Chapter 119

Sasa sneered from the side,

"Still complaining about how the world I created is full of bugs? It's easy to talk when you aren't the one doing the work. Just look at it once and you'll understand; the laws of the universe are so complex that it's a miracle this mountain of shit can even run."

Qi Xing's mouth twitched; he actually couldn't refute that.

Indeed.

It was impossible for him to fix all the "bugs" he had defined across the entire world at once. Not to mention, he didn't even dare to touch the core laws that Sasa had written into the underlying system at the beginning of creation. If those rules went wrong, the entire world could collapse instantly.

Because the laws Sasa had written into the system's foundation couldn't be "restored" or undone.

But at least, the logic of the [Cycle] that Yaobikuni had written into the Northeast land over the past eight hundred years, even though it had deeply permeated the bloodlines and the local culture, did not belong to the original system. Erasing them completely would not cause the world to collapse.

These "truths," which had long since become a part of the lives of the people here, now had nowhere to hide under the Giant Spirit's [Yata Mirror]. Like sludge floating to the surface of the water, they were revealed one by one.

The first to bear the brunt was, of course, the "truth" that Yaobikuni had grasped during the famine eight hundred years ago, when she was still a child.

Endless reproduction, self-propagation, an endless cycle of giving birth to oneself.

Sacrificing those born "today" to sustain the lives of "yesterday."

Making the older bloodlines and living people cling more tightly to their native land. The older the bloodline, the less they could leave; they didn't want to change their current way of life, making their hometown itself "irreplaceable."

Because they didn't want change, they didn't want them to leave, and they didn't want them to change their original lifestyle.

Thus, the people themselves became the fuel to maintain the [Cycle].

In such logic, every person became the body of an Ouroboros, devouring themselves to maintain eternity.

…However, a bug is a bug, and exploiting a loophole is, in the end, still exploiting a loophole.

Unresolved system errors accumulate and will eventually erupt one day.

—For example, in those villages that relied on prostitution and child sacrifice to keep running, how would the boys in the village feel?

Even if the girls felt very good under the influence of the erotic laws, enjoyed the process, and were very willing—how would a boy feel seeing a girl he knew, perhaps one he grew up with, turn into a prostitute?

Thus, runaways appeared.

Men would leave, abandoning this land that made them feel humiliated and traumatized, fleeing to other lands.

But Yaobikuni could not accept this "escape." Her cycle required a complete structure. No matter how much she exploited the system's loopholes, she couldn't maintain seventy thousand square kilometers of northern land using only women. If men fled in large numbers, the [Cycle] would develop cracks.

Thus, in 1938, there was the incident where a young man, in a single night, took a shotgun and a katana and massacred the entire village. That suddenly awakened mortal even hacked the white-haired shrine maiden to death once. She must have been very astonished at the time.

This was precisely an instinctive rebound of a systemic error that had been suppressed for too long.

The [Yata Mirror] reflected all of this. Eight hundred years of chaos and filth had seeped into the spiritual veins of the land, poured into the bloodlines of humanity, and become a deep-seated tumor in both the geography and the human heart.

Normally, like that night in 1938, such distortion would eventually erupt—but Yaobikuni used her "Cycle" to suppress it, preventing it from being released.

The Ouroboros could suppress its own hometown, preventing the land and the human heart from changing, keeping them in an internal cycle.

—But Yam was a larger snake than it.

Crossing the sea of the void, coming from the outside, descending upon this place.

The Dragon Snake opened its mouth, and the Holy Spear was thrust out from the center of its seven heads, piercing and churning the chaos!

In an instant, Qi Xing had forcibly seized control!

Those laws that wanted to "stay," those that "could not change," those that "must never end"—began to loosen, collapse, and peel away.

The twisted logic of the cycle was being completely erased, line by line.

Frozen and forcibly brought here, Yaobikuni's remnant soul could only watch helplessly as Qi Xing deleted the laws she had spent eight hundred years building, bit by bit.

The logic of reproduction and devouring was all reduced to ashes, like a temple burned by raging fire, leaving not even the foundation behind.

However, now that it had come to this, with death imminent, she did not continue to wail miserably.

"…History is written by the victors. If I lost, I lost. Now that it has come to this, I have nothing more to say."

Yaobikuni's remnant soul whispered, her voice as soft as ever,

"But, [Master Leipu]."

But her voice suddenly became sharp again, carrying a determination bordering on obsession:

"…Everything I did was to allow the lives of the 'present' to continue, to ensure that the 'people living in this moment' would not fall into despair—would not be like me back then, on the verge of starving to death with no way to help myself."

"You deleted my [Cycle] and destroyed all my efforts, but what happens after that?"

"Eight hundred years of construction, eight hundred years of bloodlines; over ninety percent of the people in the entire Mutsu region are descendants flowing with my blood. How do you expect my children to survive in the future?"

Her god had discarded her like refuse, not even acknowledging the "meaning" of her actions.

She could only cling desperately to the last thread, trying to bite back at Qi Xing using the "cost of reality."

But in the face of her question, Qi Xing did not retreat.

"Do all your children agree with your path?"

He used the giant dragon head in the center to spit out the Holy Spear, churning the chaos. One of the remaining heads spoke indifferently.

"For those children who do not agree with your path, did you give them a chance to leave?"

These words made Yaobikuni freeze.

The answer had already been stated; of course not. Because once that was allowed, the [Cycle] could not be maintained and would collapse sooner or later.

"This is for the benefit of the collective, sacrificing the few…"

"If you didn't."

Before she could finish, another of Qi Xing's dragon heads interrupted her:

"Then how can you claim you are doing it 'for the children'?"

"You don't dare let them choose freely, because you know that if you let go, half of them won't choose you."

"Then why do you want them to live?"

"Willingly accepting something is one thing; being forced to accept it is another."

"You break their legs and then say, 'Look, they can't run, they can only rely on me for care'—what kind of logic is that?"

The Holy Spear rotated slowly in the void, and the chaos clarified, purifying Yaobikuni's laws.

Thousands upon thousands of lights surged from the spiritual veins of the Northeast, leaping toward the sky like fireflies flying in the night.

They drifted in the air, flickering, as if bidding a final farewell to this land.

"I won't force them to take any particular path, but I will at least give them the right to choose."

"Not everyone will survive, and not everyone will make the right choice. But that is what it means to be 'human'."

As soon as he finished speaking, heaven and earth shook violently.

Three pure white rings of light began to spread out toward the sky, the sea, and the earth.

The first ring of light touched the sky.

The formatted area, which had been empty, immediately changed—a beautiful sky blue was emerging bit by bit.

The second ring of light touched the sea of lifeless chaos.

The earth immediately roared and "grew" from below.

Seventy thousand square kilometers of land; at first, it was the shallowest dust trembling, followed by deeper rock layers and spiritual veins, layer by layer downward, permeated by the "logic" modified by Qi Xing.

The third ring of light swept across the seventy thousand square kilometers, across the lives of approximately ten million people.

He could mess with the sky, and maybe he could mess with the earth, but messing with people would definitely lead to big trouble, so Qi Xing only carefully deleted the external influence Yaobikuni had placed in their bloodlines.

The three rings of light were overwhelmingly powerful and omnipotent, like the act of founding a nation.

There were some details that Qi Xing actually didn't quite understand yet; there was really no helping that. He had only collected two [silver coins], and the road ahead was still long.

But at least the Mahamayuri standing behind Qi Xing had slowly closed its three faces and six eyes. The [Yata Mirror] also extinguished its golden radiance at this moment.

At least according to its criteria for judgment, the system error data for this land had returned to normal, and it no longer needed to be destroyed.

Mount Hakkoda and the abandoned village that had previously been erased by formatting now returned to reality.

A gentle breeze blew from the horizon, dispersing the stagnant fog in the village.

This fog would never be here again.

Lin subconsciously looked up.

That was a real wind.

On this land, the wind had begun to blow again.

Volume 3: Shrine Maiden of the Black God: 115: Things That Need To Be Done

The logic of the [Cycle] that had secretly continued in the Northeast land of Japan for eight hundred years had been ended.

How the future fate of this land will change, only time can tell.

And right now, there was still a troublesome problem that hadn't been solved.

—[Mahamayuri], how should this Giant Spirit, which possessed destructive power, be handled?

"I have already decided."

Qi Xing's tone was without a hint of hesitation,

"I will seal it in this abandoned mountain village."

Seal [Mahamayuri] in an abandoned little mountain village?

One only ever heard of mountain villages hiding an old ghost or an old corpse; now, to actually be able to hide a [Mahamayuri] with power enough to destroy the world—I'm afraid even a drunken manga artist wouldn't dare to easily adopt such a setting.

Naturally, Sasa was the first to object: "Huh? Little fool, did you get your brain beaten to a pulp?"

She flapped the still sacred and solemn wings of the [Mahamayuri], her face full of indignation.

"This is a Giant Spirit, a universal tool I once used to maintain the world; it is equivalent to the gods of this world."

"Although the Giant Spirit's functions are fixed when it descends into the human world, it is still the strongest [weapon] in the world right now. You want to throw away the strongest weapon in the world for nothing?"

Sasa's expression was as if she were saying that Qi Xing had gone crazy.

She was paralyzed now, but the Giant Spirit was a creation from her prime, the ultimate tool with the highest-level power in this world, pure strength.

No one would give up such a weapon, such a tool.

But after hearing Sasa's words, Qi Xing just looked at her very calmly and asked only one question:

"Then, in your current state, can you control the Giant Spirit well?"

Sasa immediately averted her gaze with a subtle expression.

Of course not.

Even if Sasa was the creator of [Mahamayuri] and the creator of this pseudo-divine body, in her current state—to put it bluntly, even fighting required relying on her mouth and Qi Xing.

She was just a shadow now; her main body was truly paralyzed, like an offline system administrator, with only chat functions left, unable to even access the backend.

"Then, of course, it can't be kept."

So Qi Xing retorted,

"The accumulation of system errors in the Northeast has been cleared by me. The Giant Spirit seems to have stopped moving for now, but who knows if it will determine somewhere else needs to be formatted next?"

Can the Giant Spirit clearly distinguish what is a bug and what is a system loophole?

Of course not!

Even Sasa, the creator herself, couldn't accurately distinguish it anymore; it was even more impossible for the artificial idiot she created to distinguish it!

In the end, what the Giant Spirit could judge was actually just data. If the error data for a certain area was clearly exceeding the limit, it would go and kill everyone there, or simply format it directly. Could Qi Xing trust its judgment?

AI self-driving isn't even completely reliable, yet you still dare to trust AI self-killing? Especially when it's an AI written by Sasa.

…On the other hand, Qi Xing also didn't intend to hand over such great freedom to Sasa right now.

In the end, they were still far from establishing that level of trust between them.

Although Qi Xing did see a rare side of Sasa this time—a glimpse of her majesty as a [God] and creator—perhaps that was exactly why he had to remain even more vigilant against Sasa.

Because she was truly not some comical, super-small-cup devil. Even if blind and foolish, she was truly a god.

"Do you think I really don't feel it's a pity?"