"What are you doing?!"
The moment Zhu Yao caught her, Yu Nan, who had been a complete mess, sprang up and sat up, staring warily at her hands that were still suspended in mid-air as if facing a formidable enemy.
"Didn't you say you couldn't get up?" Zhu Yao felt strange. This person seemed alert and didn't look like someone who would suddenly die after running a few steps.
"I told you to pull me up," Yu Nan gritted her teeth, "I didn't tell you to pull me from behind!"
There's really nothing we can do about Zhu Yao.
A strange thought popped into Zhu Yao's mind—could it be that Yu Nan is ticklish?
Unfortunately, she and Yu Nan weren't close enough to pounce on each other and make tickling jokes.
"The flowers outside must be blooming, want to go for a walk?"
Zhu Yao attempted to extend an invitation.
"No," Yu Nan shook her head firmly, "unless all the mosquitoes die."
Zhu Yao asked curiously, "So, did you plant your flowers so you could see them during the day?"
“I didn’t consider mosquitoes when I planted it,” Yu Nan shrugged. “Besides—I can see it from my own bedroom.”
"So, Miss Zhu, would you like to take a walk in my bedroom?"
Zhu Yao: "..."
It seems like we've been outmaneuvered.
Zhu Yao finally understood Yu Nan's resistance to exercise.
"Let's go back," Yu Nan urged. "You shouldn't feel dizzy anymore, right?"
"Much better," Zhu Yao nodded. "I heard that playing too many games will prevent you from getting dizzy."
"Indeed, I also got motion sickness when I first started playing games, and I was even more so than you. Just looking at that kind of graphics made me want to vomit. But now I have no problem at all."
Yu Nan stood up and walked towards the game room.
Zhu Yao followed behind her, watching Yu Nan's back.
"It's strange," Zhu Yao thought to herself. "If Yu Nan gets motion sickness to that extent, why does she insist on playing the game?"
It's like... some kind of mission.
Upon entering the game room, Yu Nan opened "Send Us to the Moon".
"Let's continue, the last astronaut to save the world." Yu Nan didn't sit on the sofa, but instead moved a gaming chair next to him.
Zhu Yao started wandering around the Pearson space station. Even though it was unrelated to the plot, she could enter any of the rooms on the space station, and the models were very detailed.
Zhu Yao saw a guitar floating in an employee dormitory in the Aries area. In the middle of the dormitory, there was a telescope fixed to the Earth, with a blue-green picture of the Earth attached to the telescope. Four letters were written on the back of the picture.
“home”
Zhu Yao moved closer to the telescope and saw the Earth from the same angle as in the photo—except that this time the Earth was not blue-green, but only yellowish-brown.
That's the direction of home.
"Was this... a photo of Earth taken by former space station crew members?" Zhu Yao asked.
"Hmm," Yu Nan said without adding anything more.
"Did they all die five years ago?"
"I can't say, it would affect your gaming experience," Yu Nan took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.
"You'll find out everything if you keep playing."
"Um…"
Zhu Yao suddenly became speechless. She found an empty box of fluoxetine on the desk in an engineer's dormitory.
It was very dull and oppressive; it felt like a huge rock was pressing on Zhu Yao's chest.
The dimly lit space station, the deep yet intermittent space sounds, the dormitories that felt like they were full of life but were completely empty—it was as if the original order had been suddenly disrupted, and everyone on the moon had instantly evaporated.
Everything points to that night five years ago—a sudden explosion at the lunar base, followed by a power outage and complete loss of contact.
From then on, no one responded on the moon.
Zhu Yao walked through a long corridor, the dim light of a flashlight illuminating the posters pasted on the side.
"For humanity, for the future!"
"Technology connects the Earth and the Moon!"
"The Moon! New Energy..."
"For humanity! For our home!"
…
Following the mission instructions, Zhu Yao transferred the energy of the life support system to the rotation system and entered the Libra control center amidst space station warnings, oxygen countdowns, and tense background noise.
She pressed the "start" button, and the screen displayed—the space elevator to the lunar base had been successfully activated.
However, a piercing warning sounded, and the space station began to shake rapidly. Zhu Yao even doubted whether she had made a mistake.
Amidst this earth-shattering tremor, the space station disintegrated.
Yes, the space station has cracked.
Zhu Yao, as the last astronaut and humanity's last hope, was thrown into space.
She almost swore.
She painstakingly followed instructions to personally launch the rocket and send herself into space, running up and down the space station to activate the power supply, risking electrocution to retrieve the energy battery—was she just going to blow up the space station and watch humanity's last hope get lost in space?
So this game was designed to make her experience despair?
At this moment, the astronauts are spinning rapidly along with the shattered walls of the space station, moving further and further away from the moon.
In an instant, anger, shame, grief, and despair intertwined.
The greater her pride when she successfully launched the rocket and docked with the space station, the greater her despair and resentment at this moment.
Zhu Yao looked at Yu Nan with accusing eyes, silently complaining to her—what a terrible game this is.
"Don't rush, keep watching." Yu Nan pressed her down and pointed to the screen.
Zhu Yao saw the astronaut trying to grab a solar panel—a part that had been flung into space with her.
A glimmer of hope ignited in her heart, only to be extinguished the very next second.
The astronauts missed it—they were just a hair's breadth away, but it slipped through their fingers.
But this gave Zhu Yao a new idea. She gripped the handle tightly and looked carefully behind her.
Great, there's a large wall panel in front.
Zhu Yao finally managed to get the astronaut to grab the board, and then turned around and pushed herself toward the space station.
It was a success…
Zhu Yao looked at the space station in the distance and breathed a sigh of relief.
It'll eventually drift away...
However, the next second a familiar voice rang out, and Zhu Yao felt like she was suffocating.
"Warning, oxygen is running low..."
The bottom right corner of the screen displays: Only 12 seconds of oxygen left.
At that moment, it seemed that a signal had arrived from far away from the space station, and Zhu Yao received a radio signal from Earth.
"Fortuna, are you still receiving our messages? Fortuna?!"
It was the NPC's slightly urgent voice, but it quickly cut off as the signal weakened.
The oxygen was dwindling, the screen was dimming, and the astronaut's heartbeat was growing louder...
Just as the screen was about to go completely black, an oxygen tank floated in front of Zhu Yao—it was an oxygen tank that had been thrown out by the explosion of the space station!
Zhu Yao grasped at the astronaut as if he had found a lifeline, guiding him toward the scattered oxygen cylinders in space.
She couldn't fail. Zhu Yao told herself that even if it was just a game, she was humanity's only hope at this moment.
After all, Earth's last remaining resources were used to launch itself into space.
Even just in the game, the feeling of lack of oxygen is unbearable; Zhu Yao, watching from outside the screen, is almost suffocating.
Zhu Yao carefully floated past a piece of space debris and saw four oxygen cylinders in front of her.
Zhu Yao was secretly delighted and controlled her character to float in that direction—four oxygen tanks could last a long time.
Seemingly sensing her intention, Yu Nan chuckled softly.
What is she laughing at? There's nothing funny here...
Before Zhu Yao could ask anything, a piece of space debris drifting past slammed into her, pushing her upwards.
With only 22 seconds of oxygen left, she missed out on all four oxygen cylinders.
"There's no oxygen left."
Zhu Yao looked incredulous. In the last 22 seconds, she searched with all her might, but there were no scattered oxygen tanks in space nearby.
She could only watch helplessly as the screen grew darker and darker, the countdown in the lower right corner acting like a death knell, making her feel extremely uneasy.
Time resets to zero, and the astronauts are frozen in space.
Game over…
"This..." Zhu Yao said, extremely unwilling, "If only I had those four oxygen tanks..."
"How's the design of this part?" Without rushing to read the save file or explaining the walkthrough, Yu Nan asked Zhu Yao a question.
"Hmm... The plot design is quite amazing, isn't it? It managed to evoke my emotions in just a few minutes, making me jump back and forth between hope and despair."
“You’re really into the game,” Yu Nan said. “This game is very immersive, and this part is one of the top three parts of the game in my opinion.”
"So what exactly do I need to do to get those four oxygen tanks?" Zhu Yao asked in a low voice.
“You can’t get them.” Yu Nan smiled subtly. “In the design, those four cans are not something players can obtain.”
"Their purpose is simply to give players a moment of surprise, and then plunge them into despair the next second."