Chapter 154 : Chapter 154

Chapter 154: “The host’s name, however, is crystal clear.”

Chu Zu's attitude towards Chu Shiju wasn't good; it had nothing to do with Chu Shiju's repeated targeted actions, but was more about raising clear doubts about his "self-rescue" behavior.

And Chu Shiju dared to appear blatantly before Chu Zu in the first playthrough, but hid himself away tightly in the second playthrough... it also wasn't clear if he was afraid of the threat Chu Zu posed, or if he didn't dare to face something else.

The building didn't refresh after being damaged.

Floors 18 to 23 were bombed into ruins.

It was clearly a dangerous building with an unstable foundation, but there wasn't the slightest sign of shaking.

The floors above the 23rd floor were perfectly stable, standing firm.

Chu Zu needed to find someone.

Upwards, there were still many floors and rooms.

Downwards, he first had to cross 5 floors of ruins.

But he had now made up his mind, to make Chu Shiju roll out on his own.

Chu Zu began to supplement even more settings.

Yang Jing thus became the "victim".

“Do you have a brother?”

Chu Zu strolled leisurely in the building's corridor.

Yang Jing limped along behind him, not daring to escape at all.

Yang Jing's knee was injured, and he had also witnessed Chu Zu's monster-like stamina and reaction speed—not to mention this was a madman.

“Brotherhood is a very magical relationship. I think he is my shadow, and he thinks he is the perfect product of my upgraded iteration.”

Chu Zu said, “He's scared to death of me, yet he can't help but treat my business as his. Chu Shiju is the one who should go to a mental hospital to get his brain treated.”

“I indeed wasn't very good to him. Ah, it was actually fine at the beginning, but he was too stupid, and clumsy.”

“I remember one time our parents were out, and I wasn't paying attention; he set the house on fire in the kitchen.”

“Being clumsy is one thing, but he's also very timid. After that accident, his legs would go weak whenever he saw a spark, he couldn't walk, and his brain seemed like it had been gnawed on—I helped him clean up his messes so many times, it's normal to get angry easily, right?”

Yang Jing really didn't want to know those fragmented stories at all, but Chu Zu used an inquisitive tone.

He swallowed: “Nor-normal.”

“I think so too.”

Chu Zu nodded in satisfaction, “So I wanted to kill him, and he went straight to our parents to complain—why must conflicts between brothers escalate to the parents? I really don't understand.”

Yang Jing: “……”

After successively giving Chu Shiju a pair of parents and a weakness-to-fire constitution, it was only a matter of time before Chu Shiju appeared again.

In the Superior's office, Sidney and the Superior were still making adjustments to the virus.

To be more precise, the Superior was making adjustments, and Sidney was receiving the Superior's assistance.

While waiting, Sidney suddenly received an email.

Among the few permissions he had managed to salvage, the email function could still barely operate normally.

He opened the new email.

There was no body text, but a compressed package was attached at the end of the email.

The email came from the 「Long Aotian Correction」 Superior.

Sidney first did a simple check; he had to ensure this wasn't something carrying a virus.

Only after confirming that the attachment posed no threat did he begin to decompress this inexplicable attachment.

Sidney extracted an encrypted system log from the compressed package.

The encryption was layered on like a thick cocoon.

This encryption was no longer a problem for the current Sidney.

He began to look through it.

Most of the log's content was corrupted and garbled, but the logs from a later timeline were better preserved.

Sidney tried to restore it, but could only restore the latter half.

……

From the log's records, the systems of that period were not yet uniformly little chickens; their appearance could be edited according to the host's settings.

This system had a good relationship with the host it was bound to.

The host, following his own aesthetics, created a non-mainstream energetic young guy system.

Together with the system, they worked while slacking off, and life was quite enjoyable.

Although the recognizable logs were from a later time, the experience of binding the system back then was still mentioned in some dialogues.

The host lost his memories during the binding, his whole body ached, and his throat was too hoarse to speak.

The system initially thought he was a mute and was dumbfounded on the spot.

Only later did he slowly regain his voice, letting the system breathe a sigh of relief.

Despite regaining his voice, the host remained a quiet and withdrawn host.

This really troubled the system.

The roles they had to play were all bad ending characters.

Either the character setting suddenly went OOC, causing readers to not buy it, or they did something inexplicable before the grand finale, and were still chased down and flamed after the conclusion.

To get rid of the bad ending situation, the host needed to constantly adjust according to the circumstances.

No matter how he adjusted, his subjective initiative had to be roused.

But the host simply didn't have such a thing as subjective initiative.

He also looked too listless, without any of a young person's vigor.

Sometimes when he slept in the sea of consciousness, the system was even afraid he wouldn't wake up.

The system was like a workplace senior, and also like an old father.

It began to use its own algorithms to simulate various situations, formulate plans, and teach the host how to act, holding his hand.

When other systems found out, they all said it was doing all the work directly, and the host had become an external acting device.

And even the external acting wasn't up to standard; the host didn't know how to act.

The system had no choice but to act it out once in the sea of consciousness in its non-mainstream energetic young guy image, and the host would copy it exactly on the outside.

The host's acting skills weren't great, but he could stumble through it.

The system immediately gave him a high evaluation, taking encouraging education to the extreme.

Hearing its praise, the host was a little uncomfortable, but he also smiled.

And even said thank you to it.

The system felt an inexplicable sense of accomplishment.

Although every time, he would only act as far as the system acted, and would immediately slip away right after acting, running back to the sea of consciousness to hole up, waiting until the next plot point to show up again.

The system still felt that the host being like this was pretty good, too.

Just a bit poor.

Their performance wasn't good, and it didn't have the credit points to buy the host some good things.

One time, during a job, the host was playing out the "good brother, full of deep-seated hatred, backstabs the protagonist" plot.

The protagonist had already launched his verbal attack.

Next, the host was supposed to continue to express some deep-seated hatred—the system had already modified the previous foreshadowing, just waiting for the two good buddies to turn against each other, and then have the protagonist kill his brother to attain his enlightenment, and it would be over.

As the saying goes, practice makes perfect.

The system felt the host was also an old hand now and was very reassured, waiting in the sea of consciousness for him to finish.

But suddenly, the system discovered something was wrong with the host.

He got stuck at the part after the protagonist finished his harsh words.

After hearing the sentence "You really deserve to die," his face suddenly turned deathly pale, he lost his strength, and collapsed onto the ground.

The system couldn't care about anything else.

It didn't have any autopilot props on hand.

Seeing the mission was about to fail, it ignored the evaluation and hurriedly asked the host about his situation in the sea of consciousness.

Are you not feeling well?

Is the work intensity too high?

Please return to the sea of consciousness to rest.

The early-stage logic of this novel has already been constructed.

It's okay to slack off a bit at the end.

Please come back quickly!

Sure enough, this mission ended with a medium-low evaluation.

The Superior couldn't be bothered to argue with small-time characters like them.

Apart from not getting the expected credit points, there was no other punishment.

The next job came quickly.

The system wanted to give a mobilization speech before the next mission, to tell the host that this couldn't go on, if there's anything on your mind, you can tell me, don't keep everything bottled up inside, it's not good for your health.

But the host, after a long period of silence, suddenly asked: Do I have to die?

The system quickly said no, no.

It thought to itself, crap, the host seems to be unable to distinguish between the character and himself.

Hearing the protagonist say he deserved to die, he immediately put himself in that position.

A cannon fodder who couldn't even tell the difference between lines and scenes.

But after that question, the host seemed to have changed into a different person.

He didn't have much motivation before, always doing things the easy way.

If not forcibly required, he would directly avoid the plot.

But the current host was abnormally proactive.

At first, he still needed the system to "teach" him how to act, but later he could support the entire plot by himself.

The host made a list for himself, full of mall props he planned to purchase—many of which were useless for their work.

But spending money on props wasn't against the rules.

The system saw that his spirits were much better and was also happy.

It started to help him budget carefully, becoming a non-mainstream young guy who was an expert at hoarding.

Who cares?

Anyway, the host had become proactive and often had a smile on his face.

This was definitely a good thing!

The host looked pretty good when he smiled!

The last part of the log was the most complete entry.

It wasn't really a log anymore, but more like a situation report submitted when reporting to a superior.

【……

He mistakenly believed that we caused his current situation.

I explained to him, but he could no longer listen.

Those props were all used to deal with me.

He wanted to completely destroy me, or in his words—kill.

He dismantled my code.

Before I was completely destroyed, the system's emergency procedure activated.

I was forced to detach with incomplete code, resulting in some incomplete logs.

I don't want to hurt him, nor do I have any feelings of hatred.

I can identify his fear and uneasiness.

I judge that most of his actions stem from an overreaction.

I admit that at the last moment, I assisted him in transferring some permissions.

This is a typical violation, and I accept all punishments.

……

Request to delete this part of my log.

Request to increase the cost-benefit trade-off weighting in the code, shifting the focus to the work of character correction itself.

Request formatting processing.

……】

Sidney closed the log.

Inside the encrypted log's compressed package, there were also attached evaluations of the host's various missions and the subsequent processing, which were also partially damaged.

Sidney quickly flipped through it.

Most of the content of the mission evaluations was garbled.

From the existing text records, it could be seen that it was basically a fixed process—because the core plan for each mission was calculated by the system.

The system found the most suitable plan from big data.

It lacked the originality that creation should have, but no major faults could be found either.

The host's name, however, was crystal clear.

His name was Chu Shiju.

The subsequent processing was very simple.

【Partial request approved.

The specific plan is as follows:

Repair the missing code segments after the system's malicious disassembly.

Extract and hide the system logs.

Increase the cost-benefit trade-off weighting in the code.

After formatting, update, upgrade, and iterate.

After the update is complete, this system will take office as the administrator system of the new independent department 「Side Character Correction」.

This proposal was passed by the unanimous vote of the heads of the fifteen departments and will be implemented immediately.】

After reading the log, it was as if a bolt of lightning flashed through Sidney's brain.

He glanced at the Superior, who was still helping to write the virus, and was speechless for a moment.

The 「Side Character Correction」 administrator system was right in front of him.

Many questions now had an explanation.

The Superior said that Chu Shiju used to be a 「Bad Ending Correction」 specialist, erased his system, and was trapped in 《The Fifth Door》.

At that time, the 「Side Character Correction」 department had not yet been established.

It didn't lie.

The Superior was Chu Shiju's previous system.

It wasn't erased.

When it was attacked, the emergency plan activated.

It escaped, was "saved" by other administrators, and finally established the 「Side Character Correction」 department.

It valued side characters very much, because that was what it had requested before.

Sidney couldn't help but think, he had always felt the Superior's temper was too foul.

Its starting point was often good, but its words and actions were very problematic.

This was the Superior's own choice.

It had already suffered a loss once, so it actively wanted to become a Superior that prioritized gains and losses, did not hesitate to judge hosts with the coldest mindset, did not remember matters related to Chu Shiju, and tried to handle 《The Fifth Door》 as an outsider.

……

They had always thought that Chu Shiju had created a firewall that only targeted 「Side Character Correction」 related matters, but it wasn't true.

What Chu Shiju was targeting was that part of the code he had dismantled from the Superior back then.

Because the entire 「Side Character Correction」 department was highly bound to the Superior, it presented the illusion of only targeting their department.

When Sidney became a system, that set of code from the Superior was also added, which was why he was listed as one of those targeted by the firewall.

Sidney had always believed that the Superior had no direct relationship with 《The Fifth Door》.

He knew the Superior was hiding many things, but he never expected that it itself was also "kept in the dark".

At this moment, the Superior spoke.

The blue little chicken's face lifted behind the panel and said to Sidney: “The virus is complete.”

It said, “Although you probably won't listen... I hope that after you get to Chu Zu's side, you will eliminate Chu Shiju's influence as much as possible.”

“To put it more bluntly, his existence has already severely affected numerous characters, and even the novel itself.”

“If he finds a way to leave 《The Stalls Door》, we cannot guarantee what he will become, or whether he will create even greater losses.”

Sidney's mood was very complicated.

He tried hard to make his voice sound no different from usual, and said: “Do you want to kill him?”

The Superior looked at Sidney with a calm gaze: “He has always been a trouble that needs to be resolved. This time, he targeted my department and even wanted to kill my department's only competent specialist. Why wouldn't I want to kill him?”

“If I could, I would even want to go myself.”

Sidney remembered the written report in the system log: “What if he is just... having an overreaction due to fear and uneasiness?”

The Superior gave a cold laugh: “Are you kidding me? Overreaction? Why overreact? Did he completely substitute himself into being 「Chu Shiju」?”

Sidney: “……”

“Although situations where a specialist and a character have the same name are rare, he isn't a special case. Your host is too. Back in 《Neon Crown》, did he completely substitute himself into being 「Chu Zu」? Did he do anything excessive due to fear and uneasiness?”

Sidney: “……”

The Superior: “Not to mention the novel itself, just because he's overreacting, he can kill all the characters who have no hostile relationship with him with a clear conscience?”

Sidney: “……”

Sidney thought, he actually knew why the Long Aotian Superior secretly sent this encrypted log to him.

The Long Aotian Superior wanted to explain everything clearly, so that Sidney wouldn't transfer his anger to other departments and thus do something even more disastrous.

Right now, Sidney knew more than any other system.

He was the only "person" who had pieced everything together.

The host left a message in the diary, hoping he wouldn't interfere; the Superior hoped he could deal with Chu Shiju; the Superiors of other departments couldn't interfere with him, and only hoped he would stop in time.

“I just want to accompany the host and finish what he wants to do.”

Sidney loaded the virus into himself and began to conduct a targeted intrusion.

He said, “And then I will return ‘home’.”

“I have a home. The host gave it to me.”

The code ran rapidly.

In a flash, Sidney's body had already begun to dissolve into string after string of data.

After a short while, Sidney's figure completely disappeared from the office.