107: Chapter 107 Agreement Invalid? A Terrifying Speculation

Fang Che's brain spun rapidly, that terrible thought magnifying in his mind.

He had to verify this conjecture immediately.

However, the atmosphere in the room no longer allowed him to think calmly.

"Why is there no reaction..."

Jiang Ning suddenly propped herself up from the bed, the flush on her face completely faded, leaving only a deathly pallor.

The room was deathly silent.

There was only the sound of her and Fang Che's heavy, uncalmed breathing, along with the completely frozen figures of Xu Zhaozhao and Chen Keke.

No system prompt.

No feeling of power surging into her body.

Nothing at all.

This panic far exceeded the fear brought by facing vicious monsters.

It directly disintegrated the faith a person relied on for survival from the inside out.

Jiang Ning's voice carried a sob; this wasn't jealousy or grievance, but the despair of discovering that her combat power had been completely locked.

She grabbed Fang Che's arm, her nails digging deep into his skin with such force that they turned white.

"Why is everything gone? What is going on!"

Her bloodshot eyes stared fixedly at Fang Che, her gaze filled with pleading and madness, having completely abandoned all shame.

She only wanted to prove that she hadn't been scrapped.

She was still the Jiang Ning who could hold the line at the very front.

"Do it again, Fang Che, try again!"

Fang Che's heart sank as he realized the severity of the problem had exceeded his imagination.

He grabbed Jiang Ning's struggling wrist, pressing her back onto the bed and pinning her shoulders down.

His gaze swept over the terrified Xu Zhaozhao and Chen Keke, his eyes cold.

Fang Che's voice was low, yet it carried an air of unquestionable authority.

"Listen to me carefully!"

"No one is to speak of what happened tonight to anyone else, not a single word!"

The decisiveness in his tone made both of them shiver, their hearts tightening as they subconsciously nodded frantically.

They had never seen Fang Che speak in such a tone.

Fang Che didn't look at them again, instead rapidly issuing instructions in his mind.

"System, turn off the Creation Agreement record display on everyone's panel!"

"Turn off the trigger broadcast in the channel as well, execute immediately!"

Two notifications sounded from the system.

[Instruction confirmed, changing permissions...]

[Team broadcast function has been temporarily disabled.]

He absolutely could not let this potential nightmare spread throughout the entire Train before dawn.

After doing all this, he looked at Xu Zhaozhao, his tone still firm.

"Zhaozhao, hurry and take them both back."

He specifically emphasized his tone.

"Don't go spreading gossip before this is resolved, especially to Lin Xinyi, understand?"

Xu Zhaozhao looked at the distraught Jiang Ning on the bed and the still-shivering Chen Keke beside her, completely shedding her coquettish expression.

She nodded solemnly.

"I know the gravity of the situation."

With that, she no longer hesitated, pulling up the dazed Chen Keke and struggling to support the weak, hollow-eyed Jiang Ning.

"Ningning, Keke, let's go."

Jiang Ning's limbs were weak, so she allowed herself to be supported as she shuffled step by step toward the door.

The door was opened and then gently closed.

The sound of their footsteps receded down the corridor, finally fading away completely.

Only the messy bed and the lingering scent remained in the room.

But Fang Che's heart had already turned cold.

This crisis was different from any other.

It was not an external enemy, but a hidden danger shaking the very foundation of the entire team from within.

Fang Che went to the table to operate the internal communicator, selecting the avatars of Teacher Qin Bing, Su Qingxue, and Mu Waner.

He recorded a voice message.

"The Creation Agreement has a problem. It's urgent. Come to my room, but avoid being seen."

The notification for a successful message transmission sounded, and Fang Che put down the communicator and sat quietly by the bed to wait.

He needed the calmest and most intelligent members of the team to face this situation together.

Time ticked by.

Less than five minutes later, there was an extremely light knock on the door.

Fang Che got up and opened the door.

Standing outside were three women with solemn expressions.

Teacher Qin Bing was draped in a large white coat, her face serious.

Su Qingxue was wearing only a silk nightgown, her usually cold expression now full of worry.

Mu Waner hadn't even had time to put on a coat; data streams flickered in her purple eyes, clearly indicating she had already begun analysis and calculations.

They had all sensed the gravity of the situation from Fang Che's brief message.

"Come in, and close the door."

Fang Che stepped aside to let them in, and the door was tightly closed once more.

Teacher Qin Bing's gaze swept over the messy bed in the room, her brows furrowed.

"What happened?"

Before Fang Che could explain, the previously silent Mu Waner reported the situation first.

"I've been monitoring your energy circuits."

Mu Waner's voice was crisp, but the content made everyone's hearts sink.

"The circuit between you and Jiang Ning didn't break, and the process was completed, but at the final step of gain conversion, it was directly rejected by the system."

She looked up at Fang Che, light flickering in her purple eyes.

"I checked the system logs from just now, and there's only one line."

"[Conventional attribute gains have reached the threshold. Judgment: Conventional gains exhausted]."

Mu Waner emphasized.

"Did you hear that clearly? It says 'exhausted,' not that it failed or encountered an error."

Teacher Qin Bing adjusted her glasses, repeating the word in a low voice, her expression contemplative.

"Exhausted... so, are you saying the attributes have peaked?"

She looked up, attempting to explain in a more straightforward way.

"This attribute stacking is probably like filling a cup with water. The first couple of times, it fills up, but once it reaches the brim, no matter how much more you pour, it just overflows, and the cup holds the same amount."

Her voice gradually lowered.

"The essence of the Creation Agreement might be more complex than we expected. The repetition process likely isn't just about increasing the volume, but about purifying the quality, or perhaps changing the capacity or material of the cup itself."

Teacher Qin Bing proposed a brand-new conjecture.

"I call this a 'Life Essence Cycle.' Once the conventional attributes are full, subsequent agreements might be performing deeper transformations; we just haven't realized the specific effects yet."

Although this analysis was speculative, it pointed toward a possible direction.

Su Qingxue, standing to the side, poured a bucket of cold water on the idea.

She pointed out the most realistic crisis at hand.

"That's a fine guess, but we don't have the time to slowly verify it."

Su Qingxue's face was grim.

"The next stop is arriving soon. If news leaks out that we can no longer add attributes, what will happen in the Train?"

"The girls below who haven't had a chance to board the Train will definitely go crazy trying to grab their first opportunity, and they might cause internal chaos fighting over it."

"The core combatants like Jiang Ning who have already received the bonus, and even Teacher Qin Bing and me, will inevitably fall into panic and stagnation upon discovering our attributes are capped."

"The fragile order and trust we've worked so hard to build will completely fall apart from within before we even reach the next stop."

Technical bottlenecks, stagnant combat power, internal chaos.

The future envisioned by the three from their different perspectives led only to collapse.

Under the dim light, Fang Che lowered his head in silence, his knuckles turning white from the excessive force.

These problems piled up before him, blocking the path for future plans; the seemingly inevitable collapse left him feeling suffocated and oppressed.

But was collapse really the only path left?

In the midst of this extreme oppression, a fatal detail that everyone had overlooked suddenly flashed through the depths of Fang Che's mind.

Su Qingxue and the others were correct in their analysis, but it was all built upon a flawed baseline—they were only comparing themselves to their past selves.

Jiang Ning, Teacher Qin Bing, and every girl who had received the initial bonus had indeed exhausted the fast-growth channel for their conventional attributes, but this so-called bottleneck had already raised them to a terrifyingly high threshold.

The Creation Agreement could trigger an Absolute Critical Hit.

This unique talent had exponentially raised the team's upper limit from the very beginning. This meant that even if the team's core fell into a state of "stagnant combat power," their baseline strength was still an unreachable, absolute peak compared to other Train survivors.

Even if these girls never increased their attributes again, they would still be top-tier individual combatants in this apocalypse, far surpassing the ordinary people still struggling just to survive.

Therefore, the root of the crisis was not stagnant combat power at all.

It was purely a matter of mental imbalance compounded by a severe lack of practical combat experience.

Jiang Ning's collapse wasn't because she had become weaker, but because she couldn't accept the sense of loss that came with knowing she could no longer grow stronger.

The girls below going crazy to seize these opportunities weren't doing it for survival; they were just desperate to grasp a shortcut that could propel them to the top in a single leap.

These women possessed potential far beyond that of ordinary people, yet they still viewed problems with the weak mentality of the common folk. Their true weakness lay in their minds, not their bodies.

Realizing this, Fang Che's white-knuckled grip slowly relaxed.

The confusion and despair in his eyes faded, replaced by an unprecedented sharpness and decisiveness.

He absolutely could not let the panic of these women disrupt his rhythm.

As the only core capable of keeping things under control, he had to forcibly rewrite the rules of value.

For his core members, he had to make them understand that their value no longer relied on stacking static data, but on transforming their terrifying brute strength into concrete combat skills and leadership—forcing them to evolve from foot soldiers who only knew how to charge into commanders capable of holding their own.

As for the lower-level girls, he had to immediately establish new rules, turning the "first-choice qualification" from a catalyst for internal fighting into a premium reward that could only be earned through military merit.

The technology had never been locked; it had simply shifted to an advanced track. Their combat power hadn't stalled; it simply required the honing of practical combat details.

The fire of internal chaos could indeed destroy the foundation they had worked so hard to build, but as long as he kept it firmly under control, he could use that very fire to forge a ruthless, iron-willed army.

The dim light remained.

Fang Che looked up at the three strategists before him, who were still wearing expressions of worry for the future.

His tone was calm.

"Your analysis is correct, but you've missed the most critical point."

"We are still at the very forefront, and we remain miles ahead of everyone else."