I Am Extraordinary Alone

"Follow me," Mike said.

They went downstairs, preparing to leave. At this moment, Mike stopped and said, "Just you and me, let your people stay here."

Professor Li Xianping and several refugee bodyguards looked worried, but Lin Yan said, "I'll go with him and take a look, you stay here and communicate with their team."

Li Xianping said, "Take two people with you, just in case."

Mike smiled and said, "I understand your concerns, but rest assured, at this point, we don't need to do that. Besides, Miss Lin Yan carries the White King, and we are no match for her."

With that said, it was hard for Professor Li Xianping to insist, so he just advised her to be careful.

Mike said, "I'll take you to our transmission room. It only accommodates the operator and the two of us, which is why I asked your team to stay here, no other reason."

Lin Yan nodded and said, "Lead the way."

The two left the research institute, walked through a path paved with pebbles, and arrived at the two-story building next door.

This place looked like a gym, with two guards at the door. Due to a shortage of weapons, they were only armed with handguns.

Seeing Mike's arrival, they opened the black double doors, and the smell of formaldehyde drifted out from inside.

Following Mike into the room, Lin Yan saw the vast space occupied by something wrapped in brown camouflage fabric. In fact, after a few steps in, there was no more space.

"This is...?" Lin Yan just asked when she heard the White King excitedly speaking in her mind. It was its half-body.

"What you see in front of you is its lower half. We used the minimal preservation methods possible, given limited resources," Mike said.

It really is!

Lin Yan pressed her chest, reminding the White King in her mind to stay calm.

"Its legs, lower abdomen, and some internal organs. Interestingly, after all this time, the organs haven't decayed but remain in a stasis state, just like when they were first severed," Mike said.

"I can't imagine how painful that must be," Lin Yan also lamented.

"We know that when the false god severed it, you were present. Now that we're not adversaries, can you tell me what happened then?" Mike asked.

"I'm sorry, but the White King was trying to escape at the time. By the time I came to my senses, they and the White King were gone, and I wasn't there," Lin Yan said.

"That's a pity... Imagine, we measured the length of its lower half. If it stood up, its legs alone would be 70 meters long. It's hard to imagine how they managed to sever the White King!" Mike was a bit excited.

"If you say that, it won't be happy," Lin Yan said.

"Oh... then please apologize on my behalf," Mike said.

"I can understand the feeling... after all, I'm an evil scientist conducting experiments with other people's lives," Lin Yan smiled.

Beside the White King's half-body, there were also a few servers set up. They created a local area network to share data and transmit signals, with a female researcher waiting in front of a computer for Mike's orders.

"Let me show you the fictional world we've iterated through several times. It's my favorite place, but let me clarify first, we can only stay in there for up to 12 minutes," Mike said.

"12 minutes? How long outside?" Lin Yan asked.

"About... 2 seconds," Mike said.

"How do we enter? I don't see any equipment, like... chairs or VR devices," Lin Yan said.

Mike shook his head and then looked at the female researcher operating the computer and said, "Activate the transmission gate, and send us to the old place."

The female researcher nodded, typed a command on the keyboard, and a blue transmission gate suddenly opened in front of Lin Yan.

A gust of cold wind blew out; this transmission gate was identical to the one Lin Yan had activated before! Behind the gate was a chilly midnight alley, where vehicles passed by at the mouth, and the sides were too dark to discern the buildings.

"Come in, time is precious," Mike stepped into the transmission gate first, now standing in the cold dark alley.

Lin Yan walked into the alley, and the transmission gate closed behind her with a swoosh.

The two walked one behind the other along the damp path, all the way to the alleyway's mouth.

Opposite the alley was a building with only half its background lights on the advertisement sign, depicting an American-style oil painting of a well-endowed beer maid carrying a tray of beer, smiling towards the gray street. Beside her, the large red POP advertisement letters read: In Opportunity City, we all drink Busch Beer.

"Opportunity City?" Lin Yan said.

"We based this city on Sethegia's Diet Green. The current time is..." Mike said, pulling out his phone to check.

Lin Yan noticed there was no signal on this phone; Mike was simply using it as an electronic notebook and camera.

"Hmm... this world's time is set in 2008," Mike said.

"Over 100 years ago, I thought our technology had developed quickly, but looking at the scene before me..." Lin Yan said as a yellow taxi drove by, "it doesn't seem much more advanced than now."

"This was the early years of smartphones, not to mention the use of AR and VR. Let's keep walking," Mike said.

He led Lin Yan along the street, flanked by dark buildings and closed factories.

"This place doesn't seem very developed?" Lin Yan said.

"We set certain conditions, such as the federal state information and some details about Diet Green, related industries... things like that. But once the city was generated, it began to evolve automatically. We could only set a starting point; its development process and future... we can't interfere. Perhaps it's because we lack the White King's brain," Mike said.

The night was chilly as if the city lay between autumn and winter. Lin Yan noticed some black buildings in the city, surrounded by isolation covers and marked with letters D, C, B, A, S in prominent locations on the stairs.

"What does that mean?" Lin Yan pointed at those buildings and asked.

"We added a variable here... superpowers. Similar to fallen objects, but taking different forms here. Frankly, this place also has enterprises similar to pharmaceutical companies. However, this world seems to have developed along a completely different path. They call these pharmaceutical companies 'psychic corporations,' and they're quite large. I suspect they've squeezed the survival space of other industries," Mike said.

"I have a feeling that if this world continues developing, it won't be much different from ours," Lin Yan said.

"Yes, which is why this is a testing environment, not a place we plan to live in the future... Opportunity City, without opportunity," Mike nodded.