章 15: Chapter 15: Mutual Redemption
2022, summer. Linxiang City, Dimension Transformation Building.
A girl stood on the railings of the twenty-ninth-floor rooftop, teetering on the brink.
Physically speaking, another fifteen-degree tilt would send her plunging into the second dimension.
But if one observed her carefully, one would notice her eyes were lifeless, her expression dull.
A person facing death would surely exhibit some emotion.
Yet the girl seemed to be in a daze, like a walking corpse, similar to an attendant whose senses had been scrubbed clean.
Oddly enough...
She was carrying two phones. One phone was fixed to her ear, while the other kept issuing a voice command—
"Hey Siri, call the suicide crisis intervention hotline."
Every three seconds, without fail.
The phone, upon receiving the voice command, would automatically dial the suicide crisis intervention hotline.
Along the path to the top of Dimension Transformation Building, the phone had been repeatedly uttering that sound.
"Hey Siri, call the suicide crisis intervention hotline."
Time and again, these sounds gently tapped on the girl's eardrums but failed to bring any change to her.
She continued dragging her somewhat stiff steps, inching closer to death.
Those contemplating suicide once said that there's always a thirteen-person queue for the suicide intervention hotline. It's puzzling why so many people in this world cannot find peace.
The girl's call never got through. This was undoubtedly a very foolish approach.
If she truly wanted to live, she should've tied herself up, or... have someone watch over her.
But those methods were actually meaningless.
All she could do was blindly stumble upon a dead mouse.
It was nothing more than a dying struggle, hoping that the people at the suicide intervention center could awaken her...
It was like clutching at straws when drowning, hoping that they were not just weeds, but a rope thrown from a luxurious cruise ship.
No one could awaken her except for the forerunner.
Because the girl... was a forerunner who had failed her challenge.
...
When a forerunner fails a mission and is forced into suicide, non-forerunners cannot intervene.
And once a forerunner intervenes, they would get entangled in a strange punishment.
The girl had failed her mission and was about to embrace her suicide.
If at this point a forerunner was willing to stop this suicide...
That forerunner would face an extremely adverse situation in their next challenge.
It's very likely they would enter an era of mayhem post version 2.0.
It was an era with a very low survival rate, one that even third-tier masters would not dare to challenge lightly.
But the worst was yet to come...
If this forerunner who attempted to save the girl failed in their own challenge...
Both he and the girl would ultimately die, and no one would be able to save them ever again.
To put it simply—
If you don't try to save the girl, only the girl dies.
If you save the girl, the girl dies, and the rescuer dies too.
Such a situation doomed the girl to be left utterly alone, even though she was the much-adored Sky Eye in her life.
She was even a rare second-tier being—Sky Eye.
But it was all for naught.
Failure meant death, and the dead should not drag down others—
This was almost a consensus among all forerunners.
Therefore, upon learning that this daughter of Sky Eye was going to die, some felt regret, some were sad, some took pleasure in her misfortune, but no one was willing to rescue her.
Everyone thought that this forerunner from the number one power, Future Gate, was doomed.
During this day's Voice of the Forerunners, many also expressed their lamentation in their messages.
But for forerunners, everything would ultimately return to calm.
The girl thought so too.
Expecting the suicide intervention center to save her... was as impossible as Saito Asuka getting a divorce from his even more cowardly spouse.
But just as the girl was about to step through the gates of hell...
The call suddenly connected.
Indeed, this world is full of coincidences. One might even say coincidence and inevitability are but two sides of the same coin.
"Hello, you've reached the suicide crisis intervention hotline. My name is Zhou Baiyu."
The moment the man on the phone began to speak, his gentle voice seemed to be infused with some sort of magic power. A strong desire to live suddenly surged within the girl, and her dull eyes sparkled instantly.
In no time, she began to sob uncontrollably, muttering "I'm sorry" and "Thank you" repeatedly.
Overwhelmed with emotion, it was as if she was feeling the beauty of the world once more.
But the world was not beautiful, and she had always known that. She sobbed not because of its beauty but because she had survived.
And her apology was because she knew well that she had implicated another person.
"I... I'm really sorry... is there anything you would like me to do for you?"
"No, just live well."
The girl cried even harder.
Since this person could awaken her, then he must be a forerunner.
Even though he was a forerunner, he completely disregarded his own safety... From beginning to end, this man had not once mentioned anything related to being a forerunner, but just continued to comfort her.
Of course, there was also the possibility that this man was not aware that he had saved a forerunner who had failed the challenge.
But regardless, it made the girl feel an intense sense of guilt.
The guilt made the girl cry even more fiercely, and listening to the man's gentle concern, all she could do was cry out:
"Zhou Baiyu, sir, my name is Ling Hansu, and I will... live well. I hope... that we will meet again one day. I also hope that you... won't encounter any unsolvable difficulties!"
Then, Ling Hansu proactively ended the call. If she hadn't hung up, she feared she would be overwhelmed by her guilt.
Two minutes and twenty-five seconds, the call was over.
Zhou Baiyu, on the other end of the phone, was somewhat baffled. When he answered the call, he had heard the frantic breathing of someone who had just been saved from drowning.
As if suddenly awakening.
What puzzled him even more was that the flow of this call was a bit off.
In the past, the callers would talk to him for a long time and then hang up reluctantly.
But this time... the girl had hung up proactively.
As if she had made some kind of severance.
The final goodbye didn't sound like what a person about to commit suicide would say to their rescuer.
But Zhou Baiyu couldn't ponder too much; the challenges before him compelled him to leave his post ahead of schedule.
...
...
This incident was not over.
Perhaps because she survived a desperate situation, Ling Hansu forgot something.
"Crap... I shouldn't have hung up so rashly. Mr. Zhou Baiyu saved me, but that doesn't mean I'm truly out of danger."
"Because he saved me, he will face a particularly difficult version... If he doesn't survive, then neither will I."
Slap!
Ling Hansu, frustrated, slapped herself.
As an advanced form of the Watcher, the Sky Eye, with a deity like the God of Knowledge and Wisdom at her back, she naturally possessed the power to gather information.
"I could have... tried to help him, maybe I could have provided some intelligence."
"But I, unable to bear the guilt, hung up the phone instead."
Regaining her senses, Ling Hansu quickly adjusted her emotions. Looking at the bustling scene beneath her feet, she made a decisive call back.
However, the person who answered was not Zhou Baiyu, but a woman:
"Looking for Zhou? Unfortunately, he just left. Where does he live? We don't know, he seems to have rented a new place recently..."
Ling Hansu hung up the phone; she hadn't been able to ask what she wanted to know.
She began to panic:
"Calm down, calm down, Ling Hansu. Right now, the most important thing is to find Zhou Baiyu before he enters his next challenge."
"Provide him with enough information so he can survive. Though the chances are slim, now that I've started, I cannot give up."
If Zhou Baiyu dies, I will still die. If I help Zhou Baiyu survive...
Then both he and I may well be the first examples of people who can "escape death's rule."
The first occurrence of anything is pioneering and is bound to cause a sensation.
Maybe in the future, people won't be so indifferent to rescuing other forerunners.
But for now, Ling Hansu faced a conundrum—
"I've survived now, and until Zhou Baiyu dies, I won't die. I have to find Zhou Baiyu and ask him about the version he is going to, to provide him with informational support..."
"The only resource I can use is the guild's, activating their influence in reality should allow us to quickly find Zhou Baiyu..."
"But if I do that... Mr. Zhou Baiyu's real identity will be exposed. That would be very dangerous."
In the previous versions, Ling Hansu's ID was Snow Demon.
Her initial identity was that of a special agent, and her forerunner profession was the Watcher, definitely a chosen starter.
As a highly sought-after Sky Eye by many forces, she usually served the leading power among the forerunners—"Future Gate."
But now, Ling Hansu can't repay kindness with enmity...
The examples were too many, of forerunners whose real identities were exposed and who met with disaster.
So, caught between two difficult choices, Ling Hansu decisively began to search for the address of the "Suicide Intervention Center." She was determined to go to that place and find Zhou Baiyu.
For Ling Hansu, this day was destined to be incredibly busy. Her heart was filled with apologies and a sense of mission.
Because in her eyes, this was a mutual redemption between herself and Mr. Zhou Baiyu!
Without her help, Mr. Zhou Baiyu—
simply couldn't survive.
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