CH 3

Fu Zhiyu was furious at this nonsense. He thought to himself, ”Let’s see how you are going to slander me next,” and continued to read on.

Most of the later plot in the book was similar to his memory, and the personalities of the other characters in the book were exactly the same as in reality.

Only he himself and the Fu Zhiyu in the book were almost like two different people, and even the interactions between himself and Xie Ke were also very different.

Fu Zhiyu had heard of Xie Ke’s name long before they met. When the military generals mentioned him, they all said that this young man’s future was limitless, which made Fu Zhiyu have a very good initial impression of Xie Ke. So much so that when he fell into the frozen lake that winter day and was rescued by Xie Ke, he couldn’t help but have his heart pounding.

The moment of life-saving grace made him endure countless years of countless heartbreaks in some kind of mystifying daze.

But it was not what happened in the book. The person Xie Ke rescued was not him. He saved the daughter of Prime Minister Xue, the woman who later married Xie Ke. And Fu Zhiyu had never been to that icy lake.

The timing of their meeting in this book was also incorrect. In the book, Ninth Prince Fu Zhiyu only met Xie Ke when he was eighteen years old. The reason for the meeting was Fu Zhiyu’s appreciation of Xie Ke’s talent and wish to recruit him. At that time the covert rivalry between the princes was almost in the open. In the book Fu Zhiyu did not have any ambiguous feelings towards Xie Ke; all he wanted was to benefit from Xie Ke.

However, Xie Ke’s dislike for Fu Zhiyu was exactly the same as in reality. He felt that this prince’s thoughts were too treacherous and cruel. But the other princes were not much better and after several refusals, Xie Ke ostensibly joined Fu Zhiyu’s camp, but inwardly had his own calculations. The two were actually just using each other.

In the book, after several battles, Fu Zhiyu finally defeated the other princes and ascended to the throne as he wished. Xie Ke was also awarded the rank of first-class general.

However, there was distrust between the emperor and his subject, and after two years, Fu Zhiyu set a trap to make Xie Ke hand over his military power. But Xie Ke, who was already prepared for this, made the conspiracy fail. Then he found a reason and led his large army to rebel.

Once Fu Zhiyu became the emperor, his temperament was brutal, his life was extravagant, and due to floods the people of the country were suffering unspeakably. Xie Ke’s rebellion received a lot of support. In the end, Xie Ke attacked the imperial city, killed the tyrant, and ascended the throne as the emperor himself.

That was not true!

Fu Zhiyu closed the book and took a deep breath.

He admitted that he was not a very good emperor, but he had never taken advantage of Xie Ke, and even his own fight for the throne was partly for Xie Ke’s sake.

He was never as brutal, unkind and extravagant as the book suggested. For Xie Ke he fought against the criticism of the ministers but there was no one in his harem. He kept everything simple and devoted himself to the governing of the dynasty. He had never had the slightest intention of snatching Xie Ke’s military power.

The floods did happen. He had just ascended to the throne and was on the verge of emptying the treasury for disaster relief, but there were layers of corruption in the middle of it all. He was furious, but before he could react to what to do with the corrupt officials and the poor victims, Xie Ke fed him the poison and rebelled.

But regardless of the process, the ending was still the same. Whether in the book or in reality, he was an incompetent emperor who eventually died at Xie Ke’s hands.

However, Fu Zhiyu had only been in about one-fifth of the book, and there was more to come, all revolving around the main character, Xie Ke.

The country of Jilin, where Fu Zhiyu grew up, was not the only one in the realm. There were also Chen and Jing in the Central Plains alone. Beyond the Central Plains, there was the southern border, the barbarians of the grasslands and the ancient states of the West. After Xie Ke ascended to the throne and became the emperor, he made good use of his strength to build up his army, gradually making the country rich and powerful, and eventually annexing the whole continent. He finally became a truly famous emperor whose name would live on in history.

The book was really long, and sometimes Fu Zhiyu would be unconsciously in a daze for a while when reading it.

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Of course, the content was also very rich, not only political battles and wars. There were also emotions in the middle as a seasoning. After all, Xie Ke was a famous emperor, and the harem of seventy-two concubines was the standard.

Xie Ke was really successful, in every sense of the word.

But… what exactly was this book?

Fu Zhiyu couldn’t understand. If it was to record Xie Ke’s magnificent life, why should he be the only one to be distorted?

His love and hate were misplaced, but he was not such a bad person as described in this book.

“Have you finished reading?”

A voice suddenly rang out from above his head, and Fu Zhiyu was so startled that the book in his hand that he didn’t hold firmly fell at his feet.

“Who are you?”

“I am the Lord God.”

Fu Zhiyu looked at the place where the voice came from, and a ball of light gradually appeared in the void. The radiant appearance really had something divine in it.

When the ball of light floated to him, it inexplicably asked him, “Excuse me, why can’t I delete you?”

Fu Zhiyu hadn’t gotten over the shock of “Why would a ball of light talk?” yet when he was confused by this sentence.

“You… what do you mean?”

The ball of light that called itself the Lord God explained to him very patiently, “Have you read the book just now? Did you find yourself different from the one in the book? You are out of character. The plot line and emotional line are even more messed up. If it weren’t for the protagonist’s actor being strong enough to forcibly pull the main line back on track, this mission would have failed.

All of this clearly indicates that your data is very wrong, probably infected, and with a stubborn virus at that.”

Fu Zhiyu: “…I don’t understand.”

The ball of light flew around him, seemingly ignoring Fu Zhiyu’s answer, and said to itself, “Strange, usually abnormal data can be captured and deleted by the cleanup system immediately after death in the original world. Why can’t this one be deleted anyway?

Hey, does this data have some unfulfilled wish or something like that, and a particularly strong one?”

Fu Zhiyu was taken aback. He did have a lot of regrets, but they all calmed down with death, so… they shouldn’t be considered as strong.

“Forget it, you’re an ancient world data, I can see that you can’t understand,” the ball of light sighed, “If you stay in the cleanup system for a long time, the system pipes will be clogged. Hurry up and go.”

Before Fu Zhiyu could ask where he was going, everything before his eyes blurred. He was taken out of the original strange space by the ball of light and put inside a small room.

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“I just did it manually a few times but I still can’t delete you. I can’t even adjust the data. You’re really weird, one of the weirdest bugs I’ve ever encountered,” said the Lord God ball of light. “Just stay here by yourself. It’s close to the Master Brain and the radiation is strong. Let’s see if we can consume you slowly. In fact, there is no point for you to be like this. Can’t die even if you die, it’s so tiring.”

This small room was much better than the previous space. It was very bright. Although there was no door, there was a large window. Fu Zhiyu was not used to it at first. He looked out of the window and not a single person could be seen, only a lot of round iron balls floating around. There were conversations between the iron balls. Fu Zhiyu could understand them, but didn’t understand their meaning.

They were all as divine as the Lord God, talking about their divine things.

He lived in this room for a long time. For so long that the Lord God ball of light had to accept reality, didn’t expect to delete him anymore and came to talk to him sometimes, often bringing some information over, and also taking the initiative to explain a lot of things.

So after a long time, Fu Zhiyu understood.

His original world was the book, the one that was called “His Name Will Live On in History”.

There were countless such worlds in the space of the Lord God. The protagonist was the most important person in these worlds, but there were always some worlds where the protagonist would have some abnormalities due to an accident, which would bring turmoil to the original world. After that, the “actors” would appear. By playing the role of the protagonist, the actor would follow the set storyline and ensure that the main line did not deviate from it. This was the actors’ task.

Xie Ke was one of the ‘actors’.

“And one of the very best. Among the current actors, his points can be ranked in the top three, and now there is a trend for him to rise to the first place,” the Lord God said to Fu Zhiyu. “Aborigines like you don’t matter. This is actually just one of his missions.”

After listening to this, Fu Zhiyu lowered his head and smiled, saying, “Okay.”

Fu Zhiyu didn’t know how long he had been here. It might be decades, or might be centuries.

He didn’t live in that small room anymore either. After all, there was no sign of being deleted at all after living there for so long. But he spent most of his time next to the Master Brain, looking at information from other worlds, sometimes walking around inside the Lord God space and communicating with the busy-looking balls when he got the chance.

It was only later that he learned that the balls were called “systems”, and each actor had one. Systems provided plot reminders, role-playing advice, point exchange and other services. The systems were actually curious about Fu Zhiyu, a bug that could not be removed.

“The Lord God even mentioned before, why don’t you go and be an actor?” One system said to him, “If you become an actor, I can be your system. Yeah, I’m very good.”

“The Lord God means well, but I don’t want to do it,” Fu Zhiyu said and emphasised by repeating, “I don’t want to be an actor.”

Fu Zhiyu thought that this would be his life from now on, but the unexpected happened again.

On that day, he stayed next to the Master Brain as usual to read the information, when suddenly the alarm went off.

This was the first time Fu Zhiyu had heard an alarm from the Master Brain. He didn’t know what to do about it, so he simply stayed where he was. But the alarm never stopped, and Fu Zhiyu couldn’t avoid it anywhere. He just felt like his brain was about to explode.

Then the Lord God came rushing over to him, its round body moving so fast that it looked like a small cannonball.

Fu Zhiyu asked it, “What’s going on? Is there a problem with the data again?”

“No, we’ve been attacked from outside! It’s that man, he’s been planning this for a long time!” The Lord God ball of light looked very anxious, “Zhiyu, listen to me, there’s not enough time now, your world is going to reboot, you have to go back! I don’t know how much you’ll remember going back, but you have to remember this!

That Xie Ke is crazy! Actor 027 is out of his mind! You need to stay as far away from him as possible!”