The flush faded from Du Sanying's face, and he took two cautious steps back, hunched over as he looked at Bai Liu. "–Who the hell are you?"
Why do you know everything about me so well… if you're not a friend?
"I've used you before." Bai Liu didn't hesitate to speak the truth. "That's why you don't want to see me."
He looked Du Sanying squarely in the eye. "But I didn't force you. You chose to follow me of your own free will. Your luck and intuition told you to join my team, and that's why you did."
"What about your intuition now?"
Du Sanying froze, then slowly straightened. The man was right.
His good fortune had led him to trust Bai Liu, which was why he had been so obedient in the first place.
But then why had the parrot warned him to stay away?
Bai Liu cast a bemused glance at the parrot on the balcony. "Do you know why you chose a parrot to record your memories?"
Du Sanying shook his head honestly.
His mind was mostly blank now; he often relied on residual premonitions brought by luck to guide him—for example, sensing danger around him, believing what the parrot said, or following Bai Liu.
"Because there's no other way to record your memories in this world," Bai Liu said calmly. "You're in a dangerous game, but your luck lets you survive. Though sometimes… that luck hurts others."
"You reject those memories, emptying them every week. But even then, you must continue to endure, just to survive in this game."
Du Sanying shook his head, trembling. "Why? Can't I leave this game?"
"No," Bai Liu replied. "Because you still have unfulfilled desires."
He raised his eyes. "You want to make up for the misfortunes created by your good luck. You want to revive your parents, your siblings, and the friends who died because of you. You want to end this unfortunate cycle and restore what your luck inadvertently destroyed. This game… gives you hope and desire."
Du Sanying opened his mouth, but no words came out. He couldn't remember anything.
Bai Liu continued, "You can't reveal this game to anyone. The paper can't record it. Electronic devices can't save it. Even if you confide in someone, their memory will be erased after seven seconds."
Du Sanying whispered, "But the parrot remembers…, and it remembers you!"
"If I'm correct, this parrot was a game prop you won," Bai Liu said, his gaze drifting to the bird. "It aligns with your core desires and was placed in reality as a carrier of your memories. It was originally a creature from the game."
Mu Sicheng, standing beside them, finally understood. "That's why this parrot remembers things from the game."
Bai Liu extended his hand to Du Sanying sincerely, his dark, mirror-like eyes reflecting the boy's hesitant face.
Du Sanying froze, staring at his own reflection as clearly as the pond below.
"I may be a bad person," Bai Liu said softly, "but I've never harmed you. More importantly—"
"-You can't hurt me. My bad luck is innate, far worse than any misfortune you could bring. And the fortune you scorn is exactly what I dream of."
Bai Liu stepped closer. Du Sanying couldn't retreat and froze.
In Bai Liu's eyes, Du Sanying saw a storm of wild, cold wind and snow, melting ice floating in the air, fire and acid hissing and smoking. Fleeting images of destruction and smoke swirled. A figure appeared for an instant—a beautiful memory that didn't exist—floating away in the wind.
Du Sanying felt as though he saw… a man with a broken heart.
"I ask you… help me," Bai Liu whispered. "Use your good fortune to save someone important to me."
Du Sanying was silent for a moment, then whispered, "...If I go, can I really save them? I won't hurt them?"
"No," Bai Liu replied, smiling faintly. "When one's life is unfortunate enough, the misfortune you bring may just be another form of luck."
"For me, for the man I'm trying to save, and for the five people on the plane—you won't harm them."
Bai Liu lowered his eyes. "Because their fate is already as unfortunate as it can be."
Du Sanying clenched his teeth, took a deep breath, and grasped Bai Liu's hand. "Okay, I'll go with you. What do I have to do to save them?"
Bai Liu explained the situation.
Du Sanying looked confused. "The plane's already over the Antarctic and is going to crash. What can I do?"
"You can be teleported onto the plane," Bai Liu said. "Use your luck to try to bring it down safely into the sea instead of the ground, minimizing the crash and saving the people and items on board."
Du Sanying's face went pale. "Teleport me onto a plane that's going to crash?!"
Bai Liu held him firmly. "I'll be with you."
Though fear drained his color, Du Sanying managed to maintain his composure. He grabbed Bai Liu's arm weakly. "How… how do you teleport?"
Bai Liu's eyes flicked to the parrot on the balcony. "Using game props."
Du Sanying had entered the game about a year ago, just as his family had been involved in the accident. It was reasonable to assume that the core desire driving him into the game was related to that tragedy—for example, the desire to instantly teleport his entire family away from the scene.
And the parrot? A game prop, fulfilling Du Sanying's core desires and brought into reality. Coupled with the careful design of those behind the scenes…
Bai Liu had every reason to suspect that the parrot's true function was as a teleportation tool.
Tang Erda caught the parrot off the balcony, pressing down on its wing joints under Bai Liu's direction.
The bird hissed loudly, neck stretched and wings fluttering. "Bai Liu! Bad! Bai Liu! Bad!"
Du Sanying, anxious and uncomfortable, weakly added, "Be gentle… It's not comfortable."
Bai Liu took the parrot from Tang Erda and handed it to Du Sanying.
The parrot quickly climbed onto Du Sanying's shoulder, tilted its head, and rubbed against him, blinking its green eyes. Its claws brushed against Du Sanying's ear as it muttered, whispering a warning: "Bai Liu, bad, run."
Du Sanying didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He raised a hand to touch the parrot's head, hesitated, and then covered its eyes. "...Using props won't hurt it, will it?"
"No," Bai Liu replied. "But you'll need to figure out how to use it."
Du Sanying frowned bitterly. "...But I really don't remember."
"It's obviously a voice-activated prop," Liu Jiayi prompted. "Did you devise a keyword for it, something like 'Bai Liu'?"
At the word, the parrot twitched its wings, tilted its neck, and called out: "Bai Liu, bad—!!!"
Du Sanying calmly covered its beak. "Let me think."
"If you and your family were caught in a violent traffic accident, what keyword would you choose to teleport everyone out?" Liu Jiayi asked.
Du Sanying hesitated. "A traffic accident?"
"Yes. A severe one," Bai Liu explained clearly. "The remains weren't found for a week. The passengers' bodies were fused together into an indistinguishable mess of flesh and blood from the fire and violent impact."
Du Sanying's pupils constricted as he ducked his head, biting his nails nervously. "It sounds… so serious."
"You try to separate your family's remains for a proper burial, but you can't. No one else can either. DNA identification would take ages."
"Eventually, the families of the victims agreed to set up a mass accident cemetery. Everyone was buried together. On the day of the tribute, you—the only survivor—became the talk of the town."
Du Sanying's breathing quickened.
"The families at the memorial asked how you survived. Some were concerned, others comforted you. Many sympathized, relieved you were lucky enough to live. Two families even said they wanted to support your college education—because in their minds, you were also a victim."
"But you knew you weren't. You felt like the perpetrator. You knew their loved ones had died because of your luck."
"And yet they wanted to help you."
Du Sanying covered his head, shaking, lost in thought, transported back to that scene. He kept apologizing, wide-eyed and tearful.
"I'm sorry… I'm sorry… I didn't mean to…"
Bai Liu took his hands and forced him to look up. "When the mass burial happened, you disappeared. Everyone searched for you, worried sick. Eventually, they found you buried in the cemetery. Luckily, you were found."
Bai Liu's voice grew darker. "A child was playing in an unfinished part of the cemetery and was killed by a falling monument. That's how they found you. That child belonged to one of the two families that wanted to help you. His father died in the accident. He loved you and called you brother. His mother, moved by that affection, wanted to help you—not realizing the misfortune it would bring her."
"Does this remind you of your own sister?"
Du Sanying trembled, struggling to pull his hands back, tears streaming down his face. "—Stop talking!!!"
But Bai Liu pressed on, eyes locked on the boy's tear-filled gaze.
"What were you screaming as you crawled from the grave, holding the child's broken body, clutching your dead parents and siblings at the accident scene?"
"Why did your memory fail after that, refusing to recall anything?"
Du Sanying sank to his knees, sobbing hoarsely, voice full of despair.
"Help!!! Somebody help them!!!"
"Let me die!!! Let them live!!!"
"-I don't want to be lucky to live. Let me die unhappily."
The parrot's crest stood upright as it echoed him: "-Let me die unhappily!!!"
A dazzling white light enveloped Du Sanying and Bai Liu, wrapping around their shoulders.
And then, in an instant, the two of them disappeared.