……
The world's consciousness woke up far too late.
By the time They finally surfaced from Their slumber and regained perception of the world, They were horrified to find that Shen Yi had already tangled up with the great villain from her past life.
The world's consciousness knew better than anyone how impossibly difficult this man was to deal with.
They had witnessed every step of his life's trajectory, and knew full well how he had overturned the entire chessboard in his previous lifetime.
He had dragged the whole world down just for a child he had never even met.
And in this restarted worldline.
Shen Yi had still found Shen Sixing.
The moment the two met, all the looping stories formed a closed loop.
The world's consciousness realized They could no longer intervene at all.
This was already a cycle that went round and round, with no gaps left.
Shen Sixing overturned the world, the world restarted and sent her back to this life, and after returning to this life, she walked right back to that very same origin point, meeting him again.
It was a fully drawn circle, where the start connected directly to the end.
And so that loop snapped shut completely, forming a thoroughly locked circle.
Any force that tried to intervene from the outside would be bounced right off.
The world's consciousness could not interfere with any part of this plotline.
They so badly wanted to tell Shen Yi directly.
If only you don't go looking for Shen Sixing, if only you stay far away from them, your future will be easy and joyful.
No sorrow, no do-overs, only happiness waiting for you.
I've already written the script for you, paved the road for you, all you have to do is sit back and wait.
To that end, the System had reminded Shen Yi countless times in the meantime.
[You don't need to concern yourself with their fates. You are the protagonist, all that matters is that you are happy.]
They had warned Shen Yi hundreds of times.
Across hundreds of restarts.
If Shen Yi had chosen to give up even just once, there would be no loneliness waiting for her in the future.
But across every single one of those countless restarts, her answer never changed: I am willing.
The System had never met such a stubborn person.
In Their eyes.
The villain's ending was already set in stone.
When the world's consciousness restarted the world and decided to make a different person the protagonist, They had never made any changes to the fates of the Shen family from the very beginning.
Their logic was very simple.
Since the protagonist had been changed, there was no need to alter anyone else's fate in the old storyline except for Shen Yi.
The fate of Shen Sixing's family would still march toward that same end as it did in the previous life.
Many characters were still destined to die, that was something written into the script across both lifetimes.
And when that time came, what would Shen Yi do then, after she had finally gotten her hard-won happiness?
The world's consciousness thought over this at great length.
Endless torrents of data recombined and collided within Their being, searching nonstop for a way out.
Eventually, They came to a conclusion.
If the protagonist could not find happiness, the world might as well be destroyed.
So after waking up, the world's consciousness split off a wisp of Their own awareness, turned it into the System, and came belatedly to find Shen Yi.
Just as the world's consciousness had stated before the previous life's reset —
They could grant her one do-over, a new chance to make her choices.
Then the System gave Shen Yi the ability to make those choices countless times over.
It wasn't the kind of aura that Song Yee had, the kind that made everyone adore her, that brought her absolute luck and unreserved favor from nearly everyone around her.
It was the power to have fate reset itself over and over, so that Shen Yi could still stand at that fork in the road, and carve out the ending that satisfied her.
But in exchange for that.
You will have to pay a price thousands of times more arduous than anything Song Yee ever had to endure.
And through all of this.
I will walk this path right alongside you.
So now —
[I wish you happiness, Xiao Yi]
The System's calm voice carried emotion for the very first time.
It said:
"It's all over now."
"You are the best protagonist I have ever met."
"Goodbye."
"Shen Yi"
The System had been thinking all this time.
How should They describe her, this journey of their encounter?
What did she resemble?
She was like a beam of light, like a blade of grass.
Like the cosmos flower that grew everywhere on the high plateaus.
Like unassuming moss, or any other hardy plant that could survive and thrive.
She was completely different from all the other heroines They had ever seen.
She was no sun.
More like a wisp of bright light that broke through the sky right after the clouds and fog cleared away.
Shattering the fickle whims of fate in one single strike.
Unmatched in her radiant splendor.
……
Most of the key points have been laid out almost fully now.
This plotline was part of my original outline, but I never really wanted to write it out in full, since it took so much mental effort. It was a scrapped plot that was only meant to explain the backstory and context. Before I decided to expand this novel into a longer work, I had planned to just touch on it briefly in the extra chapter and gloss over it with a few lines.
But then I got the notice to write a longer version, so I pulled this abandoned plotline back out and decided to flesh it out completely.
At this point, most of the story has been explained pretty thoroughly, but there are definitely still follow-up details to cover.
But let me think about it for a bit.
Updates will be irregular. I need to sort out what other content still needs to be explained, because honestly, the core story is almost wrapped up here. I will take a little break first, then write the rest of the follow-up for everyone.
As for that "They" character, a lot of readers seem to be confused about it. It is the special pronoun for a divine being, which is why I use "They" to refer to the world's consciousness here.
