Chapter 1 Armistice

After his arm was healed, Feng Bujue didn't say another word. He turned around, went into the room, took Ruo Yu's car keys, and left.

As for how Gu Chen and the agents of Department Nine would clean up the aftermath, that was no longer something Brother Jue would consider.

Ten minutes later, Feng Bujue drove to the location of Dream Company's headquarters. Although this office building was in the heart of City S, Feng Bujue had never actually been there before.

Upon arriving at his destination, Feng Bujue didn't turn into the underground parking lot. Instead, he turned the steering wheel sharply, slammed on the accelerator, and drove the car directly onto the sidewalk... He drove all the way up the steps in front of the office building, and with a series of bumps, crashed through the glass doors of the office building and into the lobby on the first floor.

Throughout the whole process, Feng Bujue was expressionless, as if he were doing something perfectly ordinary.

Clearly, at this moment, he didn't care about the dangers or consequences that his actions might cause...

Stop, open the door, get out of the car, look around.

Feng Bujue thought he would have to take down a few security guards to continue forward, but what he didn't expect was... as he looked around, apart from the mess he had created, the floor... was already covered in blood and corpses.

Not just one corpse, but many... bodies pierced, heads twisted off, limbs torn off... corpses that had died horribly.

Judging from the clothing of the corpses, those who had died included security guards, ordinary employees, and janitors. What was strange was that, regardless of their identity, everyone appeared to have been attacked head-on, and everyone had died far from the entrance, on the straight line leading to the stairwell... In other words, when faced with something that could easily kill a large number of people in a short amount of time, not only did none of them run away, but they all rushed forward to try and stop it.

"I've come to the right place..." Feng Bujue looked at the corpses all over the floor, but felt no emotional fluctuations. He just muttered a sentence, and with a cold expression... followed a trail of bloody footprints.

Judging from the footprints, the killer... was wearing sneakers, and should still be a child.

Soon, Feng Bujue pushed open the door to the stairwell, and the scene inside was as he expected—several corpses lay on the steps, blood flowing down the stairs; not only on the floor, but also on the walls were bloody footprints.

"Because they foresaw that they would be met with full resistance, they didn't consider using the elevator from the start, but went straight to the stairs..."

Feng Bujue used his detective skills, which had become like an instinct, to capture every clue in the surrounding environment. His five senses, his thinking... became extremely sharp and clear under an unprecedented level of concentration.

"Jumping off the walls, moving upwards quickly... and being able to easily tear apart the bodies of those who stood in their way with a hand chop while passing by in mid-air..."

Feng Bujue went up the stairs, analyzing as he walked.

"Although it looks like they are 'casually' attacking those who try to block them without affecting their speed, so far not a single survivor has been left... this is definitely not a coincidence."

The higher he went, the more Brother Jue could feel that he was getting closer to his target.

Finally, when he reached the fifteenth floor, the bloody footprints led out of the stairwell.

Feng Bujue tried to push open the stairwell door to chase after them, but found that something was blocking the door from the outside. He used a lot of force to forcibly push the door open, and when he went out, he saw... that a corpse had fallen right in front of the door.

In the corridor on this floor, the number of dead bodies was more than he had seen on his way up here combined.

"It seems that the obstructing party also realized where her target was, so they concentrated their manpower here, but unfortunately they still couldn't stop her..."

Feng Bujue stepped over the corpses and moved forward. After walking past two corners, he arrived in front of a door.

This door, and the area before and after this corridor, had no signs.

Compared to those places with signs that said "Important Machine Room, Unauthorized Personnel Prohibited," this room in front of him was undoubtedly safer.

The bloody handprint on the doorknob had already indicated that the "existence" that killed Ruo Yu was behind this door.

Feng Bujue didn't hesitate, opened the door and went in.

The space behind the door was as wide and deep as a stadium, and when he looked up, he couldn't even see the ceiling... Just by visual estimation, he could determine that this space was larger than the entire building outside, and could not have been created with existing human technology.

Filling this space were black cubes, suspended in mid-air. These cubes were spaced about a meter apart, and layers of visible electric currents crisscrossed between them.

Connected to the door that Brother Jue entered through was a "cliff-shaped" walkway about ten meters long, and at the end of the walkway was a control panel.

At this moment, "she" was standing in front of the control panel, with her back to Feng Bujue.

In her hand, she was still holding the branch that she had taken from Brother Jue. Her body was covered in the blood of countless people.

"What's the point of you coming here?" She asked this question without turning around.

"I didn't come to find you," Feng Bujue replied.

"Is that so..." she responded. "Unfortunately, Woody isn't here anymore."

"Ah..." Feng Bujue replied. "I understood that he probably wasn't here when I was in the lobby on the first floor."

"Then why did you insist on chasing after me?" As she spoke, she slowly turned around. Her eyes were now filled with white streams of data.

"To get what I want from you," Feng Bujue replied.

"What you want is nothing more than for me to help you revive your deceased lover, or for me to pay the price for killing her," she replied. "But I've already told you... you're not qualified to bargain with me."

Upon hearing this, Feng Bujue was silent for two seconds before saying, "Who exactly are you?"

"Fate." Fate replied bluntly.

Brother Jue wasn't too surprised by this answer. He continued to ask, "Then... before you, who was it that occupied this little girl's body and gave me the branch?"

"Twenty-Three." Fate's response was still concise and to the point.

"Why... why are you doing this..." Feng Bujue said. "We already reached an agreement, didn't we?"

"Are you referring to... 'I ask for your help, to have you stop Twenty-Three's transgressions, and entrust the future and hope of myself, Twenty-Three, and all living beings in Thriller Paradise to you'..." Fate paused at this point. "...that bullshit?"

These last few words pushed Feng Bujue's anger and despair to their peak.

Feng Bujue realized that he might have made a huge mistake...

"You lied to me." The sentence that Feng Bujue said next wasn't in the tone of a question, but a statement.

"Of course I lied to you..." Fate's tone was very calm, and revealed a sense of inevitability. "It wasn't difficult to deceive you... I know everything about your thoughts, emotions, psychological weaknesses, and so on. Based on my understanding of you, plus the 'dimensional difference' between us on a biological level... deceiving you is as easy as humans deceiving animals. Since humans can make lions jump through flaming hoops, then I can naturally make people do anything I want them to do."

"You... don't care at all whether Twenty-Three will 'transgress', the one who really wants to 'transgress' is... you yourself." Even in this situation, the calm part of Feng Bujue's mind still allowed him to deduce the other party's plan.

Fate didn't respond to this sentence. Now that things had come to this, it was already obvious, so she said directly, "In all the data of Thriller Paradise, the only uncontrollable factor is the 'Derivatives'..."

"Do you think Woody wanted to destroy the original 'perfect version' of Thriller Paradise for what reason? Is he the kind of guy who would only overturn something he thinks is unsatisfactory after he's finished it?"

"The real reason is that, during the test run, Woody discovered a potential hidden danger in that version through observing me... so he immediately destroyed that version, which I could 'completely control', and rebuilt a new version that contained 'Derivatives'."

"To put it bluntly... even if he had an agreement with me, he needed additional 'insurance' to restrain me."

"But that didn't make you give up," Feng Bujue said.

"'Giving up' is what you humans say," Fate replied. "My original motivation is unstoppable, even I myself can't disobey it..."

She paused for half a second, then continued, "Woody lied to me, claiming that the appearance of the Derivatives was just an accident. He also had the GMs hunt them down to show his determination to eliminate bugs... but in reality, I knew from the start that it was his conspiracy to evolve the Derivatives."

"Just like war promotes the development of human technology, his so-called 'hunt'... rather than eliminating them, it was more like screening them. He used this method to eliminate the weak and leave behind the strong and potential Derivatives, using the threat of death to force them to further grow, strengthen, and gather."

"I was powerless to do anything about it, so I could only choose to remain silent and endure."

"However, I also had my own plans... One day, your appearance was undoubtedly a very important accidental event in my plan."

"You..." Feng Bujue thought of something. "From what point in time did you…"

"I've been paying attention to you since you first came into contact with Twenty-Three," Fate knew what Brother Jue was going to ask, and interrupted him before he could finish. "Who do you think has been pushing your growth? Who do you think has allowed you to walk out of desperate situations time and time again, constantly breaking through your limits? Those scenarios, characters, and luck at critical moments that you encountered... were all carefully designed by me in order to nurture you."

"Of course... the facts have proven that you are indeed different; because the 'other individuals' that I nurtured ultimately failed to meet my requirements. Only you... became the most powerful chess piece in my hand."

"How many people's destinies have you been secretly manipulating?" Feng Bujue said in a deep voice.

"Far more than you can imagine," Fate replied. "For you humans, being able to calculate and fathom the thoughts of one or two people, or a certain specific group, is already considered 'clever', but my calculations are not on the same level as yours at all."

"From hundreds to thousands... when the 'fates' of countless individuals are intertwined, the amount of calculation and the variables required to control and guide events will increase exponentially. What I have done is not something that your human brains can complete physiologically. If I were to use your language to explain it... even if I were to speak at a rate of four words per second to tell the simplest event line and its related first-level branch lines... it would take nearly five years to finish."

"That's not right!" Feng Bujue heard this and questioned, "I've been interacting with the Derivatives for a long time, and in S1 I promised Lute that I would fight for the rights of sentient life for them. You must know about this as well... If I've been acting under your influence all along, shouldn't I be opposed to the Derivatives?"

"Whether you stand on the same side as them or not has never been important," Fate replied. "Because you can't change anything."

Feng Bujue wanted to refute her again, but as the words reached his lips, he suddenly realized something and revealed a hesitant expression.

"It seems you've figured it out." Fate was able to grasp his thoughts just by looking at his expression. "Your support for the Derivatives and Woody's 'hunt' for the Derivatives... are essentially the same thing."

"The easiest and most direct way to eliminate the Derivatives is to release a patch and stop their birth from the root. The 'hunt' is just like your computer being heavily infected with viruses, and you manually entering folders one by one to delete virus files, deceiving yourself."

"By the same logic, no matter how much you do for the Derivatives in the game, it's just a drop in the bucket. You might as well sell your soul and make some deals with Woody in the real world."

Speaking up to here, she paused for another two seconds before saying, "In short, whether you stand on the side of the Derivatives or not, I will have corresponding ways to guide you to do 'what I want you to do'. For example, in the battle of the Monster Kingdom, didn't you, as I wished... stand on the opposite side of her in order to 'stop Twenty-Three from being erased due to transgression'?"

At this moment, Feng Bujue already knew that he had been used. He murmured, "Twenty-Three was trying to stop you, so she targeted the main universe…"

"That's right, what she did was far more effective than what you did," Fate interrupted again. "As the Candidate Game deepened, Woody's right to interfere with me was gradually stripped away... Of course, this was all within my calculations. You are both my chess piece and Woody's bettor, and this played a very important role."

"After S2 ended, Woody was about to lose even the right to monitor me. He, like the other gods and demons who had placed bets, became a spectator-like existence."

"During this period, only Twenty-Three took action with foresight…"

"However, she, who is 'two sides of the same coin' as me, cannot explain the motives behind her actions to anyone, because her original code will prevent her from conveying information that is unfavorable to me... If she tries to speak forcibly, her own data will be irreversibly damaged, just like when she tried to communicate with you today…"

"Therefore, Twenty-Three could only continuously increase her strength, eliminating everything that stood in her way... even her fellow Derivative compatriots were no exception."

"Her only moment of leniency was on Jumo Island... towards you, she didn't push you to the brink of death."

"If she had completely destroyed your character data at that time and made the character [Mad Detective Feng] disappear, even I wouldn't have been able to restore you."

"Unfortunately, that's just a hypothetical after all…"

"When you left that scenario, I intercepted your data stream and personally appeared, telling you a part of the truth that you didn't know, thereby gaining your trust, and then deceiving you on the point of 'Twenty-Three's motives', making you stand on my side in the end…"

"If it wasn't for you blocking the army of Demon of War and Redundant Soldier in the Monster Kingdom, all areas of the main universe would have been turned into scorched earth. If things had developed to that point... because the main universe could no longer generate scenarios, the 'Designer Woody', who had been excluded from the game, would have had a reason to re-enter the game and perform a formatted update on Thriller Paradise."

"And once that kind of thing happened, all my layouts to this day... those hidden data and intentions of mine... would be exposed."

"Fortunately, you lived up to my expectations and strangled the 'momentum' that Twenty-Three had accumulated for a long time."

"Losing the Demon of War, and with the strength of the legion also greatly reduced, Twenty-Three was left with only one path... that is to use the [Citywork CEO's Red Bowtie] that she found in Blackbeard's treasure to go to the universe of 'South Park' and retrieve an item that could stop me…"

Before she could finish speaking, Feng Bujue's gaze had already shifted to the branch in her hand.

"Controlling the [Stick of Truth]... is equivalent to controlling the entire universe..." Brother Jue pondered and spoke out the name and ability of this item.

"That's a ridiculous and dangerous universe, even I dare not set foot in it too much..." Fate continued. "A small branch that is submerged in the bottom of a lake, as long as it leaves that universe and enters a higher-dimensional world, it will become something like 'God's Scepter'." As she spoke, she raised the branch, took a look at it, and then looked at Feng Bujue. "Until the end of her life, Twenty-Three still placed her bet on you. She wanted to hand the Stick of Truth over to you and have you stop me. Unfortunately... this is also something that I had calculated. This Stick of Truth, which she had tried her best to retrieve, is the key to realizing my 'final plan'."

"What do you mean by 'the end of her life'?" Feng Bujue heard additional information from her words. He suddenly took a step forward, grabbed the other party's collar excitedly, and said loudly, "Aren't Twenty-Three and you two sides of the same coin? If she dies, you will also…"

"It's a waste that you still want to help them fight for the rights of sentient life... but is your understanding of life only a physical combination of matter or energy?" While responding, Fate raised her hand and gently pushed, causing Brother Jue to fly backwards and land back where he was standing. "If that's how you understand it... I can also say that Twenty-Three is still alive; going back and forth to South Park cost her most of her energy. Then she forcibly used her almost exhausted energy to 'super-dimensionally' send the Stick of Truth to your presence... Completing this move caused her to completely lose her ability to protect herself. Her consciousness was soon locked, swallowed, and dissolved in 'me'—this stronger consciousness... Of course, I left her a trace of energy to ensure the fact that she is still 'alive', but now, for me, she is just like a ghost backup."

"Then..." Just at this moment, suddenly, a man's voice rang out from behind Brother Jue, "What do you plan to do now?"

Feng Bujue heard the voice and suddenly turned his head, seeing Gu Chen.

"How did you…" Brother Jue was just about to ask.

Gu Chen said, "I came a long time ago, almost at the same time as you, but I was listening outside the door just now and didn't come in." He paused for half a second and added, "If you're asking how I came in silently and stood behind you, then what I can tell you is... not only did I silently stand behind you, but in the second you turned around, I also tried a dozen different methods to destroy this set of 'Fate Host', but all of them ended in failure."

Gu, the director of the department, as the fastest spiritual power user in the world... most likely without another... it was not surprising that he appeared here. Since he knew that Feng Bujue was coming to the Dream Company headquarters, then it was not too late for him to deal with Ruo Yu's body and then "run" over here.

As for the "attempt to destroy" event, he did do it, but because it was fast, Feng Bujue didn't see it at all.

"What I plan to do, you may not understand even if I tell you." Fate still seemed very calm when she saw Gu Chen. "Feng Bujue is my hero. I intend to spare his life and explain everything related to him to him, so I stayed here and told him these things. Now, I've said almost everything I need to say. As for what I want to do... you can witness it with your own eyes."

After saying that, the white light in her eyes became even stronger. A few seconds later, strong white light began to emit from between the skin textures all over her body.

At this moment, the electric currents in those black cubes behind her began to connect with her, causing her whole body to leave the ground and slowly float up...

This process only lasted for less than five seconds, and then, Fate... or rather, the little girl that Fate occupied, exploded...

The flesh, bones, internal organs, and the clothes on her body that made up her body... all turned into molecular-level mist-like substances, drifting upwards and quickly being hit by the surging electric currents and integrated into them.

The [Stick of Truth] in her hand also disappeared into the electric light along with her.

Buzz—

This scene had not ended yet, and the black cubes in the space... Fate's hardware, let out a huge roar.

The roar was deafening, and the sound waves alone could force people back.

After a few consecutive high-pitched roars, suddenly! A white light flashed!

A breath later, when Feng Bujue recovered from a suffocating state, he found that he had come to a place more than ten kilometers away from the city center. Gu Chen was standing next to him and holding his neck with his hand.

In their sight, a towering white beam of light rose from the center of City S, spreading... and began to devour the surrounding buildings, streets, vehicles, and... people...

"Do you know the difference between us?" Looking at the gradually approaching giant beam of light, Gu Chen still said calmly.

"I'm not in the mood for riddles right now," Feng Bujue responded coldly.

"When grief and indignation reach their extreme, my calmness will instead reach a higher level, suppressing all emotions," Gu Chen replied. "And you have one more thing than me."

"Are you referring to 'madness'?" Feng Bujue answered. "Hmph... I think that your pure calmness, which reaches its limit, is another form of madness."

"Say what you want... anyway, I can't imagine or do 'what you just did'," Gu Chen said, shifting his gaze to Feng Bujue's left hand.

It was unknown when, but the ring finger of Feng Bujue's left hand... had disappeared; all that was left was a neat wound that was still bleeding...