After the countdown reached zero, the public terminal retained only two status lines.
`Answer window closed`
`Final settlement record generating`
Gu Heng did not open his personal results first. He rearranged every page version since Chapter 101.
The first annotation had appeared seventeen seconds before the system prompt.
After the system prompt appeared, the page gained another sentence: "The first person to press it."
Class D's responsibility statement had been cut off after the response portal closed.
The final anonymous message followed the punctuation order of the first annotation.
Yukimura stared at the timeline.
"Can we confirm who edited it now?"
"No."
"Then can we confirm who pressed it?"
"Also no."
Yukimura placed his hand on the edge of the terminal.
"After checking all this, we're left with two things we can't confirm."
Gu Heng lowered his pen tip onto the second timestamp.
"That isn't a conclusion."
"Then what is it?"
"A hypothesis pending verification."
He drew two lines on the page.
One was labeled "system action."
The other was labeled "external explanation."
"I suspect someone first created a narrative of submission, then had the system prompt endorse it."
Gu Heng added a horizontal line beneath "suspect."
"But that sentence cannot go into the facts column yet."
Yukimura glanced at him.
"You're even locking up your own judgment?"
"Judgment can be used. It can't impersonate a record."
Horikita walked over from behind the shared table. Without touching Gu Heng's timeline, she opened the public page instructions first.
Three status lines appeared on the right side of the page.
`Official settlement column: read-only`
`Class D response portal: closed`
`Public annotation layer: retains page versions`
Yukimura enlarged the third line.
"It doesn't say school settlement here."
"Because it isn't a settlement column," Horikita said. "It's merely a place on the public page