121: Welcome to my story, dear readers and authors.

【The Cracks of Narrative · The Chessboard of Concepts · Beyond Time】

Here, there is no light, nor is there darkness.

There is no sound, nor is there silence.

This is a non-space constructed purely from “possibility” and “established fact.”

Countless threads, emitting either bright or dim light, were born from nothingness, and in nothingness, they intertwined, entangled, broke, and reconnected.

Each thread represents a world, a causality, a story.

And at the end of these threads, in the center of that chaotic primordial sea...

Stood two thrones, impossible to describe with words, impossible to fathom with thought.

On one of the thrones, a figure was seated.

His form seemed to be composed of the purest “order” and “logic.”

Cold and indifferent, like the absolute zero at the end of the universe.

Before him, a huge chessboard, made of countless light points, floated.

On the chessboard, a city was clearly reflected.

A city enveloped by cold rain and despair.

He is the Divine Gu Jianghan, the Lord of the End who fancies himself the True Author.

At this moment, he was watching his “masterpiece” with great interest.

Admiring how the chess piece he personally named Sword River Fish, struggled to flee and barely survive on his meticulously designed chessboard.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

The Divine’s voice, devoid of any emotion, echoed through the hall like an absolutely rational algorithm.

“A bug attempting to defy its ‘setting.’”

“Ultimately, it can only follow the ‘script’ I wrote for it.”

“Heading towards that already destined tragic end.”

“Look at his desperate eyes, how much like a hymn composed for ‘ignorance.’”

“You are wrong.”

A completely different voice leisurely sounded from the other empty throne.

Immediately after, a figure slowly condensed into form from the convergence of thousands of threads of causality.

His outline was vague and mutable.

Sometimes a hero, sometimes a villain.

Sometimes a saint, sometimes a madman.

He seemed to be “possibility” itself, an aggregate of “chaos” and “emotion.”

He is the Humanity Gu Jianghan.

Humanity slowly walked to the chessboard, his gaze falling upon the dim, curled-up chess piece in a corner of the city.

A playful smile touched his lips.

“You only see ‘despair.’”

“While I see ‘new life.’”

The Divine’s eyes, which seemed to contain the birth and death of the universe, shifted slightly to Humanity.

“New life?”

“A stray dog, stripped of all its claws, its spine broken, despised by the entire world—what ‘new life’ can there be for it?”

“Your so-called ‘new life’ is nothing but a meaningless flicker of light before death.”

“No, no, no.”

Humanity wagged his finger, the smile on his face growing wider.

“You still don’t understand where the true fun of this game lies.”

He reached out and gently nudged the chess piece representing Sword River Fish.

“You think that by defining his ‘cry for help’ as ‘plot’ in your role as the True Author, you’ve won?”

“You think that by defining his ‘resistance’ as ‘crime’ in your role as a ‘fugitive,’ you control everything?”

“Quite the opposite.”

Humanity’s gaze deepened.

“Your self-righteous ‘dimensional reduction attack’ didn’t destroy him at all.”

“Instead, you personally opened a door to a higher dimension for him.”

The Divine’s gaze narrowed slightly.

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is.”

Humanity’s smile became somewhat wild.

“You made him realize a question that even you and I had never considered.”

“—If an ‘author’ can be perceived by a ‘character,’ then is the ‘author’ also just a ‘character’ being ‘read’ by a ‘reader’ of a higher dimension?”

“You, me, this game, this hall of causality...”

“Are we also just an insignificant ‘plot’ in another grander ‘story’?”

Boom—!!!!

Humanity’s words were like a “conceptual bomb” thrown into the primordial sea!

Causing this eternally unchanging hall to tremble violently!

For the first time, a crack appeared on the Divine’s face, which was composed of absolute order.

“...Absurd.”

He coldly uttered two words.

“This is a baseless logical paradox.”

“Is it?”

Humanity smiled noncommittally.

“Then tell me, did you ‘edit’ that ‘bell’?”

The Divine was silent.

“Tell me, did you ‘overwrite’ that ‘conceptual riot’ triggered by ‘The Gospel of the Mad King’?”

The Divine remained silent.

“See, you can’t.”

Humanity spread his hands, his smile full of a victor’s posture.

“Because that was the ‘virus’ I threw into your ‘stagnant chess game.’”

“That bell, it’s not some ‘prop,’ it’s a ‘coordinate,’ a ‘singularity’ linking ‘story’ and ‘reality.’”

“And that book, ‘The Gospel of the Mad King,’ is not some ‘babbling.’”

“It is a ‘Meme’ that has self-life and propagation ability, nurtured with Sword River Fish’s ‘authorial authority’ as the ‘carrier’ and the ‘spiritual worlds’ of all ‘madmen’ as the ‘soil’!”

“You can modify the ‘script,’ but you cannot kill an ‘idea.’”

“Especially an ‘idea’ that has already begun to take root and sprout in the ‘reader’s’ mind.”

For the first time, a flicker of emotion named “miscalculation” flashed in the Divine’s cold eyes.

He had indeed not anticipated it.

A mere mortal, an “ant” who hadn’t even stepped into the threshold of “supernatural.”

Could actually use “thought” as a weapon and “concept” as a shield to tear such a huge hole in his “divine domain”!

“So, what exactly do you want to say?” the Divine asked coldly.

“What I want to say is.”

Humanity’s gaze returned to the chessboard.

“This game has become much more interesting than we imagined.”

“It is no longer just a battle between you and me.”

“It has escalated.”

“It has escalated into a ‘God-slaying war’ about whether the ‘characters’ can kill the ‘author’!”

“And I am very much looking forward.”

Humanity’s eyes gleamed with an unprecedented, fervent light.

“Very much looking forward to what kind of spectacular ‘revenge’ our desperate ‘protagonist’ will stage for us ‘readers’ who are high above.”

The Divine was silent for a long time.

Finally, a subtle hint of “interest” even appeared on his cold face... “...Good.”

“Since you want to play such a big game.”

“Then I will play along to the very end.”

“I want to see.”

He reached out and gently swept across the chessboard that reflected the entire city.

Countless red dots representing “police,” “surveillance,” and “informants” lit up from every corner of the city.

Like a net that was slowly tightening.

“...How long can you, this ‘virus’ I personally created, struggle?”

He paused, his voice having both the Divine’s indifference and Humanity’s playful mockery.

“...When facing my ‘antivirus software’ called ‘reality.’”