---o---
As Jingliu's voice echoed from the projection, the image began to change.
"In the deductions of the Jade Abacus, the horns of the god's war have already sounded. One Lord Ravager will have their wish fulfilled, one Aeon will fall into silence..."
On the screen, Fu Zhu saw Amphoreus and Nous's own body. This made him realize instantly that Nous had also calculated the events of Amphoreus, or rather, the plot Lygus was hatching.
He was planning to kill Nous!
"Interesting."
Fu Zhu took Lygus's head out of his inventory again, tossing it up and down like a ball as he questioned Nous, "Since you've calculated this far, you're actually not going to do anything?"
"The outcome is inevitable, but you are not part of it."
Nous's sudden reply took Fu Zhu by surprise. The Nous of before was like a bottomless well of questions, only ever asking, never answering. He never expected it to actually give him an answer this time.
Fu Zhu stopped tossing the "ball" and stared at Nous, lost in thought.
"You mean, you think I'm going to change this future?"
Nous once again fell silent, not intending to answer Fu Zhu's question.
Seeing no response, Fu Zhu was left to toss the "ball" and think to himself.
He didn't have much desire to change this future; he only cared about the few friends he had just made on Amphoreus and the Astral Express.
The Express needed refueling, and he wanted to experience this Trailblazing journey with his companions.
However, he had no intention of following the script Lygus had so carefully arranged. The course of the story had to be decided by him.
Elio had only given a rough description of their experiences on Amphoreus, without mentioning any of the finer details. That meant he could decide those for himself.
In that case, he might as well play something a little more exciting.
Fu Zhu suddenly stopped tossing the "ball," turned his head, and shot Nous a toothy grin.
"Machine head, you said it yourself, the outcome is inevitable, right? So what if I put the outcome at the beginning of the story?"
Nous: ?
Fu Zhu's figure suddenly vanished, reappearing the next second on top of Nous's main body. In its uncomprehending gaze, a lever was slapped onto its chassis by Fu Zhu.
"Take a deep breath. Dizziness is normal."
Fu Zhu took out his phone, turned on the video recorder, and aimed it at himself. Then, he pulled down the lever he had just installed on Nous's body.
Click—
As the lever was pulled, Fu Zhu immediately heard the sound of machinery grinding to a halt, and Nous's giant scarlet indicator light suddenly went out.
Nous had been forcibly shut down.
Fu Zhu saved the recording, then took out various redstone technologies and began to arrange them on Nous's body according to a specific pattern.
"Hmm, let's set an alarm clock for the machine head, so it'll turn back on in a month."
Muttering to himself, Fu Zhu finished setting up the redstone alarm for Nous. He then took out the mask Aha had given him and held it in his hand.
"Aha, you dead yet?"
The mask, originally an inanimate object, suddenly seemed to come to life, the smile on its surface becoming more animated.
"I've hit a boredom level of 1.4. Got any fun, pal?"
After speaking, Aha detached from Fu Zhu's hand. It lowered its gaze and immediately spotted the powered-down Nous.
"Aha!!"
Aha instantly went wild, zipping around Fu Zhu like a madman.
"Oh, my dear pal! I knew I wasn't wrong about you, you're so talented! How about I give you my spot as an Aeon, and you go finish off all the other Aeons?"
Fu Zhu waved a dismissive hand.
"All this fighting and killing is so boring. I've got something more interesting. You in?"
"Ooh, I'm all ears!"
Fu Zhu replayed the video he had just recorded for Aha, and while it played, he took out Lygus's head to explain.
"This is Nous's dad, Zandar's avatar. He's been plotting to kill the good son he created. Do me a favor, find a way to get this video into Lygus's hands, and record his reaction for me. I want to see if his current machine body will crash when he sees this."
After watching the video, Aha couldn't help but manifest a white-gloved hand next to the mask to give Fu Zhu a big thumbs-up.
"A facial-smack ultimate? Sick! Aha loves to see this!"
Aha knew parts of this story, but it never imagined that Fu Zhu would just use a common-looking lever to forcibly shut down Nous!
That was the result Lygus had spent years calculating with the Scepter to achieve, and Fu Zhu had accomplished it with a single casual pull!
Aha couldn't wait to see the look on Lygus's face, twisted in disbelief, after watching this video!
"Can you do it? Don't make me look down on you, Aha."
The white-gloved hand that Aha had manifested balled into a fist and punched the air, making a series of muffled thuds.
"When Aha's on the job, you can count on it!"
With that, the mask in Fu Zhu's hand suddenly became an inanimate object again, and the white glove vanished. Fu Zhu knew that Aha had already rushed off to find Lygus.
---o---
In a space outside of Amphoreus, Lygus stared blankly at the Scepter system before him.
Just now, he had witnessed the entire sequence of events through his avatar, which was the cause of his stupor.
"Fu Zhu… is truly incomprehensible…"
After a moment of reflection, Lygus decided to continue his research on how to deal with this variable. But just then, the Scepter system's interface suddenly flickered.
Just as Lygus thought the Scepter system had bugged out again, a notification suddenly popped up on the interface.
[Your friend [Nous Was My Kill (Fu Zhu)] has posted a new update.]
Lygus: ?
Since when did the Scepter system have a friend system?
And what the hell does "Nous Was My Kill" mean?
Although he knew this was definitely a bug or some trick by Fu Zhu, Lygus felt he had to see what this was all about.
He clicked on the update and saw a short video accompanied by Fu Zhu's caption.
[A genius's racked brains are no match for my casual move.]
Seeing this caption, Lygus really wanted to frown, but his current body lacked such a function.
Who is this targeting! I'm asking you, who is this cringey caption targeting!
Lygus took a deep breath, scrolled down, and opened the video, which was only a few dozen seconds long.
The moment he opened the video, Lygus froze. In the video, Fu Zhu was standing on Nous's main body, smiling at the camera as if to console Nous, and said, "Take a deep breath, dizziness is normal."
Then, Lygus witnessed an unbelievable scene.
He saw Fu Zhu place a common, everyday lever on Nous's body, and then pull it with such casual indifference!
All his painstaking efforts, his thousands of years of work to make Nous cease its calculations, had been stopped just like that, by Fu Zhu's simple action!!!
"I… Galactic foul language!"