“Father said he had gone mad.”

Su Xiaoshu looked at her husband, and the sorrow in her eyes made Mr. Wu’s heart clench painfully.

For Mr. Wu, the affairs of the yamen represented his ambitions, but Su Xiaoshu was his very life. He felt helpless before the sorrow in her eyes — this was the deepest source of his self-reproach.

Su Xiaoshu walked to Mr. Wu’s side and gently wrapped her arms around his waist.

Gentle women always know the right thing to do — for instance, when a man doesn’t know how to comfort her, she lets him know: just hold me, and that will be enough.

Mr. Wu understood her grief. After all, her brother was one of the few family members she had left in this world. After all, he was her brother.

This world is not short of madmen. Some are truly mad; others are merely thought to be mad by everyone else.

Su Xiaoshu’s brother was exactly like that — had been since childhood, even in their father’s eyes. And so from a young age, he was not particularly liked by his parents, though he seemed not to care.

He was a man who lived entirely within his own world — and that description could be taken to its most extreme interpretation.

A man who lives within his own world finds no one else important, not even his own family and closest kin.

When he was six years old, he told his father: “The heavens have an edge.”

His father was delighted at the time, feeling that his son’s gifts were truly extraordinary — to have such vision and such thinking was one in ten thousand.

When he was seven, he told his father: “The sky has an eye.”

Though only a year had passed, his father’s attitude toward him had already shifted considerably. He began to think his son might have been possessed by something sinister.

When he was thirteen, he said: “The world of men is not the world of men. It is a pitch-pot, a game board, an archery target…”

No one could understand what he meant by any of this — whether he was deliberately being profound, or simply raving.

Later he said: “It is a game. When people speak of ‘playing in the world of men,’ it is not that men can play in this world — it is that someone is playing with the world of men as if it were a game.”

He had no familial attachment — not out of defiance. Had he been truly defiant and unfilial, his father might have directly crippled his cultivation when he was still young. He was simply… indifferent.

When he saw his father fall ill, he would merely look on, never asking after him with any warmth. When he saw his younger sister fall down, he would merely look on, never reaching out to help her up.

He had no desire to harm anyone — he simply seemed to feel that none of it had anything to do with him.

If one were to call him unfilial, that would be accurate, but he was never defiant, and he would never do anything outrageous. He truly just didn’t feel that the relationships between people were particularly complex. He even believed that relationships between people were never supposed to exist at all — because those relationships were something the players of the game had assigned to people.

When he turned twenty, he told Su Xiaoshu: “There is a hand in this world.”

Su Xiaoshu was terrified at the time, feeling that her brother’s illness was growing worse. But what she hadn’t expected was that her brother would turn around and walk right out the front door. He said… he was going to find that hand and see what it looked like.

From that moment on, her brother vanished without a trace, and no word was ever heard from him again.

Their father fell gravely ill over this matter, and in his feverish delirium would mutter to himself that he had failed to raise his child properly.

Mr. Wu patted Su Xiaoshu on the shoulder: “A person like him — at the very least, no one would be able to harm him. So don’t worry too much.”

Su Xiaoshu murmured in acknowledgment and rubbed her forehead back and forth against Mr. Wu’s shoulder. “Don’t want to drink medicine… don’t want to drink medicine… don’t want to drink medicine…”

Mr. Wu made a sound of agreement. “Then don’t. I’ll go make you some rock sugar bird’s nest congee.”

“Heh heh…”

Su Xiaoshu broke into a smile. Sorrow, it seemed, was always dissolved by a husband’s tenderness — this was the place where she felt herself most, most, most, most fortunate.

She always forgot that it was she who had taught her husband to be tender.

—

The Western Regions.

In this land of scorching heat and arid dryness, a torrential downpour had, for once, come crashing down — a deluge, so heavy that there was not a single person left on the streets.

Mr. Li’s little tavern enjoyed a rare quiet. He propped open the window, brewed a pot of hot tea, sat down by the window, took out paper and brush, and prepared to write something.

He wrote often. Otherwise, where would all those books of Li Chi’s have come from?

The things Mr. Li wrote were a complete mess. Sometimes when he was daydreaming, he didn’t even know what he’d written, and when he came back to his senses, he might find the paper covered with things like “First, Lü Bu; second, Zhao Yun; third, Dian Wei” — or “A flock of ducks swims beneath the bridge before my door” — or even something about southern girls.

This life was clearly much longer than his previous one, yet this life held so little worth remembering, while the memories of his previous life were inexhaustible.

What was there to remember of this life?

No one was more capable than him — in any respect, no one came close. And so nothing felt particularly interesting.

He raised his brush and wrote down two lines, then stared at the words and began to drift into a daze again.

*A fondness for wealth and women; warm spring, blooming flowers.*

Just then, something in the sound of the rain outside made Mr. Li slightly alert. The sound of rain had been constant, but something different had woven itself into it.

Mr. Li glanced out the window. Far down the street, a man stood in Central Plains clothing — a long robe, holding an umbrella.

Mr. Li’s eyes narrowed slightly. For the vast majority of his wandering through this world, he had been hiding.

He firmly believed that someone like himself — a glitch in the system — could not possibly live out his entire life in comfortable peace. Something would inevitably find him.

And so, having lived as long as he had, Mr. Li had never done anything too outrageous.

He didn’t dare use his knowledge to alter the course of this era. Even the improvements in weaponry he had passed on to Li Chi — he would think back on them and feel regret.

Though those improvements had been only minor refinements upon the existing weapon designs of this era, he still felt they might bring him trouble.

Mr. Li had read many transmigration novels. Every transmigrator would use their knowledge to carve out a grand career for themselves.

But Mr. Li thought that was all nonsense. He believed that keeping a low profile was the only truth.

His one indulgence was women. Sometimes he would use a certain scoundrel’s line of reasoning to justify to himself that he was not, in fact, a scoundrel.

That reasoning being: women are a basic necessity.

This reasoning was sufficiently scoundrel-like — and sufficiently honest.

If Mr. Li had been willing, he could probably have built a cannon, despite having graduated from an agricultural university with a major in agricultural engineering.

Mr. Li’s greatest worry was that living as long as he had, he was bound to eventually cross paths with a protagonist. He firmly believed that when it came to transmigration, the transmigrator absolutely could not be the protagonist.

And so, if he ever did encounter the protagonist, he would likely end up as stepping stone beneath the protagonist’s feet.

If he could hide, he would. If he couldn’t hide, he’d run. Don’t expect someone like Mr. Li to do something like killing the protagonist and standing in his place.

Mr. Li glanced at the man in the long robe with his umbrella, then turned back to take one look at the fiery woman on the bed, still sleeping beneath a blanket, and couldn’t help letting out a soft sigh.

He felt that this was exactly the sort of thing he had always been hiding from — definitely not a person, but rather something more like a tool sent by the system to purge a glitch.

He liked this Western Regions girl. Slender waist, round hips, long legs — and above all, she was the one who had taken the initiative.

This scoundrel made a decision that was not entirely scoundrel-like.

He had no intention of waking the Western Regions girl. So he picked up an umbrella and walked out of the little tavern.

The man across the way watched Mr. Li approach. After a brief silence, he asked his first question — and that alone was enough for Mr. Li to feel his guess had been correct.

The man asked: “Is it you?”

Could there be any further need for proof? This peculiar man in a long robe was here to purge Mr. Li.

In such a rainy scene, Mr. Li’s mind drifted back to *The Matrix*.

And so Mr. Li replied, with full sincerity: “Not your mother, but your father.”

About a quarter of an hour later, inside the small tavern.

Mr. Li looked at the cut on his shoulder — not too severe, just a small gash of blood — yet this was the first time in a very long while that he had been wounded.

Fortunately, the man across from him had been beaten to a swollen pulp.

And so Mr. Li concluded that he had probably guessed wrong this time. This person was not some program, not some tool. He was just a madman.

“You can’t even beat me. So why did you come looking for me?”

Mr. Li pushed a cup of wine across the table.

The man with his blackened, swollen face sat there, yet somehow his bearing had not been entirely defeated.

“I only wanted to see where the hand in this world truly was — what it looked like, what it would do. I simply hadn’t imagined… that this hand would be hiding in this tiny corner of the Western Regions, selling wine.”

Mr. Li sighed. “Are you unwell? Did you have a fever as a child?”

The man with the blackened, swollen face actually answered in all seriousness: “I did. It was precisely because that illness was rather severe, and after I recovered…”

He pointed to his own head. “More things appeared in here.”

Mr. Li: “A brain tumor?”

The man stared at him with a look of complete bewilderment.

Mr. Li sighed again — bored and resigned — and pointed at the wine cup. “Drink it while it’s warm.”

The man took a sip and wrinkled his brow. “Why are you drinking swill?”

Mr. Li: “Well, damn — finally, someone with taste.”

He asked: “What is your name?”

The man answered: “My name is Su Ruye.”

Mr. Li calculated based on his life experience: a person with a name like that, even if not a protagonist, would at least be a major supporting character. Based on another kind of experience, Mr. Li felt he should keep his distance.

That experience being: stay away from people with surnames like Ye, Su, or Chen — especially if their names carry even a hint of flair.

“Why did you come looking for me?”

Mr. Li was still curious. If this person was not some kind of program, then why had he been searching for so long?

Su Ruye said with great seriousness: “I have always felt that this world is a giant game box…”

The moment those words left his mouth, Mr. Li’s eyes snapped wide open. “Where the hell did you come from?! What year?! Post-80s? Post-90s?!”

Su Ruye’s expression was confused. Deeply confused.

Mr. Li sighed again. Looking at Su Ruye’s face, he knew he had been overthinking things once more.

Su Ruye said: “The world may be a pitch-pot, a game board, an archery target, or perhaps…”

Mr. Li: “Or perhaps a PS5.”

Su Ruye: “What is that?”

Mr. Li: “Just keep going with what you were saying.”

Su Ruye said: “I always feel there is something intervening, or perhaps directing things. When I gaze up at the night sky, I feel as though the heavens have a right eye.”

He raised his hand and pointed upward. “Could the sky be a piece of cloth? The stars, clouds, and rain — could they be things that people have painted onto that cloth, or conjured into being?”

Mr. Li had thought about this too. He really had. He suspected that the sky was just a giant LCD screen.

“I have always wanted to find where the loophole in this world is. There must be a loophole. And so I have kept searching, traveling to many places. I began by thinking that the most powerful people in this world were, in fact, the loophole itself.”

Su Ruye said: “So I drew close to those with the greatest power. I once drew close to the Emperor of Dachu — and found that he was not it. Then I drew close to the Shanhe Seal — and found that they were not it either.”

Su Ruye looked at Mr. Li. “Right now, you seem the most likely. But not entirely.”

Mr. Li had never encountered a madman quite like this. He even found it somewhat entertaining — in a certain sense, a madman like this was the closest thing to a kindred spirit he had ever found.

And so Mr. Li smiled and asked: “Where does the ‘not entirely’ come from?”

Su Ruye considered for a moment, then answered: “Too low-level.”

Mr. Li: “…”

For the first time, someone had called him low. And said it to his face, no less.

Mr. Li pursed his lips and swept a finger around his little tavern. “What’s low-level about it?”

Su Ruye also looked around, and in that same plain, earnest tone replied: “All of it is low-level. Except for the one on the bed.”

Mr. Li: “Damn…”

An hour later, Su Ruye rose to his feet. “You are not it. You are merely very strong. And so I must be going.”

Mr. Li was struck by surprise again. This man he had beaten to a pulp was actually saying he was merely “very strong.”

Su Ruye raised his umbrella and walked out of the little tavern.

After a brief silence, Mr. Li offered a word of advice: “Go back to the Central Plains. Do something meaningful.”

Su Ruye stopped in his tracks and turned back. “What is meaningful?”

Mr. Li thought it over and replied: “Since you believe there is something trying to manipulate this world, and you cannot find what is wrong, then go find what is right. Use your ability to protect what is right, to prevent wrong things from happening — would that not be far simpler than searching for what is wrong?”

Su Ruye’s expression visibly shifted. After a long moment, he bowed toward Mr. Li. “My thanks.”

Then, unable to help himself, he asked one more question: “With such ability, why does the gentleman not go and do what is right himself?”

Mr. Li turned back to glance at the Western Regions girl on the bed, one long leg stretching out from beneath the blanket, and smiled. “How much more right would I need to be… I am already quite right enough.”

Su Ruye: “The gentleman’s strength is unrivaled under the heavens. You ought to be doing greater things, rather than sinking into the pleasures of women…”

Mr. Li turned and shut the door. “I advise you to mind your own business.”

—