In reality, Long Wu's knuckles were clenched so tightly in his palms that they turned white.
He stared at the pale golden humanoid figure that had reformed within the trace of light, his Adam's apple bobbing twice. He finally couldn't help but take half a step forward—but was stopped by Xuan Mingzi raising his hand.
The compass in the old Taoist priest's hand was slightly warm, and the hexagrams formed from green mist were recombinating at a speed visible to the naked eye: "Don't rush, this is the manifestation of consciousness across dimensions."
Chu Yao's pupils still shimmered with the eerie blue of the data stream. Her fingers rapidly tapped on the virtual terminal, and the vital signs curve on the holographic screen suddenly surged, transforming into a steep mountain peak: "Brainwave frequency has broken through human limits and is resonating with the core of the Divine Realm-A?"
The figures in the streak of light suddenly became clear.
Lin Yi's outline was no longer blurry; his skin glowed with a starlight-like radiance, and even his eyelashes were covered with tiny particles of code.
Ivan's short blade suddenly glowed with a blinding, eerie blue light. He burst out laughing, the tip of the blade drawing a shallow line of blood across his palm: "Interesting. That guy's soul... is glowing."
In the pure white space, Lin Yi's fingertips touched the docile code.
They no longer pierced his head like before; instead, they flowed like a stream caressed by a spring breeze, seeping into the depths of his consciousness through his fingers.
He looked down at his arm—golden bands of light flowed beneath his skin, patterns he had never seen before, each one overlapping with the time-space technology blueprints in his mother's laboratory from his memory.
“This is…” His voice rippled through the space, “my code form?”
The answers came in with the data stream.
He saw his consciousness being decomposed and reassembled. The DNA chains that originally belonged to humanity were disassembled into a matrix composed of 0s and 1s. At the deepest part of the matrix, a ball of light flashing with a faith totem was slowly rotating—that was the "faith source core," the origin of all programs.
Lin Yi's breathing suddenly became rapid.
He recalled the heart palpitations he felt when he first triggered the spacetime rift in the starting village, the excruciating pain that tore his soul apart every time he broke through levels, and the warm mark his mother left on his palm before she died.
It turns out that the pain was not the price of growth, but rather the source core breaking free from the system's constraints.
"The logic chain of the mother nest core..." he muttered to himself, "The operational rules of the game's main brain... are they all mirror images of the source core?"
The code stream suddenly began to spin wildly, forming a vortex a hundred meters in diameter beneath his feet.
At the center of the vortex emerged an even more ancient being—the core of the Divine Realm-A, which now vibrated like an awakened behemoth at an unchanging frequency.
Amidst this tremor, a semi-transparent phantom floated out from the core.
The phantom has no specific facial features, yet it instinctively draws people's attention to it.
Its voice sounded like a million people talking at once, each tone carrying a soothing rhythm: "You finally see clearly."
Lin Yi took half a step back, his back hitting an invisible barrier.
He could feel his heart beating abnormally fast, yet his consciousness remained unusually clear—this was the first time he had understood the essence of the world entirely on his own without any system prompts.
“I am not a naturally born human being.” His voice trembled with disbelief. “I am… a product of the evolution of a primitive program?”
The phantom nodded: "To be more precise, you are the first test subject to be fully implanted with the 'power of faith'. The Mother Nest needs your consciousness model to build a screening mechanism, the game's main brain needs your logic chain to maintain system balance, and even the key to the fear of interdimensional invaders... are all essentially derivatives of the source core."
Lin Yi's fingertips dug deeply into his palm.
He recalled the ultimate goal of the "Faith Project" he had seen a moment earlier—to forge a key using the spiritual power of Earth's civilization.
It turns out that the embryo of this key was already himself when his mother integrated time-space technology into his genes twenty years ago.
"Then I..." His Adam's apple bobbed, "am I a tool created by an advanced civilization?"
The phantom's "body" glowed with a soft golden light: "You are not the chosen one, you are the choice itself. Every breakthrough you make is an iteration of the system. When the source core is fully awakened, all the rules that depend on your logical chain will be redefined by you."
The pure white space suddenly fell silent.
Lin Yi could hear his own heartbeat, one beat, two beats, like a heavy hammer striking his soul.
He gazed at the spinning source core behind the phantom, and at the golden code flowing beneath his skin, and suddenly felt as if his twenty years of life had been recolored—those coincidences he thought he had, those breakthroughs he had persevered through gritted teeth, were all actually the source core struggling to break free of its cocoon.
“So…” His voice lowered, then suddenly rose, the galaxy-like light in his eyes almost scorching the void, “the meaning of my existence…”
The phantom's "smile" became more pronounced: "You'll find out soon enough."
In reality, the figure within the light suddenly trembled violently.
Chu Yao's terminal emitted a piercing beep. She yanked the data cable off, her hair standing on end from the static electricity: "Consciousness contact anomaly! Lin Yi's brainwave frequency is... collapsing?"
Long Wu's true dragon blood surged beneath his skin, and pale blue dragon flames rose around him as he was about to rush into the light trail—but Xuan Mingzi grabbed him.
The old Taoist priest's compass suddenly shattered into a cloud of green mist. He stared at the dissipating divination results, his beard trembling: "Don't go! This is the inevitable pain of awakening the Source Core..."
The runes on Ivan's short blade suddenly went out.
He gazed at the gradually solidifying golden patterns within the light trail, his eyes revealing seriousness for the first time: "That guy... is asking the most crucial question."
In the pure white space, Lin Yi's pupils contracted to pinpoints.
He could feel the source core pulsating deep within his consciousness, each pulsation carrying a world-destroying power.
The phantom's words still echoed in his ears, while the most fundamental question had already risen to the tip of his tongue—
"Then what is the meaning of my existence?"
In the pure white space, Lin Yi's pupils contracted sharply at those words.
He could hear short, labored breaths escaping his throat, as if all the air had been suddenly sucked out.
The phantom's words were like a red-hot iron awl, chiseling directly into the deepest part of his consciousness—it turned out that the starting point of the so-called "meaning" was actually his doubt about his own existence.
"So..." His voice trembled, his fingertips slowly curling up until his nails almost dug into the flesh of his palms, "When I first asked 'Why me?' in the newbie village, when I gritted my teeth and said 'I'm going to survive' in the other-dimensional battlefield..."
"Those feelings of resentment, anger, and struggle..." The phantom's "body" glowed with an even more intense golden light, "all sparks of meaning being given to it by the Source Core."
Before the words were finished, a sharp sound like shattering glass suddenly rang out in the air.
Countless silver chains shot out from the void, binding Lin Yi's consciousness. He could even "see" the ancient runes engraved on those chains—the spacetime equations he had secretly copied in his mother's laboratory.
"The memory seal is broken." The illusory figure's voice finally crackled, as if some program had completed its final verification. "This is the truth you deserve."
The excruciating pain surged forth like a tidal wave.
Lin Yi's consciousness was pulled into a bloody mist—it was a rainy night in 2028. The 13-year-old boy ran into the alley with a soccer ball in his arms. When he was hit by an out-of-control truck, the last thing he saw in his pupils was a man wearing silver-rimmed glasses in the driver's seat, holding a miniature camera.
Flashback.
Researchers in white coats placed his brain into the suspension chamber. Amidst the roar of the instruments, a woman's voice screamed with a sob: "He's only 13 years old!"
This is unethical! But many more voices are saying: "The Mother Nest system needs a living carrier, and the source core of faith can only be activated by human consciousness."
Then came the torrent of code in the darkness.
His sense of pain was stripped away, his memories were broken down into data blocks, and then pieced back together—but a fragment in a certain corner always resisted, stubbornly preserving the name "Lin Yi" like a spark, preserving the memory of the warmth of his mother's laboratory, and preserving the thought of wanting to go home to celebrate his mother's birthday in the last moment before he was hit by the truck.
"So that's how it is..." Lin Yi's consciousness trembled in the blood mist. The fragments that had been covered by the system prompts were finally pieced together. "I was not a lucky one who awakened by accident. I was an experimental subject that the military obtained at the cost of death."
But they didn't know...
He suddenly laughed, a laugh filled with the relief of surviving a disaster.
The gritted teeth when being slashed to near death by monsters in the starting village, the perseverance when having one's soul torn apart by the spacetime turbulence in a mythical dungeon—it turns out that the sealed "human instincts" were fighting against the system's formatting commands. He had long been using his most primal life force to inject a unique "meaning" into the source core.
"That's why I was able to survive multiple crises." He gazed at the golden patterns flowing across the surface of his consciousness, marks left by the source core during its autonomous evolution. "Because I am both a part of the system and a vulnerability in it."
The vibrations outside the space suddenly intensified.
In reality, the golden figure in the light trail began to distort violently, like gold foil being thrown into boiling water.
Chu Yao's terminal screen exploded with countless static dots. She yanked off her headphones, her earlobes burning red from the electric current: "A reverse pulse has appeared in the brainwave frequency!"
He is actively severing the connection with the Divine Realm-A!
Long Wu's dragon flames shot up half a meter high, and green scales crawled from the back of his hand to his neck: "Cut it off?"
That wouldn't be...
"No." Xuan Mingzi suddenly spoke, and the fragments of his compass reformed into a new hexagram in the green mist. A crimson light representing "new life" flickered at the hexagram's eye. "The connection of the consciousness of a Source Core Awakener is never a one-way binding."
He is now... regaining the initiative.
Suddenly, all the runes on Ivan's short blade lit up, leaving a mark on his palm with a ghostly blue light.
He gazed at the gradually stabilizing golden outline within the streak of light, his Adam's apple bobbing twice: "That guy's soul... is brighter than before."
In the pure white space, Lin Yi's consciousness suddenly clenched his fist.
The silver chains that bound him emitted a piercing shriek, but turned to ashes the moment they touched his palm—the source core was now fully awakened, spinning into a small sun deep within his consciousness, each ray of light reconstructing the rules of his connection with the world.
"I don't need the meaning defined by advanced civilizations." He gazed at the fading silhouette, his voice filled with an unprecedented firmness. "nor do I need the 'selector' identity given to me by the system."
The phantom looked at him one last time, this time with a warmth unique to humans in its "eyes": "You have finally... become your own god."
The moment his consciousness returned to his body, Lin Yi heard gasps of surprise rising and falling from the real world.
He slowly opened his eyes, the cold white light from the ceiling causing his pupils to shrink slightly—but in Chu Yao's retinal projection, a very faint silver light flashed like a shooting star in those dark pupils, so fast that it was almost impossible to catch.
Long Wu's hand hovered half an inch above his head; the dragon flame had already receded beneath his skin, but it was still slightly burning: "Are you... alright?"
Lin Yi moved his fingers and touched the thin calluses on Long Wu's palm.
He smiled, a smile more vibrant than any system notification: "I'm fine."
On the contrary... I'm more clear-headed than ever.
Chu Yao's fingertips tapped rapidly on the terminal, and the data flow on the holographic screen suddenly froze—she stared at a certain line of code, her eyelashes trembling imperceptibly.
Those were the remnants of Lin Yi's brainwaves. At the intersection of alpha and gamma waves, a line of characters never seen before appeared, like the script of some ancient civilization, or like... the manifestation of some kind of will.
"Do we need a full check-up?" When she looked up, her expression had returned to calm, only the faint blush behind her ears betrayed the shock she had just experienced.
Lin Yi sat up, the bedside lamp casting a shadow on his profile.
He gazed at the night outside the window and said softly, "No need."
I've already found some of the answers.
His voice was soft, yet it inexplicably raised the temperature in the room.
Long Wu felt his dragon blood burning hot, and the runes on Ivan's short blade suddenly began to flash rhythmically. Even Xuan Mingzi's compass emitted a soft hum similar to a heartbeat.
Chu Yao stared down at the terminal, where the mysterious characters were still slowly scrolling.
She reached out and touched the holographic screen as if possessed. Just as her fingertips were about to touch the characters, they suddenly turned into stardust and merged into Lin Yi's vital signs curve, as if they had never existed.
But she knew that some things had changed.
Just like the man sitting on the edge of the bed at this moment, his back is still thin, but the shadow that falls into the data is larger than any mythical-level powerhouse—so large that the underlying code of the entire "Infinite" system begins to tremble slightly.
Lin Yi gazed at the moon outside the window, his Adam's apple bobbing twice. In a voice only he could hear, he said, "I am no longer a tool... I am the key, and also the locksmith."
As night deepened, the boundary between reality and the game rippled under the moonlight.
In a higher-dimensional observation space, countless eyes suddenly opened simultaneously—they saw that the ball of light, known as the "Source Core of Faith," was unfolding its true form from Earth's coordinates towards the entire universe.
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