Later I finally found Xia Jiawen.
He stood on the rooftop, leaving me with a thin and upright back.
A complex code appeared on the screen. I recognized it - it was the order to abolish Jiuyou.
“…Is this your final decision? Fifth Manager?” I said.
At this moment, I no longer called him "Teacher Xia" or "Jia Wen", but the serious "Fifth Manager".
He heard my voice but didn't turn around. I could only vaguely see his eyelashes, trembling and stained with moisture, through the reflection of the lens.
Next to it was the display screen of the life hard disk memory, which showed the death toll of [1628 people], including Lin Yawen of course. So Xia Jiawen knew about their deaths even before I did - no, that's not right. When he left the auditorium early, he should have already made an agreement with Lin Yawen, and even the order to die together was made by him.
I can't imagine how he felt when he made such a decision in just a few seconds. His lover and children were in that bloody auditorium. But he said goodbye to them so resolutely and walked up to the rooftop alone to do his final work.
...Did he give Lin Yawen a farewell hug at the end?
I have no idea.
"...There are only two of us left?" Xia Jiawen stopped typing the code and looked back at me.
The cursor on the screen stays on the last letter, with only a simple "enter" left, and this Jiuyou will fall into a state of no one working - the monitoring room will fall into hibernation, the body cultivation plan of the old gods will also be forever stagnant, and the old gods a thousand years later may very likely see an empty Jiuyou.
"Yes, there are only two of us left." I responded to him.
Looking around, the building we were in was like a spire in the sea, and the black fog was like a tsunami, spreading over most of the land. The number of lives on the screen also told us that there were only three lives left.
Me, Xia Jiawen, and Lu Shu who is somewhere unknown.
Just one researcher's partiality, just one millisecond of negligence... led to such a terrible result - God can make mistakes thousands of times, but humans only need to make one mistake, and they will pay a terrible price. We are only responsible for the outer edge of the Millennium Plan, but it is still so tragic.
…This is “confrontation with God.”
Xia Jiawen looked outside through the lenses. The auditorium was no longer visible, submerged in a thick sea of fog. No one could see the thousands of smiling corpses sitting inside.
His eyes made me feel strange.
He has always been a gentle person, caring for children and tender to his lover, and he has never had a quarrel in all these years of marriage.
However, at this moment his eyes were deep, far-reaching and cold.
"Stop entering the code, Fifth Manager." My voice was also cold: "Even if all the staff died, we can find a group of new people to move into Jiuyou instead of abandoning Jiuyou."
Xia Jiawen looked at me.
There was something in his eyes that I couldn't understand.
"Mingyue." He still used a familiar name, which was different from me. "The location of Jiuyou has been known by Dieying. Even if the Utopia automatically expelled all the black fog, it won't take many years for Dieying to come again. The price he paid doesn't need to be high: if we release a piece of black fog at random, the tragedy will still happen again. We are lucky this time. You and I are alive. We still have time to perform the final operation, but what if next time, the next time... countless times in a thousand years, you and I die accidentally? Who will Jiuyou belong to?"
"If we abandon Jiuyou and only keep its basic functions, and let it operate mechanically without any human intervention, there will be absolutely no problems. There is no human listening to Dieying here."
"In this way, Jiuyou will at least not be taken away by the enemy, and the largest life hard drive transformed by General Qin will safely pass through a thousand years - this is the most important thing."
"——That's your excuse!" I said, "——You just don't want to see any more deaths and injuries!"
What he said actually made sense. Jiuyou's biggest task was to store the life hard drive. As for building a monitoring room and cultivating the bodies of the old gods... they were all side tasks. Although without these tasks, the plan would inevitably have loopholes, but at least it would continue to run.
But Xia Jiawen was not afraid of the fall of Jiuyou, but he did not want to see such a total destruction happen again. The Millennium Plan was perfect, how could it be abandoned because of an attack - but after the coordinates were leaked, the price to pay for maintaining Jiuyou was too heavy, and it was human lives.
He was chosen as the fifth person in charge of Jiuyou because of his gentleness and kindness. But now it was his soft character that prompted him to give up Jiuyou.
——For some incidental tasks, so many lives were sacrificed. His choice was no.
Xia Jiawen looked at me.
His body was covered in dust, and the cloth on his knees was torn. He must have seen many tragedies on the road, mobs shooting at children, dying children covered in blood crying for help... But he did not stop, he needed to make sure he ran to the rooftop in time. In those few tens of seconds, his heart broke.
When he ran here, he was alone.
The black fog spread up little by little, gradually rising to the height of the rooftop, with only a few dozen meters left.
"...Mingyue." His voice became hoarse.
I remembered that starry night, he was lying on the bench, crying and shouting... He wanted a pair of trousers, free trousers that could be bought in the mall. Over the years, Jiuyou's mall has been established, and he has many pairs of trousers, all hanging in his closet.
His wish has come true.
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