The Oculus of Equilibrium hung in the air, a silent, judging star in the center of Li Fan's throne room. The voice that had echoed in his Divine Spark was gone, leaving behind only the chilling question: "Purpose of the catalytic action?"
It was not an accusation of treason. It was a demand for a productivity report from a piece of machinery that had just operated outside its scheduled maintenance cycle. The sheer, impersonal nature of it was more terrifying than any of Xuan Zhang's cold threats. Xuan Zhang was a policeman. This was the warden of the universe itself, asking why a cell door had clicked open on its own.
Li Fan stood perfectly still, his own divine power banked to the barest ember. To show force now would be like a bacterium declaring war on a supernova. His mind, however, was a vortex, spinning through every interaction, every clause of the Fundamental Laws, every subtle intonation from Xuan Zhang.
He could not claim ignorance. The system had detected a deliberate action.
He could not plead innocence.He had catalyzed the harvest.
He could not justify it with his true purpose.That was a death sentence.
There was only one path forward, one that was so audacious it skirted the edge of insanity. He had to answer the system in a language it understood, and in doing so, redefine the terms of his own existence.
He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, not in prayer, but to access the vast, cold database of the Divine Fundamental Laws that was now part of his being. He found the clause he needed, buried in the driest, most bureaucratic appendix on "Asset Performance Optimization."
He opened his eyes and looked directly into the Oculus. His voice, when it came, was not that of a supplicant or a rebel, but of a technician reporting a finding.
"The catalytic action," Li Fan stated, his tone flat and data-driven, "was a diagnostic procedure. Designation: Asset Self-Audit, Code 7-Gamma."
He was making it up. There was no such code. But he was phrasing it in the system's own sterile lexicon.
The Oculus pulsed with a soft, blue-white light. "Justification for unscheduled diagnostic."
"The Asset's internal monitoring systems," Li Fan continued, weaving truth and lie into a seamless whole, "detected sub-optimal efficiency in the Potential Harvesting throughput from subordinate cognitive units. The previous model of passive collection was deemed insufficient. The catalytic action was a stress test to measure the upper limits of harvestable potential and to identify bottlenecks in the Tithe-Transfer Protocol."
He was telling the system he had broken its rules to make its exploitation more efficient. He was framing his act of rebellion as a form of… proactive quality control.
A long silence followed. He could almost feel the vast, distributed consciousness of the system cross-referencing his statement with quintillions of data points, searching for precedent, for logical inconsistency.
"The action resulted in a 0.0001% increase in localized cognitive entropy. This conflicts with the stated goal of efficiency."
A flaw. It had found a flaw. Li Fan's Divine Spark went cold, but his voice remained steady.
"Short-term entropy increase is a recognized byproduct of capacity-testing protocols," he countered, pulling from the jargon of mortal engineering. "It is a necessary input to calibrate long-term optimization algorithms. The data gathered from this event will be used to refine the cognitive environment, ultimately leading to a higher, more stable yield of pure potential. Inefficient systems are stable. Maximally efficient systems often pass through phases of controlled instability."
He was gambling everything on the system's core principle: the relentless pursuit of optimal function. He was speaking its sacred tongue.
Another pause, shorter this time.
"The 'Asset Self-Audit' protocol is not a standard function."
"It is now," Li Fan said, a flicker of his divine authority returning, not as a challenge, but as a statement of fact. "This Asset has concluded that proactive self-diagnosis and optimization are necessary to fulfill its primary function within the system. To remain static is to depreciate."
The Oculus hovered, unmoving. The silence stretched, becoming a tangible weight. Li Fan held his breath, his entire existence hanging on the judgment of this silent, all-seeing eye.
Then, without another word, the Oculus of Equilibrium simply dissolved. It didn't vanish in a ripple of space; it de-rezzed, its particles disassembling into the background energy of the throne room as if it had never been.
The direct link was severed.
Li Fan did not move for a full minute, processing the reprieve. He had done it. He had not only survived a direct interrogation by the system's core consciousness but had, in effect, negotiated a new modality for his own existence. He had established a precedent: that Li Fan, Asset 734, was a self-optimizing unit.
It was a hollow, terrifying victory. He had won the right to dig his own grave more efficiently, all to convince the gravedigger he was a valuable asset.
He looked inward, at the shimmering, treacherous architecture of his own Divine Spark. He saw the siphoning arrays woven into its essence, not as foreign implants, but as the very circuitry of his godhood. To remove them would be to unmake himself.
The path was clear now, and it was darker than he had ever imagined. He could not simply rebel against the system from the outside. He had to do it from within. He had to become so indispensable, so perfectly efficient at managing his own soul-farm, that the system would grant him more leash. He had to learn to manipulate the Tithe itself, to skim from the harvest, to hide the growth of his true power in the ledgers of his own increased productivity.
He had to play the game at a level beyond the understanding of gods like Xuan Zhang. He had to beat the system at its own game of cold, hard numbers.
A new, chilling clarity settled over him. The yearning cry of "I don't want to be a god anymore" was a luxury he could no longer afford.
Now, he had to become the best god the system had ever seen. He had to master the First Principle of this reality: to break the rules, you must first prove you understand them better than their creator.
He sat upon his throne, the seat of his power and his prison, and began to plan the most efficient soul-farm in all of creation, with himself as both the master and the first head of cattle to be liberated.