CH 95

The Lord God wanted to say something else, but Fu Zhiyu couldn’t listen anymore. He felt his ears buzzing.

Why did he do this?

Fu Zhiyu couldn’t think clearly.

He tried to recall the last time he saw Xie Ke. His memory of that night was actually very vague. He only remembered the hug and the words “I love you”, and nothing more.

He thought that this was the end for him and Xie Ke, and it was the best end he could think of at the time. The two of them let go, and if they met in the future, at best, they would just look at each other and smile.

Forgetting each other in this world was perfect.

But now that these things were uncovered, everything changed, and the seemingly peaceful ending was actually indescribable in retrospect.

At this point in time, Fu Zhiyu wanted to ask Xie Ke what he was thinking, and why he was doing this.

But there was only one thing he couldn’t say. This time he couldn’t tell Xie Ke that he didn’t need to do it. If it weren’t for Xie Ke’s initiative, Fu Zhiyu wouldn’t even have the opportunity to stand here.

The Lord God left at some moment. Perhaps it saw Fu Zhiyu’s inability to listen and felt that it was useless to say anything, so it left.

The time here was very long, enough for Fu Zhiyu to think.

Fu Zhiyu had always thought that he was a very open-minded person. Because of his complicated experience, he was always easy to let go of the wrongs that others had done to him, such as Shen Yang, such as Xie Ke before.

He could let others wrong him, but he couldn’t let himself wrong others. In other words, Fu Zhiyu didn’t like to owe others.

He only had a few people he felt regrets about and owed, and he did everything possible to compensate them. If others treated him well, he would return the favour in double, whether they were family or friends.

But he and Xie Ke were too entangled. Before Fu Zhiyu knew the truth, he could still say that their two lives compensated each other and in general, no one owed anyone. But it was all wishful thinking; after this incident, he couldn’t say that he didn’t owe anything.

Why did he and Xie Ke end up like this?

It was not that Fu Zhiyu had never seen love. Sister Yuan Xi and her husband loved each other for a long time, and he watched them from falling in love, to getting married, to staying together side by side. Even if sometimes the couple quarrelled, it could still be seen that the two people respected each other and loved each other. 

The love of others was calm and happy, and it was sweet to watch. He couldn’t understand why when it was the turn of the two of them, it was just a ball of wool that couldn’t be untangled.

Fu Zhiyu didn’t know how long he was thinking about it alone. The past between him and Xie Ke swirled through his mind like a spinning lantern.

When he used to think of Xie Ke, it was always some unhappy memories. But now that he thought of him, those sad memories of the past still existed, but there were more, the ones that made Fu Zhiyu feel different.

One night, two people walked together on a deserted street, two lanterns without writing floating along the water. He also met Xie Ke on the construction site where the canal was dug. Xie Ke’s face was grey and he couldn’t wipe it clean. And further in the past, Xie Ke cautiously climbed over the wall of the residence, habitually avoiding Rongrong, and when he got there, he didn’t dare to get too close to Fu Zhiyu, so he stood there like that, looking at him a little stupidly.

When you hate someone, everything this person does is wrong. But when Fu Zhiyu’s mood changed and he remembered these things again, he felt different.

He and Xie Ke had experienced almost everything before, ups and downs, the sweet and the sour.

It was just that in the end, they were separated.

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The time Fu Zhiyu spent alone wasn’t much, and the World Consciousness came to him not long after.

It was at this time that Fu Zhiyu felt what was “different”, as the Lord God had said. It was very difficult for the Lord God to communicate with the World Consciousness, only getting a few words at a time. The Lord God explained to him many things, but it itself had received them intermittently, taking a long time to learn everything.

But the communication between Fu Zhiyu and the World Consciousness was very smooth, without any barriers.

When he first felt the presence of the World Consciousness in the midst of his memories, he felt a force pulling his cheek.

Fu Zhiyu hissed and touched his affected cheek.

“What is it?”

“Me, the World Consciousness.” He heard a low voice coming into his ear, “It’s the first time I’ve seen you, so I’m trying it out.”

Trying out what?

Fu Zhiyu clutched his cheek; did this World Consciousness think he was dough? Knead him whatever way you want?

“When can you start working?” The World Consciousness pretended that nothing happened, and got to the point, “There are many things you need to do.”

Fu Zhiyu: “……”

He couldn’t speak for a while; the World Consciousness had no body and there was nothing in front of his eyes. He could only smile bitterly and sigh. “Do you think I can still do things for you?”

“Why can’t you?” The World Consciousness was very puzzled, “I have observed your actions in the world of ‘His Name Will Live On in History’. You have some ideas and also are active and enthusiastic. Many of the things I explained to you are connected. Shouldn’t you find it enjoyable and meaningful?”

“And you still wanted to delete me before?”

“And what if you didn’t obey?” The World Consciousness felt it was very reasonable, “Now you are fine anyway.”

Fu Zhiyu: “……”

He didn’t want to talk, so he turned away.

“It’s useless for you to do this, I’m everywhere,” the World Consciousness reminded him, “Don’t get emotional.”

Fu Zhiyu resisted passively, ignoring it.

He didn’t want to get along with the World Consciousness, but in the end, he agreed to the work demands of the World Consciousness.

It was because of its words: “In this universe, anything can happen. What the Lord God says is not absolute, but whether you can do it or not depends on yourself. If you don’t do anything and don’t understand anything, then it’s impossible.”

Xie Ke also had done everything he could to get him back.

“Do you have the same feelings for him?” the World Consciousness asked, “But you can’t go crazy like him and not listen to reason. If you do, it will be very detrimental to your work.”

Fu Zhiyu: “I won’t.”

He was silent for a while before answering the first question.

“Actually, I don’t know,” he said, “So I have to find him, and he… will have to answer me personally.”

Putting everything aside, the World Consciousness’s idea of changing the world was actually quite interesting.

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“I wrote the sentence on the title page of the actor’s manual,” the World Consciousness said, “I love all the worlds deeply, so I think, at this point in time today, what’s more important than a 100 per cent re-enactment is respect, respect for all the characters in the original.”

Fu Zhiyu helped the World Consciousness to change the existing rules for the actors little by little. There was no longer a rigid points system, and the scoring was more flexible.

“If the characters in the world change without harming the foundation of the world, don’t forcibly break them back according to the original work. Their development should be respected,” the World Consciousness said. “You reap what you sow, everyone has their own fate, and the protagonists played by the vast majority of actors always make their worlds a better place. Even in a tragic world, there are personal ups and downs and growth. I really hope that people in these worlds can have their own lives; whether it is good or bad, they should not be shackled by the original work.”

In fact, the World Consciousness ultimately hoped that there would be no more actors in these worlds, and all worlds would be free worlds.

But these worlds had basic operating rules. The protagonist of a world was the son of luck. If the protagonist had an accident, the world would collapse, so the actor needed to save the day. So this idea of the World Consciousness was still an unattainable wish.

Compared with the previous practice when every line had to conform to the original work, this method of judgement was more complicated, mainly because it was difficult to grasp the “degree”, and the difficulty of the task was greatly increased for the actors.

This also caused the actor organisations to be no longer as strong as before. Now that the task changed drastically, they were all focused on the task. How could they have extra energy to do other things? At least the Lord God was very happy about it.

Fu Zhiyu was now one level higher than the Lord God. Strictly speaking, he was the real Lord God, but he didn’t care about daily affairs and didn’t usually interfere. Most of the work was still done by the original Lord God. Fu Zhiyu didn’t plan to fight with it. Other systems still called him “Zhiyu.”

The actors sneakily called him the devil, and after knowing that he was the one Xie Ke died for, the actors became even more respectful to the former actor who had disappeared.

What kind of strong man could fall in love with an unreasonable workaholic demon like Fu Zhiyu?

Very, very capable.

Fu Zhiyu was still alone. For a while, he thought about finding his mother and the others, but he was denied by the World Consciousness.

“No matter what they are, they are ordinary data. They can’t come to the system space. If you forcibly transfer them over, they will be automatically deleted as abnormal data. Not everyone is as special as you,” the World Consciousness explained. “But in those worlds, all data circulates. You can understand it as reincarnation. The data that has eaten your blood will be more or less different. You don’t have to worry about them having a bad time.”

Fu Zhiyu also sneaked around to make sure that the people he cared about were all doing very well, and it made him somewhat relieved.

Xie Ke was probably the only regret in his heart now. Even after so much experience, he still hadn’t figured it out.

Fu Zhiyu heard Xie Ke say before that he had lived for many, many years and still loved him deeply, but at that time he only half believed it.

He probably felt it now. After so long, he had also experienced a lot, but he still wanted to see Xie Ke and remembered the words of the World Consciousness.

In a roundabout way, Xie Ke became a knot in his heart.

Time will only make some feelings more profound, not make them stale.

But for Fu Zhiyu it was not a matter of life and death; he just lived calmly like this. Sometimes, the Lord God asked him, and he smiled very serenely.

“He will come back and make it clear to me,” Fu Zhiyu said. “If he really loves me as much as he said, he won’t be willing to leave me alone.”

The Lord God stopped asking.

There was no time in the system space, and Fu Zhiyu didn’t know how long he had been working. When the work entrusted to him by the World Consciousness was almost done, the rest was just patches and daily maintenance for abnormal situations. He was idle all of a sudden.

Fu Zhiyu couldn’t afford to be idle now; when he was idle, he tended to think more.

“There just happens to be one more thing,” the World Consciousness approached him, “There is a world recently where the task has been completed, but it has not been transformed into a free world. So it is stuck there, unable to get up or down. The actor has left it, and the task rewards have been settled. In the absence of a task, other actors can’t get in. The only one I can think about is you.

You are idle now anyway, go and have a look. At any rate, you’re half an actor, you haven’t been to other worlds for so long, right?”

Fu Zhiyu refused on the spot: “I’m not going, you can solve it by yourself, I don’t want to be an actor.”

As his identity of half an actor, he even carried the pile of points and props that Xie Ke left him, but Fu Zhiyu didn’t even want to touch them.

“No, this is work,” the World Consciousness said righteously, “Zhiyu, be good, you have to be obedient.”

Fu Zhiyu: “…Don’t talk to me in this disgusting tone.”

It was probably that the Lord God’s strange “child of the World Consciousness” description of him was also heard by the World Consciousness. Fu Zhiyu didn’t take it seriously. He only recognised his own mother; but the World Consciousness accepted it very smoothly and even felt it was very reasonable.

So sometimes when Fu Zhiyu talked to it, he really wanted to fight it because of its strange tone, but he suffered from the fact that the World Consciousness had no body.