Lin Sanjiu sat in place, staring motionless at the interlaced corpses on the ground in front of her for a long time. She suddenly felt that the way living people regard death as something so terrifying is truly unreasonable. They died painlessly, holding onto hope until the last moment; after death, the constant noise of life that they could never shake off disappeared, and they became another form of eternal tranquility.
Compared to being alive, what's wrong with this state of death? Look at them lying on the ground, finally freed from the life that always tortured them, urged them, lied to them, made them afraid. Now they looked so innocent, naive, free, and at ease.
She sighed slowly again. This time, naturally, no one would die at the end of this breath; her breath gently stirred the air, drifting through the underground space.
This idea might not be normal, but what she was beginning to question now was normality.
Ji Shanqing stood silently beside her, his eyes constantly shifting between the bodies and Lin Sanjiu, but even someone as clever as him seemed not to know what to say. In his silence, if Lin Sanjiu was harboring some slim hope, it was gradually extinguishing now. When humans face a predicament for which they have no answers, they often rely on a non-human entity for answers and salvation—she was no exception.
"This place itself is a core machine." The Veda's voice came from not far away. If anyone in the room was least affected by this scene, it must be Yu Yuan.
Whether those five people lived or died, how they died, why Lin Sanjiu and Ji Shanqing were silent for so long after they died, to him, was as insignificant as someone on another planet choosing to drink orange juice instead of milk for breakfast. He couldn't care less.
His interest was focused on the underground space itself; after all, nine rooms had disappeared, he began to circle the underground space, occasionally touching the walls, floor, and various objects, as if taking the pulse of the space.
Following his voice, Lin Sanjiu subconsciously turned her head.
"Yes, I think using a machine as a metaphor is most appropriate," Yu Yuan said. "The reason this world came to an apocalypse, I remember, seems to be because the humans here started one reality game after another uncontrollably—after all, human wars are essentially a type of game. Anyway, they themselves lacked textual ability, unable to create a system to develop games... So, they might have caused the world to be destroyed by the games they created, but this core machine was placed here by Nüwa afterward."
His focus on the immediate facts brought Lin Sanjiu's thoughts out of the vague nothingness, giving her a sense of reality again. She thought for a moment before saying, "So... if this core machine is removed, will this apocalyptic world no longer be apocalyptic?"
"I can't be sure of that," Yu Yuan said, pausing to think for a moment. "Without the core machine, there's another possibility that the posthumans who come to this world will start to create real-life games themselves. Why are you staring at me?"
Lin Sanjiu was taken aback and looked back to see that the grand prize had just lowered his head, covering his mouth with his fist as he coughed once.
"No, continue speaking," he said uncomfortably.
"There's nothing else to say," Yu Yuan said, his interest in the underground space far exceeding his interest in the two people. "How long do you want to stay here? I'd like to try to decode this core machine. Ji Shanqing doesn't have this ability," he added, "I can tell that you only split off a small strand... You're still different from us."
Ji Shanqing rolled his eyes, looking at the ceiling, ignoring him.
This core machine's analysis was not of any use; even if it were taken and copied into a new one as it was, Lin Sanjiu could not figure out what to do with it. Since Yu Yuan was interested, she might as well let him play with it. It would give her some time to deal with loose ends—after her thoughts were pulled back into reality by the Veda, she felt like a hamster that had fallen back into its wheel, having to keep running regardless of how illusory the road ahead may seem.
After the nine rooms were gone, even with only the round hall and some branch-like corridors remaining, the space was still vast. Yu Yuan nodded, quickly disappearing from the two people's sight. Since he became a Veda, even though his appearance remained the same as before, Lin Sanjiu would still occasionally feel a sense of strangeness, for he was no longer the Yu Yuan she knew well.
"Speaking of which," she whispered, glancing at Ji Shanqing, "He told me that when the Veda taught him how to immigrate. It was done by... um, using something that was basically like cheating."
The grand prize seemed a bit embarrassed, a faint blush rising on the cheeks. "Sis, then you..."
How Yu Yuan was exposed to the Veda in the first place, leading to his "voluntary" immigration, Lin Sanjiu was no longer willing to pursue. After all, she had already forgiven the grand prize. She gently said, "I let him analyze me... just as you suggested at that time."
Long before the grand prize informed her that Yu Yuan would come to her, the two were prepared for the moment they saw Yu Yuan.
Since he had now become a Veda, he would want to analyze Lin Sanjiu—if there were a most obvious habit of the Veda, it was undoubtedly the compulsion to analyze anything it saw. Being an opponent against the Veda for so long, the grand prize came up with a solution.
"He's no longer the former Yu Yuan, regardless of what he plans to do when he comes to you," the grand prize said. "We must find a way to understand him. Although I know what the Veda are like, I don't know about individual ones. It's like you understand what human beings are, but you don't know what a particular posthuman you encounter on the street is like. I think we might as well let him analyze you, sis, and while he's analyzing you, we can also let him leave his imprint."
"How will we have him leave his imprint?" Lin Sanjiu asked.
"I can create an entirely identical layer of data on top of your data, with both layers updating simultaneously according to your state, so he won't suspect anything wrong. However, the surface data is specifically for Yu Yuan to analyze."
Ji Shanqing tilted her head, seeming to look for an analogy she could understand. "Um, how to put it. Have you ever seen clay or wet cement? When he analyzes your data, he makes contact with you. If the part he touches is clay or cement, then he inevitably leaves his own impression on this layer of data."