194: Chapter 195 God cut the thread, the receipt is still on its way.

The first blade fell toward the dirty work order receipt between Jiang City and Hai City.

On the Mainframe screen, the gray-blue line—composed of oil stains from a pancake bag, watermarks from sea salt, broken guardrail numbers, and Intern Liang Yu's handwritten signature—was slashed in half by a golden blade of light.

Click.

The sound was faint.

But the screen for Hai City instantly went dark by half.

Intern Liang Yu's voice cut off mid-sentence.

"Jiang City, our clutch plate just—"

Communication terminated.

On work order no. 002, the column for Hai City rapidly turned gray.

[Mutual Aid Line Severed]

[Local Node Isolated]

[Recommendation: Wait for Mainframe Unified Processing]

At the same time, the receipt lines for Beiyuan, Nanling, and Qinghe County were all targeted by the golden blade lines.

The God Head was no longer trying to swallow this web.

It wanted to shred the web, one line at a time.

Chen Ye was so anxious he wanted to smash the Mainframe.

"It cut the lines!"

"What about Hai City?"

Cheng Du stared at the screen, his face as dark as iron.

"It's not cutting the cities."

"It's cutting the path for help to arrive."

"As long as the line is broken, every place will think it has returned to being an isolated city."

"Then they will either wait for death or wait for the Mainframe."

Lin Jin grabbed work order no. 002.

The gray-blue trace for Hai City had dimmed.

But it hadn't disappeared.

He suddenly reached out and pressed down on that column.

"The receipt is still there."

Luo Wensheng looked up immediately.

"What do you mean?"

"It cut off the communication."

Lin Jin stared at that pancake bag oil stain.

"But we have already received what Hai City sent over before."

Ye Guizhou's eyes lit up; he lifted the stamp and pressed it down heavily.

[Hai City Receipt Received]

[Line Interruption Does Not Affect the Fact of Past Receipt]

He Zhibai immediately updated the ledger:

[Mutual Aid Cost Recorded]

[Support Already Provided Cannot Be Erased Due to Disconnection]

On work order no. 002, the column for Hai City stopped turning gray.

It didn't light up again like an online status.

It just turned into a steady gray-blue.

[Status: Received, Temporarily Disconnected]

Not disappeared.

Not reset to zero.

Just temporarily unreachable.

Lin Jin turned to the city-wide broadcast.

"Listen up, all cities."

"If you can still hear me, do not rely on a continuous connection."

"Every time you issue a work order, keep a copy locally."

"Every time you receive a solution from others, copy it down."

"A broken line does not mean the event didn't happen."

Qin Shanhe immediately followed up.

"All Record points in Jiang City, start copying copies of work order no. 002."

"Paper, walls, iron plates, the back of medical Records, toolbox lids—write wherever you can."

"Don't just rely on the Mainframe."

"The Mainframe will disconnect."

"The paper in people's hands won't all break at the same time."

Luo Wensheng's original Record console lit up.

She broke down work order no. 002 into short sentences.

No longer written as long passages.

Instead, written as small segments that could be copied away.

[Do not let the first person to press the valve stay forever.]

[Rest points are not shelters.]

[Names pending are not blank.]

[Chalk dust can block God's Breath.]

[Action is action, power supply is power supply.]

[Shields can break, humans cannot act as petals.]

Sentence by sentence, like folk remedies in a disaster.

Yet it was precisely these folk remedies that had saved people.

The line for Qinghe County hadn't broken yet, and Teacher Song Qing's voice came through urgently.

"We are copying!"

"Each student copies one sentence!"

"But the blade line is almost at our side!"

Lin Jin said:

"Once copied, pass it out."

Teacher Song Qing was stunned.

"Pass it to whom?"

"Anyone who might pass by."

"Couriers, drivers, patrol teams, delivery workers, teachers from the next village."

"Don't wait for the network."

"Don't wait for authorization."

"Establish a human-based receipt."

Chen Ye's eyes widened.

"Pass work orders by foot?"

Cheng Du suddenly let out a laugh.

"The oldest method."

"And also the method hardest to cut clean in one stroke."

Qinghe County immediately sprang into action.

Thirty-seven students wiped chalk dust on the corners of paper and folded them into small packets.

Teacher Song Qing wrote on the blackboard:

[Qinghe County temporary maintenance point, if disconnected, please carry this paper to the next inhabited place.]

A student raised their hand:

"Teacher, my family runs a small shop, the delivery truck is going to the next town tomorrow morning."

Teacher Song Qing's eyes reddened.

"Give it to the driver."

"Tell him not to treat it as an order, but as a reminder."

The next second, the communication line for Qinghe County was severed by a golden blade.

The screen went black.

On work order no. 002, the column for Qinghe County changed to:

[Received, Temporarily Disconnected, Paper Packets Being Sent Out]

The God Head clearly sensed the problem.

The golden blade lines no longer just cut communications.

They began to cut the "intention to forward."

Golden text appeared on the wrists of everyone currently copying, passing on, or retelling work order no. 002.

[Unauthorized dissemination of dangerous maintenance information]

[Recommendation: Stop]

Some people's pens stopped.

Not out of fear.

It was because a thought suddenly popped into their heads:

What right do I have to tell others?

What if I pass it on wrong?

What if I end up hurting someone?

Seeing this prompt, Lin Jin grabbed the broadcast.

"Mark it even if you pass it on wrong."

"If you don't know, write that you don't know."

"Only pass on what you have seen yourself, do not pass on what you made up."

"You are not issuing an order."

"You are saying: This is what happened here."

Ye Guizhou stamped:

[Forwarding only indicates transmission, not an order for the other party to follow]

Luo Wensheng added:

[Retelling must retain source, time, questions, and uncertainty]

He Zhibai recorded:

[Cost of correcting erroneous forwarding to be borne by the public; do not prohibit all requests for help because of this]

Once these three points were issued, many people who had stopped resumed writing.

Someone wrote on paper:

[I don't know if this trick is suitable for you.]

[But we used chairs to keep people here.]

Someone wrote:

[This method might be dangerous, don't copy it blindly.]

[Check if you have a handover ring locally first.]

Someone simply wrote:

[I only know this one sentence: Humans cannot act as petals.]

These incomplete receipts, filled with hesitation, were stuffed into pockets, tied to miner's lamps, tucked into medical Records, and stuck onto car windows.

The God Blade severed the light between cities.

Jiang City tore the work order into fragments and let the fragments travel in reality.

The first batch to leave were the people.

There was a medicine transport team in the east of the city that was supposed to deliver medical supplies to surrounding shelters.

Fang Ning stuffed several protection methods waiting to be named into the top layer of the medicine box.

"If you see children being numbered, take these out."

The second batch were the vehicles.

Even though Old Liu was still resting, when he heard a convoy was about to leave, he looked up and said:

"I'm not driving."

Everyone looked at him.

He rubbed his red eyes.

"I just sat down, I can't push myself again."

"But my car can be used."

He placed the keys on the table.

"Whoever has rested enough can drive it."

The rest station recorder wrote on the side:

[Providing a vehicle does not mean the individual must drive.]

The third batch were the birds.

In Qinghe County, students raised carrier pigeons; before the communication broke, they tied the chalk-dust paper packets to the pigeons' legs.

No one knew if they could fly to the next town.

But flying out was better than staying in a black screen.

The God Head's golden blades kept falling.

One line broken.

Two lines broken.

Ten lines broken.

The Global Mutual Aid Network on the Mainframe screen changed from a bright expanse to scattered gray dots.

But next to every gray dot, new statuses began to appear.

[Received, Disconnected, Record Kept]

[Received, Disconnected, Paper Copy Sent Out]

[Received, Disconnected, Locally Rewritten]

[Not Connected, but Received Retelling from Hai City]

[Not Connected, but Received Chalk Packet from Qinghe]

The God can cut light.

It cannot cut all the paper that people have already tucked into their pockets.

It can break broadcasts.

It cannot stop one driver from saying to another at a gas station:

"Don't lock up the first person guarding the gate."

Above Jiang City, the God Head's two eyes contracted significantly for the first time.

[Mutual Aid Network Physicalized]

[Cutting Efficiency Decreased]

[Contamination Spread Cannot Be Completely Blocked]

Cheng Du stared at the screen and whispered:

"It fears slow things."

"It's not fearing slowness."

Lin Jin watched those gray dots gradually dispersing.

"It's fearing things that cannot be processed uniformly."

Just then, the direction of Hai City suddenly flickered again.

It wasn't the original communication line.

It was an extremely weak return signal that had been transferred twice via land routes.

Intern Liang Yu's voice was so blurry it was almost impossible to hear.

"Here... Hai City."

"We received the Qinghe County chalk packet."

"Although two characters were written wrong on it."

"But we know you are still there."

The column for Hai City on work order no. 002 lit up again.

Not with blue communication light.

But with a speck of chalk white.

Chen Ye slapped his shield hard.

"It's alive!"

The next second, a faint light signal also lit up in the Beiyuan mining area.

"Beiyuan received the paper forwarded from Hai City."

"It has the sentence 'Humans cannot act as petals' on it."

"We just kicked the old mine manager off the turntable."

"He's got plenty of energy to scold people now."

The Hospital in Nanling returned:

"Received the paper packet waiting to be named."

"Already forwarded to three hospitals in the Southwest."

"Reminder: Do not stick tape onto wounds."

One by one, uneven, untimed, incomplete return signals began to bypass the main lines cut by the God Blade, crawling back through the cracks in reality.

work order no. 002 was no longer a single global network.

It had turned into countless roads that broke and reconnected, slow as hell, and dirty as hell.

The golden blade line paused for an instant.

Subsequently, the God Head coldly issued a new judgment.

[Line Cutting Insufficient]

[Cutting the Source]

Lin Jin's heart sank.

The Mainframe screen suddenly locked onto Jiang City.

Locked onto Luo Wensheng's Record console.

Locked onto Ye Guizhou's receipt stamp.

Locked onto He Zhibai's ledger.

Locked onto Qin Shanhe's broadcast.

Locked onto work order no. 001 and no. 002.

The God was no longer cutting the lines between cities.

It was going to cut the people who first wrote out these dirty methods.

The first golden blade of light slashed directly toward the right hand Luo Wensheng was using to write.

Shen Tingxue's Ice Line pulled up instantly, but was cut open by the blade light.

Teacher Xu Wenzhou raised 002, just about to block, but the blade line bypassed the tool and went straight for the "act of recording" itself.

Luo Wensheng looked at that blade light, her fingers didn't stop.

She only had time to say one sentence:

"Don't save the hand."

"Finish writing this sentence first."

The last line on the paper was still missing three characters.

[After disconnection, it can still—]

The blade light fell.

Lin Jin lunged over, blocking with his rusty wrench in front of her hand.

The golden blade hit the rusty wrench, and the notch completely cracked open.

The rusty wrench broke into two pieces from the middle.

But Luo Wensheng's pen tip also finally fell.

[After disconnection, it can still be delivered.]

Those seven characters lit up.

All the paper packets, convoys, and word-of-mouth messages that had already dispersed lit up at the same moment.

The golden blade raised a second time.

This time, it was no longer slashing at Luo Wensheng.

Instead, it slashed at the broken rusty wrench in Lin Jin's hand.

The Mainframe let out a piercing alarm.

[Work order no. 001 core tool destroyed]

[Maintenance team identification object unstable]

Cheng Du's face changed drastically.

"It wants to cut off your work ID source!"

Lin Jin looked down at the rusty wrench broken into two pieces.

That old tool that had accompanied him all the way finally couldn't hold on anymore.

But before the God Blade could land the second strike, Chen Ye suddenly handed over the handle of his shield, which was already broken beyond recognition.

Shen Tingxue handed over a fragment of an Ice Key.

Zhou Heng handed over a metal ring cracked off the end of the Thunder Spear.

Thirteen tore a piece of skin scorched by the divine light from her palm and tossed it onto the table.

"Don't misunderstand."

"It's just trash."

Ye Guizhou knocked a corner off his stamp.

He Zhibai tore off a page of the ledger.

Luo Wensheng tore off the corner of the paper she had just finished writing on.

Cheng Du was silent for a moment, then removed a brass screw from the Mainframe's maintenance slot.

Damaged items were piled up next to the broken rusty wrench.

Lin Jin looked up at everyone.

Chen Ye grinned.

"That rusty wrench of yours should have retired long ago."

"Replace it with a worse one."

The golden blade stopped in mid-air.

The work ID no. 001 emitted a rust-colored low hum.

[Single core tool destroyed]

[Detected multiple damaged components]

[Whether to recast maintenance team identification object]

Lin Jin gripped the broken rusty wrench, his hand full of rust and blood.

"Recast."

The golden blade fell with a roar.

And just the moment before the blade light touched the table, all the damaged items lit up simultaneously.

They didn't turn into divine artifacts.

They just assembled into a new tool that was absurdly ugly, a section shorter, and still had the shield pattern and paper ash on the handle.

work order no. 002 automatically floated a line of text.

[Maintenance team tool updated]

[Source: Multiple damages]

[Naming: Pending]

The God Blade slashed at the new tool and was deflected for the first time.

Lin Jin gripped it, his wrist sinking.

It was much heavier than the original rusty wrench.

And much uglier too.

But holding it felt like holding the hands of many people.

He looked up at the sky.

"The old one is broken."

"The new one is not for you to cut."