Seeing the guilty look on Brother Jiang's face, Notch patted him on the shoulder, while J comforted him at the same time, saying, "It's fine. We understand."
Brother Jiang nodded, then looked at Notch and continued, "Even though you forgot D and J, you still stayed obsessed with making Minecraft."
"So I quit my job overseas and came back home to find some easy work so I could stay by your side."
Hearing that, J clicked his tongue enviously. "Damn, this really is true love."
At J's teasing, Notch rolled his eyes speechlessly. "What true love? He lives in my house, eats my food, drinks my stuff. Even the cushy job he found was arranged through me."
The moment Notch finished speaking, J burst out laughing.
He looked at Brother Jiang and teased, "Brother Jiang, is there anything you can't do? You've even branched into being a live-in nanny?"
Notch waved his hand. "What kind of live-in nanny mooches off my takeout for all three meals every day? And another thing! Forget cleaning my room, I'm the one cleaning his room too!"
"Live-in nanny my ass. I basically raised a giant son!"
Brother Jiang laughed and cursed back, "Then tell me this, did I or did I not take care of you? Under my 'careful' care, didn't you slowly start recovering?"
After Brother Jiang finished speaking, Notch helplessly brushed him off.
"Yeah yeah, sure, sure."
"Anyway, after that I slowly started recuperating. With your help, I gradually recovered and began making games again."
"But because I'd forgotten D and J and lost that section of my memory, I could no longer gain recognition from the Inner World. So in my eyes back then, all the data I painstakingly wrote only manifested as endless void."
"When I realized every block in that void had corresponding code attached to it, it honestly scared me. Thankfully, I didn't back down."
"I rewrote the data of that void bit by bit, but what I didn't know was that every block I rewrote represented one block disappearing from the Surface World at the time…"
"As I rewrote the void's data, that world gradually started fading away too."
"The creatures and players of that world all lived in the former Surface World. As the Surface World vanished, players could no longer enter it, while the creatures all fell into the void."
Hearing this, Brother Jiang frowned.
"Don't tell me all those creatures…"
Before he could finish, Notch shook his head and interrupted him.
"At that time, my subconscious stepped in again. The creatures' physical bodies perished, but their souls were protected by my subconscious and drifted through the void…"
"After doing all that, my subconscious was probably afraid more trouble would arise, so it erased those creatures' memories…"
At this point, Notch sighed and shook his head.
"I never expected D to exploit the loophole anyway. He noticed the existence of those souls and made use of them, trying to use them to free himself from the void's seal."
Hearing this, J picked up the conversation.
"After being sealed into the void, I was completely out of it. Choosing to stand with him was a decision I made in a very short amount of time. There wasn't even time to think about the consequences."
"But once things calmed down… my emotions started hitting me all at once…"
"And on top of that, I was really upset that D had just stood by and done nothing back then, so during the first few years, we fought constantly."
"Because of that, I never had the time to study the powers that came from Notch."
"Later… neither of us could endure that endless loneliness anymore, so we reconciled. But we tacitly agreed never to bring up what happened back then again."
"And so we wasted away day after day…"
At this point, J looked toward Notch and continued, "At first, I was still full of hope. I believed you'd definitely find a way to rescue us."
"But gradually, that hope became fainter and fainter… It wasn't that I thought you'd abandoned us, but after so long without seeing you, I figured something must have stopped you."
"And the Inner World was constantly changing. No one could truly grasp its rules, so eventually… I gave up."
"I thought D and I would slowly grow old and die in that endless void… but after all those years passed, we realized our appearances hadn't changed at all. Even our hair and nails had stopped growing…"
"It was like time itself had abandoned us…"
At this point, J paused for a moment and let out a long breath. After steadying his emotions, he continued, "If I could grow old and die, then at least I'd know that endless loneliness had an end waiting for it…"
"But after realizing we wouldn't age with time… I really broke down…"
As he spoke, J's face twisted involuntarily. Even now, he still remembered the endless loneliness that had nearly driven him insane…
He exhaled deeply, releasing some of the pressure before continuing, "I drifted through life like that for who knows how long. I couldn't even tell what time meant anymore…"
"Then one day, D suddenly excitedly told me he'd found a way for us to leave… I think that was shortly after the game's servers reopened."
At this point, J looked at Notch and Brother Jiang.
"The moment I heard that news, I don't think I'd ever been happier in my life…"
"I would rather have died than stay in that void any longer… so I excitedly asked D how we were supposed to leave."
"He told me to wait a little longer because he still needed to research it more thoroughly, and then he asked if I could temporarily lend him the power inside me."
"Even though I'd never studied those powers over the years, I still refused him. Maybe from that moment onward, I stopped trusting him unconditionally…"
"Even though I no longer trusted him like before, I still chose to stand beside him again… My request was simple. I just wanted to leave the void…"
"And so… one wrong step led to another. I became his accomplice."
Hearing this, Brother Jiang let out a long sigh. He patted J on the shoulder and said, "Brother… how about this?"
"Give me your bank card password. You owe me some emotional damage compensation at the very least… Listening to your story is seriously suffocating."
"Quit sighing already. Your sense of morality is way too strong. If all this had happened to me… I probably would've become the mastermind directly…"
Brother Jiang's half-joking, half-comforting words instantly broke the heavy atmosphere.
Seeing that, Notch added, "You really would do something like that."
Hearing the banter between Notch and Brother Jiang, J's mood eased somewhat. He smiled too.
"Thankfully, while D was desperately trying to figure out how to leave the void, HIM wasn't sitting idle either."
At this point, admiration appeared in J's eyes.
"I truly admire him. He's a genuine hero."
"He may not have been sealed away, but the loneliness he endured far surpassed what D and I experienced…"
"At least D and I had each other. We could still talk… even if eventually there was nothing left to say, we were still emotional support for one another."
"But him…"
"It was like the whole world had abandoned him… Everything in existence had fallen silent, leaving only him alone… No one could see him or hear him…"
"And yet he still never gave up. He endured that loneliness by himself…"
"He couldn't enter the void, so he probably never knew those creatures' souls were still alive."
"Even so, he still carried out the promise he made to those creatures back then…"
"Even though the creatures in this new world had no connection or interaction with him whatsoever, he still silently protected them…"
At this point, J looked at Notch with a worried expression and asked, "HIM's ending…"
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