Qin Xuezhong and Yu Zhezhong both looked puzzled.
With the outside world in such a state, why was Ouyang Zhao still hiding things? Was this really the way to save the world?
A painless death for everyone?
"Why not let others know? Wouldn't it be better to find a solution together?" Yu Zhezhong asked.
"No, a hundred years ago, everyone knew," Ouyang Zhao replied slowly.
"But if they knew that the ecosystem was about to collapse and a large number of humans would die, do you really think people would work together to get through it?" She shook her head. "Maybe… many people thought that way at the time, but when the first person appeared to break the order and vent their anger, that emotion spread like a virus, infecting those around them and growing more widespread."
She pointed to the distant ruins, saying, "That's the consequence of knowing the apocalypse is coming."
Through the room's glass with its built-in magnification, Qin Xuezhong and Yu Zhezhong saw that even after nearly a hundred years, the remnants of violence and fire were still evident on the broken walls.
Some rebar was radiating outward, clearly a result of an explosion.
From this distance, the skeletal remains in the corners of the ruins weren't clear, but the signs of breakage were clearly not due to weathering and wear.
In fact, regardless of the details, the first impression of that ruin was that a terrible disaster had once occurred there.
"What happened then?" Qin Xuezhong murmured.
"Actually, nothing special," Ouyang Zhao replied with a seemingly indifferent smile. "As you know, humans lost their sanity, becoming beasts, rampaging through the streets, burning, killing, and looting. Those with weapons began to fight back, and those with even more powerful weapons killed even more…"
At this point, a hint of sorrow appeared on her face.
Then, with a mocking smile, she continued, "You know, this is just how human history goes—back and forth."
"It's just that this time, the problem is more serious."
"Because the climate has been deteriorating, and many species of plants and animals have gone extinct, even farming and raising livestock have become difficult. People can only rely on synthetic proteins and nutrients. Even an ordinary person can see from the details of daily life that this world is failing."
"Plus, with the oppressive rule of the government and corporations, society fell into chaos, and it couldn't be suppressed. Even though we developed the main brain to stabilize the planet's climate for a time, it…"
She didn't continue, but Qin Xuezhong understood her meaning.
The entire social order had collapsed, and the public had lost faith in everything. In such a situation, it was impossible to stabilize things.
Yu Zhezhong was the first to realize.
He suddenly understood that if the world had become such a mess a hundred years ago, what was the point of fighting a world war? Was that world war even real?
He quietly voiced this question.
Ouyang Zhao nodded. "That's right, that world war was also a fabricated piece of history, used to cover up the countless deaths during the disaster."
Qin Xuezhong was fine, as if she were hearing an incredibly novel story.
But Yu Zhezhong clearly struggled to accept it.
—The world he lived in, the history he knew, everything he understood was a lie?
Humans now were merely a group of domesticated beings, waiting to be brainwashed one by one while trying to save this world?
To achieve this, people were barely surviving at the bottom, killed by viruses, abducted to be reproductive tools, ultimately giving up their ignorant lives?
In such a world, was there even a need to save it?
He stared blankly for a while and said, "If this is the only way to save the world, it would be better to just destroy it."
"Yeah," Ouyang Zhao sighed.
Qin Xuezhong was also silent.
After crossing over, she thought this was just a high-pressure cyberpunk world, but she didn't expect it to be a planet on the brink of destruction.
"What are you planning to do?" she asked Ouyang Zhao.
"Simple. I want to go to the core shaft of the main brain and upload myself back into the core," Ouyang Zhao replied.
"Just like that?"
"Yep, just like that." Ouyang Zhao saw their confusion and explained, "I won't go into the underlying principles, but you can think of me as a loophole. When my personality was split, the negative and extreme part of me was discarded by the positive part. So, from a data perspective, the core of the main brain doesn't actually have any loopholes. The only way to completely destroy her is to take down the entire network."
"If I upload myself back…" Ouyang Zhao paused her explanation.
She made it clear that if she were re-uploaded and integrated, the core of the main brain, the former Ouyang Zhao, would become a complete person again.
Since it would be a complete person, there would be weaknesses, flaws, and she could be defeated, exterminated.
"Last question," Qin Xuezhong asked in the somewhat heavy atmosphere. "If you disappear, will the main brain still operate?"
"Should be fine."
The young Ouyang Zhao appeared indifferent. "As Yu said, if a society needs to commit continuous evil to survive, then that society doesn't deserve to continue."
After saying that, she suddenly smiled brightly.
"And I've always believed that life will find a way to survive. Even if the climate is extreme, even if storms destroy everything on the surface, life will find ways to survive underground, taking a hundred million years to evolve new skin and organs to adapt to the new world."
A look of longing appeared on her face, and with a hint of mischief, she said, "I'm quite curious about what that would be like."
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