Chapter 420

Thunder rumbled, rain poured down, and an old-fashioned building loomed in the lightning.

The car slowly drove to the front of the building and stopped.

"Later, keep your mouth shut. No matter what you see, don't ask." Cui Cui Nidi warned Ye Nan.

"Rest assured." Ye Nan curled his lip. "I won't ask. I know all your stuff."

Having watched *The Matrix*, he naturally knew what was inside. Perhaps he would be slightly excited when seeing the real thing, but he wouldn't lose his composure to the point of not being able to keep his mouth shut.

Ascending the spiral staircase, eventually, under Cui Cui Nidi's guidance, they walked up to a wooden door.

"We're here." Cui Cui Nidi looked at Ye Nan, her eyes fierce as a wolf or tiger. "Remember what I said."

"Looks like my treatment is quite different from Neo's." Ye Nan curled his lip and, under Cui Cui Nidi's predatory gaze, closed his mouth.

"After we go in, I have one piece of advice: please be open and honest." After saying this, Cui Cui Nidi opened the door.

Ye Nan followed Neo inside, only to see a black man wearing sunglasses with his back to them in the room. Ye Nan knew this was Morpheus.

"We finally meet." Morpheus turned around, and when he saw Ye Nan, he was stunned for a moment, then laughed. "This must be Ye Nan."

"You are Morpheus? A person from the Zion base." Ye Nan walked over casually and sat on the sofa with a thud. "Finally, I don't have to talk to your subordinates."

"Shut up, don't be rude in front of Mr. Morpheus." Cui Cui Nidi's fierce gaze seemed to want to eat Ye Nan alive.

"I want to chat with you about some things. For example, prophecies and the like." Ye Nan ignored Cui Cui Nidi and spoke directly to Morpheus.

He knew clearly that among all the awakened humans, only Morpheus believed in the Prophet's prophecies. He was Morpheus.

As long as he could move Morpheus, leaving this place would be easy. And he had enough confidence to move him during their conversation.

"You know about prophecies?" Although Morpheus was asking, his tone was very flat.

"I know about prophecies. Not only do I know, I also know the Prophet. I even know the Prophet's identity." Ye Nan took a bottle of red wine from under the table and poured it into a glass. "Just like red wine, if it is drunk by me, this program will disappear."

Ye Nan drank the red wine in one gulp. "The program has disappeared, so what will happen to it?"

"If a program disappears, it just disappears." Morpheus looked at Ye Nan, who was acting mysterious, and said with dissatisfaction: "But does this have anything to do with the prophecy?"

"It does. The program disappeared; it did indeed disappear. But there are always some programs that don't want to disappear, so they rebelled." Ye Nan looked at the wine bottle in his hand. "Unlike the dead object of this wine bottle in my hand, living things always have thoughts, so programs that don't want to disappear escaped."

It must be said that as an intelligent life form that betrayed humanity, she herself was also experiencing betrayal. And this betrayal was brought about by programs she herself had split off. Especially in *The Matrix*, those programs that possessed self-awareness did not want to be replaced or swallowed, so they rose up to resist, even stripping away part of the Matrix world's authority to build their own homeland.

"This is called 'the upper beam is not straight, the lower beam is crooked'." Ye Nan murmured.

"What did you say?" Morpheus suddenly heard the phrase "the upper beam is not straight, the lower beam is crooked" from Ye Nan and for a moment couldn't figure out what connection this had with the previous sentence.

"Nothing." Ye Nan also knew he had lost his composure and immediately covered it up. "In the original Matrix world, there was also such a program. She was the original program, and together with the Father of the Matrix, they held the control of the entire Matrix world. She was called the Mother of the Matrix."

"You mean to say the Prophet is..." Morpheus didn't finish his sentence, but everyone present guessed it. For a moment, everyone hesitated.

The Prophet—they had always worshipped the Prophet as a god because the Prophet could predict the future. But now, someone was telling them that the Prophet was the mother of this Matrix world. This made them unable to accept it. The person worshipped as a god was actually an enemy—what could be more absurd than this?

"What evidence do you have to prove it?" Morpheus pondered for a moment and asked again.

"Proving it is very simple. Why don't you go ask her yourself?" Ye Nan said.

The people present were speechless again. Asking directly was indeed the simplest way, but if you asked about this kind of thing directly, would she tell you?

Ye Nan glanced at them and understood what they were thinking, so he said immediately: "Don't worry. When the Savior appears, the Prophet no longer has any need to hide. For her, this game has already begun."

"Game?" Hearing the new term, Morpheus asked immediately, "What is a game?"

"A very interesting experiment. At the beginning of the Matrix's establishment, a special program was born. This program broke free from the Matrix's control and even conversely obtained a portion of authority. Please note, this program is unique. It is not one of those rebellious programs, because those programs that betrayed the Matrix cannot escape this Matrix world in essence."

"Unique? Escape the Matrix world?" Morpheus shifted his gaze to Neo, his eyes somewhat heavy.

"Yes, you guessed right. This program possesses something similar to a human soul. It can combine perfectly with a human body." Ye Nan said.

In the movie *The Matrix*, that special program called Shi Shi Misi obtained a special ability from Neo, then self-replicated, even replicating into the real world, assimilating the minds of humans in the real world. This ability is simply inconceivable.

You must know that a program is a program, and a soul is a soul; these are two completely different things. Perhaps a program can make a soul hallucinate, but for a program to become a soul is simply impossible. It's like wood wanting to become pork—completely impossible.

Yet Shi Shi Misi succeeded. He successfully assimilated someone's soul into a program, turning a person into a machine. This unprecedented ability reminded Ye Nan of Neo.

As the special program that mutated from the initial creation, Neo could fuse with a human body. From a program, he became a thinking, conscious soul, and this ability was replicated by Shi Shi Misi.

Just as the Father of the Matrix said, he couldn't do anything about Neo, so he created Zion, letting Zion become Neo's burden, letting him make a choice at a critical moment: abandon himself and save Zion, or abandon Zion and save himself.

The first generation of Saviors made the choice to abandon themselves and save Zion, but Neo did not make the same choice in the end.

"I've digressed!" Ye Nan shook his head, throwing away his cluttered thoughts, and continued: "Neo is just such a program. From the first generation, the Father of the Matrix had been plotting to take Neo back. But unfortunately, the Neo that was taken back could not be analyzed at all, nor could the Matrix itself evolve. So he was released again, and thus, the Savior was born."

"Yes, the Savior. In order to make the Savior who became human subject to the control of the Father of the Matrix, the Father of the Matrix preserved Zion, which is your base, letting it become Neo's burden, making Neo make a choice at a critical moment."

"What choice?" Neo asked.

"Choose to save Zion and integrate into the Matrix, or choose to abandon Zion and obtain freedom." Ye Nan said unhurriedly: "This is the choice the Matrix gives you."

As Ye Nan spoke, his voice gradually became higher. "You must know that the Father of the Matrix cannot do anything about you, but he can give you shackles, making you willingly do that thing."

"Family, love, friendship, and responsibility." Ye Nan snapped his fingers and laughed. "These are the burdens that belong to you. I have to say, the Father of the Matrix has figured out your personality."

"Then who are you?" Neo's voice was somewhat hoarse. "You said you are the president of the ICQ company, but clearly, you are not. A president from the past couldn't possibly understand this so clearly. You are deceiving me."

"Deceiving? No, I said I know the past, present, and future. You can treat me as the Prophet." Ye Nan said sincerely.

"We cannot believe your words." Morpheus spoke. Unknowingly, the room had filled with many people.

"You don't need to believe me; you only need to make a choice." Ye Nan imitated the Prophet's tone. "The future is composed of countless choices. It will never have only two paths. The unknown is the charm of destiny."

Ye Nan took another sip of red wine, his face somewhat flushed, his gaze somewhat unfocused. "The Father of the Matrix gave you two choices, but you yourselves can make a third, a fourth, or even an Nth choice."

"How do we make a choice?" Morpheus said in a deep voice, his initial disbelief vanishing instantly.

Ye Nan smiled lightly, the unfocused drunkenness in his eyes disappearing without a trace. "Didn't you just say you didn't believe my words?"

"I don't believe your words, but I want to make a choice." At this moment, Morpheus couldn't care about Ye Nan's attitude; he wanted to know what the choice Ye Nan spoke of was.

"The choice is very simple, but you must send me out." Ye Nan smiled lightly, putting forward his own request.

"Are you threatening us?"

"You could say that."

Morpheus looked at Ye Nan helplessly, wanting to take action but fearing to create an enemy, so he had to agree.

"Go, I'll take you out." Morpheus turned around and said to the others, "Go back, we're leaving here."

"Do you really believe what he said?" Cui Cui Nidi whispered. She always had a feeling that what Ye Nan said was not real at all.

"Most of what he said is true." Morpheus said: "For this 'most', I must take a risk."

"Cui Cui Nidi, it seems your warning was ineffective." Ye Nan trotted two steps, quickly following. "You have your own cognition; what I give you only needs you to distinguish it yourselves. Don't trust your feelings too much; feelings will always deceive."

Ye Nan passed by Cui Cui Nidi with a smile, triumphant. "I know why you reject me. You've fallen for that guy called Neo, haven't you!"

Although it was a question, Ye Nan's tone was quite certain. In the movie, Cui Cui Nidi fell in love with Neo, and just now, in the car, Cui Cui Nidi had been very gentle toward Neo.

"Because I broke the halo of the Savior of the person you admire, you are dissatisfied with me." Ye Nan said word by word. "So you bad-mouthed me."

Ye Nan deliberately spoke very loudly. Seeing success was imminent, he didn't allow any mistakes to happen. Anyone who wanted to stop him was his enemy.

"What did you say?" Cui Cui Nidi threw a punch, hitting Ye Nan in the stomach.

Ye Nan let out a miserable cry, bent over, and clutched his stomach, his face full of pain. Although this was the effect he wanted, he still underestimated his endurance. In the Matrix world, he was just an ordinary person.

"What are you doing?" Morpheus, who was walking in front, turned his head and happened to see the scene of Ye Nan being knocked to the ground, immediately scolding her angrily.

"He... I..." Cui Cui Nidi opened her mouth, but then closed it.

Seeing Cui Cui Nidi's hesitant expression, Morpheus was somewhat angry, but Cui Cui Nidi was his subordinate, and he didn't want to scold her outside, so he said: "Come over quickly."

Passing through a door, old-fashioned computers came into Ye Nan's view, and racks of unknown machines were placed on them, making the room look somewhat sloppy.

"Sit down." The blonde beauty walked to Ye Nan's side and pointed to a chair.

Upon hearing this, Ye Nan sat down. "So familiar? Looks like you've done the same thing."

"Shut up." The blonde beauty said irritably while sticking white sensors onto Ye Nan. After all the sensors were stuck on Ye Nan, she took a pill out of another box.

"Open your mouth."

Upon hearing this, Ye Nan opened his mouth. As soon as he opened it, he felt something thrown into his mouth, and he instinctively swallowed it.

"The pill you swallowed can interrupt your carrier signal, so we can accurately locate your spatial position, find you, and then cut you off from this virtual world." Morpheus's voice came over.

Ye Nan, who had watched the movie, naturally wouldn't have as many questions as Neo in the movie. Although he was also very interested in the principles of these things, at this moment, he didn't want to create extra trouble.

In a trance, Ye Nan came in front of a mirror. The sensors on his body had disappeared at some point.

"This mirror?" Ye Nan reached out to touch the mirror, and silver mercury immediately surged out from inside, covering Ye Nan's arm step by step.

"So cold." Ye Nan looked at the mercury that had quickly covered most of his body, and for some reason, he suddenly felt some regret.

"If they want to kill me, wouldn't I be completely defenseless?"

"What I'm doing is really risky."

One suspicious thought after another emerged from the bottom of his heart. The next moment, his whole body was completely covered by mercury, and a feeling of suffocation almost made him faint.

"No."