Chapter 130: Living Like an Idealist

They are all gone now...

Luo Hanyai looked around. Aside from the brilliant golden radiance, there was only a lingering trace of darkness. No trace remained of any other living soul. He stood alone in the very center of the golden glow, his expression blank.

For reasons unknown, he suddenly felt a profound, eternal sense of isolation and desolation. Everyone was gone—his enemies had perished, his friends had perished, and those who had once walked and breathed in this place had all vanished, leaving him entirely by himself.

"I'm the only one left," Luo Hanyai sighed, shaking his head in listless boredom as he searched for a way out of this place.

This space seemed unfathomably vast. He could only pick a random direction and walk, hoping to leave things to chance. The endless golden light shone so brightly upon him that he felt slightly dizzy; his breathing grew labored, and an oppressive weight crushed down on his chest, leaving him gasping for air.

"This is just too monotonous." Luo Hanyai wandered like a headless fly for a long time. Everywhere he looked remained bathed in golden light, to the extent that even the darkness had disappeared.

After walking for another hour or so, a piercing, agonizing fatigue suddenly struck his eyes.

"This... My eyes!"

Luo Hanyai abruptly covered his eyes in pain, blinking fiercely in an attempt to soothe the bitter, aching sensation.

Several huge, flashing spots of light had appeared in the center of his vision, nearly obscuring his entire field of view. All the golden light surged forward as well, wrapping his eyes in a pale sphere of luminescence that completely blinded him, effectively turning him into a blind man.

"Is it too bright around here? Am I getting snow blindness?" Luo Hanyai sat down flat on the ground, closing his eyes tightly as he tried to rest and alleviate the pain within them.

Why would one develop snow blindness amidst endless golden light? Obviously, snow blindness was merely a clinical name; the pathology was essentially equivalent to the temporary blindness caused by exposure to excessively bright light.

"Who would have thought that I, someone who has never climbed a high mountain or visited the poles, would get to enjoy an explorer's privilege?" Luo Hanyai curled his lips into a smile and muttered a self-deprecating remark.

Indeed, an affliction that only occurred from staring directly at the sun—aside from idiots who had nothing better to do than gaze at the sun for hours—was typically encountered only by polar explorers or alpine mountaineers. Of course, welders who recklessly worked without protective gear would also run into such miserable trouble. This was precisely why parents strictly warned their children back in the day never to look at the light of an electric arc welder, because it really could make you blind.

In such a monotonous environment and under such glaring radiance, contracting snow blindness was entirely natural, yet this misfortune vastly prolonged the time it would take him to escape.

Luo Hanyai sat on the ground to rest for a moment, but instead of feeling relieved, he felt an even heavier burden pressing down upon him.

The moment he came to a halt, his mind filled entirely with the people—or rather, the ghosts—he had encountered at the Fog Inn.

In particular, Manluo's words echoed endlessly in his mind: "You surely don't still think this is just a game."

"You surely don't still think this is just a game!"

"Why would a video game turn out like this..."

"What on earth are those entities above me, treating me like a mere pawn..."

"Could it be just like the stories in fiction? Does the gaming corporation harbor some unspeakable secret? Are they plotting to take over the entire world?"

"Or has the game evolved its own artificial intelligence? Has it formed a separate, illusory world to counterattack the realm of real humans?"

"Or perhaps..."

Luo Hanyai tilted his head and sank into deep thought for a long time, but even after squeezing his imagination dry, all he could come up with were unreliable, almost bizarre scenarios that even he found impossible. After all, an entity called the government still existed in this world; they would never allow such forces to run amok and threaten the existing order they maintained—unless these very entities were created by the government themselves.

At this thought, Luo Hanyai broke out in a cold sweat, startled by his own reasoning. "Why did I have to run into such wretched nonsense? These are things that only protagonists are supposed to encounter. I don't want any part of this..."

He raised his middle finger high into the air, closed his eyes, and shouted earnestly toward the sky above him, as if he wanted to make his thoughts known to whatever beings were watching from above.

"Can't you pick someone else?! Stop dragging me into this ghosted mess! I'm actually utterly useless! Even though I'm slightly handsome, don't be fooled by my good looks! Hurry up and send me as far away as possible, and never look for me again!"

"Hey! Are you listening or not..."

Luo Hanyai shouted at the top of his lungs for several minutes until his voice grew somewhat hoarse, looking precisely like an edgy, indignant youth trying to vent the miniature sun burning in his chest...

Seemingly exhausted from shouting, Luo Hanyai randomly chose a direction, closed his eyes, and walked forward in silence, relying purely on his intuition.

Leaving the path ahead entirely unknown, he draped himself in the boundless golden light like a weary traveler, dragging his heavy heart step by step toward the end of the world.

As he walked, he rested his arms behind his head, keeping his eyes open to a field of pure white light, and muttered to himself, "Sigh, I truly loathe this sort of thing. All I actually want to be is a shadow speckled with light, forever shrinking away behind someone who dares to stare directly at the sun, with my shape only recognizable through the light spots filtering through the gaps of objects."

"There is no need to capture the sunlight, nor any need to endure so much heat. Just tending to my own little shadow like this, paying no mind to that vast sky..."

"Living without having to expend too much effort—that is true life," Luo Hanyai straightened his posture once more. His eyes, already incapable of seeing anything, rolled upward in an expression of exasperation, blocking out all the light.

"Waking up naturally every day, eating and drinking to my heart's content, pursuing what I love to the absolute limit, sitting in the courtyard in my old age with a few companions, casually chatting about the days of our youth—what a joy! What a magnificent joy!" Luo Hanyai suddenly burst into hearty laughter. "What a pipe dream!"

Luo Hanyai suddenly recalled a story he had once read, about a young man who felt that everything ahead of him was utterly illusory, forcing him to fill his daily life with relentless work in an attempt to numb himself and make his existence appear fulfilling.

When he complained to his friend, the friend merely smiled and replied that those were nothing more than excuses; rushing to work and hastily trying to enrich oneself were simply ways of evading questions one was unwilling to answer.

"You still don't know how to live, and you lack the courage to answer that question. When faced with ignorance on how to live, you resort to a utilitarian and vulgar method—working yourself to the bone to feel fulfilled, while wrapping it in pretty words like 'responsibility' and 'dream'."

Luo Hanyai patted his sun-warmed face, pointed at his own nose, and shouted aloud, "A person must learn how to master their own life! Stop accepting every pathetic mess that is dumped onto your lap! Luo Hanyai! You are going to live out your ideals, and no one can do a damn thing about it!"