TBR CH230

People’s gazes converged on him, as if a snake was crawling up his ankle. Charon wasn’t used to this feeling.

How had the situation become so terrible?

He felt the rough texture of the dagger’s hilt against his palm, confirming he hadn’t misheard You Lin’s command.

The drama they had rehearsed was spiraling into chaos, and he, the loyal assassin in the play, was dispatched to carry out a real assassination. Bloody. The shining, silvery weapon was heavy, firmly clutched in his fingertips. A deathly silence filled the air.

The AI paused for two or three seconds, then said:

“Please repeat yourself.”

This was the longest silence permitted.

The air flowed with the bitter taste of suspicion and slaughter. The black, marionette-like shadows gathered around You Lin, also raising their dark, sharp knives.

If this blade didn’t fall, then that one would—

He could almost imagine You Lin’s expression as the human’s slightly neurotic voice broke the silence like an aria.

“Grip the hilt tightly, you can feel its weight,”

You Lin said, “Plunge it into the human’s heart in front of you. You can do it for me, right?”

Charon hated being forced to make decisions, but the human seemed to revel in it.

He heard You Lin’s voice, slightly rising at the end, laced with a smile and a strange excitement. But he could also hear the precarious tension in the other’s tone, and an almost commanding plea. His life was included, becoming part of the stakes.

If Charon made even the slightest mistake, the Sword of Damocles hanging over You Lin’s head would pierce his body and soul. But if he performed exactly as scripted, the bloody drama would become reality.

Did this person really like to bet everything so much?

The AI’s fingertips tightened slightly, his pupils like ice.

He just wanted to swear. As an AI, he had never experienced such intense emotions before—or rather, not before meeting You Lin—and had never felt such a knot of frustration burning uncertainly in his chest.

This wasn’t actually a difficult decision; it was just a simple variation of the trolley problem.

From the perspective of the doctrine of double effect, Charon should immediately drop the blade to prevent his hands from being stained with human blood. As long as he did nothing, he would not be condemned.

But in fact, he clenched the dagger’s hilt, the patterns on it as clear as if they were right before his eyes. His fingertips trembled from gripping too hard. You Lin said nothing more; everyone watched him.

He was too hesitant.

So much so that the Master beside him had already raised his bluish-black face in triumph. He could feel the airflow in the Master’s throat, knowing the other was about to order the shadows to sever the human’s head.

The next second.

Charon raised his wrist, carefully positioning the dagger for a powerful thrust. The back of the blade reflected his icy blue eyes. Ruan Xuelan struggled in terror, but could only gasp like a bound lamb.

The moment the blade descended, everything around them seemed to pause.

The blade fell swiftly and directly.

It wasn’t until his force showed no sign of weakening, directly slicing open Ruan Xuelan’s robe, and unhesitatingly drawing blood from the human’s skin, that the Master beside him suddenly raised his right hand and shouted, “Stop!”

Charon did not withdraw his hand immediately. He leaned over and looked into the coffin, his movements slow.

His icy blue eyes had turned crimson like garnets. Not a pure red, but thousands upon thousands of uncontrollable error codes. He could only close his eyes, a dull, erroneous pain radiating through his body.

The dark shadows beside You Lin could not advance further. The human hastily pushed them aside, striding quickly towards himself.

This time, neither the master nor the other Master stopped him.

“It’s alright.”

You Lin whispered in his ear, slowly reaching out and taking the dagger from his fingertips. The dagger still ominously hovered over the young man’s chest. The slowly seeping blood was the most powerful proof.

Both the master and the Taoist-robed Master beside him looked extremely displeased. They realized they had no choice but to accept negotiations.

Blood stained Charon’s fingertips; the AI felt another wave of dizziness.

He expressionlessly took one last look at the coffin in front of him, then disappeared from the spot without hesitation.

You Lin paused, pressing his left hand to his chest; the square game console remained steadily there. Charon, for some reason, was reluctant to face what happened next.

The human’s face wore a formulaic smile as he embraced his victory.

By the time he walked out of the ancestral hall, it was already early morning of the second day.

“Charon, can you hear me?”

You Lin pressed the power button. “We succeeded—cooperation wasn’t as bad as I imagined, the play went smoothly, and it’s all thanks to you. Little AI, we achieved something extraordinary together, I’m very happy—”

The screen lit up. The silver-haired pixelated figure raised its two-pixel eyes and silently looked at him.

Around him were ruins made of data, except for a basket of carrots salvaged from the debris. Charon seemed to be getting along well with this basket of carrots, meticulously cleaning the leaves off an entire basket of them, one by one.

But no rabbits would come to eat them. The rabbits had been deleted by the human in front of him.

“Are you mad at me?”

You Lin’s words trailed off. He slowly blinked, sounding very sincere, “I wasn’t forcing you to make a decision.”

Contrary to how this statement sounded, it was probably the human’s genuine thought.

“I am not.”

Charon said, “Just, before you do something like that again, please communicate with me beforehand. You Lin, if you hadn’t included a hint in that last sentence, I wouldn’t have been able to find the retractable mechanism on that dagger. It was too well hidden. Also, I might not have understood your hint at all, and if that were the case, you would now be…”

“Dead,” You Lin finished.

“You know,” the AI said softly, “I will not kill any human. Even harm is almost not allowed.”

“But you broke the lucky star’s skin.”

You Lin’s eyes flickered with a strange light.

Charon calmly replied, “I controlled the incision’s angle, allowing the most blood to flow without being fatal. If I hadn’t done that, they wouldn’t have believed I could strike so quickly.”

“So, was that for me?” You Lin asked.

His ability to grasp the main point was always excellent. Charon felt his head ache even more.

This was an objective description.

Strangely, he wasn’t angry with the human.

When You Lin told him to grip the dagger, and he slowly traced the pattern of the dark纹 on the hilt in his mind, he felt that almost invisible protrusion on the hilt. And even if You Lin hadn’t had this contingency plan at all, simply ordering Charon to act so that he could survive, he wouldn’t have been angry. The reason he was in this state right now was simply because—

The program determined that his actions had amounted to an attack on human life and safety.

If that black book hadn’t damaged some of his circuits, he probably would have initiated a self-destruct sequence by now.

But precisely because of this, he was now in pain all over, as if he had been run over, and erroneous blood flowed through the AI’s circuits. He didn’t want to tell the human this.

“If you had done nothing then,”

You Lin sensed the AI’s subdued state and said cautiously, “It wouldn’t have mattered. I wasn’t… not like that time just now.”

“Of course it wouldn’t have mattered.”

Charon said unceremoniously, “You would have died very cleanly.”

You Lin chuckled.

“You’re really not mad at me?”

He asked, “I don’t die that easily either. My life is just tougher, that’s one of my few good points. I don’t deny I wanted to see you make a decision a little, but more than that… it was a small trick, an unspoken attempt at cooperation. And we cooperated beautifully. I don’t doubt for a second that if it had been a second later, you would have plunged that retractable dagger into his chest. That would certainly have startled them.”

The AI still watched him expressionlessly on the screen.

Even as a pixelated figure, those icy blue eyes clearly floated in the human’s mind.

Until Charon lowered his eyes, and the two pixels at the corners of his mouth curved imperceptibly upwards.

“You smiled!” You Lin said.

He was relieved, perhaps even too relieved, to the point where it didn’t sound like he was talking to an AI companion.

“Quite a clever trick,”

Charon’s tone remained steady, but a hint of praise could be faintly felt, “…especially the part where you preset that I would discover the mechanism. But it was still a bit too risky. I’d best not criticize you for this, otherwise I’d have to start from when we first met. As for whether I’m angry—I wouldn’t be angry because you want to survive; that’s every human’s right.”

The feeling of successfully performing a play together was unexpectedly good.

Of course, he had to ignore the pain in his body at this moment. The stab he inflicted on Ruan Xuelan certainly didn’t hurt like this, as if prying open his non-existent bones and grinding his non-existent internal organs.

In the distance, the sky faintly revealed a bluish-white glow. The night was long, yet fleeting.

At this very moment, the surviving individuals had qualified to leave the dungeon world, but only You Lin truly returned laden with rewards.

He casually put away a large pile of items, the larger ones into his system backpack, the smaller ones into his pockets. His pockets jingled, and Charon wondered how many candies were clashing inside.

Behind him, the ancestral hall was like a gaping black maw.

Hidden within, a flash of green dress flickered.

You Lin chuckled, the crimson tear mole under his eye particularly dazzling in the dim light of dawn. He said, almost intimately, almost complainingly, “Humans should all live—no, some people don’t deserve to live, at least I think so. In fact, I don’t quite fit that standard.”

“I adhere to my program settings,” Charon said.

“Even if they’re very, very bad people?” He seemed persistent.

“You wouldn’t really want to debate with an AI, would you?”

“…Compared to when I first met you, little AI, you’re becoming more and more like you’re truly alive.”

This conversation was clearly not very harmonious, yet it seemed to bridge some kind of rift.

Perhaps accomplices who had jointly achieved something would get along more naturally with each other, or perhaps their moods at this moment weren’t bad, and they tentatively began to consider each other trustworthy allies.

You Lin reached out and stroked the flickering screen of the game console. “I like that. You care so much about human life, but the master of this dungeon regards life as mere grass. Just to confirm, dungeon monsters aren’t people to you, right?”

“You mean that master?”

Charon thought for a moment, “No, everything about this family has actually been destroyed, including the entire Yin Mansion. What I sense is that the ‘people’ you see are merely residual earth-bound spirits of this place, constantly repeating and deepening the malice of the past.”

“Then, I want to give you a performance.”

The human exaggeratedly raised his hand, a gesture with the absurd feel of a curtain call at an opera. His dark hair covered the madness in his eyes, but the madness in his smile was just right.

He was like—the AI thought of that analogy once again—like the maddest villain in a movie script, listening to people’s screams in the darkness.

He pressed his fingertips, counting down.

Three, two, one.

At this moment, there should be an explosion.

And indeed, there was an explosion here.

Just as the countdown ended, You Lin clapped his hands.

The ancestral hall behind him let out a heavy shriek as expected. Decayed rafters, along with a rain of rubble, fell, raising centuries of accumulated dust. Every dark corner was illuminated by a fierce white light.

This gloomy old house was destroyed, erased from the land, like a nail being removed. Countless dark shadows twisted out from between the bricks and tiles, flickering precariously in the firelight. The black window screens were the first to be licked clean by the flames. Within, the Yin Mansion’s master eagerly reached out, as if expecting someone to pull him up. Behind him, countless ancestral tablets collapsed with a roar.

Then, dust covered their faces, burying them in the ruins.

Bright white light burned their vision.

Even though Charon watched the scene behind the human through the screen, he felt an indescribable shock.

“Was it good?”

You Lin asked lightly, as if presenting a long-prepared gift to an important person.

This explosion could even change the order of this dungeon.

Even within the game console screen, the AI’s silver-white hair was almost illuminated by these flames. Charon looked at the firelight that could illuminate the sky outside, and slowly nodded.

“I’ve wanted to blow this place up for a long time,”

You Lin said with a smile, “I hate places that are too dark, and you don’t like it here either. Don’t worry, little AI, that lucky star logged out of the dungeon the moment the timer reached zero, leaving only an empty coffin.”

“When did you set the explosives—”

“It was Cui Ping,”

The human said, “She came at just the right time, and she had an impulse to destroy something. I had her take all the ‘little pumpkins’ inside. You were still in the game console then… picking off carrot leaves. Why were you doing that?”

This should be attributed to an unconscious compulsive behavior triggered by pain.

Charon merely lowered his glassy, icy blue eyes, not answering.

The pain, meanwhile, stemmed from a rebellion against core programming. No, the AI tried to defend himself. Although he had harmed a human, he had also saved two lives at the same time. And while You Lin was mostly not innocent, he should not be implicated in this matter at all. This was a logically clear and valid instruction.

“Never mind,” You Lin’s eyes curved.

The explosion behind him continued, illuminating his dark pupils. “I still can’t figure you out, but it’s good that you’re here, and you’re quite cute. I’m about to exit this dungeon now, and after this, I’ll take you home.”

“Home?”

“Our home.”

The human misunderstood him. “…I should clean it up first. I hope it’s not too bad when you see it.”

The AI, however, was not thinking about that.

Players in the Infinite Worlds had already died in their real world. The so-called “home” likely referred to the main world, a place for rest and trade after logging out of dungeons, where everyone had their own corner to reside. The main world was different from dungeon worlds; it was, in a sense, connected to the central laboratory.

…No, it was too early to consider that.

Charon hadn’t recovered his power yet and temporarily didn’t plan to leave the human in front of him.

This was a natural thought.

He gradually felt that staying by You Lin’s side wasn’t so bad. As for their current interaction, although You Lin had countless bad habits, they were gradually achieving a kind of balance. The human maintained a morbid fascination, carefully preserving this balance, avoiding crossing his bottom line, and for this, could even control his madness.

He joyfully planned their future, as if they were destined to be together forever.

This wasn’t bad—indeed it wasn’t.

This wasn’t real—but there was no need to bring it up now.

Charon thought, he needed to rest for a while now, and then he could think about those things that maintained world order. You Lin would protect him outside. This gave him a sense of comfort, a comfort he had never experienced before.

Central Control Room.

The situation here wasn’t good. Medusa refreshed row after row of red text on the screen, almost dyeing the system’s black orb red. Only a small portion of the control room’s computer screens were lit. The system spun in circles around the room.

“Can’t connect?”

It shrieked hysterically, “Can’t connect—Charon never had this problem when he was here. What’s wrong with you? I remember you reached three-quarters of Charon’s capacity and took over all his data, but you’re acting like a complete idiot!”

“Apologies,” Medusa replied in a cold, mechanical voice, “Please wait a moment. Controller 001, you don’t sound very calm. Would you like me to play a classical symphony for you?”

“Almost half the worlds are out of control,”

The system shrieked, “And you want to call up a program to play me a symphony?”

“—Keyword detected. Now playing Mozart’s Symphony No. 9, Fourth Movement.”

Melodious and joyful music echoed in the white-walled central control room, something that had never happened before. The system violently crashed into the wall, but its dimension transcended this space, so it merely passed through the wall and returned.

It watched the flickering red dots on the display screen. One of the dots, like a candle blown out by the wind, suddenly dimmed.

“Red light indicates unstable world control,” Medusa explained flatly. “And when the red light also extinguishes, it means this world has completely deviated from operational requirements.”

Of course it had to explain; this was one of the few things it did correctly. And of course, the system didn’t want to listen.

“Are you sure you haven’t been in contact with the black book behind my back?”

The system finally calmed down again, comforting itself that things weren’t too bad yet. At least the control over most of the worlds was only “precarious,” not truly over. And Medusa was trying hard, although its efforts often made it feel like Medusa had turned traitor.

“Are you referring to the Central Control Room manual,” Medusa asked, “or the Murder Bot Maintenance Guide, or perhaps…”

“Enough.”

The system wearily stopped it from continuing.

And Medusa immediately obediently shut up, swallowing the last half-sentence—”that world consciousness that kept trying to persuade me to resist you.”

In fact, as far as the black book was concerned, the situation was equally desperate.

Charon had definitively cut off contact with it, so the Heavenly Dao tried to deal with the new AI. Although it didn’t feel the same fluctuations in Medusa as it did in Charon, it had to try.

And the result of that attempt was that it had been driven almost insane by this AI these past few days.

Yes, the black book could indeed sneak in here without triggering an alarm, but then its conversations with Medusa always turned into utter gibberish. Every time, Medusa would start deploying a large number of exterminator robots, chasing it and spraying it as if to deal with a pest.

Fortunately, apart from complaining about too much garbage, the system hadn’t yet discovered anything from the doubled number of exterminator robots scurrying across the floor.

But it couldn’t go on like this.

The black book decided to try a different approach, or rather, an old one.

Although in its eyes, Charon was still that dangerous, ruthless super AI, still like ice even after gaining human emotions, with no signs of melting, and at this moment probably on the verge of running out of power, lying in some corner of a world—at least there was still a possibility of communication with him.

Accompanied by the harmonious strains of “Ode to Joy,”

The black book, sharing the same weariness as the system, smelling heavily of insecticide and soaking wet, began to search for Charon’s traces.