There was no hiding of the disgust and annoyance in Tian Dao's voice, and his mind was so open that it seemed as if He was innocent enough.
Rong Tang's face turned pale, his whole body was cold, and an emotion called anger kept surging up in his heart, causing a stuffy pain in his chest.
He was silent for a long time before he found his voice, but it was so hoarse that it was almost inaudible: "Why?"
'Tian Dao' smiled softly and repeated: "Why?"
He said, "I would also like to know why you came down for no reason."
The old man sat in his original position with a kind smile on his face. He raised his hand slightly, and the surrounding scene changed. Before Rong Tang could react, he caught a glimpse of something floating up and down beside him.
His pupils suddenly shrank, Rong Tang grabbed the handrail, and leaned forward subconsciously.
—That's the system.
The system that only had a chance to appear in front of him when the moon was full on the 15th of every month, now floated beside "Heavenly Dao", without a word or a sound.
Rong Tang asked hoarsely: "What did you do?"
"Don't be nervous," said Tiandao, "I just put it back to its original state."
Rong Tang's heart sank.
At the beginning, as he saw in his dream, the system was just a small ball in the clouds, composed of water vapor. A rain would disperse it into the vast earth and disappear without a trace.
The Heavenly Dao said: "Do you know why you came to this world?"
Rong Tang did not answer, and the other party obviously did not want him to answer. He just paused for a moment, and then took the initiative to explain for him, whether out of kindness or malice, "It was all true at the beginning."
"Be it the novel or the setting of the hero and the villain, they have all been true from the beginning." He said softly, his tone gentle, with the calmness and indulgence that wise men who have experienced the affairs of the world usually bring when speaking.
But this kind of calmness, in its essence, carries with it a sense of superiority and is an invisible arrogance.
"The story is exactly as you saw at the beginning. The protagonist went through a lot of hardships and was about to become an emperor, but at the last moment, the villain stole his fate and changed the development and ending of the story."
He said this calmly. Rong Tang couldn't stand it anymore and said sarcastically, "You live in your own world?"
The other party chuckled and said, "This world is indeed mine. What you said is not false."
Rong Tang was completely silent. His eyes would occasionally drift to the system, thinking about how to take the little fool away.
As for what 'Heaven' said, it's ridiculous.
He felt it was so outrageous that hearing one more word seemed to offend his ears.
But the man continued, "You liked this novel, and died unexpectedly in another world. And by chance, you came into this world when it was locked and there was no follow-up progress. Your responsibility should have been to maintain the smooth operation of the small world and realize the ending envisioned by the author, but why did you change?"
He seemed puzzled: "The protagonist succeeds and the villain is killed by the good guy. Isn't this the result that readers in your world want to see the most? Why do you want to make such an illogical change?"
He seemed to really not understand what Rong Tang did. When he said this, the desire in his eyes disappeared, and what was left was the desire for an explanation, but there was also an inexplicable hint of madness.
He is the 'Way of Heaven', and his role is to maintain Sheng Chengli's character as the protagonist, so that he can become the one who aspires to conquer the world no matter what.
And now, due to Rong Tang's intervention, not only has the probability of Sheng Chengli becoming emperor been reduced again and again, but even the ending in the original novel where the villain successfully rebels and Dayu is burned down is most likely impossible to achieve.
As a reader of the novel, Rong Tang traveled into this world and, in his three lifetimes, he had not done a single good thing in the eyes of Him who was the 'Way of Heaven'.
It was hard for Him not to hate this man.
But when Rong Tang heard this, he lowered his head and looked at the bloody marks on the palm of his hand.
He was silent for a while, then said softly: "I think it's very interesting."
Tian Dao was slightly startled, and looked at him curiously, waiting for his next words, wanting an answer.
Rong Tang: "I was thinking, I never taught Sheng Chengli to lie, talk nonsense, spread rumors, and confuse right and wrong. Lord Mu and Ke Hongxue would not teach him either. Who did he learn that kind of speech from? He always thinks he is the most correct in the world and the whole world owes him. He doesn't feel guilty or ashamed at all when he says those disgusting nonsense."
He spoke slowly, with an elegant posture that could be painted by an artist into a painting that would be passed down from generation to generation.
"Now that I think about it, I probably got your true teachings." Rong Tang spoke softly, his demeanor was calm and his tone was gentle. There was not a single dirty word and no trace of anger. When he raised his eyes slightly, there was a natural aura in his voice.
The 'Tian Dao' on the opposite side was stunned for two seconds, then looked at him with a frown.
Rong Tang said, "I didn't listen carefully to what you said, and I'm too lazy to correct your mistakes one by one. After all, I'm not your teacher, and I have no obligation to correct you bit by bit in the hope that you will become better."
"But first of all, this world is not yours."
Saying that the world is not his in front of the Heavenly Dao is undoubtedly a bomb. As soon as Rong Tang finished speaking, he saw the man's expression change several times, and finally fixed on an expression that could not be described as ironic or angry. He asked him coldly: "Do you want to say that it is yours?"
Rong Tang laughed softly, then realized how unnecessary his previous vigilance was.
He shook his head: "Of course it's not mine, but thank you for confirming my guess."
The fact that "Heaven's Way" could say "This world is yours" directly, whether it was a rhetorical question or a doubt, was enough to prove that Rong Tang did not enter this book as the prince of Ning Xuan when he first came into the book.
He said, "I just figured out something that might answer your question."
'Heaven' said that everything was real, but Rong Tang thought, if it was all true, then why did he travel into this world and as what side did he come
The Heavenly Dao answered as a matter of course: "Since the beginning of the world."
Rong Tang nodded: "At the beginning of the world, that's when the author first came up with the outline of this story."
"What do you want to say?" For some reason, he had a bad feeling.
Rong Tang: "When fiction is born in the real world, the world will have self-awareness. It sounds reasonable."
'Tian Dao' didn't say anything, just looked at him.
Rong Tang asked, "But in this case, it would be too illogical for me to travel into this world."
All words have their own traces; there are no words or meanings that are made up out of nothing.
The three-life crossing was a scam, but if Rong Tang went back to the beginning of the first life, the information he got was this: [The plot line was seriously broken, the emperor was not tolerated by the heaven, the world was crumbling and needed to be corrected. However, the consciousness of the small world had just been formed and it was not able to directly kill the villain, so he was asked to protect Sheng Chengli and let him ascend the throne smoothly. ]
Based on this premise, Rong Tang was pulled over from another world.
This seemed to be no problem, but Rong Tang asked: "Do you know what correction is?"
'Tian Dao' said nothing, as if he realized that he was about to say something incomprehensible.
Rong Tang said slowly, "My travels through time and space these past few times were like playing a game where I had to reload the save file and start over. I was originally wondering why this mechanism existed, but now I finally understand."
'Tian Dao's' eyes moved slightly.
Rong Tang: "In the era I came from, there was something called computer code."
"Whether it's a game or a program, it's essentially written in code. When there's a problem with the code, after the problem is discovered, subsequent maintenance and reinforcement are carried out to prevent it from crashing immediately. This is called patching. However, correction is to go back to the source, go back to the line where the problem first occurred, delete the code and rewrite it."
"This is a huge project, but it is the only way to avoid the situation where more and more patches are applied, and another error or omission appears after one patch is fixed as time goes by."
Rong Tang smiled and said, "Do you feel familiar?"
Tian Dao said in a deep voice: "Don't keep us in suspense."
Rong Tang: "Assuming that the world consciousness discovered that Su Huaijing ascended the throne and the world was destroyed, it was an irreversible consequence caused by a code error. Then the best solution should be to send the tasker, that is, me, to before Su Huaijing was born, and make him disappear directly from the source. This is called correction."
"But on the one hand, I was not given the task of killing Su Huaijing, and on the other hand, I was asked to protect Sheng Chengli. No matter how you look at it, this is a ridiculous process of stealing and not learning enough, self-understanding and processing, which ultimately leads to a ridiculous result of drawing a tiger but ending up with a dog."
"Tian Dao" seemed to be slapped in the face in an instant, the sanctimonious look on his face disappeared, and what was more obvious was a feeling of anger and shame.
Rong Tang closed his eyes, and when he opened them again he continued, "In that case, I have to suspect that the person who gave me the task knew about other tasks and their patterns in advance, but because of his limited ability and inadequate knowledge, he wanted to cover the initial task, but was framed by the original premise, and finally gave me the task of 'protecting the hero from being killed by the villain'."
"I always have a dream recently. In the dream, I am still a time traveler, but I am not traveling to a specific person, and my mission has never been to protect Sheng Chengli. On the contrary, the clearest voice in the dream is: stop everything from happening."
Rong Tang smiled. There were only the two of them in the hall. There was no smile in his eyes, only an indescribable vicissitude and irony: "Going back to stop it before it happened, isn't this the original meaning of 'correction'?"
Tian Dao's face darkened, and he asked in a deep voice, "What do you want to say?"
Rong Tang pinched his brows and said, "You guys always pretend to know when you don't, and pretend not to know when you know. It's really annoying."
He said: "You said everything is real, which may be believable. But tell me, a completely closed world has its own consciousness. Why doesn't it just keep the world running and do its best to grab a person from another world?"
Rong Tang raised his eyes and looked at Him: "Everyone captured here does not belong to this world. It is possible that the situation will collapse and move in an uncontrollable and unpredictable direction. Why should it take this risk?"
Tian Dao frowned and stared at Rong Tang.
Rong Tang looked at him with cold eyes, and said softly word by word: "Because it is saving itself."
"It was never Su Huaijing who caused the world to collapse, but you and your so-called male protagonist."
For any person or thing that is just born into the world, the most urgent and urgent instinct must be the instinct of survival.
This is true for 'world consciousness' and 'heavenly way' as well.
The "world consciousness" discovered that if it followed the setting of the original novel, Su Huaijing would succeed in seizing the throne, and Dayu would be in chaos and suffer. It would eventually perish.
So it wants to pull people in to stop this from happening.
However, "Tian Dao" discovered that if someone succeeded in stopping him and his male protagonist, their very birth would be meaningless and they would be bugs that needed to be erased and repaired.
So He borrowed the original logical principles, modified and fabricated them, and re-assigned the task, interweaving deception and truth to fabricate a seemingly reasonable lie in an attempt to justify Himself and squeeze out the power of the world consciousness.
"You lied." Rong Tang said softly, without any sadness or joy, and without any accusation, but it made the people who heard it shudder unconsciously, and a trace of fear surged from the bottom of their hearts. "It was not you who was born at the beginning of the world, but the world consciousness. Your birth should be counted from the time when Sheng Xuyan wanted to rebel."
Sheng Xuyan wanted to rebel and began to plan. Sheng Chengli was born, and a sorcerer predicted his fate. This was the beginning of all the stories in "The Emperor's Journey".
This person who calls himself "Tian Dao" came into being.
Rong Tang sighed, as if he had lost his memory for a long time and finally remembered all the truth in an instant: "I came here to stop you."
This is the real meaning of "correction".
(End of this chapter)