Build a prison together

Dead silence.

It was the kind of dead silence that was like an absolute vacuum, after even the aftermath of the collapse of rules was completely swallowed up.

The silver snow no longer fell in Jintian Realm, as half the space was now covered in a cold, geometrically symmetrical metal code structure, so smooth that it reflected no light or shadow. The remaining half, which had barely remained intact, was now covered with rough, scar-like cracks in the rules, silently telling of the madness that had nearly destroyed both parties.

Xiang Jinyang's consciousness drifted in endless darkness and excruciating pain. The tearing sensation from the forced reset had not yet subsided, and every weak breath dragged the pain that permeated every inch of his being. He could almost "hear" the groans of his own structure as it overwhelmed the weight.

He opened his eyes with difficulty, and his vision was blurred for a long time before gradually coming into focus.

What came into view was the grotesque and ugly new Jintian Realm that had been forcibly pieced together.

Half is a ruined hometown, and half is a cold foreign land.

Despair, like the deepest sea, instantly drowned him.

Billions of years of duty, eternal order, and in the end... it turned out like this.

It was him... it was he who let the wolf in, and it was he who finally agreed to open up all permissions, which led to this terrible ending.

A sense of complete collapse, a sense of existential collapse greater than the collapse of his physical body, gripped him. The last glimmer of light in those glassy eyes seemed to be extinguished.

At this moment, a slightly cool hand, with a barely perceptible tremor, gently pressed against his forehead.

A stream of pure yet unusually gentle energy carefully poured into his dry, cracked core. This energy was different from any previous one; it seemed to be trying hard to mimic the frequency of Heavenly Dao power, with a clumsy sense of trying to "repair" rather than "instill."

Xiang Jinyang's body stiffened, and his distracted eyes slowly moved to meet He Yuan's face which was very close to him.

The other man's face was equally pale, and the code flow in his eyes had dimmed considerably. Clearly, the forced reset had drained his strength, perhaps even left him with hidden injuries. But the look he gave Xiang Jinyang was no longer the inquiry, curiosity, or fervor of a tech enthusiast. Instead, it was... a complex, unprecedented solemnity and a hint of... helplessness.

"Don't... don't look at me like that." He Yuan's voice was a little hoarse, even a little stumbling. He avoided Xiang Jinyang's heart-poundingly empty gaze, "For now... I'm stable. I won't die."

He tried to restore his usual nonchalant tone, but it revealed an obvious sense of guilt and lack of confidence.

Xiang Jinyang just looked at him silently, without any emotion in his eyes, like a broken mirror that could not reflect any image.

This silence made He Yuan feel even more uneasy than any reprimand. He withdrew his hand, scratched his hair in annoyance, and looked around at the space that they had "ruined" into a mess.

"Tsk... this is a bit awkward," he muttered, as if commenting on a failed project. "The compatibility between the two rule systems is even worse than expected... the side effects of forced coupling are too great."

He tried to use technical terms to cover up the waves in his heart, but when his eyes swept across the intersections where sparks of rules were constantly bursting out, and Xiang Jinyang's face as pale as paper, those cold analyses could not continue after all.

A long, suffocating silence fell again.

After a long time, He Yuan seemed to have made up his mind. He took a deep breath and looked at Xiang Jinyang again.

"Listen," his tone became more serious than ever, even carrying an almost heavy sense of responsibility. "This place... is like this now. My rules and yours have been forcibly blended together, forming some kind of... extremely unstable symbiotic structure."

He gestured around. "The current situation is that if any party withdraws alone, or attempts to forcibly strip away the other party's rules, the entire structure will completely collapse. The consequences... you know."

Die together. Or worse.

Xiang Jinyang's eyelashes trembled ever so slightly. He had already sensed this outcome.

"So," Kazubuchi's voice was dry, "we are...bound. Literally."

He used the word "binding," a term commonly used in his database to describe device connections or protocol establishment, but now it carried an extremely heavy fate.

"Until we find a way to safely decouple," he paused, uttering the second half of the sentence with great difficulty, "we... must work together to maintain stability here. No one can escape from the other."

Maintain together.

Xiang Jinyang slowly closed his eyes. This was the most absurd mockery of his duty to the Heavenly Dao. "Co-maintaining" with a virus that threatened to destroy everything and transform his domain into a nondescript mess?

But...does he have a choice?

Protecting this place was his core command, a vow etched into the very foundation of his existence, even though it had become unrecognizable.

Endless fatigue and a deep, almost fatalistic sadness swept over him.

He looked at He Yuan's eyes, which were now filled with complex emotions rather than pure calculations, and suddenly raised the corners of his lips very faintly and almost imperceptibly.

It wasn't a smile, but a broken, bleak arc.

"...As you wished." He heard his own voice, as soft as a sigh, as cold as ice. "Congratulations, 'Virus'. You have finally... achieved your wish and have had your code engraved into the core of the Heavenly Dao."

These words were like poisoned ice cones, piercing He Yuan's consciousness.

His face turned pale instantly and his lips moved, as if he wanted to refute, to say that this was not the "result" he wanted, and that his "wish come true" would never be such an embarrassing situation where both sides were hurt and trapped.

But in the end, he said nothing.

He simply reached out his hand silently again and began to channel his energy, carefully handling the most unstable spark band nearby. His movements no longer carried the domineering and confident air of before, but instead carried a rare caution, even... a hint of ingratiating clumsiness.

Xiang Jinyang watched his actions indifferently, neither stopping nor assisting.

However, repairing this strange "symbiotic prison" created by the combined efforts of two people is far from easy.

He Yuan's code rules are efficient but cold, lacking in flexibility and resilience; Xiang Jinyang's Heavenly Dao power is vast, but due to his serious injuries, he has difficulty in fine-tuning it. The two are incompatible, and forcing them to merge will only create new conflicts and sparks.

Time and again, He Yuan tried to patch it up with his algorithm, but always failed because he could not perfectly match the subtle rhythm of the laws of heaven, and occasionally even caused a small-scale secondary collapse.

"No... The phase difference calculation of energy conduction here is wrong..." "Tsk! Another conflict! Can't the rule rejection reaction in this part be eliminated?" "Wait! Don't guide the power in that way, it will aggravate structural fatigue!"

He grew increasingly agitated, beads of sweat forming on his forehead. Code streams flashed frantically before his eyes, yet he could not find the optimal solution. This feeling of powerlessness, for someone who had always believed that computing could solve everything, was an unprecedented frustration.

Xiang Jinyang watched his opponent's repeated failures coldly, and a sense of almost cruel pleasure arose in his heart.

Look, this is the "efficiency" you believe in. How ridiculous it is in the face of the true power of heaven and earth.

However, after the pleasure comes deeper despair.

If this continues, this fragile balance will be broken again sooner or later.

Just when He Yuan failed in his attempt again, nearly causing a small area of ​​code to crash, and was so angry that he almost wanted to smash things -

Xiang Jinyang moved his fingers extremely slightly, as if sighing.

A wisp of Heavenly Power, extremely weak but containing a unique rhythm, quietly flowed into the repair code that He Yuan was struggling to maintain, like a trickle of water.

That power is not dominant, but... guiding and lubricating.

It gently smoothed out the overly rigid edges in the code rules and subtly adjusted the frequency of its energy output so that it could better adapt to the "breathing rhythm" of the surrounding heavenly environment.

Miraculously, the repair point that was in constant conflict and on the verge of collapse actually slowly... stabilized.

Although it still looks rough, it no longer emits dangerous sparks.

He Yuan was stunned, and looked at the repaired spot that was quietly smoothed out in disbelief. He then turned his head abruptly to look at Xiang Jinyang, who still had an expressionless face, as if he had done nothing.

From the other end of the passage, Xiang Jinyang's cold, tired, yet tinged with a hint of sarcasm came a thought: "...Brute force is useless. Feel its 'breath'."

breathe?

He Yuan was stunned. This word once again exceeded his standard database definition.

But he looked at the repair point that had finally stabilized, recalling the unique rhythm contained in that faint force, which was difficult to describe with data...

He was silent for a long time.

Then he reached out his hand again.

This time, he didn't immediately start calculating and outputting code. Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to... sense.

He sensed those subtle fluctuations of the laws of heaven and earth that he had previously dismissed as "noise." He sensed the extremely faint rhythm of energy flowing at the intersection of those codes and the power of the Heavenly Dao. He even... sensed the faint but still present pulse of the laws of the cold and broken incarnation of the Heavenly Dao beside him.

Silver code flowed from his fingertips again.

The pace has slowed down considerably. No longer striving for ultimate efficiency, but rather trying, clumsily, to imitate, to follow... the so-called "breathing."

Xiang Jinyang did not provide direct assistance anymore, but the rhythm of the way of heaven emanating from his body became an invisible coordinate and a reference.

The process is still bumpy and failures are common.

But this time, when the code clashed with the power of Heaven again, He Yuan no longer tried to crush it with computing power. Instead, he paused, frowned, and tried to "feel" the root cause of the conflict, and then adjusted the structure and output method of the code extremely awkwardly.

He even began to experiment with incorporating some perceived, fuzzy "rhythmic" parameters into his computational models.

The efficiency is still low, and even seems clumsy.

But that kind of pure, technological arrogance seems to have been quietly smoothed out a little through repeated perception and adjustments of failure.

Xiang Jinyang watched all this indifferently, watching the virus that once only knew how to wield an efficient sword and slash randomly, now frowning and struggling to learn "feeling" and "imitating" like a primary school student.

On the cold ruins in his heart, something seemed to be struggling extremely slowly... and it showed a little tender green that he himself had not even noticed.

The common prison has been created.

And in the prison,

Forced symbiosis,

In an extremely awkward,

But in an irreversible way,

Start quietly.

Hunter and prey,

Viruses and Administrators,

By a twist of fate,

Tied to the same sinking ship.

Only by learning to collaborate,

Only then can we temporarily...

Not drowned.