Yes, this was only a false world, limited in every direction, and sooner or later would come the day that it disappeared. Huyan Xi’s views were the right ones. Even if he couldn’t live forever, at least he had to do his best to survive. His fate couldn’t be dictated by someone pressing a button. Probably any cluster of data that learned the truth would want to become real, wouldn’t want to one day vanish into nothing but dusty history. Those like Emperor Jingren, who could give up the opportunity to be “real” for the sake of a fake nation, were vanishingly few.

But…he was in pain, and it was real pain.

Whether he was going hungry on the road or being whipped in the snow by Huyan Xi, he felt it. His sadness was real.

Emperor Jingren knew that he too was only a cluster of data programmed by someone else; though he didn’t know the meaning of data or programming, this did not impede his understanding. He only had to try to think of himself as a character in a novel.

Even if he was only a character someone had imagined, he could still feel pain, could still be hungry, could still be sad, could still love someone.

So all the people in this nation were the same. Even if the whole world disappeared in the next instant, the pain they felt in this instant was real.

Only as a cluster of data himself could he understand this feeling: Even though I am fake, I will still live as well as I can, for the sake of others, and for my own sake as well.

Huyan Xi could abandon all the warriors of the herding tribes who had put their faith in him, but Emperor Jingren could not abandon his people and his realm.

His new law was still being implemented. He had just subdued all the old courtiers, had just reached the point of being able to carry out his lofty aims. When an emperor meets his end, all the ambitions he had previously suppressed would emerge. Prince Huainan couldn’t hold them back, not even with Emperor Jingren’s decrees backing him. Prince Huainan was well suited to administering a fief, but not to administering a nation.

When the nation fell into chaos, it was the common people who would suffer.

Even if the next moment everything disappeared without warning, he hoped that in this moment, all his people could be happy. He didn’t want his people to disappear while experiencing the pain of war, starvation, and separation.

Making the State of Xia flourish, making its people prosperous and happy: that was his responsibility. Since Emperor Jingren was a component that had been designed to have this temperament from the start, he would persevere till the end.

Huyan Xi’s voice grew more and more distant, so far away it was as if life and death already separated them.

Ha! A mocking laugh appeared in Emperor Jingren’s mind. He wanted to bring happiness to the people? He was about to die…

His death would cause the Ephemeral Snow Lotus to appear, and Huyan Xi would combine with the lotus’s data to become something greater than this world. The empress…

It would probably be a headache for Jinyi…

The image of the empress seemed to appear before his eyes. He was dressed in fighting clothes, holding the powerful bow that Emperor Jingren had given him. He drew the bow and took aim at an enormous tiger in front of him. He stood before Emperor Jingren and faced the tiger, saying, “Your Majesty, your subject wife will protect you.”

“Yes, we know,” Emperor Jingren said softly.

“Your Majesty, what did you say? Your Majesty?” cried Su Huailing as she dragged Emperor Jingren. She saw that Emperor Jingren was cold all over, heavy against her. A cold sweat of fear drenched her. Hands trembling, she touched Emperor Jingren’s chest. There was no more heartbeat there.

“It-it’s not beating!” Su Huailing couldn’t help starting to cry. She knew that tears would freeze on her face and damage her skin, but she really couldn’t resist. At first she had hated Emperor Jingren for being a self-important emperor who didn’t care about anyone’s lives. Later, as she slowly studied with the Embroidered Guard, she had understood how important Emperor Jingren was to this nation. He was an emperor for the ages; no ruler was more suited to making the people happy.

Su Huailing stopped holding back. In spite of everything, she yelled at Huyan Xi, “He’s dead, His Majesty is dead! You beast! I don’t understand what you mean by data or things being false. So what I am fake? I still feel pain! I still get sad! And so what if you’re real? A cold-blooded scoundrel like you doesn’t deserve to be called human, even if he is real!”

“And so what if I don’t deserve it?” Huyan Xi grabbed Su Huailing’s chin and squeezed, at once breaking her jawbone. Coldly, he said, “I am not the person I was in the novel. I won’t fall in love with you as my settings dictate. Emperor Jingren is dead, but the Ephemeral Snow Lotus has yet to appear. It seems that you must die, just as in the original.”

He raised the hand in which he held his whip, ready to lash the expiring Su Huailing.

In that very instant, the whole area warmed up.

When her jaw was broken, Su Huailing had known she wouldn’t survive. She had closed her eyes and waited for death to come. Suddenly, the cold vanished, and the pain in her jaw vanished as well. She tried to move her fingers and found in them none of the stiffness of frostbite. She felt absolutely wonderful.

Was this…death? Was that why she was no longer in pain?

She blinked and found that she might have been hallucinating. Before her eyes, a white lotus flower, so beautiful it defied description, had suddenly appeared, standing up amid the wind and snow, emanating a faint, gentle light. As the light shone on Su Huailing, her pain and wounds vanished.

“The Ephemeral Snow Lotus…” Su Huailing murmured.

A thought struck her. She reached out to touch Emperor Jingren and found that though his heart still wasn’t beating and he still wasn’t breathing, he was as warm as if he were alive.

The Ephemeral Snow Lotus could bring the dead back to life. If she gave His Majesty this flower to eat, he could be alive again!

Su Huailing threw herself at the Ephemeral Snow Lotus, but another figure was faster than her. When she had just thought of moving, Huyan Xi seized the blooming lotus and brought it straight to his mouth.

“As expected, you can’t bear to let the children of fortune die, hahaha!” Huyan Xi said. “Living according to your settings? Idiots, all of you.”

The Ephemeral Snow Lotus’s effects would last for the briefest span after it bloomed, so Huyan Xi didn’t waste time on words. He had to eat the lotus as fast as possible. He brought it to his lips, but instead of the flower, he bit into a mouthful of snow.

The instant he had placed the lotus in his mouth, someone had snatched it out of his hand and replaced it with a snowball.

“Who’s there!” Huyan Xi looked around and found Xiao Jinyi kneeling beside Emperor Jingren’s body. He didn’t spare Huyan Xi a single glance as he plucked the petals off the flower and put them in Emperor Jingren’s mouth.

“Xiao Jinyi!” Huyan Xi’s eyes turned bright red. He raised his whip and lashed at Xiao Jinyi. Did this person absolutely have to get in his way?!

During the battle near Mobei City, Xiao Jinyi had prevented him from taking Su Huailing and Emperor Jingren alive. Now, he wanted to prevent him from living forever!

His whip wrapped around Xiao Jinyi. Huyan Xi planned to use the whip to immobilize Xiao Jinyi while he dashed forward to snatch the Ephemeral Snow Lotus.

He had fought Xiao Jinyi and knew his abilities. This was enough to hold him for a moment, and a moment was all it would take for Huyan Xi to grab and eat the lotus.

But Xiao Jinyi didn’t give him even that moment. As soon as the whip wrapped around him, with a slight movement, Xiao Jinyi shattered it, and the whip fell in pieces on the snow. The barbs hadn’t even touched Xiao Jinyi.

“Your abilities… This can’t be. This world doesn’t permit the existence of such great skills. I am already at the utmost limit!” Huyan Xi’s eyes were ready to pop out of their sockets as he watched Xiao Jinyi put the Ephemeral Snow Lotus petals in his own mouth and chew them. Huyan Xi charged at him desperately, but Xiao Jinyi stopped him in his tracks with only a few icicles.

The icicles struck Huyan Xi’s acupoints precisely. He directed all his strength to disrupting their effects, but he couldn’t do it!

“Of course I have to feed it to you mouth to mouth like in the original.” Xiao Jinyi smiled at Emperor Jingren and gently kissed his soft lips, feeding him the lotus.

Su Huailing, meanwhile, pulled a leaf off the lotus plant and swallowed it. Her jaw no longer hurt, but the bone was still broken. She hoped the leaf would also do some good.

After swallowing the lotus petals, Emperor Jingren gradually began to breathe, and his heart began to beat weakly. Su Huailing, meanwhile, touched her chin and found to her astonishment that her bone really was completely intact. All her other injuries had disappeared too. As for Emperor Jingren, the wounds from the whip were gone as well.

“It’s really so useful!” Su Huailing rushed to find the rest of the lotus, but she saw that it was already withered, a dried flower laying in the snow. The earlier magical effects were no longer possible.

The lotus bloomed only once in a thousand years and lived only for the sake of saving a single person’s life. It knew what it was, knew the truth of this world. It would always have the ability to compute for itself, to upgrade itself, but it still acted in accordance with its earliest settings, using its life to save another life.

This had been its mission at birth. Without this mission, it wouldn’t exist.

Su Huailing buried the withered lotus, spreading a final coat of snow over it.

Xiao Jinyi removed his thick fur cloak and wrapped Emperor Jingren tightly in it. Then he stood and walked toward Huyan Xi.

Watching Xiao Jinyi, Huyan Xi suddenly noticed that there was blood leaking from his eyes, and from his ears also came a trickle of blood.

“You’re bleeding from the apertures of your face. I wondered how you had suddenly become so powerful, but it turns out you’ve used some forbidden art. You’re…”

He could no longer speak. Xiao Jinyi had a hand wrapped around his neck. With a bit of force, Huyan Xi’s hyoid bone broke. Xiao Jinyi had applied just the right amount of pressure; Huyan Xi didn’t die at once, only stared wide-eyed at Xiao Jinyi, struggling to breathe.

Xiao Jinyi felt something trickling from his nose. He wiped away a smear of red.

Looking into Huyan Xi’s mutinous eyes, he said gravely, “I won’t ask again what happened to the doctor. I believe that you really did kill him. I am about to leave this world. Before that happens, I just want to tell you that it was very impressive of you to discover the truth of this world. But even if you became a real person, you would still never understand all of a human being’s emotions. Duty, responsibility—these are things that Shen Junrui and the Ephemeral Snow Lotus understand far better than you.”

Huyan Xi wrote violently in the snow: You. Will. Regret.

“I won’t regret this,” Xiao Jinyi said mildly. He reached out and put an end to Huyan Xi’s life of bitter struggle.

After doing this, he went to Emperor Jingren and lifted him in his arms while also putting Su Huailing over his shoulder. He swiftly brought the two of them to Jing Xixian.

Jing Xixian felt a wind blow past him and found himself unexpectedly piled up along with Su Huailing on someone’s shoulder, being carried down the mountain.

At the place where they had left their horses at the foot of the mountain, Xiao Jinyi stopped at last and placed Su Huailing and Jing Xixian together on the back of a horse.

“General Xiao, you…” Jing Xixian finally had a clear look at Xiao Jinyi’s face, which was completely obscured by blood.

Xiao Jinyi wiped his face with his sleeve, removing the blood, and smiled at Jing Xixian. “Take His Majesty away from the mountains.”

“General Xiao, come with us, you need…” Jing Xixian started in surprise.

“No,” Xiao Jinyi interrupted. “I’m dying. I can’t be saved.”

Looking at the still dizzy Su Huailing, he said to her, “Su Huailing, tell His Majesty for me that I’ve gone back.”

Then Xiao Jinyi turned and walked toward the snow-covered mountain. In a few leaps, he vanished.