Chapter 601: Surgery Completed

Tinnitus across all channels.

It was as if something had been forcibly cut off in frequency. Jiang Yuan stood in the ruins, blood still dripping from his hand, his head buzzing for a full three seconds, unable to think of anything.

The communication channel died completely; Wei Gong's voice vanished, He Chuan's voice vanished, even the background noise of the command center was cut off—Jiang Yuan's headset was left with absolute silence, so quiet it felt like he'd been thrown alone into a vacuum.

Three seconds.

Five seconds.

A buzzing sound pierced out of the earphones, making people clench their teeth, then all equipment rebooted simultaneously.

The screen lit up, the data flow started again, and confirmation signals began trickling in from various branches over the channel—not alarms, but confirmations, the kind that say "I'm still here."

Jiang Yuan lifted his head.

The sky was a deep blue.

It was clean to an almost abnormal degree.

That oppressive, breath‑stealing thing from just now was gone—not weakened, but completely vanished, as if it had never existed; the whole world fell silent at this moment, even the wind died down.

"Ground vibrations have stopped." He Chuan's voice came over the channel, trembling but clear: "Global weird activity data is...... declining. Not dropping to zero, but...... self‑contracting."

Liang Wen was still sprawled on the pile of broken equipment, poking his head out: "What does 'contracting' mean? Is it good or bad?"

No one answered him.

Su Ming stood two meters to Jiang Yuan's left, eyes not on the sky but fixed on the tablet in his hand, its surface cracked. The Time Marrow Worm, from over‑exertion, lay curled beside his wrist, motionless, entirely translucent, dragging a weak body.

He moved a finger, pulling out the first batch of received recomposed data.

"Headquarters," Su Ming said in a flat, unvarying tone, "Activate maximum computing power. He Chuan, I need you to run this entire batch of data."

Wei Gong's side fell silent for two seconds.

"Already activated."

In the command center, He Chuan sat at his workstation, his eyes bloodshot from exhaustion, his eyelids straining to stay open; he shifted his chair forward slightly, and when his fingers touched the keyboard, his hand trembled.

On the screen, a waterfall of data streamed downward.

Garbage, all garbage—each character jumping, as if something from the underlying logic architecture were pushing up, line after line slamming into the processor, turning the screen gray‑white then back to black with green text.

He Chuan took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, put them back on, and kept staring.

"How much has run through?"

"Seventeen percent."

"Continue."

In the command center nobody spoke; everyone held their breath, waiting.

Jiang Yuan went outside to tidy up the scene, dragging the still‑mobile people out of the ruins and sending the wounded to the rear. After finishing, he took another look at that patch of ground.

Where Chu Che had fallen, all that remained was a pair of askew gold‑rimmed glasses.

One lens was shattered, catching the light under the lamp.

Jiang Yuan squatted down and stared for a long time.

From start to finish, Chu Che never actually intended to resist. Surrender, interrogation, breaking free of chains, finally opening the editor—each step counted as good. He needed that blade; he was waiting for that blade.

The "Nameless" sword that Qin Zhixia threw out was by no means the end.

It was the beginning.

"Jiang Yuan."

Su Ming's voice came over the channel.

It wasn't loud, but hearing that tone, Jiang Yuan's calf inexplicably tightened.

"The decryption results are out."

"How so?"

Su Ming didn't answer right away, pausing for about two seconds—the kind of pause while processing information.

Jiang Yuan heard him exhale.

"Chu Che isn't dead."

The ruins suddenly fell silent.

Liang Wen had a pill from his pocket clenched between his teeth; hearing this, he didn't swallow, stared blankly for a few seconds, then whispered softly: "...... What?"

"He rewrote himself," Su Ming said in his usual flat tone, "using the Weird Editor to rewrite his own consciousness and power into physical law, covering the globe. He no longer exists as the person Chu Che; he is...... the rule itself."

Qin Zhixia sat on a piece of rubble, the remnants of her mechanical prosthetic arm laid beside her, her white hair disheveled. After hearing this, she didn't move, her gaze fixed on the ground for a few seconds.

"Physical law." She repeated it, her voice flat, but Jiang Yuan could tell it was the flatness that comes from having suppressed all emotion.

"Right," He Chuan's voice chimed in, carrying a strange mix of excitement and terror, "the data we can currently parse shows that the underlying operational logic of global weirdness has been reorganized, but it's not out of control—it's...... an orderly loss of control, with someone in charge, someone coordinating uniformly, all the rules checking and balancing each other, global weird activity levels are dropping, falling to a...... sustainable stable value."

"A sustainable stable value," Jiang Yuan stood up, "what does that mean?"

"It means......" He Chuan paused, "this isn't about destroying the world. It's about...... establishing a new order."

The channel fell silent again, a longer silence.

Jiang Yuan took two steps, his boots crunching on gravel, eyes fixed on the far‑off sky that was unnaturally blue; a thought slowly formed in his mind, growing until he couldn't avoid facing it even though he didn't want to.

"So," he said slowly, "did we actually win?"

"We killed Chu Che."

"But Chu Che is now the atmosphere," Su Ming continued, devoid of feeling, "he is gravity, the speed of light, the operational logic of all weirdness. He is no longer a target that can be aimed at or eliminated; he has become part of the Earth itself."

Liang Wen finally swallowed the pill in his mouth, sat on the ground dazed for a full five seconds, then said in a very calm, almost Buddhist tone:

"Then we fought for nothing."

Nobody objected.

From Wei Gong's side came a low, sigh‑like breath.

This was the first time Jiang Yuan had heard Wei Gong sigh.

His hand clenched slightly, then relaxed.

Clenched slightly, then relaxed.

The image of Chu Che's eyes disappearing played through his mind, without madness, without reluctance, like the composure of a surgeon after checking surgical indicators and pushing open the operating room door.

"So what now," Qin Zhixia spoke, voice not loud, "Where should we strike? How do we counter a physical law?"

No one spoke.

In the command center, everyone stared at the screen, waiting and waiting, dazed and dazed, He Chuan's pen hovered in midair, never falling.

Wei Gong sat in his wheelchair, one hand resting on the armrest, unmoving, and said only one sentence: "First figure out what he wants to do."

After that sentence fell, the channel fell into silence again.

Then Su Ming said: "Wait."

His voice changed slightly, not much, just a hint of something indescribable added to his normally flat tone—not panic, but the intense focus that comes when encountering an unexpected variable.

"This string of data—"

He paused for two seconds.

"The 'expected rate of human evolution'...... is surging."

Jiang Yuan immediately turned his head: "How much?"

"It's still rising," Su Ming stared at the screen, his finger tapping the string of numbers in the upper right corner, "faster than the total of the past three years."

He Chuan froze for two seconds, snatched it to look, put on his glasses and leaned toward the screen, looked for three seconds, pushed up his nose bridge, turned to look at Wei Gong: "This......"

Wei Gong said nothing, only stared at that string of numbers, something in his gaze slowly sinking.

Jiang Yuan stood in the ruins, at his feet were Chu Che's bloodstains, above his head was an azure, clean sky, secretly governed by something.

He suddenly recalled Chu Che's words.

"Thank you for your assistance."

That tone.

That tone, from start to finish, precise to the millimeter, carrying the composed ease of a gentle physician.

It was never a plea for death.

He was carrying out the plan.

And this plan, judging from the current data, is proceeding in the direction he wanted.