Channel, peeps, continue the main thread.

061 came out of "In a Flash" and went to 023's office.

The lightbrain was still the same rippling, glowing with electroplated luster, tiny streams of data running through it, occasionally colliding with a little spark.

023 sat in front of his light-brain playing the Pac-Man game that 061 had sent him last time, and the room was filled with the chirping sound of little people eating beans.

His graying silver hair was cut short and permed.

061 greeted him, "New haircut?"

023 took a look at him with a vacant eye, "What brings you here at this hour."

061: "The Lord God seeks me."

023: "What did Brainflower ask you?"

061: "......"

The Lord God was indeed a giant brain-shaped creature, and unlike the tangible, unimaginative light-brain that 023 watched over, it had a solidity to it, writhing with light, with synapses and nerves, like the brains of ancient giants being cultivated in a laboratory.

...... certainly does resemble fondue lover's favorite, Brains.

023 fiddled with the game console, "Are you afraid he'll hear you? My office is sixty rooms away from 'In a Flash'. Besides, our initial data contains a privacy concordance and a firewall concordance. Even the Lord God has no right to violate our privacy."

061 said helplessly, "It's certainly fine to say it in front of me. But ever since you mentioned the Brain Flower thing to 009 last time, he's been looking at the Lord God in the wrong way at every meeting."

023 rolled his eyes, "...... What did he call you for?"

061 smiled up slightly, "Good thing. The Lord God inquired about my recent work and said that he would like me to participate in an expansion program for a new type of service project."

023: "Benefits?"

061: "The maximum number of missions performed was reduced to 120."

Only after asking for favors did 023 ask, "Content?"

061 shook his head, "I don't know."

"...... don't know?"

"I haven't signed on yet. The Lord God said he was just forewarning me and would let me know when the program was underway."

"What about the general status of the experiment?"

"The Lord God stated that it wouldn't violate space law and the basic treaties already in place is all."

"120 times, pretty generous treatment." 023 coughed and put down the console, and as he stretched his body and moved his muscles, he asked, seemingly intentionally, "How's it going with Chi Xiaochi now?"

061 intuited 023 that there was something strange about the question, but presumably he was worried that he was too close to his host, and didn't think any deeper.

He objectively commented, "It's a pretty good relationship."

023 responded casually and disinterestedly, "Uh-huh."

061 smiled gently, "Hey, you're obviously the one who asked, why is the reaction so cold."

023: "I'm just asking off the top of my head. What do you want to hear from me?"

061: "Like asking what I came to see you about?"

023 lifted one eyebrow, "What are you doing here with me?"

061 said, "The complete Harry Potter. Please."

A few minutes later, 061 checked the database, "Roger that, thanks."

023 spread his palms flat and said, "Where's my reward."

061 digs around in his arms and tosses a small packet of Chi Xiaochi baked cookies over.

023: "...... Really? You think I'm 009?"

061 said, "It came too soon this time, let's make it up next time."

023 gave a disgruntled grunt and let him off the hook.

Waiting for 061 to walk out, 023 picked up the bag of framed cookies along with the game console and casually placed it on the floor, crossed his legs, sat down in the chair, and moved to lift the thin tabletop, revealing the inner workings of this table.

Inside is a set of interlaced and dense communication lines, densely packed with thousands of intertwined vertical and horizontal, blue light such as the sea, the 023 eyes of the fine data light stream reflected more and more clearly.

He neatly picked out seventy to eighty communication lines that showed "online" status, and plugged them into his skull one by one.

Immediately, a chat channel flashed in front of his eyes, the name of the channel was "Me and 367 big idiots".

[023]: There's good news, do you want to hear it.

[011]: Say.

[182]: Say.

[1999]: Hmm?

[072]: 023, I remember saying many times that you should change your name.

[072]: every time I see that channel name I want to go to your office and beat you to death.

[023]: I didn't start it. Whoever started it is the one you go to.

[089]: Ha ha ha ha.

The channel gags, and in the blink of an eye 023's voice message is topped off and out of sight.

After swiping through a hundred or so messages, someone finally said something reliable.

[139]: I just saw 061 go out of your room.

[139]: So it's something to do with 061?

[139]: Something to do with Chi Xiaochi?

[089]: I guess so. I just saw that 61 was called by the Lord God just now.

[023]: Inside information, he got a nice perk, a chance to get back early. --His mission cap number is down to 120.

[1999]: ......

[221]: ......

[1983]: ......

[131]: Really?! He can go back?!!! Great!

[015]: [fireworks] [fireworks] [fireworks]

[177]: It's still a good thing.

[1112]: Yeah, I thought it was another 023 bluff that ended up in the mouth of a dog.

[023]:1112, no need to beat around the bush if you don't want to down a small movie later.

[1112]: ...... Dad!

[1112]: Dad do you see me kneeling in a standard position.

[023]: Well, it's okay.

[131]: Whitehair, I remember you used to be the least supportive of 061 and Chi Xiaochi.

[023]: That was before, not anymore.

[1999]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, can 200 missions be the same as 120? 061 has been in for twelve years and has never taken a public holiday, and it's only made it to the halfway mark.

[023]: I thought before that Chi Xiaochi wouldn't wait for him, and there was no need for him to go on with false hopes. It's good to just forget about Chi Xiaochi.

[023]: But if he's successful in that program, after bringing Chi Xiaochi, he'll be busy for another four or five years at the most, and he'll be able to go back to his old world line.

[131]: Will Chi Xiaochi choose to go back to his original world line, though?

[131]: The hosts I brought with me all wanted to go back in the beginning, but in the end none of them were willing to go back to their original worlds, and all of them picked a favorite out of the ten mission worlds.

[131]: What if he's like everyone else.

[131]: Also, now that 061 doesn't remember anything, even if he goes back to the original world, does he know who he's going to find?

[131]: We're under a non-disclosure agreement, so we can't tell him anything about Chi Xiaochi, and even the slightest mention of it could be completely blocked.

[139]: ......

[654]: ......

[1999]: ......

[089]: Why are you talking so much when everyone was having a good conversation.

[089]: can someone do the honors and shut this pessimist up.

[1999]: I live next door to 131, I'll go.

023, who was following the situation in the channel with a raised eyebrow, suddenly heard a knock on the door.

It was too late to force the line down, and 023 just fought 061, wide-eyed.

Messy inserted a head of light rope, 023 thick skin, heart steady, calm as usual: "What are you back?"

061 asked him, "Gossiping again."

023 denied, "I'm not that boring."

...... I'm not, I'm not, don't you dare say that.

061 held onto the doorframe and cracked a smile, "Good, not boring. I purposely turned back to tell you that the cookies, if you don't want them, share them with everyone so they don't go to waste."

023 looked to the cookie bag and responded with a squeamish, "Uh-huh."

061 added, "Also, the Lord God has said that that plan is not considered a classified project. But since the plan is still unformed and needs to be tested internally, the quota is also only set for me for the time being."

023 raised his snow-white eyebrows, "What do you mean by that? Am I the kind of person who just chews on people?"

061 laughs, "...... Well ahem, of course you're not. I'm just worried that with a special exception, people's hearts will get over it."

023 coolly stated, "Don't worry. Even if there's only one spot left that can break away from the main god right now, I'm afraid no one will snatch it from you."

...... Anyone know how long you've been waiting.

Even though you don't know who you're waiting for yourself right now, everyone helps you remember your friends after all these years.

061 gave a polite nod, "Thank you."

023 waved his hand, signaling that he had nothing to do and retired from the court.

After 061 actually left, 023 took a look at the channel and found that people were already discussing whether or not they could go and form a group around that rumored Chi Xiaochi.

023 huddled around for a while longer before he closed the comm channel with a sense of satisfaction, grabbed a bag of cookies, and went to hand them out one by one to the system employees at home.

With a snap, the door to Room 1008 closed, leaving only the data within the optical brain to rage and surge, casting a mix of light and dark on the empty desktop.

Gradually, a bulge protruded from the light brain.

The bulge slowly took shape, at first resembling a not-so-smooth sarcoma, and eventually morphing into a human face.

The human face has no mouth or nose, except for unusually distinct eyes and ears.

The entire lightbrain and the room began to distort with a thin, soporific sound.

A ...... light brain, the floor and the surface of the walls, a thousand sarcomas emerged, a thousand human faces with developed eyes and ears, silently watching and peering at what had just happened in the room.

For a moment, the clean and dust-free data staging area became full of ears and blood between the eyes.

If someone were to come through the door at that moment, they would be startled.

Soon, 023 folded back into the room.

He casually pushed the hidden door, and the sarcomatous human face attached to the back of the door moved slowly along with it.

But what came into 023's eyes was the incomparably normal data station, the entire room returned to normal, and the light brain still emitted a warm barge of light, as if the strange scene just now was nothing more than a dream bubble.

And all the images, all the sounds, were transmitted to the Lord God "in a moment", sixty rooms away.

The dark red giant's brain wriggled beneath the towering dome, and a huge datapad was embedded in the walls of "In a Flash".

In days gone by, this datapad would show numerous red and blue data changes, one after the other, like a tidal wave.

But today, the datapad was stuck with just one message from one person.

"Monitoring host data information #1198."

"Host name Chi Xiaochi, gender male, age 26, height 181cm, weight 64kg."

"Current data, favor value 46, remorse value 46, the former on a downward curve, the latter on an upward curve."

The red bar for favorability and the blue bar for remorse are similar to those shown on Chi Xiaochi's personal data disk.

However, in addition to these two data items, there is also a black bar on the data plate of "In a Flash".

When this item was scanned, the androgynous AI mechanical voice steeply raised its volume -

"Reminder, reminder, entropy value anomaly found for host 1198, entropy value anomaly, well below average data. Draw attention to it."

After a few moments of contemplation, a command was issued from the fluctuating and undulating cerebral cortex, "Where is the peak point of entropy generation?"

The system goes through a series of measurements and presents a section of the image on a data plate.

--It was the first time Chi Xiaochi had seen Yang Baihua, and Chi Xiaochi, leaning against the car, was slightly startled to see him.

Just at the sight of that face, Chi Xiaochi's entropy fluctuates significantly.

But since then, the entropy bar belonging to Chi Xiaochi had become a pool of stagnant water, and Yang Baihua's presence in front of his eyes did not cause any more fluctuations.

Having seen the image, the Lord God was silent.

After a long time, he issued a second order.

The command trailed off in a long, careless tone with a hint of unspeakable weirdness, "...... Keep an eye on the entropy changes of this host. If the situation remains unchanged until the second world, increase the difficulty of world two as appropriate; if the unchanged situation continues, prepare to put 061 into the pilot program."