The operation to close the net and wipe them out did not go smoothly.
He had clearly underestimated the power of the plot.
The moment Shen Sixing truly began destroying the core of the story, the entire world seemed to become enraged and fight back.
The people he sent out would fail for all sorts of bizarre reasons.
Signals would be cut off, vehicles would break down, flights would be rerouted at the last minute, and strangers would inexplicably appear in crucial locations.
Once, he personally led a team to deal with a key point in the story. On the way, they encountered a landslide that blocked the entire road. By the time he took a detour and arrived, Song Yee had already disappeared.
He nearly died in the resulting car accident. The steering wheel had been twisted out of shape by falling rocks, and when the airbag deployed, two of his ribs cracked. He crawled out of the car, stood in the rain, and spent a long time catching his breath before calling in the next team.
Shen Sixing became even more cautious in the operations that followed.
He no longer placed his hopes in a single operation. Instead, he spread out more than a dozen lines of action at once, gripping every thread in his hands. If one thread snapped, the others could still continue tightening.
Shen Sixing no longer cared about human lives—or what anyone else thought.
As long as he could overturn this world and start it all over again, it did not matter who around him became one of the soldiers sent forward to die.
His subordinates were replaced in a steady stream. If someone was lost, he sent in another group. If someone was exposed, he severed that line. Whoever the investigation traced back to, he dealt with them. Anyone who could not be left alive was eliminated.
Shen Sixing sat in his office and put every plan into motion.
It did not matter who fell. A soldier’s purpose was to die at the front so that those behind could keep moving forward.
In any case, Shen Sixing’s chessboard was large enough, and there were plenty of pieces he could use.
Every piece on the board had its name stripped away before he pushed it forward.
The outside world could not understand this almost fanatical approach. Not even Shen Sigui could understand it.
That day, Shen Sigui stormed into the office and slammed a thick stack of reports down on the desk. The pages scattered across the tabletop, filled with the names of those lost and records of operations from the past six months.
“I honestly don’t know what the hell you’ve been doing these past few years.”
Shen Sigui’s voice was low, and he was clearly forcing himself to keep his panic under control.
The man braced both hands against the edge of the desk, leaned toward Shen Sixing, and stared hard at his utterly expressionless face.
“But don’t you think something’s wrong? You want to kill the Song family’s adopted daughter? After failing so many times, you should’ve realized something was off by now. What exactly is making you target her like this?”
“What the hell are you trying to do? So many people have been lost because of this. Does that make you feel good?”
Shen Sixing leaned back in his chair and looked at him without answering immediately.
He looked the same as he always had, but the careless indifference that had once surrounded him had vanished completely. In its place was a silent gloom, as though his entire aura had changed color.
Shen Sigui stared at that calm, almost hollow face and suddenly felt that this person was very far away from him.
Only after a long while did Shen Sixing speak. His voice was soft and flat.
“No. I’m not that twisted. I don’t enjoy watching my subordinates throw their lives away. I have my reasons for doing this. Whether they live or die has nothing to do with me.”
Shen Sigui was growing anxious too. In truth, he did not care whether those subordinates lived or died.
Compared with that, he was more worried about Shen Sixing’s mental state.
“What happened to you?”
“Can’t you tell us? You look like you’re about to die, you know?”
Shen Sixing even smiled at that.
“Do I?”
Shen Sigui examined the obviously thin, insubstantial suit Shen Sixing was wearing, then looked at the prominent knuckles of the hand resting on the desk.
“You look like you’ll be dead sooner or later.”
“What about your wife? Is she just watching you lose your mind?”
Shen Sixing’s gaze fell on the scattered reports atop the desk. Line after line of black characters covered the pages, packed tightly together.
Wen Ya certainly would not simply stand by and watch him lose his mind.
But Wen Ya had rarely forcibly interfered in the things he wanted to do.
That was probably a tacit understanding between husband and wife.
Sometimes, he would go home and curl up in Wen Ya’s arms to sleep.
At other times, they would nestle together on the living-room sofa with the television on at low volume. Wen Ya would lean against him and scroll through her phone while Shen Sixing rested his head on her lap, burying his face in the soft fabric over her stomach and closing his eyes.
Even then, he had never said a word to Wen Ya about the story of the past and the future.
Of course, Shen Sixing would never let Wen Ya get involved.
Shen Sigui and he had nothing to say to each other. He felt that Shen Sixing had been mentally unstable these past few years.
He could not understand Shen Sixing’s motives at all.
Yet if one called him insane, that did not quite fit either. Under his leadership, every one of the family’s industries had flourished. The already enormous organization had expanded to an even more staggering scale.
Money, influence, connections, channels—every measure of a powerful family in the underworld had been climbing at a furious pace.
At this point, it would not have been an exaggeration to say that the world was in his hands.
Shen Yi drifted about like a ghost. After watching Shen Sigui leave, she saw Shen Sixing slowly lower his head and rest his forehead against his clasped hands.
The light came from the side, revealing the thin ridges of his shoulder blades beneath his shirt as they rose and fell faintly with each breath.
He looked as though he were in terrible pain.
…
Shen Yi suddenly remembered a long time ago.
A teenage Shen Sixing had been crouching on the floor of a shabby rented apartment, repairing the door with a screwdriver clutched in his hand. As he tightened the screws, he had turned around to glare at her.
Back then, although Shen Sixing had still seemed listless, he had been unmistakably alive. He would complain that she talked too much, that she was annoying, that she was blocking the light.
He had been completely different from the cold, lifeless person he was now.
Shen Yi thought that the box she had accidentally left behind seemed to have ruined everything.
Sometimes, when she followed him, she would see Shen Sixing talking to himself in the empty office late at night, when no one else was around.
“I kind of hate you. I really do.” His voice was quiet, almost a lament. “You ruined everything I had. I wagered everything—stability, freedom, the future, even myself—and begged for another chance, not knowing whether it would work.”
“What should I do if the result of starting over is still the same?”
But if she could come to them…
That would prove the ending had ultimately been a happy one.
The System spoke in its emotionless voice:
【Xiao Yi, the way your father looks right now is so dark and brooding, he could walk onto any film set and get cast as the villain. Seriously.】
Shen Yi was in no mood to respond.
She lowered her head and looked at Shen Sixing’s hunched figure.
His shoulders were a size narrower than they had been several years ago. His coat hung over the back of the chair, while a dark-gray suit jacket lay draped there, its sleeves hanging empty.
“You’re also part of the world’s consciousness, aren’t you, System?” Shen Yi suddenly said.
The System fell silent for a moment.
【…Yes.】It replied. The mechanical quality in its voice had faded somewhat, replaced by a hesitation Shen Yi had never heard from it before.
Shen Yi said, “I hate that you exist.”
The System immediately explained, 【I’m sorry. I’m merely a consciousness that arose from the derivative process. In truth, no such consciousness exists in this world—it’s only the result of the rules at work. I… am just a small projection brought forth by the rules at a certain juncture. I had no subjective will or position in the past, but now, my position is on your side—】
Shen Yi cut it off. “I know.”
It was nothing more than a script written the moment the world came into being.
Even the System couldn’t change it.
When she thought about it, it was almost laughable. The world was one enormous script, and everyone’s fate had been predetermined.
She had died an unlucky death. Who could she blame?
