Chapter 4 — Death Exam

Just a few short lines of code have completely confirmed my guess. The destiny of this dynasty has long been exhausted, the so-called "prosperity" is actually forcibly maintained by an evil thing called "Heavenly Dao System". It swallows the wisdom and fortune of the "higher soul" (time traveler) as fuel. As for Ta Canh Hoa, he is nothing more than a puppet raised by the system! What gives me more chills is the last line of code: [Next harvest: Mid-Autumn Poetry Festival. Estimated output: High.] Mid-Autumn Poetry Festival. It is a harbinger of the next massacre. We must find a way to break the situation before that day comes.

04

To find out if the "birth gate" was real or not, I began to take advantage of my "idiot" status, wandering around the palace. After all, who would be wary of a crazy woman who only knows how to chase butterflies and gnaw on tree bark when she's hungry? Half a month later, I groped my way to the deepest place in the royal palace — Lanh Palace. Here, even the weeds exude a breath of death, and the air is filled with the smell of rot and mold. But I realized that this place is more strictly guarded than Duong Tam Dien. Several dark guards with calm breathing hid on tree branches, closely watching over a dilapidated heavenly palace in the corner of Lanh Palace. Who's in there? I took advantage of the secret guard changing shifts, crawled through a dog hole and snuck inside. The palace was damp and gloomy, with only a window high on the wall letting in a bit of weak light. Based on that light, we see a... "thing" chained to the corner of the wall. It was a girl only about twelve or thirteen years old. His clothes were torn, his whole body was dirty, and his hair was tangled like dry grass. What terrifies me the most is that her limbs are all torn and twisted at strange angles. Four wrist-sized iron chains pierced her collarbone, tying her to the wall. How deep is the hatred that makes people do such things? Hearing the noise, she slowly raised her head. What kind of eyes are those - clear black and white, but completely emotionless, like two dry wells, like two mirrors reflecting the filth of the world. She did not scream, because when she opened her mouth, we saw that it was empty inside. Her tongue had been plucked. She is the youngest daughter of the first emperor, who was declared to have died prematurely - Princess Ta Doanh. I held my breath and slowly walked closer. I think, she must have been considered cruel and imprisoned here. But when I lowered my head, I discovered that she was using those deformed hands, trying to draw something on the dusty ground. Not graffiti. It's... a drawing. We are natural people, we only need one look to realize what those lines represent. That's a diagram of the underground water system of the entire palace, but it looks more like a giant integrated circuit! Each pipe, each arc electrical layout, corresponds to an energy transfer node in the system. But Duong Tam Dien — is the CPU of that giant circuit board. At that moment, I got goosebumps. This little girl, who had never left the Cold Palace, was able to deduce the underlying hardware logic of the system with just observation and talent, in this feudal era! She is the only "original genius" of this era. Also the first person to discover the system's secrets. So the emperor spit out her tongue and cut off her hand tendons her legs, but not killed — because she flows with royal blood, which is the best "backup battery" of the system. The Ninth Princess looked at me, there was no help in her eyes, only the emptiness and indifference of someone whose heart was dead. Perhaps she thought I was also coming to torment her. I took a deep breath, squatted down in front of her, and held her dirty, bloody hand. Her body trembled violently, reflexively wanting to withdraw her hand. I hold on tight and don't let go. Then, I used my fingernail to gently tap her palm. Split, split, split… It was Morse code: S, O, S. She didn't react. That's right, she's a native speaker and doesn't know Morse code. We change another way. I write a formula on your palm: E = mc². No, this is physics. We think for a moment, then write a simple line of logical code: if (alive) { fight; } The Nine Princess's body suddenly stiffened. She stared at me, in those dry well-like eyes, ripples appeared for the first time. It's surprise, it's doubt, it's even more... a fire called "hope". Even though she doesn't know English, she understands logic and understands that these symbols are the aura of her "kind". Her crooked fingers suddenly counterattacked, scratching my wrist. Her nails dug deep into my skin, painful to the bone. She used her fingernails, extremely slowly but firmly, to draw a symbol on the back of my hand. It's a circle, with a diagonal line in the middle. It is a "prohibited" symbol in programming, also... the death point of the system.

05

Time passes like an arrow, in the blink of an eye, the Mid-Autumn Festival has arrived. The system... is hungry. In recent years, natural disasters have not stopped, droughts and locusts have been raging, and the fate of Dai Wei is about to collapse. The Emperor urgently needed a large amount of "high-dimensional food" to prolong the life of the system. Thus, an unprecedented solemn "Mid-Autumn Poetry Festival" was held at Ngu Hoa Vien. That day, the entire palace abolished guarding. The Emperor issued an edict: all readers in the world, regardless of gender, as long as they create poetry from the world's scriptures, they can one step rise to the top of the sky and become a marquis and minister. This is a blatant conspiracy. But faced with the lure of fame and fortune, countless time-travelers hiding among the common people could not suppress their hearts of "plagiarism" and flocked to the capital like moths to a fire. They thought that this was the era for them, the stage for them to flourish. Who would have thought that under the red carpet... was a meat grinder. In Ngu Hoa Vien, the lights are bright and the wine and meat are fragrant.