-thousand-meter marathon, only the one who endures to the end is the true victor.
"Major," the screen monitoring staff were excited, just as Lin Yi was wavering, a light appeared on the large screen, more precisely, sunlight.
The first ray of simulated sunlight from "Military Road" illuminated the large screen, looking so incredibly real. The other four hundred and fifty Experimenters, including Xia You, had no idea that the despair caused by darkness had already claimed the lives of fifty people.
The only participant not wearing a brain scanner, Xia You, upon seeing the sunlight, collapsed to the ground, her lungs aching sharply, gasping deeply, her eyes wide as her vision grew clearer by the moment, where on earth had she arrived?