The first stolen droplet of potential rested within Li Fan's Divine Spark, a secret so profound it felt heavier than a collapsing star. It was not power, not yet. It was untainted possibility, a sliver of reality that existed outside the system's grand, suffocating ledger. He was a god, sitting on a throne of lies, nurturing a spark of heresy in the heart of his own temple.
The success of his first, microscopic theft was not a conclusion. It was a hypothesis confirmed. Now began the true work: scaling the operation from a single, painstakingly diverted quantum to a sustainable, hidden revenue stream.
His divine consciousness became a precision instrument, no longer focused on the grand tapestry of his kingdom, but on the infinitesimal calculus of its exploitation. He was no longer just a warden or a shepherd; he was an embezzler, auditing his own soul-farm for loose change the owner would never miss.
He began to run a series of mental simulations, modeling the Tithe-Transfer Protocol. He identified the key variables: the intensity of a Prayer's cognitive activity, the corresponding "value" of the potential generated, the latency of the settlement period, and the system's threshold for detecting statistical anomalies. He was reverse-engineering the universe's tax code.
His method evolved. He could not manually mirror every Tithe from every soul; the cognitive load would shatter his mind. Instead, he began writing a subtle, self-sustaining script—a metaphysical algorithm—and imprinted it upon the foundational code of his divine realm. This script did not actively steal. It simply created a persistent, background "leak" in the conduit system, a systematic error that consistently diverted a minuscule, pre-set percentage of the Tithe during the settlement period into his hidden reservoir.
He set the leakage rate to an almost absurdly low value: 0.0000001%. It was a figure so small it was mathematically insignificant, lost in the natural background noise of cosmic information transfer. It was the divine equivalent of siphoning a single molecule of gasoline from a tanker truck every mile—utterly undetectable through conventional means.
Days turned into a cycle. The script ran silently, tirelessly. Drop by stolen drop, his reservoir began to grow. It was agonizingly slow. The amount he accumulated in a full cycle was less than what a single, average Prayer generated in a thought. But it was his. Unlogged. Unseen.
The strain was immense. Maintaining the script was like constantly holding a complex, invisible pattern in his mind while performing all his other duties as a Divine King. A faint, perpetual headache became the background hum of his existence. He found himself withdrawing, his interactions with his own divine court becoming more automated, more distant. He was present in body, but his true consciousness was forever focused inward, on the greatest heist in history.
It was during one of these periods of intense, internal focus that a new alert pulsed at the edge of his awareness. It was not from the system, and not another cryptic message from the Abyss.
It was from Xuan Zhang.
The Patrol Envoy's signature spatial ripple was absent. Instead, a single, compressed data packet arrived, marked with the highest level of Order Division encryption, but also with a unique, personal identifier tag—Xuan Zhang's own. It was a direct, and more importantly, unofficial communication.
Li Fan, his senses on a razor's edge, carefully opened it. It contained no text. Only a single, stark data visualization: a graph tracking the "Cognitive Entropy & Potential Yield" of his kingdom over the last several cycles.
A standard green line showed a stable, acceptable level of entropy.
A standard blue line showed a stable,acceptable yield of harvested potential.
But overlaid on this was a third line, in stark, warning red. It was almost perfectly flat, running infinitesimally below the blue yield line. The caption read: "Cumulative Theoretical Yield Discrepancy (Modeled)."
Xuan Zhang had not detected the theft. He couldn't have. The amount was too small.
But he had inferred it.
His impeccable, data-driven mind had modeled what the yield should be, given the observed level of cognitive activity and entropy. And his model was reporting a persistent, microscopic shortfall. It was a ghost in the machine, a deviation so small it was beneath the system's notice, but not beneath his.
The message was not an accusation. It was a report. A fellow technician, pointing out a tiny, puzzling anomaly in the data. There was no threat, only a profound and unsettling curiosity.
Li Fan stared at the graph, a cold admiration for his adversary warring with a spike of primal fear. Xuan Zhang was operating on a different level. He wasn't just enforcing rules; he was seeking a perfect, unified understanding of the system's functions. And Li Fan's perfect crime had just created a tiny, invisible flaw in that perfect understanding.
He closed the data packet. He did not reply. Any response would be an admission.
He looked inward at his slowly filling reservoir, then out at the invisible, analytical gaze of the Patrol Envoy. The game had changed once more. He was no longer just hiding from a godlike system. He was being peer-reviewed by a genius.