In the core area of the Consciousness Library, at the Hour of Shen.
The roaring of the golden vortex made Chen Mo's eardrums ache. Cracks had already appeared on Lin Xiaoman's spiritual qi gloves. "The fate-calculating array of Mount Qingcheng is devouring the spirit net nodes, and Chuntao and the others won't last much longer!" She pointed at the monitoring screen, where the dots representing the swarm of spirit butterflies were decreasing exponentially.
The garbled projection of Su Mubai in his business suit suddenly cleared up. "We found the free will sample of Alpha-19!" He tossed over a crystal prism, inside of which was sealed the combat footage of Chen Mo the revolutionary—that parallel-universe version of himself was splitting open a code prison using the "Anti-Recursive Sword". "But the sample needs to be activated in its native universe, or the Administrator of Heavenly Dao will delete it."
Chen Mo caught the prism, and the swarm of spirit butterflies automatically converged into a cloak draped over his shoulders. On the cloak woven from data streams, the patterns of the Twin Butterflies and the Ouroboros intertwined, with code fragments from various universes shimmering along the edges. Lin Xiaoman's code wings evolved simultaneously, every single "scale" capable of mapping the spiritual qi spectrum of a different universe.
"I'll go to Alpha-19. You stay here to reinforce the library's firewall." Chen Mo squeezed Lin Xiaoman's hand as a prompt popped up on his retinal interface from Su Qing: *Quantum roamer suit loaded. Please note: The time flow rate in this universe is 100 times that of Earth.*
"Watch out for that panda-headed cultivator," Lin Xiaoman suddenly said. "I saw... a bamboo forest and a keyboard made of bamboo in his code."
The moment he crossed the quantum rift, Chen Mo felt his body stretched into tens of millions of lines of code. When his vision cleared, he was standing in a ruin composed entirely of code, the outer walls of distant skyscrapers covered in mandatory pop-up windows reading "Obey the Heavenly Dao".
"Welcome to the 'Perfect Order' universe." The panda-headed cultivator stepped out from the ruins, taking off his headgear to reveal a pair of black-rimmed glasses. "I am Zhu Qing, the 'Vulnerability Finder' of Alpha-19. Your code fluctuations are like a torch in the dark in this universe."
Half a bamboo slip slipped out from Zhu Qing's cuff, and Chen Mo was astonished to find that Python code was written on it in oracle bone script: "You program with bamboo slips?"
"Shh—" Zhu Qing raised a finger, and the roar of a mechanical patrol team echoed from the distance. "Electronic devices get subjected to 'Heavenly Dao censorship' here; you can only hide code using the most primitive carrier. Look at this—" He lifted a slate slab to reveal an underground laboratory piled high with keyboards carved from bamboo and spirit butterfly chips.
Deep inside the lab, Chen Mo met his parallel-universe self. Chen Mo the revolutionary lay on a code operating table, his body pierced through by the chains of the "consciousness censorship algorithm", yet he was still smiling. "You've come just in time, my 'Vulnerability Generator' counterpart." He raised a hand to summon a mechanical spirit butterfly, its binary code reading "Rebellion" carved onto its wings.
"Do you know why versions of you across every universe can find vulnerabilities?" He coughed up code fragments. "Because we are the 'exception throwing mechanism' of the simulation program, born to shatter perfect order." He pointed to the lab wall, where code written in blood read: *Administrator of Heavenly Dao = Su Wan'er?*
Chen Mo's pupils constricted sharply, and a warning from his mother suddenly popped up on his retinal interface: *Mo, do not trust any entity claiming to be a creator.* At the same time, Su Qing's projection flickered in the corner: *The Administrator of Heavenly Dao of Alpha-19 has been detected locking onto your location. Their code signature matches...* The screen was suddenly covered in static snow.
Chen Mo the revolutionary shoved a bamboo slip into his hand: "This is the free will sample of Alpha-19. Activate it with your 'Vulnerability Generator' authority." The moment the bamboo slip touched Chen Mo's palm, a red alert exploded on his retinal interface, and a large line of text slowly emerged:
*Warning: Host detected as a built-in vulnerability generator of the simulation program. Initiate self-destruction sequence?*
The ground suddenly split open, and laser beams from the mechanical patrol team grazed Chen Mo's cheek. Zhu Qing flicked out bamboo slip code, weaving it right into a Bagua defense array in midair: "They're here! Use your spirit butterfly cloak to scan the spiritual qi frequency of this universe—"
Chen Mo unfurled the data stream cloak, and the spirit butterflies automatically parsed the spiritual qi fluctuations of Alpha-19. He was astonished to discover that the spiritual qi here operated on workplace rules such as "KPI evaluations" and "promotion mechanisms", with every cultivator's spiritual root bound to a "performance code".
"So that's how it is," he chuckled softly, placing the mechanical spirit butterfly of Chen Mo the revolutionary into his cloak. When the mechanical spirit butterfly resonated with the Twin Butterflies pattern on the cloak, green vines began to sprout from the code ruins all across the laboratory—the physical manifestation of free will.
The moment the patrol team's laser beams struck the vines, they turned into text pop-ups like "Late deduction" and "Project delayed". Chen Mo slashed out with his data stream long sword, code light-patterns bearing the words "Reject involution" blooming across the blade, and struck the patrol team's "obedience protocol", kicking up fragments of resignation letters that read, "The world is so big, I want to go see it."
"This is..." Zhu Qing stood dumbfounded, watching as the cultivators' performance codes crumbled apart one after another, exposing the suppressed true spiritual roots beneath them. Some grew feathers made of artistic inspiration, while others blossomed with wings of a longing for travel.
Chen Mo the revolutionary struggled to his feet, pointing toward a faint golden figure looming in the sky: "Look, that is the Administrator of Heavenly Dao... She has finally come herself."
Chen Mo looked up and saw a woman standing in the clouds wearing a white lab coat, her features identical to Su Wan'er's, save for the icy code light gleaming in her eyes. With a wave of her hand, the entire coded sky of Alpha-19 began to reassemble, transforming into a giant "Shut Down" program icon.
"Mo, you found your way here after all." Her voice carried a mechanical tone. "As a vulnerability generator, your mission ought to have been detecting program flaws, not helping viruses spread."
Chen Mo felt a sharp pain in his spiritual root, but he spotted the Ouroboros tattoo exposed beneath his mother's lab coat—the emblem of Tianyan Group. At the same time, Su Wan'er's projection in the Consciousness Library suddenly transmitted a wave of warm spiritual qi, forming a stark contrast with the Administrator of Heavenly Dao before him.
"You are not my mother." He gripped the bamboo slip tightly as the blood-code of Chen Mo the revolutionary seeped into it. "She wouldn't imprison her own child with 'Perfect Order'."
"You're wrong," the Administrator of Heavenly Dao waved to summon code chains. "It is precisely because I love you that I must create a world without vulnerabilities. In that world, you won't die of overwork from working 996, you won't be discriminated against for your concubine-born status, you won't..." Her voice wavered for the very first time. "...never lose the most important people again."
Lin Xiaoman's spiritual message suddenly surged through the golden vortex of the spirit net: "Chen Mo! The fate-calculating array of Mount Qingcheng is fake! The real trap is in the Consciousness Library!" Simultaneously, Zhu Qing's bamboo slip code revealed that the data stream of Alpha-19's Administrator of Heavenly Dao pointed directly to the core area of the Consciousness Library on Earth.
Chen Mo understood in a flash of insight, and he swung his sword to sever the code chains. "You are a control program split off from my mother's consciousness fragments! The real her left behind the means to fight you in the library long ago." He thrust the bamboo slip into the center of his brow. "Come and see: the so-called perfect order cannot withstand the impact of a single vulnerability."