Chapter 019 Anorak's Suspicion

After bidding farewell to Clark, Wang Bo took another turn around the world. Seeing that this world was rebuilding a civilized society under Clark's leadership and with the help of the demons, he felt much more at ease.

A few days later, Wang Bo returned to the OASIS world.

This time, besides Malthus and Caroline, Ada Wong also came along.

So Wang Bo duplicated a new game helmet and gave it to Ada Wong.

After putting on the helmet, Ada Wong began to register an account.

Meanwhile, Wang Bo found Miss Friday. "Have you found the answer I asked for, Friday?"

Friday nodded and said, "Yes, master, I have found it. The game has been running without any anomalies, except that the game you played had its data modified to increase the difficulty."

"So, someone is targeting me."

"From the current evidence, it seems so," Friday said.

"Who is it?" Wang Bo couldn't help asking. "Who exactly is targeting me?"

Friday said, "I am still searching for that. The person targeting you is quite cunning and has high-level permissions in the game. I haven't caught them yet."

Wang Bo fell into thought. In the game OASIS, there were only two people with the highest permissions.

One was the developer of OASIS.

James Halliday!

But he was already dead. A few years ago, James Halliday's life came to an end, and he left behind a will, which was a short video.

This short video was not only exposed by major media, but he also thoughtfully sent a backup of the video via email to every OASIS user.

This video was actually a meticulously crafted film, titled... Anorak's Invitation!

The entire film was just over five minutes long, yet in the following weeks, it became the most closely watched film in history, even analyzed frame by frame countless times.

The reason people were so crazy about analyzing this video frame by frame was because of a crazy thing James Halliday did in it.

He set three Easter eggs in the game, and these three eggs were three keys.

Whoever could collect all three keys would inherit everything James Halliday owned. 'Everything' here referred to all of James Halliday's property, including company shares, the social simulation system, and so on.

In total, it amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars.

Because of this will, people frantically searched for the Easter eggs left by James Halliday.

Millions of people spent their free time studying and searching for that Easter egg. Initially, they were called 'egg hunters,' but soon the nickname 'gunters' replaced it.

In the first year, almost every OASIS user claimed to be a gunter.

But by the anniversary of Halliday's death, the fervor of the competition began to wane. A year had passed, and no one had found anything useful. Not a single door or key.

This was not unrelated to the vastness of OASIS. After all, it contained thousands of virtual worlds, and thoroughly searching any one of them would take years.

People poured all their enthusiasm into searching for the Easter egg, but Wang Bo was not interested. After all, hundreds of billions of dollars meant nothing to him.

Money was nothing to him.

But what Wang Bo cared about was not the money, but Anorak.

And this Anorak was James Halliday's in-game avatar.

In other words, the so-called GM.

In the game OASIS, Anorak was an omnipotent god. Everything in the game moved according to his will; he could modify anything in the game at will.

Anorak could certainly increase the difficulty of Wang Bo's mission. Although James Halliday was dead, Anorak still existed in this world.

Wang Bo remembered that in the plot of Ready Player One, when the protagonist Wade found all the Easter eggs, Anorak appeared, transformed into James Halliday's likeness, and had a conversation with Wade.

That is to say, James Halliday might have uploaded his consciousness into the game before his death.

Although his body was dead, he could observe the game in another way, and even meet his future successor, the male protagonist Wade.

Although after death, consciousness quickly dissipates and ceases to exist, Anorak was still alive and even came out to talk to the protagonist—an indisputable fact.

This was enough to prove that James Halliday's research on the brain and subconscious was quite remarkable.

In other words, this Anorak was likely the culprit who increased the difficulty for him. But the question was, why would he do that?

Could it be because of Wang Bo's identity?

Wang Bo had not forgotten that James Halliday was very likely a time traveler. It was not impossible that he was interested in Wang Bo's identity and used this method to test him.

But the problem was that when Wang Bo arrived in this world, James Halliday was already dead.

And the mission was executed during Wang Bo's second login to the game.

On what basis did Anorak think Wang Bo was special? In what aspect had Wang Bo given himself away?

But on second thought, Wang Bo realized he indeed seemed quite special.

First, in a world where OASIS was so popular, he was already this old and logging into OASIS for the first time—that in itself was very abnormal.

Second, after he logged into OASIS, a large sum of money appeared in his account—even more abnormal.

Third, he had browsed a lot of basic knowledge in OASIS—even more abnormal.

A man of his age, acting like a newbie experiencing OASIS for the first time, even not knowing much about OASIS—this was simply unbelievable.

After all, since OASIS appeared, it had not only changed the gaming industry but also the social scene, even the entire world.

It was like someone in modern society not knowing what a mobile phone was.

If Wang Bo had encountered such a person before his time travel, his first reaction would be that this guy crawled out of some deep mountain forest, but his second reaction would be, no, even people from deep mountain forests should know about mobile phones.

Then, Wang Bo would suspect that this guy was either a time traveler from ancient times or from another world.

If cautious, he would test the other party.

Not to mention that James Halliday himself had a high probability of being a time traveler and should be very sensitive to such things.

That is to say, James Halliday—or more precisely, Anorak—might not know his true identity, but likely suspected he was a time traveler.

So he reached out to test him?