Public execution

Xie Dang bent down to pick up the document, flipped through it casually, and found it to be blank, without a single word. He scoffed and raised his hand to throw it out the window.

"Wait!" Lin Jingshang shouted as if possessed.

Xie Dang paused, raised an eyebrow at him, but said nothing.

Lin Jingshang began to think seriously. Would there be punishment for defying the plot? The forced command just now was proof of that.

But what if we don't completely resist it, but instead utilize it?

Lin Jingshang's eyes lit up as he made his discovery, and he suggested to Xie Dang, "President Xie, it asked us to deliver the documents, right? There's no rule that I have to deliver them, you can receive them, right?"

Xie Dang immediately understood his meaning: "Go on."

“What if we go up together, go into the office together, and then…” Lin Jingshang lowered his voice and said his idea, “what if we shred this important document right in front of it?”

Didn't you want us to be alone? Here we come.

Didn't you want to send documents? We did, though they ended up in the shredder.

Every step was executed, but the result was completely different from what was expected. Wouldn't you call this an extreme case of exploiting a bug?

Xie Dang looked at Lin Jingshang, and for the first time, a smile appeared in his eyes, which were always filled with weariness and resistance. It wasn't the wicked smile required by the plot; it was a genuine smile from the heart, because he had finally found a kindred spirit.

"Interesting." He waved the empty folder in his hand. "Then, shall we go upstairs and have a seat?"

Five minutes later, in the CEO's office.

The world's will may be undergoing a data storm.

It observed that the target, Lin Jingshang, and the key character, Xie Dang, were alone in a confined space, thus fulfilling the condition.

It saw that the important document had been successfully submitted, and the conditions were met.

Just as it was about to load the next piece of code that created an ambiguous atmosphere, it detected that the two carefully arranged actors were standing side by side in front of the paper shredder.

Xie Dang personally inserted the document, which symbolized the pull of fate, into the shredder's inlet, while Lin Jingshang solemnly pressed the start button.

"Buzz—"

The shredder roared, grinding the world's script into meaningless threads.

Amidst the noise of the machines, Xie Dang turned his head and extended his hand to Lin Jingshang, his tone more relaxed than ever before: "Let's get to know each other formally, Xie Dang, a bug who doesn't want to be a domineering CEO."

Lin Jingshang looked at the hand with its distinct knuckles, took a deep breath, and gripped it tightly.

"Lin Jingshang, an NPC who wants to slack off peacefully but always gets spoiled."

The day after the important documents were destroyed, everything was calm.

Lin Jingshang sat at his workstation, mechanically processing reports while cautiously observing the air around him. There were no bullet comments, no forced commands; the calm was unsettling.

"Something's not right." He slipped out to the fire escape during his lunch break and sent a voice message to the newly saved contact, "[Debtor (Coffee)]," in a low voice. "According to the usual tropes, after forcibly disrupting the plot, shouldn't there be a more intense counterattack? Like some kind of forced 24-hour bondage or something?"

Xie Dang's reply was swift and concise: "I'm in a meeting. The counterattack may be late, but it won't be absent. Stay vigilant."

Sure enough, at 3 PM, the air in front of Lin Jingshang began to flicker abnormally, and large swaths of pink text started frantically flooding the screen: [Emergency Compensation Event Activated!]

[Scene: Company anniversary dinner.]

[Key Event: Xie Dang and Lin Jingshang will dance romantically together in the center of the dance floor. Under the spotlight, their eyes meet, and feelings begin to blossom.]

[Additional effect: Witnessed by all the celebrities in attendance, favorability automatically increases by 520.]

Lin Jingshang stared at the words "center of the dance floor," "romantic dance," and "budding romance," and felt a wave of nausea wash over him. He was so uncoordinated that he could barely move his arms and legs properly even while doing calisthenics. Asked to dance? And a waltz of such prowess?

This isn't just a plot-driven death; this is a public execution!

His hands trembled as he texted Xie Dang: "I'm here...the dance floor...save me..."

Xie Dang replied with a period to indicate that he had received the message.

That evening, the banquet hall of the five-star hotel that the company had booked was dazzling with lights and filled with the clinking of glasses. Lin Jingshang was wearing a rented suit, which was a little tight around his armpits. Like an ugly duckling that had wandered into Swan Lake, he huddled in the far corner of the long table where the food was laid out, trying his best to make himself inconspicuous.

Then, he saw Xie Dang arrive.

The man, dressed in a perfectly tailored black tuxedo, stood out even among the elites. He seemed to sense Lin Jingshang's gaze, his eyes piercing through the crowd and landing on him.

Lin Jingshang's heart tightened.

Is he coming? In front of everyone, I'll invite him to dance?

Xie Dang nodded slightly and then walked straight to the sound control console in the banquet hall.

"???"

Lin Jingshang was stunned.

The next moment, the soothing waltz music stopped abruptly, and the entire banquet hall fell into a moment of silence.

Immediately afterwards, a burst of dynamic, high-energy music with a strong drumbeat and a distinctly cheesy vibe erupted.

"Come on! To your left! Draw a dragon with me! To your right! Draw a rainbow!"

All guests: ???

Lin Jingshang: "!!!"

He saw Xie Dang standing by the sound control console, holding a microphone he'd somehow gotten his hands on, looking at him expressionlessly, and then gesturing towards the dance floor with his eyes.

The meaning is obvious: you want to dance? Go ahead and dance to this rhythm.

Lin Jingshang almost knelt down on the spot.

Bro, are you saving me or sabotaging me?!

[WARNING! Background music is severely incompatible! Unable to create a romantic atmosphere! Forced music switching failed! Permission conflict!]

A line of garbled red error messages flashed before Lin Jingshang's eyes.

It seems like the world's CPU has been overheated by these songs.

Xie Dang seemed to think the fire wasn't burning bright enough, so he put down the microphone, stepped onto the dance floor, and the spotlight followed him closely, enveloping him in a beam of light.

All the guests, including the dumbfounded chairman and the bewildered celebrities, watched as their legendary cold and aloof president walked up to the young employee who was hiding in the corner, wishing he could disappear into the ground.

The music was deafening.

Xie Dang stopped in front of Lin Jingshang, and then, under the gaze of everyone and the will of the world, he raised his hand—not a gentlemanly gesture inviting him to dance, but…

He started practicing military boxing.

The movements were vigorous and powerful, creating a strange harmony with the rhythm of the song.

Lin Jingshang stared at the scene before him, his mind blank for three seconds. Then, a strange surge of courage welled up within him.

To hell with romantic dancing! To hell with budding feelings!

He took a deep breath, and just as Xie Dang delivered the throat-piercing kick, he suddenly stood up and began doing the eighth set of broadcast gymnastics.

"Stand still... March! One, two, one, two, one!"

One is practicing military boxing, and the other is doing radio calisthenics.

At the lavish banquet, amidst the frenzied rhythm of the songs, and under the questioning gazes of everyone present.

Lin Jingshang felt as if he heard the sound of something shattering, not a wine glass, but more like a core component of the rules governing the world.

The error message in front of him began scrolling wildly, flashing colors erratically: [Error! Error! Unable to recognize dance type!]

[Logic module crashed! Affected sentiment computing unit overloaded!]

The "Romantic Scenes.exe" file has stopped working!

The surrounding scenery began to fluctuate subtly, like a television screen with a poor signal. The red wine in the glass of a lady next to me suddenly turned into bubbling cola, and several beads on the crystal chandelier above my head abruptly turned into pixels.

"BUG!" Taking advantage of the chest expansion exercise, Lin Jingshang leaned closer to Xie Dang and whispered excitedly.

"It has a bug! We've spotted a vulnerability!"

Xie Dang stopped his blocking punch without losing his breath, glanced at the cola, and said sharply, "It seems that extreme incongruity can impact its underlying logic."

The music was still playing, but no one was paying attention to the two performance artists in the center of the dance floor anymore; everyone's attention was drawn to the strange phenomena that were appearing around them.

Xie Dang stopped what he was doing, straightened his perfectly neat collar, and said calmly to Lin Jingshang amidst the chaos, "Let's go, partner. The first phase of testing was a success."

Lin Jingshang stopped his stretching exercises, looked at the man in front of him who was using military boxing to fight against the whole world, and smiled from the bottom of his heart.

"Received, partner."

He quickened his pace to catch up with Xie Dang.

The incident involving the military-style boxing and radio calisthenics during the anniversary celebration was internally characterized by the company as "an incident involving an unknown virus intrusion into the sound system and a collective brief hallucination." Manager Zhang expressed his deep regret at the morning meeting, demanding a thorough investigation from the IT department and suggesting that everyone appropriately reduce overtime.

Lin Jingshang kept his head down and silently took notes, keeping his achievements and fame hidden.

His and Xie Dang's vulnerability observation entered a new phase. They discovered that whenever they successfully interfered with an important plot point, the world would randomly display texture errors or missing models around them, much like an old, faulty television.

For example, the expensive orchid in Xie Dang's office suddenly turned a bright fluorescent green, and its shape looked exactly like an Angry Bird. Another example is the wall opposite Lin Jingshang's workstation, which occasionally becomes semi-transparent, allowing a direct view of the programmers' receding hairlines.

These vulnerabilities are usually fixed within seconds, but that's enough to prove they're on the right track—the world's code isn't robust, and they can try to disrupt it.

“We can’t just passively defend.” Xie Dang swiped his tablet, which displayed the patterns of vulnerability occurrences that he had recorded. “We have to take the initiative and find its core logical weaknesses.”

Lin Jingshang, biting his pen cap, asked, "Then how do I take the initiative? Go to the banquet hall and practice some boxing again?"

“No,” Xie Dang raised his eyes and looked at Lin Jingshang. “It is obsessed with advancing the emotional storyline, which means that the emotional interaction module may be its key area, as well as its vulnerability.”

Lin Jingshang felt a chill run down his spine: "So?"

"So, the next time it pushes a storyline, we'll give it some emotional interaction. It can't understand real negative human emotions."

Lin Jingshang suddenly had a bad feeling.