Chapter 175: The Narrator’s Resolve
The Federation had fallen into chaos, yet Xu Zhi still chose not to leave Yuncheng. It wasn’t because she had given up or decided to be lazy — far from it.
At first, she had repeatedly caught fanatics trying to sneak into the city through the perspectives of her familiars guarding the entrance. After killing more than a dozen of them, the intrusions suddenly stopped. It looked as if the enemy had given up — but neither Xu Zhi nor the Narrator believed that the [Cup] faction would simply abandon Yuncheng.
If the cultists outside couldn’t infiltrate the city to carve their ritual arrays, then the only possibility left… was that the problem would arise within Yuncheng itself.
That was why Xu Zhi chose to stay. No matter how one looked at it, Yuncheng was an essential piece of His grand design. If the arrangements here failed, it might at least cause some disruption to His plan.
Xu Zhi didn’t harbor any illusions of stopping His “descent” completely — she wasn’t arrogant enough to think that was possible. Her current goal was much simpler: to make things difficult for Him, and if possible, to inflict some damage in the process.
Sometimes, Xu Zhi found herself disturbingly cold. She didn’t truly care about the lives of others. Even when she learned that countless transcendents in the Federation had died — and that this was only the beginning — her heart didn’t stir in the slightest. No pity. No sorrow. No sense of loss at the death of her kind.
Her only thought was whether those deaths would increase His power, creating more trouble later — and whether the Federation was smart enough to respond properly.
Even the notion that “humanity might be wiped out in this catastrophe” didn’t move her. To her, that was just an abstract and meaningless statement. Sometimes she felt like a ghost drifting outside of humanity — as if the entire world were nothing more than a tiny box built to contain her.
And yet… When she looked at Zhong Lingfan, Shen Jinwen, or the other people of Yuncheng — each with their own personalities and warmth — she thought they were… interesting. If she were the only one left in this world, it would be unbearably dull.
So, as long as she could do so without endangering herself, protecting them a little didn’t seem so bad.
Of course, that protection had to stay within her limits. If it became too troublesome or dangerous — she’d simply drop it.
Even so, Xu Zhi found her own thought strange.
She didn’t think of herself as a “kind” person. Even though she shared some level of friendship with Zhong Lingfan and Shen Jinwen, even though she’d seen the admiration and reverence the Yuncheng residents held for her — she felt nothing inside. So why, then, did she have this sudden urge to “protect” them?
“Is it because I think of them as my possessions?”
The thought flashed through her mind, and Xu Zhi immediately felt she’d found the source of this odd “benevolence.”
Yes. That made sense.
She nodded to herself in approval. She saw the transcendents of Yuncheng as her property. When one’s own life was safe, it was only natural to want to protect one’s property, wasn’t it?
The Narrator, watching Xu Zhi mutter her way into this absurdly self-consistent logic, was momentarily baffled.
[Can’t it simply be that you’re not entirely cold and heartless — that you’ve kept a little bit of human emotion?]
It didn’t believe Xu Zhi had lost her humanity completely. Yes, she was more detached and willful than most — but that very willfulness was, paradoxically, a sign of emotion.
She did meaningless things when she was happy. She took reckless paths when she was upset. She stirred up trouble simply because she found it amusing.
In short — emotion still guided her actions. So if she now felt a hint of responsibility to protect the people of Yuncheng, that wasn’t strange at all.
The odd thing was that Xu Zhi herself refused to believe she was capable of something like “responsibility.” She seemed to think of herself in the worst possible terms.
…Wait.
The Narrator suddenly realized something.
Perhaps it wasn’t that Xu Zhi refused to acknowledge her sense of responsibility — but that she didn’t understand what positive responsibility actually meant.
Looking back on her life, the Narrator realized that every experience Xu Zhi had with “responsibility” had been negative. And though the shard had given her vast extraordinary knowledge, it had never taught her anything about positive emotions. She was like a troubled child — one who gained great power before learning how to handle her own heart, and so had run headlong down a path of obsession.
What’s more, at the very start of Yuncheng’s transformation, Xu Zhi herself had cast away all the traits she once possessed — her kindness, justice, gentleness, and even the faint sense of duty she never fully understood.
She had cut all of it away. Those feelings had never been large within her to begin with, but once severed completely, she became far more extreme.
Thankfully, even so, emotion wasn’t gone entirely. When she dealt with her familiars, some faint gentleness still grew back. When she interacted with Zhong Lingfan and the others, traces of responsibility sprouted — so subtle she didn’t even notice them herself.
The Narrator didn’t see her “flawed nature” as a bad thing. It only thought that understanding emotions — even if she chose not to value them — would help her walk farther. One didn’t have to cherish feelings, but one couldn’t remain ignorant of them either.
Thinking of His true goal, the shard, and Xu Zhi’s repeated failed attempts in recent days, the Narrator silently made a decision.
It had imagined this possibility before — but from its old perspective, opposing Him was pure delusion. Now, though… the chance was here. Why not try?
The Narrator had never been this bold, this reckless. It had once been nothing more than an emotionless “appendage.” But now, it had developed its own will, its own thoughts — even a personality. All of it was because of Xu Zhi.
They were bound together by fate. And perhaps now was the time to begin revealing the truth.
As the Narrator steeled its resolve, the handheld console’s screen suddenly dimmed. Against the black background, two white pixelated words appeared:
[Xu Zhi.]
The Narrator rarely called her by name. Xu Zhi raised an eyebrow, slightly surprised. “…What is it now? Don’t tell me something terrible happened again?”
Her calm teasing tone stirred something complicated inside the Narrator — an emotion that could only be described as bittersweet.
When had it started, it wondered — this shift from being mere “tool and user” to something resembling friends? A friendship that should never have existed — after all, who would ever befriend their own system?
It understood human emotions in theory, but when such feelings appeared between itself and Xu Zhi, it couldn’t help but feel astonished.
Unexpected — but… not unpleasant.
Accepting this change, the Narrator spoke with quiet sincerity:
[Do you remember… how I came into existence?]
