World Administrator

At 11:25 PM, after bidding his wife Galina goodnight, Lin Li went alone to the lawn below the villa. His body, having undergone symbiosis with Abu, granted his brain a more efficient sleep cycle; now, he only needed two hours of rest each day to eliminate all fatigue.

However, reading the emotions of tens of thousands of people in Times Square in such rapid succession had left him feeling a long-lost sense of exhaustion. These chaotic thoughts echoed endlessly in his mind, dragging him out of his state of perpetual energy and mental clarity, reverting him back into an ordinary human.

At this moment, he could no longer construct a three-dimensional map of his surroundings in his mind, which filled him with an unbearable sense of irritability. Having experienced that superhuman sensory perception and control, this ordinary body felt like a clumsy, decrepit, century-old piece of junk computer.

Just then, the smartwatch on his wrist suddenly emitted the voice of a child: "Dump the memories of others that you can't handle onto that mascot; it's about time that guy fulfilled its duties."

The irritability on Lin Li's face froze instantly. He followed the voice's instructions and funneled the chaotic, conflicting memories of those tens of thousands of people into Abu. To his surprise, the creature, now reduced to a mere mascot, accepted them all without the slightest strain.

His expression returned to calm as he carefully recalled the memories in his mind. During the transfer, the chaotic memories of those tens of thousands of people, laden with their personal emotions, had been compressed into abstract textual descriptions. All the complex physical sensations had been offloaded to Abu, leaving behind only emotionless, summarized text in his brain.

If the previous Lin Li had been empathizing with those tens of thousands of people, he was now merely reading a book recording their emotional expressions; the difference in information volume between the two was several orders of magnitude.

"Hoo." Exhaling softly, Lin Li, having regained his composure, finally detached himself from the emotional entanglement. His brain began to operate at high speed, and in an instant, he understood who the owner of that voice was. Although the tone was different, there was no doubt it was that person.

"Hello, Abu's former master. It has been a month since we last met."

The smartwatch projected a light screen. In the 3D holographic image was a five or six-year-old boy whose hundreds of thousands of strands of hair twisted and extended outward, seemingly connecting to some objects. In front of him, a fat orange cat was sleeping on its back.

Li Heng, in his child form, greeted Lin Li cheerfully: "Hello there. You really are an impressive guy, being able to withstand the emotional memories of tens of thousands of people without going insane. You truly are the man I set my sights on; I think you're even more formidable than I was when I first mutated."

Lin Li raised his eyebrows slightly. In his conjectures, this person should have been someone steady, calm, or perhaps extremely insane, possessing a grand perspective—someone with a psychological age between twenty and forty.

The appearance before him was completely inconsistent with his profile. Yet, given the other party possessed incomprehensible power and technology, there was no need for him to put on an act. Or perhaps, this was just the other party's twisted sense of humor?

Seeing Lin Li's expression, Li Heng laughed: "Are you wondering why I'm a child? Hehe, guess for yourself. I won't tell you."

The next second, the child's mischievous expression in the projection shifted into the steady smile of an adult. This contrast felt familiar to Lin Li; it was the exact same smile he had displayed as a child.

The child-like Li Heng explained: "You've already experienced the impact of tens of thousands of emotional memories crashing into your mind. As for me, I receive a massive amount of information through the network every day. To convert it into memories that belong to me, I have split my consciousness into 8,078 parts."

Why was Li Heng's daily intake limit only 4%? Because exceeding that threshold of information would cause his sense of self to be overwritten by the incoming external data, eventually turning him into a chaotic, disordered monster.

A person's sense of self is not immutable. Every day, every minute, every second, humans are constantly perceiving the world and receiving new knowledge. A twenty-year-old adult will think their fifteen-year-old self was a naive idiot; at forty, they will think their twenty-year-old self was an arrogant fool; and at sixty, they will pine for the carefree days of their youth.

This change in mindset, occurring alongside the growth and aging of the physical body, seems irrepressible. But for Li Heng, this is not a problem—he can have it all.

The frail bodies of ordinary people prevent them from retaining all their memories. As they forget the past, their so-called memories become vastly different from their actual experiences due to the distortion and processing of the brain.

But for Li Heng, he can clearly remember every moment of his past. He can empathize with his former selves at any time. The five-year-old Li Heng is him, the ten-year-old Li Heng is him, and the twenty-year-old is also him.

He separated his self from every day starting from the age of five, eventually forming 8,078 distinct consciousnesses, and these consciousnesses, after receiving vast amounts of information from the network, transformed into even more diverse selves.

For an ordinary person, a forty-year-old middle-aged man can no longer find the joy in toys he had at five, nor the burning passion he felt at fifteen.

However, Li Heng can simultaneously love those childish toys and the dry, tedious financial news. He can love both sweet zongzi and savory zongzi. The contradictions that force ordinary people to choose no longer exist for him.

Li Heng raised his right hand. The skin and flesh on the back of his hand squirmed and deformed, turning into a small Hummingbird. This Hummingbird spoke to Lin Li in a human voice: "I can be a child, or an adult. I can be a man, a woman, asexual, or intersex—these are all merely superficial manifestations of flesh accumulated by cells. And right now, I am a Hummingbird."

Lin Li pondered the words of the creature before him. This life form had already transcended the category of conventional intelligent beings. Even he, a superhuman after symbiosis, was far from reaching this level. At the very least, he could not be both an adult and a child simultaneously; he still retained a linear human way of thinking.

However, he was not shocked by this startling revelation. Instead, he asked another question: "Were the things I saw and heard after my symbiosis with Abu guided by you?"

In the past, Lin Li had assumed this was a scientist or an ambitious person controlling super-biological technology, so he hadn't considered this. But after witnessing the other party's unfathomable life form, he began to doubt his experiences over the past month.

If his foster parents could show him genuine kindness, how could it be that after he gained the ability to read hearts, he encountered nothing but hypocritical scum and bastards?

The people in Times Square were also strange; they were almost all from the elite class. Now, detached from the interference of those emotions, he discovered the trickery behind it.

The true targets of these inflammatory slogans and ideologies should have been the lower and middle-class people with lower cognitive levels. Most of them are driven by their emotions, guided in their preferences and desires by the slogans of the elite. How could Times Square be filled entirely with hypocritical, ambitious people?

The Hummingbird raised its wing to cover its eyes, and the child-like Li Heng sighed helplessly: "Can't you just pretend you don't know? It makes my schemes look so cheap. Aren't you afraid I'll get embarrassed and angry enough to finish you off?"

Just as Lin Li suspected, the hearts he saw had been carefully screened. For instance, the bald man who fought him at the bar had been guided there by Li Heng. Such a muscle-brained idiot, obsessed with women, would naturally pick a fight upon seeing Lin Li flirting with girls.

As for Galina, she was indeed a club girl who hung out there every day. However, her scumbag boyfriend had just made a fortune a few days prior and had run off elsewhere, leaving her behind. The depressed Galina had met the better Lin Li, and her empty heart was naturally filled.

Similarly, the kind-hearted staff at the orphanage had left due to internal family issues, which was why the bullying among the children had gone unnoticed.

As for Times Square, most of the residents who were supposed to attend the rally had been waylaid by trivial matters that day, turning the area into a gathering place for the elite.

Li Heng said: "I did indeed guide the formation of your self, but the hearts you saw were real. Besides, even if you know it was me who guided you, so what? You would still loathe those malicious hearts."

Lin Li nodded. Emotions are just that—they influence a person's logical judgment. He understood clearly that if he had only encountered kindness, he would be full of love for the world, perhaps becoming a young philanthropist dedicated to charity for the rest of his life.

Unfortunately, there were no "ifs." After seeing through all that malice, he felt nothing but disgust for these people.

Lin Li said calmly: "Besides, what is true free will anyway? Just like the elite class that controls knowledge and media, this world is actually influenced by the will of a few strong individuals affecting the will of the majority. I am merely being guided by some even more powerful will."

The Hummingbird on Li Heng's hand flapped its two small wings in applause and said: "Exactly. So-called free will is limited by the channels through which a person receives information. The complex and chaotic information makes people see only a limited world."

Whether it was falling into an information cocoon to avoid painful thinking or having one's thoughts guided by processed media information, pure free will does not exist.

From the beginning of their transaction, Li Heng had never said how he would make Lin Li feel emotions. And now, this once-unfeeling person had developed feelings—specifically, a loathing for the existing society.

A large block of detailed data appeared on the light screen. The Hummingbird extended an invitation: "Become an administrator of the virtual world. The stage has already been set. You can experience the thoughts and feelings of millions in the virtual world, and you can build the ideal world of your dreams there to your heart's content."

Lin Li looked at the grand plan. This virtual world was far from the noise and strife of the mortal realm; life within it could possess virtually endless resources, and he would become the administrator of this world—the only god within it.

He countered: "No matter how real it is, all of this is ultimately fake. Abandoning the body to leave only the brain, and then enjoying life in a virtual world—would they really be willing?"

Li Heng chuckled and shook his head, saying: "What is real and what is fake? The electrical signals their brains receive are identical to what they feel through their real hands and feet. For individuals with limited lifespans, when death arrives, all reality turns into falsehood. In the void of darkness, nothing will exist."

"In the real world, they work ten hours a day, live in old, cramped houses, watch the wealthy enjoy the wealth squeezed from them, and squander it on hundreds of beautiful women. Yet they themselves can only accumulate a body full of ailments through endless, repetitive labor, finally dying in despair and pain at the age of forty or fifty."

"But in the virtual world, everyone can have an entire building to live in. They can possess superpowers that don't exist in the real world and have strong bodies that will never be injured, sick, or aged. Gold and diamonds are worthless, and handsome, beautiful intelligent NPCs serve them wholeheartedly, just like real people."

"No need to worry about work, no need to fret over illness, living carefree until the individual brain's lifespan limit of one hundred and fifty years."

"Falsehood and reality—does it really matter?"