The speed at which order collapsed was far beyond imagination, and the authorities simply had no time to react.
Even when they did, it was useless.
Police stations were overwhelmed with calls, but there weren't enough officers to respond. Even those who did go out were affected by the contamination; some drove off with their patrol cars halfway through their shifts, while others joined in the crimes once they reached the scene.
The military was called in, but soldiers are only human, and their hearts harbored the same evils that had been suppressed by rules for far too long.
Yue Shi stood on the rooftop, admiring the beautiful chaos.
“Does it look good?” Ghost’s voice drifted out from his collar.
“It does,” Yue Shi replied. The corners of his mouth turned up, and a pure, unadulterated joy sparkled in his eyes.
“The special rules of this world are built upon morality, and the essence of morality is simply what the majority believes to be good or evil. If the majority stops believing, then morality dies.”
“So you contaminated their hearts.”
“Exactly. I didn’t need to destroy the special rule itself; I only needed to make people lose their sense of morality. Look at them—the numbers are still above their heads, but they’ve stopped looking at them. The rule remains, but morality is dead.”
Ghost was silent for a few seconds. “You really are a bastard.”
Yue Shi smiled. “Thank you for the compliment.”
At that moment, everything suddenly came to a standstill, as if someone had pressed a pause button.
On the streets, the people who had been running, looting, and crying were all frozen in place, maintaining their original postures but remaining perfectly still.
It wasn't just the people; matter itself had stopped moving. The entire world fell into a state of stasis.
Yue Shi looked around; he could still move.
He stood up, walked to the edge of the rooftop, and looked down.
The frozen crowd looked like a collection of lifelike sculptures, devoid of breath.
“What’s going on? Ghost?”
Ghost seemed to be frozen as well, offering no response.
Yue Shi sighed and scanned his surroundings.
He saw a little girl.
She stood on the other side of the rooftop, less than ten meters away. She looked about seven or eight years old, wearing a white dress. Her face was round and her eyes were large, and she was currently glaring at him with her cheeks puffed out like an angry pufferfish.
A long string of numbers hovered above her head, dense and winding around several times like a glowing scarf wrapped around her.
Yue Shi squinted for a few seconds but couldn't even count how many digits there were.
“Why are you destroying my world!” the little girl questioned in a sharp voice.
“Your world?” Yue Shi countered. He immediately guessed that this girl might be the owner of this 'room,' but he feigned ignorance.
The little girl paused, frowning. “Do you really have no idea where you are right now?”
Yue Shi nodded.
The little girl’s eyes widened even further. “Who exactly are you? Where did you come from?”
She looked Yue Shi up and down, her gaze moving from his face to his clothes before returning to his face. “You don’t look like some scrawny rookie, so how can you know nothing?”
Yue Shi thought for a moment and decided to test her. “I come from the Jinlong Continent. After entering a maritime tower ship called the Bewitching Beauty Painting Workshop, I inexplicably ended up here.”
The little girl had a sudden realization. “Oh, so you’re from the outside.”
Seeing her reaction, Yue Shi felt more confident. This girl seemed to know a lot.
“From the outside? What’s the difference between here and the outside? What exactly is the Bewitching Beauty Painting Workshop? Why is it... so strange after entering?”
The little girl waved her hand impatiently. “The Bewitching Beauty Painting Workshop is just a compressed package.”
Yue Shi was stunned. “A compressed package?”
“Yes.” The little girl used her fingers to trace a square frame in the air. “Except it doesn’t compress files; it compresses worlds. Countless worlds are compressed together and packed into this one archive.”
Yue Shi was shocked. “Compressing worlds? Who did that?”
“How should I know?” the little girl snapped.
“The entity that did it might be long dead. After all, this compressed package has suffered serious damage and leaks. People from the outside can get in, and those inside can get out.”
Yue Shi fell into deep thought. A compressed package, countless worlds packed together, damage, leaks, outsiders entering, insiders leaving...
He pieced these fragments of information together in his mind, forming a blurry outline. But the outline was too vast for him to see the whole picture yet.
He wanted to ask more, but the little girl was already out of patience. Her hair bristled as she stomped her foot. “You’ve made a total mess of my world! In my capacity as the Master of this Realm, I command you to leave at once!”
As soon as she spoke, several vortices appeared around him.
Yue Shi was all too familiar with these vortices. Before being pulled in, he managed to squeeze in one last question: “Wait, did you create the Good Person Card scoring rules for this world?”
The little girl ignored him completely.
A force surged from the vortex, enveloping Yue Shi and his pet.
The vortices closed, and they all vanished.
Silence returned to the rooftop.
The frozen world remained in stasis, the motionless people scattered like forgotten props across the city.
The little girl stood there, staring at the spot where Yue Shi had disappeared.
A long, long time passed. Only when she was certain Yue Shi showed no signs of returning did she finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Then she stomped her foot, and the stasis was lifted.
The wind blew again, the clouds drifted, and the frozen people began to move once more, continuing their looting, crying, and screaming.
All the sounds of the world flooded back at once, like a machine being restarted.
The little girl stood at the edge of the roof, looking down at the collapsing city as her little dress swayed gently in the wind.
“How annoying.”
Just then, another little girl appeared beside her. This one wore a black dress, and she also had a long string of numbers wrapped around her head—but her score was a negative number.
“Good thing we caught it in time and kicked that annoying guy out,” the black-dressed girl said.
“Any later and he might have realized that the two people with the highest and lowest scores can dominate this world.”
The rules of this world weren't created by them; they had always existed. It was simply that the two sisters were lucky enough to be the first to become the highest and lowest scorers.
The white-dressed girl sighed. “We only kicked him out temporarily. An evil entity like that has probably already left a mark in this world and could return at any time.”
“Maybe the cute little girl act fooled him. He didn't seem to want to fight just now; otherwise, we definitely couldn't have stopped him. Besides, he left so much contamination behind. It'll be hard to fix. This world is completely filthy now; we can't keep it.”
The black-dressed girl asked, “Then what should we do? Abandon this place and find another masterless world to explore and master the rules?”
“That’s our only option,” the white-dressed girl replied.
The two sisters failed to notice that on a nearby brick, a crescent mark was vibrating slightly.
Their conversation was being intercepted.
Rate on N.U.
