"Where is this? Did I cross over again?"
When Chen Ze opened his eyes again, he was no longer in the familiar data space.
Yet, similarly, this wasn't the real world he knew either—but rather a completely unfamiliar place.
Judging from his surroundings, it seemed to be a park.
An abandoned park late at night, empty and silent, with only broken exercise equipment left to tell of its past glory.
"Apologies, it seems there's been an error in the login coordinates."
Just as Chen Ze was wondering what had happened, a woman's voice suddenly came from behind him.
"Who?"
Chen Ze spun around warily at the somewhat familiar voice—and then saw something that shattered his understanding of reality completely: standing there was a fox.
Or more accurately—a fox-like creature standing upright, exactly like a mythical fox spirit.
Golden fur framed her composed, extraordinary posture; clever eyes sparkled with intelligence and agility.
"Renamon?!"
Unable to hide his shock, Chen Ze stared at this eerily familiar creature and blurted out the name instinctively.
"So I really did cross over again?"
Tilting her head slightly, Renamon also appeared mildly surprised that Chen Ze had recognized her identity immediately. But there was something far more important she had to explain.
"I don't know exactly what you mean by 'crossing over,'" Renamon began cautiously, "but right now, we aren't in any known data space."
Only then did Chen Ze finally snap back from his shock, recalling clearly what had just transpired moments before.
Just earlier today, he'd finally gotten the specialized EDEN glasses he'd painstakingly ordered through a secondhand broker.
They were rare, unobtainable through normal means—a true piece of black technology capable of digitizing the human body and uploading it directly into a computer.
Yet, right when he'd excitedly prepared to log into his computer using them, the mysterious hacker who'd long been occupying his PC suddenly proposed changing his avatar to a new form.
Chen Ze hadn't given it much thought. After all, he was already using a fake identity; changing avatars didn't matter to him at all.
At least, that's what Chen Ze kept telling himself—it definitely wasn't because the fox hacker had mocked his chosen alias as too chuuni.
Under normal circumstances, he would've accessed the real Japanese EDEN network via overseas proxy servers.
Yet somewhere along the process, something had clearly gone wrong—and the moment he'd opened his eyes, he'd "crossed over" again.
Of course, according to Renamon, this was simply "an error in the login coordinates."
"So you mean... all of this was your doing?!"
Without a doubt, this "Renamon" before him was precisely that fox hacker—and the culprit responsible for his current situation.
"Wait a minute—something doesn't feel right. Why am I suddenly shorter?"
As this thought struck him, Chen Ze instinctively looked down—only to find himself staring at a pair of yellow, three-clawed hands.
At this point, Chen Ze realized that not only had the login location changed, but even his current appearance wasn't his own anymore.
"I'm an Agumon!"
This time, Chen Ze's voice was filled with astonishment.
He felt he'd experienced more surprises today alone than in the entirety of his previous life.
Agumon—iconic protagonist of the Digimon franchise, cherished childhood memory of countless people born in the '90s, and a nostalgic symbol deeply etched into Chen Ze's own childhood.
Precisely because of this, Chen Ze recognized his current form all too clearly.
A small yellow dinosaur-like Digimon, standing upright with sharp, three-clawed hands…
He was now an absolutely perfect replica of "Agumon"—even more accurate than any professional cosplay.
"Wait—is this the new avatar you were talking about?"
Chen Ze had so many questions whirling through his mind, he hardly knew where to begin.
—He clearly intended to log into the Japanese EDEN network, so how had he ended up here?
—And was this Agumon body just a virtual disguise made of data, or was it actually real flesh?
—If Agumon and Renamon were truly real, did this mean the Digital World and Digimon from his previous life truly existed too?
—And most importantly—what exactly was this "Renamon" standing across from him?
"I understand you have many questions, but truthfully, I'm just as unclear about what's going on."
Smiling faintly with an elegant gesture, Renamon herself also seemed confused by their current situation.
She'd only intended to tease Chen Ze a little—she hadn't deliberately changed the login point, much less intended for them to appear in an entirely unfamiliar world.
"But if my database isn't mistaken, this should be 'Hikarigaoka' in Japan."
Even as she spoke, Renamon sounded uncertain.
Because from her memory, Hikarigaoka was a modern city, full of information technology and various EDEN equipment.
But this place looked more like something from the late twentieth century, filled with primitive, aging buildings and genuine natural vegetation.
Most importantly, this wasn't some digital replica of Hikarigaoka—it was clearly a genuine, physical world.
Yes—that was the greatest contradiction. This was a physical world, not a digital space.
In both Chen Ze's and Renamon's experience, connections through the EDEN network always led to virtual data spaces.
Yet now, they'd somehow broken the boundary between virtual and physical, causing digitized bodies to manifest within a genuine physical world—something utterly beyond explanation by mere "technology."
Even Renamon, who came from another world, was experiencing genuine physical reality for the very first time.
Before this, she'd only indirectly understood the physical world through EDEN, learning about a reality entirely distinct from the digital spaces she knew.
"Hikarigaoka…?"
Unlike Renamon, Chen Ze's mind wasn't caught up in the philosophical implications of reality versus digital existence. Instead, he fixated entirely on the word "Hikarigaoka."
If Digimon and the Digital World truly existed here, then Hikarigaoka, in a sense, represented the origin—the beginning.
After Hikarigaoka, physical and digital worlds would intersect, and beings capable of existing simultaneously in both worlds would soon be born.
This process could be termed "digitization" (as introduced in Digimon Adventure and 02), "quantum recombination" (from Digimon Tamers), or even "AI realization" (conceptualized in later series).