After Notch finished speaking, Brother Jiang didn't respond immediately. Instead, he looked around at the surroundings, found a spot that looked reasonably comfortable, and walked over before plopping himself down.
After shifting around a bit to find a comfortable position, he lifted his chin toward Notch and said,
"Go on then. The stage is yours."
Seeing Brother Jiang acting like this, Notch couldn't help rolling his eyes again. Still, despite the look of annoyance, he waved a hand toward him anyway.
As he waved, the place where Brother Jiang sat began to change.
Several blocks of obsidian forming the ground in front of him slowly rose upward like a building being constructed from flat land, climbing until they reached the height of a tabletop.
As the obsidian platform rose, the blocks on both sides and the one Brother Jiang was sitting on also lifted themselves into the shape of chairs.
Once the table had formed, Notch waved his hand again, and the obsidian tabletop was instantly covered with all kinds of food and fruit.
After finishing all that, Notch exchanged a glance with J before both of them walked over and sat down on the freshly-made obsidian chairs.
The moment he sat down, Notch spoke, "The last time we all sat together like this was more than ten years ago, before Brother Jiang went overseas…"
As he spoke, he lifted the iron bucket full of milk in front of him and looked at the other two.
"I'll use milk in place of alcohol for this toast!"
With that, Notch grabbed the bucket and chugged down a huge mouthful of milk. Then he wiped the foam from above his lips and boldly handed the milk bucket over to J.
J took the bucket without a word and tilted his head back, gulping noisily. After finishing, he let out a milky burp before passing the bucket to Brother Jiang.
Seeing how deeply immersed Notch and J were in their act, Brother Jiang couldn't really understand it, but he still accepted the bucket shoved in front of him and started drinking noisily as well.
The moment they saw him drinking too, Notch and J immediately started cheering together from the side.
"Now that's some serious milk-drinking capacity, Brother Jiang!!!"
"That's what I call a real brother! Tonight we don't stop till we drop!!"
Hearing the two of them egging him on, Brother Jiang got fired up too. He gulped down the rest of the milk in one go before slamming the bucket hard onto the ground with a loud smack.
"Good milk!!!"
The instant Brother Jiang finished speaking, the three of them looked at one another and burst into laughter.
"We're almost forty already. How are you two still acting like those two idiots from over ten years ago? Using milk instead of alcohol? If you can't drink, go sit at the kids' table!"
"Hahahahaha! You've got the nerve to talk? You were the one drinking the hardest! Don't tell me you were just thirsty."
"You two shouldn't laugh at each other, you're exactly the same! Hahahahaha! But speaking of which, does this count as getting drunk on milk instead of wine?"
———
At this moment, the smiles on Notch, J, and Brother Jiang's faces were so genuine and beautiful that it felt as though time itself had frozen in place.
Perhaps true friendship really was this simple.
Even when they knew you were being stupid, they would still laugh at you while joining you in being stupid together.
After reminiscing for a while, Brother Jiang saw that the timing was about right. Though reluctant, he skillfully steered the conversation toward the real topic.
"You really are heartless, you know that? I funded your game development, and yet you still kept things from me."
"If you'd told me the truth back then, maybe J and D… forget it, no point bringing up D. But maybe J wouldn't have…"
After saying that, Brother Jiang let out a long sigh, his face full of regret.
Hearing this, Notch shook his head.
"It's a good thing I didn't tell you. With how obsessed you are with digging to the bottom of everything…"
At that point, Notch waved his hand dismissively, "Forget it. What's done is done. There's no medicine for regret, so there's no point talking about 'what ifs.'"
At this point, Notch looked at Brother Jiang and slowly said, "When I first started making the game, everything was completely normal."
"Maybe because the Inner World sensed my original hopes for Minecraft, little by little, the Inner World began connecting with the Outer World I created."
"At first, the living beings gradually started developing consciousness. Then players began appearing from who-knows-where… after that came the Ender Queen and the others… and eventually the real HIM."
"More and more things beyond our control began appearing in the Outer World. Back then, I honestly didn't know how to deal with any of it. I didn't even know what kind of role I myself was supposed to play…"
As he spoke, Notch looked toward Brother Jiang and J with helplessness written all over his face.
"You both know that after I started learning programming, I barely interacted with the outside world anymore."
"So I didn't know how to face those living beings and players. But I really wanted to understand them, so in the end I handed that responsibility over to D."
Hearing Notch's words, J nodded.
"I was the same as you. Slow to warm up to people, bad at dealing with strangers. So when D volunteered himself, both of us gladly accepted it."
Notch nodded.
"Yeah. After that, I focused on continuing to improve the Outer World's code while trying to find clues within the code itself about those unknown things existing in that world."
"Meanwhile, you were responsible for traveling to the various boundaries of the world I had designed in search of clues."
"We trusted D too much. So during that period, we chose to believe everything he told us…"
At that point, J shook his head and interrupted.
"At the time, neither of our sides had made any progress. So whenever D said he'd also been working every day to interact with living beings and players while searching for clues but still hadn't found anything, we didn't think there was a problem."
"But in reality, that was already when he'd started committing atrocities… Maybe at first it was just a playful prank to him."
"But once he realized those living beings were completely powerless to resist him, that he could do whatever he wanted, his mentality began to change."
"The sad thing is, neither you nor I noticed the change in him…"
Notch let out a heavy sigh and nodded.
"It was our negligence. It wasn't until you happened to encounter some living beings that you realized something was wrong. But even then, he still managed to brush us off…"
J sighed helplessly, "Yeah. Even though I acted like I believed his explanation back then, deep down I kept feeling there were too many suspicious points, so I decided to investigate personally…"
"I originally thought everything had only just begun, that there was still time to fix things. I never imagined it was already the final elegy…"
At this point, J looked toward Notch and asked, "Do you still remember the day the real HIM gathered the living beings and players together to declare war against us?"
Hearing J's words, Notch nodded heavily.
"I remember. At the time, I didn't know what choice to make. I didn't want to believe D was really the kind of person they claimed he was… but I also understood very clearly that for so many living beings and players to rise up and attack us, D must have committed unforgivable crimes. And not just one or two…"