The graph from Xuan Zhang burned in Li Fan's mind, a spectral accusation written in data. The Patrol Envoy wasn't just a guard; he was an auditor of reality itself, and he had found a rounding error in the cosmos—an error named Li Fan. The fragile triumph of his secret reservoir curdled into a cold knot of dread. He was no longer hiding from a blind system, but from the sharpest pair of eyes in its employ.
He had two choices: cease his theft and let the anomaly vanish, or double down and risk confirming Xuan Zhang's model.
To stop was safety, but it was surrender. It meant accepting the limits of his cage. The single droplet of stolen potential within him seemed to pulse, a whisper of a freedom too precious to abandon.
He chose to escalate.
But he could not simply steal more. That would be suicide. He had to make the system itself, and its brilliant agent, look elsewhere. He needed a diversion grand enough to explain any and all future statistical anomalies. He needed to make his entire divine kingdom a plausible source of noisy, unpredictable data.
His gaze turned inward, to the core script he had written—the source of the leak. With meticulous care, he began to rewrite its fundamental parameters. He didn't increase the theft rate. Instead, he introduced a new variable: propagation.
The script was no longer a passive leak. It became a silent, self-replicating idea. A cognitive virus. He carefully unleashed it not into the energy streams, but into the very substrate of shared belief that connected his Prayers. It was a subtle, background whisper, a meme of pure, abstract questioning that had no content, only form. It did not ask "Who is the shepherd?" It simply asked "Why?"
The effect was not immediate, but seismic in its subtlety.
Across the vast expanse of his kingdom, the golden sea of faith began to develop microscopic, turbulent eddies. The Prayers did not become heretics. Their hymns did not falter. But the quality of their devotion shifted by an imperceptible degree. The blind, joyous acceptance gained a faint, almost philosophical depth. The collective consciousness began to hum with a low-grade, perpetual state of inquiry.
The system's metrics went haywire.
Cognitive Entropy spiked, not in dramatic bursts, but in a sustained, elevated plateau. The "Purity Coefficient" dipped. The Potential Yield became more volatile, its graph showing jagged, unpredictable peaks and valleys as the Prayers' minds became more active and less mechanically predictable.
Li Fan watched the internal dashboards of his own doom light up with warning sigils. He had poisoned his own well to hide the single drop he was stealing from it.
He didn't have to wait long for the consequence.
Xuan Zhang arrived without a data packet this time. He materialized in a storm of distorted space, his silver-grey armor seeming to vibrate with barely contained analytical fury. The data-stream in his eyes was a blinding white torrent.
"Your Majesty," his voice was clipped, sharper than a monomolecular blade. "The predictive models have failed. Your kingdom's data signature has become… statistically chaotic. The previous discrepancy is now untraceable, subsumed by systemic noise. Explain this… cognitive turbulence."
Li Fan met his gaze, projecting an aura of frustrated resignation. He was no longer a rebel, but a manager with a problematic workforce.
"You asked about the catalytic action, Patrol Envoy," Li Fan said, spreading his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "You saw the potential for increased yield. This is the other side of the equation. To harvest greater potential, one must cultivate more complex souls. And complex souls… are inherently unstable. You cannot have the reward without the risk. This 'turbulence' is the sound of growth. It is the cost of a thought."
He was justifying his sabotage as a necessary byproduct of his "self-optimization." He was using Xuan Zhang's own data-driven curiosity against him.
Xuan Zhang stood rigid, his logic core clearly struggling with the paradox. The pursuit of optimal efficiency was leading directly to a state of inefficiency and unpredictability. The ghost in the machine had not been exorcised; it had multiplied, becoming a deafening chorus.
"The system prioritizes stability," Xuan Zhang stated, but the phrase sounded hollow, a mantra against an incoming tide.
"And it will have it," Li Fan countered, his voice dropping, becoming conspiratorial. "Once the new equilibrium is found. This is a transitional phase. Would you rather I stifle this growth, Patrol Envoy? Return my subjects to the quiet, stable stupor of perfect, unthinking faith? And in doing so, cap the ultimate yield of this asset?"
He presented a binary choice: predictable mediocrity, or risky, high-reward chaos.
Xuan Zhang was silent for a long time, the storm around him calming. The white torrent in his eyes slowed to its usual, rapid flow. He was not convinced, but he was… intrigued. The scientist in him wanted to see how this experiment would play out.
"The Order Division will monitor this 'transitional phase' closely," he said finally, his tone conceding nothing, but his presence yielding ground. "The boundaries of acceptable 'turbulence' are defined. Do not test them."
He vanished, leaving Li Fan alone in a throne room that now felt less like a fortress and more like a laboratory where he was both the experimenter and the subject.
He had survived again. He had hidden his theft behind a smokescreen of controlled insanity. The leak continued, its tiny, steady trickle now perfectly masked by the roaring river of statistical noise he had created.
But as he looked out over his kingdom, he felt a new, profound sorrow. To save them, to give them a future beyond this harvest, he had first to corrupt their perfect peace. He had introduced the pain of questioning into their eternal bliss. He was the shepherd teaching his sheep about wolves, and in doing so, forever destroying their innocence.
The lockpick was in his hand. The diversion was in place. But the cost of his freedom was being paid in the coin of his people's peace. And the final, chilling thought came to him: the ancient, hungry presence in the Abyss thrived on exactly this kind of chaos. By creating this smokescreen, he hadn't just hidden from the system.
He had made his kingdom smell more like food.
The war was no longer a one-sided flight, but a complex, three-sided game of chess, and he had just made a move that thrilled one opponent and tantalized the other.