Chapter 88 Silence Returns to Peace
The white light swallowed all vision, and after the deafening alarm of the system, there was a vacuum-like silence.
Fu Yanli's outstretched hand remained frozen in mid-air, the warmth of his fingertips still lingering from when he had gripped the cufflinks tightly.
Xu Wenci's faint goodbye was like a red-hot needle, piercing his eardrums and nailing straight into the depths of his soul, pinning him to the spot.
He could see nothing but an endless expanse of white that seemed to burn his retina almost constantly.
My heart started pounding, one beat after another, and all I could hear was the sound of my heartbeat.
Then, the white color began to fade rapidly.
The surrounding scenery resembled an ink painting soaked in water, with darkness gradually spreading.
Walls, furniture, rocking chair.
Gu Pei, curled up; Yi Lou, backlit...
Everything was silently disintegrating, turning into scattered silver data streams.
Then, it was swallowed up by that ever-expanding ultimate nothingness.
The cold, unfamiliar mechanical voice continued to repeat stubbornly, but the sound grew more and more distant and fainter, as if it came from the other side of a world that was rapidly closing down.
Xu Wenci's plan succeeded.
Yi Lou squinted slightly in the light.
Their plan should be put into action now.
Fu Yanli stood still, motionless.
Only the cufflink in his palm felt as cold as Xu Wenci's last body temperature.
Yi Lou strode over, grabbed Fu Yanli's hand, and his expression carried a madness he had never shown to Fu Yanli before.
With his other hand, he took a small piece of building block from his pocket, forcefully pried open Fu Yanli's hand, which was already clenching his cufflinks, and put the small piece of building block inside.
That piece of building block was a small, broken piece from a shattered block.
That small piece of building block can no longer be put back together.
Fu Yanli's fingers trembled as he held a small piece of building block and the cufflink in his palm, staring at Yi Lou in disbelief.
He understood.
Xu Wenci never intended to purify the operating system.
He had never even considered that goal, making the planning extremely difficult.
Moreover, that plan is far too easily exploited and countered by the system itself.
What Xu Wen wanted was pollution.
Pollution control system.
Plagiarists can pollute the operating system, forcing it to split into clones to protect the system's core.
Xu Wenci is also acceptable.
He plunged the dagger, which carried the system clone within his grandmother, into his own heart.
The goal is not to destroy the clone, but to inject all of his abnormal data into the operating system clone at the moment of death and the annihilation of consciousness.
The pain and struggles he experienced contradicted his public persona, making them the most unusual data.
These are like the most virulent viruses, forcibly injected into the core of that relatively aligned system clone.
A system clone carrying the host's strong will and paradoxical data is a more deadly poison than any external attack to the operating system itself, which pursues absolute order and logical consistency.
Therefore, the system detected an increase in abnormal data the moment Xu Wenci stabbed himself with the dagger, which caused the cleanup to fail and the system to fall into a logical dead loop, constantly trying to rebuild the system, but failing repeatedly because the core was contaminated.
Xu Wenci used himself as the last and most thorough weapon, not to save or destroy a world, but to inject an ever-present bug into this damned, all-controlling operating system.
From then on, collapse was no longer the end.
Rather, it is... a slow and irreversible corrosion that occurs from the inside out.
Xu Wenci himself did not need to use this method to pollute the operating system clone.
He did this simply because this operating system clone did not belong to him.
He had to force out this clone system and make it accept him.
Then, it was corrupted by him and became an aid in destroying the main operating system.
"Heh..." A very soft, tearful chuckle came from the side.
Fu Yanli stiffly moved his eyes and, in the gradually sinking darkness, saw Gu Pei.
Gu Pei remained curled up, but the edges of his body had begun to become transparent, like a white ghost.
He looked up, his face no longer showing the fear and despair of before, only a knowing weariness.
“So…that’s how it is…” Gu Pei’s voice drifted, “He…turned himself into a virus within the system…”
[System Reconstruction in Progress - Error...]
The mechanical sound eventually stopped at a strange syllable, and then fell completely silent.
Darkness, like a tide, slowly engulfed Fu Yanli's ankles, knees, and waist...
He had to make Xu Wenci's plan run more smoothly.
Yi Lou's building blocks, his cufflinks, Gu Pei's light sphere, and...
These are all carriers.
The system of Xu Wenci's grandmother was based on Xu Wenci's body.
Therefore, the method to contaminate the operating system... is to destroy the carrier...
The ball of light that had been resting on Gu Pei's shoulder slowly drifted away, and in the next instant, it shattered into countless crystals.
A strong light suddenly burst forth from a corner of the room, which had been completely dark.
Gu Pei clenched his fingers, his head still buried in his knees.
However, a soft sob came from her knees.
Activate emergency response plan.
Abnormal data was detected.
The abnormal data showed strong resistance, so the cleanup process was restarted...
A sharper, more piercing system alarm tore through the brief silence, like the final roar of a dying beast.
The cold, mechanical sound carried a urgency that didn't belong to a mechanical voice.
The dark tide seemed enraged by the alarm, its engulfing speed suddenly accelerating, already reaching Fu Yanli's chest. He felt an invisible pressure from the rules of the entire space, threatening to crush his existence completely.
Yi Lou gripped his wrist with astonishing force, almost crushing his bones.
Those usually calm eyes burned with a near-manic flame that Fu Yanli had never seen before. He stared intently at the cufflink in Fu Yanli's palm and the small, broken piece of building block, his voice low, hoarse, and urgent:
"The carrier! Destroy the carrier! Destroy it now!"
Everything Xu Wenci did was in vain!
Fu Yanli's other hand, trembling slightly, touched the cufflinks and building blocks in his palm. His heart skipped a beat as Yi Lou moved.
He understood Yi Lou's meaning almost instantly.
Xu Wenci corrupted one of his clones.
What they need to do is ignite all possible carriers and contaminate all clones.
This pollution has amplified the chaos and paradoxes to the extreme.
This would completely destroy the system's last line of defense and rebuilding capabilities.
The sobbing from Gu Pei's knees stopped abruptly.
He suddenly raised his head, his face still wet with tears, but his dark brown eyes shone with an alarming light as he looked up.
He looked at the fragments of the sphere of light on his shoulder, which had shattered into countless crystals and were now emitting intense light, then looked at Fu Yanli and Yi Lou, and suddenly grinned, revealing a smile that was uglier than a grimace.
“Ha…every step I took was planned out…” His voice was hoarse, tinged with a self-deprecating sadness, “As an author…I couldn’t even make the plot follow its original trajectory…”
Moreover... he now has to follow their plan to minimize the losses.
It turns out that Xu Wenci initially agreed to his plan only to lower his guard and make it easier to drive him into a corner.
Before he could finish speaking, Gu Pei used his last bit of strength to extend his left hand and tap his right wrist.
The manuscript was written out bit by bit by this hand.
He was too young then, so he wrote every single word himself.
Finally, it was consumed by the flames.
He was too young then, and he thought that the flame that would burn him up for life was just a small fire in a basin.
In his current view, it could be crushed with a single step.
As if summoned by some force, the floating spheres of light suddenly shone brightly and then, as if drawn by an attraction, rushed madly toward Gu Pei.
No, it wasn't rushing towards Gu Pei.
It surged towards the ground beneath him, which was being swallowed by darkness, and towards the operating system of this space itself.
That's right, the last core of the operating system, the corrupted main operating system, is this villa.
Fu Yanli's eyes were numb, but he curled his lips when he met that light.
As expected... as the master of this world, no one knows better than Gu Pei how to minimize the damage and ensure their plan can proceed smoothly.
A piercing sound, like an electrical overload, rang out.
Where the light sphere crystal touched, the spread of darkness slowed noticeably, and even fine white marks resembling glass cracks appeared.
Gu Pei's body was becoming transparent at a speed visible to the naked eye.
He doesn't belong to this world.
Once the world he created is completely restored and regards Fu Yanli and Xu Wenci as its rulers, it will begin to completely reject him.
He will return to his world afterward.
The main operating system has been subjected to an unknown impact, resulting in decreased stability.
Threat level is being reassessed...
The system alarms became even more chaotic.
Seeing this, Yi Lou no longer hesitated. He forcefully pried open Fu Yanli's tightly clenched hand and pressed the cufflink and the broken building block together in his palm.
Fu Yanli looked down at the cold cufflink and the piece of building block that could not be put back together, pressed tightly together.
The cufflinks hold the memories of his breaking the rules, and the building blocks represent a shattered, irreparable past...
These are all errors, paradoxes, and anomalies that the system cannot tolerate.
The cufflinks emitted a deep purple, chaotic light, like a cosmic nebula.
The broken block then emitted a pure and warm white light that seemed capable of mending all wounds.
The two beams of light intertwined, collided, and finally merged.
Multiple high-dimensional paradoxes have been detected, causing overload of the system's core logic...
The core database is... losing... abnormal data... which is growing indefinitely...
The system's sound was intermittent and filled with static, like an old radio that had been sitting idle for a long time.
Finally, amidst a piercing hiss of electricity, it vanished into nothingness.
This time, no notification sounded.
Only silence.
The all-consuming darkness ceased its spread, and the distorted data streams froze in mid-air, as if a pause button had been pressed.
Author's note: There are about three chapters left until the end.
All the foreshadowing has been resolved, with only a few minor issues remaining. These will all be properly addressed in the subsequent plot, but they will not change the overall storyline. Any revisions will simply involve correcting typos and adding transitions.
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