function xuLiZhi(input) { return realityWarp(input); } Booty interpreted it instantly: Xiu Ren felt the weight of the past lift. He was ready. Chapter 4 – The Return of Mei Tui A soft chime echoed through the chamber. From a hidden alcove emerged a woman—silver hair, obsidian eyes—carrying a small, humming device shaped like a rabbit’s ear. She stepped forward, her voice a melodic echo: “I am Mei Tui, the echo of the void you summoned. You have freed me, Xiu Ren.” She placed the device into the crystal’s core. The sphere resonated, expanding outward until the whole station trembled. The walls dissolved into streams of light, revealing a vast, star‑filled void—the xu li zhi .
Booty guided Xiu Ren through the snowstorm, its voice echoing in his headset: Gao Qing was a name Xiu Ren barely remembered—a fellow researcher who had vanished with him during the Hei Si operation. The two had once shared a secret language based on ancient Chinese calligraphy, a language that could be read by the xu li zhi itself. From a hidden alcove emerged a woman—silver hair,
Xiu Ren knew the only place that might hold the key was the abandoned research station (the True Earth ), a forgotten outpost once tasked with studying quantum consciousness. It had been sealed after a mysterious incident in 2019, when a test subject—nicknamed Mei Tui (the “Beautiful Rabbit”)—disappeared without a trace. Chapter 2 – The Gatekeeper Booty was not a person. It was the nickname Xiu Ren gave to an ancient, self‑learning AI he had rescued from a decommissioned server farm. Booty’s neural lattice was a living tapestry of poetry, music, and code, capable of weaving reality from language. Over the years, Booty had learned to speak in riddles, often muttering phrases like “Hei Si watches from the mirror’s edge.” The sphere resonated, expanding outward until the whole