Pretending To Be A Boss

Zhong Yao did not receive the good news about Tang Xian as she had hoped, instead, she was met with endless despair.

What walked back from the ruins looked like Tang Xian, but it only took Zhong Yao a few seconds to see from those indifferent eyes that this was not Tang Xian.

It was the Master of Eden.

When the Master of Eden returned, Zhong Yao guessed that Tang Xian might have already been lost in the ruins of Eden.

About this, the Master of Eden did not give Zhong Yao an answer.

It continued just as before, occasionally flipping through books in the sanctuary and sometimes speaking in enigmatic phrases.

Clearly, the Master of Eden knew everything Zhong Yao and Tang Xian did, but it did not do anything to Zhong Yao.

They seemed, as they had for decades, just a pair of master and apprentice who didn't talk much.

In the eyes of the Master of Eden, the plan of Tang Xian and Zhong Yao was just a trivial episode.

After returning to the sanctuary, the thing the Master of Eden did most was gaze at the sky.

The constellations here were actually the same as in the mining area and the human world.

But as the Master of Eden looked at the starry sky, it seemed entranced.

Stars changed.

In the eyes of the Master of Eden, there seemed to be a corresponding set of stars.

This set of stars was also shifting.

In the center of the sanctuary, where the Master of Eden usually read books, it suddenly lowered its head and muttered to itself:

"Still alive, indeed!"

When the Master of Eden uttered these words, Zhong Yao heard them too. She finally couldn't hold back and broke the silence of the past days:

"Teacher, where exactly has my child gone?"

"I appear before you in this form, and you still can't guess?" The Master of Eden looked at Zhong Yao as if looking at an infant.

Its smile always seemed profound and mysterious:

"Your child is merely a tool, and he has now fulfilled his mission."

These words seemed to suggest that Tang Xian was dead, causing Zhong Yao to stagger back two steps.

"So the talk of saving humanity, you've always been lying to me!"

"Didn't you never truly believe it in your heart?"

The stars in the eyes of the Master of Eden were constantly changing.

Zhong Yao only felt that the breath of life on the Master of Eden was becoming increasingly faint.

Completely different from the past sensation of the god of life.

"Are you resenting me, thinking I killed your child?"

"Yes!"

"You should be grateful to me." The Master of Eden's voice was indistinct.

"Why should I be grateful to you? I've learned a lot here, so I respect you with the title of teacher, but what is the use of this knowledge if it cannot be brought back to the human world? I've been trapped here, and the time I've experienced spans decades. I miss my loved ones and my child, I want to go back! But how am I supposed to return? For the sake of saving me, my child's fate is now unknown, and you want me to be grateful to you? How am I to be grateful to you!!"

Zhong Yao howled hysterically, as if venting all the repression of the past decades.

Yet the Master of Eden calmly countered:

"The Judges are hostile towards humanity. For hundreds of years, humanity's pioneers have fought in the mines, and how many have died? It was the Judges who pushed humanity to the brink and ushered in the Pyramid Era, an event in history known as the calamity that caused the fracture of civilization and the disappearance of history. This too is the doing of the Judges."

"And for centuries, the ones who have kept humanity penned in like livestock are the Enforcers. Countless inhumane experiments, countless struggles of blood and tears, countless injustices and evils have continued to take root in the two hundred pyramids, and even now, as humans have moved to Baichuan City, these ingrained concepts cannot be erased,"

The starry eyes of the Master of Eden looked at Zhong Yao, as if it were a compassionate deity from the galaxy's heights.

"It was I who defeated the Judges. I liberated the Myriad Beasts, I saved the Myriad Beasts. And as for defeating the Enforcers, the Enforcers have created the Judgment Knights in the human world. How many have become crafting materials without understanding? Without me, what would have become of the human world and the Myriad Beasts Realm?"

Zhong Yao retorted angrily:

"These are things Tang Xian and his friends have been doing! It has nothing to do with you!"

"Really? If I hadn't provided you with help, would Tang Xian have come this far?"

"But it is also because of you! That today's situation exists. If it weren't for your scheming to replace the current world, where would the myriad calamities of the human world be?"

Zhong Yao did not back down.

As Tang Xian said, the cruellest thing in the world is to let people believe there is hope when there shouldn't be.

Now that hope had shattered, Zhong Yao's last reverence for the Master of Eden finally disappeared.

The Master of Eden said:

"Foolishness! What I have done is to let each of you attain happiness. There is no true fairness in the world; if in a contest only the winner can survive, then there will inevitably be the unfortunate ones. You humans often say a phrase to mock those who think they're above others—the world doesn't revolve around you. This phrase indicates the narrowness of the previous world."

"It cannot provide absolute fairness to everyone because the divine way is merciless; it is utterly devoid of consciousness. The justice and injustice of the world, the happiness and misfortune of people and things, hold no meaning for it. Such a world, in the end, is a world where the strong eat the weak."

The Master of Eden aligned its fingers as if calculating something happening within a certain star.

In a distant block, there appeared a variable surprising enough to it.

But the Master of Eden's expression did not change.

"I have indeed underestimated you two. I didn't expect you would team up."

These words the Master of Eden did not vocalize. It continued to speak of its grand plan with a god-like, hollow tone.

"In my world, everyone is the center of the world because I will give them individual worlds. This world will be divided by me into countless portions, and I will control all emotions, memories, and consciousness. What kind of dreams you want, how to achieve them, how much good and bad you encounter each day, I, as the world itself, will give you fair judgment."

"This is an absolutely ordered, absolutely happy world. No one will be special, yet no one will be humble. In such an absolutely fair world, humanity will no longer initiate wars unnecessarily, there will be no hostility and noise, and you will be the king of your own world, with all your needs fulfilled."

Seeing the somewhat pleased expression of the Master of Eden, Zhong Yao only felt a chill.

If someone's dreams, the people they meet each day, the amount of emotional fluctuation they experience, the happiness and sadness they receive are all predetermined... and this arrangement is not applied to just one person, but to everyone in this world, how terrifying would that be?

Seeing Zhong Yao's fearful expression, the Master of Eden shook its head and said:

"Precisely because you cannot understand, you need my assistance. Presently, the only thing hindering me is your child."

"Tang Xian is still alive?" Zhong Yao exclaimed.

"Indeed, he has returned to life in a way I did not anticipate and has become quite troublesome."

The Master of Eden looked at the starry sky, where there were seventeen million small worlds. Their arrangement was irregular, yet in the eyes of the Master of Eden, it was a chessboard.

A game between heaven and earth.

"Where is he now?" Zhong Yao asked.

"He is on the other side of the board."

Several stars in the sky suddenly vanished.

The Master of Eden's expression turned somewhat unpleasant.

Previously, Tang Xian had clashed with the Master of Eden, resulting in a crushing defeat.

And this time, it was Tang Xian's second confrontation with the Master of Eden.

This encounter had several phases; this was the first.

They were not competing in combat, nor in tactics, but purely in—computational ability.

Tang Xian was sensed dispatching a mechanical army continuously into other worlds. This was Tang Xian's offensive.

He intended to leverage this mechanical army to find the path leading to the sanctuary among these seventeen million worlds!

And to ultimately let these seventeen million worlds collapse completely!