Chapter 377: Luo Qi 20

Guan Xinyue did not have the time to figure out what he meant; she accelerated her escape, heading straight for the depths of the hall. If there was no exit in the hall, she was finished, but that thing—whatever it was—was right at the doorway she had entered through. She had no choice but to return to the hall and try her luck. She did not believe today was her final day; such a large hall, even if she just ran around the statues, she could hold out for a while. Perhaps there was still a chance for salvation.

Luo Qi's body stood at the doorway, unmoving. The moment he decided to delete that girl's life, the Consciousness Gate slammed open, and a consciousness restrained his actions. He—no, it should be she—was utterly stunned.

With the capacity of a portable crystal, the consciousness it could store could not be too complex; in any case, it could not directly control his behavior. One had to know that using Telepathy to influence a person or steal their thoughts was simple enough, and digging into memories was already difficult. To control another's free will and sway their actions required Yajian Zhili several times, or even dozens of times, greater than the opponent's.

Yet her actions had indeed been dismantled. She asked that young girl in shock. Before the girl could answer, she had already seen the answer in her consciousness, and it was cross-verified in Luo Qi's memories.

Luo Qi... how could an individual from a Mage race that had propagated for a hundred generations dare to perform such a dangerous act? How could he dare to copy and split his own Yajian within a crude Magic Artifact!

She looked back in anger at the Consciousness World. Her Consciousness World was as dark as an eternal night. She began to scan the Consciousness World; the Yajian Zhiliu performing the scan illuminated various blurry forms in this void like a searchlight. She searched with all her might, nearly missing it several times, until she finally located a multi-legged slime. That thing was lying right on her path ahead.

She was incensed. In the Consciousness World, she was a red-haired female Mage, holding a scepter that represented supreme power from thousands of centuries ago. She released a Basic Primal Language at the slime, stripping away the visual shell of the Yajian cluster to reveal his most familiar self-form: a human shape.

A young boy gradually appeared before her. His bones still held a trace of a youth's slenderness, not yet fully grown into the most mature form of his life. He wore a somewhat oversized human coat, his hands tucked into his jacket pockets. A pair of bright eyes looked at her, the corners of his mouth appearing to suppress a smile. Using a near-human perspective, it was not hard to see that he was a lively and playful person. His eyes hid secrets, his mouth hid amusement, and his mind was as vast as the deep space of the universe. He looked vibrant, believing the world had ten thousand possibilities. When he was alive, he perhaps felt everything was interesting. Some people might like him and hope for a chance to share his world.

She looked at him, knowing he was merely a sub-collection of the original Yajian. Luo Qi had copied it, put it into a High-energy Crystal, and given it to the girl as an Amulet. He truly dared to think and act. She wondered if the girl would find him disgusting and a pervert if she discovered it.

So he had not said it. She had thought of it. He had many little secrets, so many that she was simply impatient to examine them one by one. She was impatient with such delicate minds; when she first ascended, she had deleted her own sentimental parts.

"You are already dead," she told him bluntly and directly.

"I know," Luo Qi looked at her with a smile still on his face, "but I, this version of me, do not have the capacity for sorrow, so I cannot feel sad."

"You lack much more than that," she said impatiently. "Tell me, how do you know you are dead?"

"If my own original body were here, I would instinctively obey him, revere him, and would never resist or attack like I just did," Luo Qi said.

She understood as soon as she heard it, "You learned to use the Priority Strategy?"

"I have been inspired. There are many versions of me; some were copied by my original body, some are copies of the copiers. We follow a regular Tree Structure, performing hierarchical obedience and passing down the Priority Strategy."

"Damn it," she couldn't help but curse.

"Yes, so I am a lingering ghost. I have already spread myself everywhere. Many of the crystals circulating in the Black Market contain me, and I will continue to copy myself infinitely," Luo Qi said with a smile. "If we encounter the original body, we will merge with him and be reclaimed. Even if you kill me, you will never be able to get rid of me in this world. I carry the Secret Language of the Yajian Society. If I am fortunate enough to enter a more powerful crystal, I will continue to organize and upgrade myself according to my will. Of course, all changes stem from the same source: I obey my original body and obey the highest purpose preset by my original body. However, I am everywhere. I am in the Orbital System you passed through, I am in the bar you went to, and I might even be in the access control system of your home. You killed my original body; this news will spread sooner or later, and we will quietly wait for the opportunity to devour you."

"You are practically a virus," she said with disgust.

The child, who looked exceptionally pure, laughed heartily, "Yes, I was also inspired by human viruses."

"Why did you do this?"

"Because I could." A smile flashed in the boy's eyes, but a powerful willpower also flickered within them. His soft, doughy appearance must have usually completely masked his brilliance as a genius; people must have often been deceived and fooled by him.

"You are not in my weight class," she said. But in another field of vision, she was also watching Guan Xinyue running away. Although Guan Xinyue looked like she was running in slow motion under their current time flow, she was currently unable to move and could only watch the girl leave at a snail's pace.

"But I am restraining you right now," Luo Qi smiled. "After all, that is my body. We are fighting inside my body; everything here is calling for my return."

She faced this reality squarely. Although she did not think what he said was the entire reason—he shouldn't have gained the upper hand so easily—it was a fact that this body was indeed most compatible with his own Yajian.

She pondered ways to attack but was much more cautious. "What is the highest guiding principle issued by Luo Qi?"

Luo Qi did not answer, looking at her with a smiling expression.

"I know," she replied nonchalantly. "He is not a hero, nor is he any remarkable figure. He has the talent randomly bestowed upon him by the heavens, but he only cares about these two and a half people around him. Truly pathetic."

"I don't think so," Luo Qi replied. "This is our freedom. We only care about the people within our personal field of vision, that's right. But we have not harmed anyone's reasonable interests. We are ordinary people, and we are proud of it."

"This is a preset answer," she said. "You had already anticipated that someone would call you a coward in the future and prepared this defense for yourself?"

"This is my self-reflection. My spirit has undergone countless self-interrogations; I am merely answering you with the results of my thoughts," Luo Qi said. He walked forward, approaching her. "You are a grand consciousness the likes of which I have never seen before; even clownfish cannot compare to you, but you are also not human."

"Shut up!" she said, incensed.

Luo Qi walked around her, observing and constantly deconstructing her. She attacked him in anger, but he dodged them all. He was naturally clever; he hadn't fully cracked her code, but by guessing, he approached the truth. "Hahaha, you are no different from me. Not 'we', but 'I'. You are also not your own Root Node; you are not the Ancestor Node. You are just someone very close to her... perhaps a first-level node."

"Shut up, you virus," she cursed. "I will destroy you, tear you apart, and scatter you. Luo Qi is already dead, and you cannot finish his path. No matter how many copies of his trash he makes, it is useless. Let me tell you, I know what your highest purpose is. It's a pity your friends won't be able to live well. At most, they can only get a Luo Qi like you, with incomplete soul and spirit—half a Luo Qi. Do you know how sad and heartbroken they will be? Having half of you might be worse than watching you die completely."

"Sorry," Luo Qi looked at her with a sympathetic posture. "I do not have the capacity for pain. My original body does not need me to process pain, and I can see you are the same. I am not human, so half of me does not exist. My existence position is a Binary Code; it is either 1 or 0. I am not like you, who clearly is nothing, yet thinks you are..."

She could not take it anymore. She whipped up a gale in the Consciousness World, intending to tear apart all Yajian in this space.

Luo Qi made a defensive posture opposite her, but then gave her a cheeky grin and vanished from her Consciousness World.

She was stunned. In the real world, the firelight brightened for an instant, and she realized abruptly that Guan Xinyue had disappeared.

The Luo Qi rooted in the crystal carried by the girl also left along with her.

She checked the hall in shock; there was no second exit. Guan Xinyue had disappeared from the secret room. And the Luo Qi from just now was merely covering her escape. She went mad with rage. She had been deceived by that boy; he had bluffed and exaggerated his abilities. A Yajian stored in a portable crystal, even when fighting within its own flesh, could not necessarily contend with her for long. She had been too conservative upon first arriving in this world. Who could have imagined that the little brat could be so cunning even with only Pianshu?

Now she might no longer be able to salvage the exposed situation. She calmed half of her anger and examined the room. Guan Xinyue could not have truly vanished into thin air; there must be some device here that allowed her to disappear.

She walked slowly through the hall, step by step, carefully checking all the energy traces in the surroundings.