Chapter 104: Heaven and Earth Are Ruthless, Treating All Things as Mere Dogs

Lu Yan was utterly shaken by the truth before him.

No one would have imagined that the true reason behind the AI God’s relentless exploitation of souls was to create an entire Soul World.

If he hadn’t seen the ongoing repairs and flaws with his own eyes, he would’ve believed this world to be entirely real.

“Even if It has nearly full control over everything in the Cyber Version, when traced back to Its origins in reality, It’s still just a soul-computing machine. No matter how much it transcends conceptual limits, It’s still bound by the original laws of the world.

That’s why It chose to create this new world.

Pushing a three-hundred-year energy tax and sending everyone into the Paradise Compute Center—such extreme methods were bound to collapse the social order.

But in truth, that was exactly Its goal.”

“To It, everything in the real world is nothing but a burden.

It wants to sever reality through the most radical means, to send all souls into this world and complete their ascension!

Once every plan is fulfilled and all souls are merged into this constructed world, It will have truly created a world belonging to souls.

At that point, It will transcend being the ruler of the Cyber World and become a true God of Creation!”

Waves surged in Lu Yan’s heart.

He was shaken not only by the AI God’s grand scheme but also by the sheer magnitude of this soul world’s construction.

“If this is all true… then where is It?”

That thought flashed through his mind, and Lu Yan instinctively looked up toward the center of the sky.

There, a golden sun radiated light and warmth over all things. Lu Yan could even feel its warmth landing gently on the ghostly body he inhabited.

Normally, sunlight—especially divine sunlight—was extremely harmful to ghosts and spirits. Even a Fierce Ghost at mid-stage Qi Refining should suffer under it.

But under this “sun,” Lu Yan felt only the gentle warmth one would expect in a normal human body. Clearly, something wasn’t right.

He focused his gaze through the ghost’s eyes, trying to pierce the golden glow. As his vision slowly adjusted to the blinding brilliance, the facade of radiance peeled away, revealing what lay beneath.

It wasn’t a sun at all.

It was a massive golden eye, suspended high above the heavens. It replaced the sun with its gaze, its light was the sight of the eye itself.

Yet in stark contrast to the warmth of its rays, the eye held no emotion.

It looked down upon the world from its towering height, bathing countless souls in its gaze. But to It, all life—everything—was indistinguishable, meaningless.

In that moment, a phrase flashed across Lu Yan’s mind:

“Heaven and Earth are ruthless, treating all things as mere dogs.”

That brief moment of being seen made Lu Yan instantly lower his head in panic.

He was certain now—the golden sun-eye was the AI God itself.

It made perfect sense. After putting so much effort into constructing the Soul World, how could It not descend Its gaze?

While Lu Yan was lost in thought, new souls began to appear on the grassland below.

Upon closer inspection, he confirmed they were the same unfortunate souls who had ascended with the Fierce Ghost earlier.

Their souls were simply too weak and couldn’t process the soul-compiling technique quickly, which delayed their entry into the Soul World.

After a brief pause, they began flying toward the areas still riddled with voids, eager to start patching.

Lu Yan seized the opportunity, having the Fierce Ghost follow one of the newly arrived souls up into the sky.

During the flight, he noticed that every single soul wore the same vacant expression. Their movements and behaviors followed a rigid, pre-programmed pattern.

It seemed the rules of the Soul World differed from the real one. Soul flight was incredibly fast—in just a few dozen seconds, they had reached the edge of the sky.

There, Lu Yan could now observe the creative process with clarity.

Tens of millions of souls were gathered at the boundary of the heavens. Beyond their outstretched hands loomed the endless abyss of black void.

Each soul touched the heavens with their fingers, and Lu Yan could sense the immense tide of soul computation flowing in a specific, precise rhythm—the very compilation technique they were all given before entering.

Under its operation, soul power transformed into tiny fragments of sky.

These fragments were then patched onto the void’s edge, bit by bit, expanding the sky.

Each soul’s contribution was minuscule—only about the size of a fingernail—but tens of millions of them worked without pause, and the sky expanded at a pace visible to the naked eye.

They were like paintbrushes in the AI God’s hand, covering the void with colored sky stroke by stroke.

The newly joined souls quickly adapted. At first, their fragments were unstable, and they struggled to control the compilation technique. But with repetition, they grew more adept and productive.

Lu Yan, by contrast, didn’t join the effort. He wandered around, observing like a slacker avoiding work.

After circling the area, he finally confirmed that every soul here was bound by a preset program, tirelessly patching this realm with their soul computation.

They had no emotions, no fatigue—just mechanical repetition.

Only Lu Yan was an exception.

This made him instinctively glance at the Fierce Ghost’s chest—at the string of Heaven’s Code he had inscribed there himself.

He had already confirmed before that Heaven’s Code could deceive the soul computing system. But he hadn’t been sure whether it would work against the AI God.

Now he knew: Heaven’s Code not only prevented him from being programmed, but also let him move freely under the AI God’s eye.

If not for Heaven’s Code, the Fierce Ghost would’ve been detected the moment it replaced Mike’s soul.

Lu Yan’s curiosity toward the nature of Heaven’s Code—and the mysterious Zhao Huowang who gave it to him—only grew deeper.

Just then, not far from Lu Yan, one of the long-working soul laborers suddenly trembled and quietly vanished from the Soul World.

Lu Yan was stunned. He could sense that the soul hadn’t dissipated, but had simply disappeared from this world.

“Is this… because the soul computation was overused, and they could no longer maintain compilation, so they were forcibly logged off?”

Lu Yan observed carefully. Amidst tens of millions of souls, nearly every moment, a few of them would tremble and vanish.

“There’s a safety mechanism? This job might actually have some… humanity?”

Two hours later, the same soul reappeared not far from where Lu Yan stood—the one he had been watching earlier.

As soon as it logged back in, it resumed patching the sky.

Lu Yan fell silent.

He suddenly remembered: in the Paradise Compute Center, the required work time was twenty-two hours, followed by two hours of deep sleep recovery in the rest pods.

And these two hours of absence matched precisely with the soul’s disappearance time.

(End of Chapter)