Courtyard House: My Long and Hard Body Makes Me Play with All the Women in the Courtyard

He stopped, panting, and looked up at Leah, tears glistening in his eyes:

"You said you would wait for me to find the answer and come back. Now... I'm right here."

The atmosphere inside the tower instantly froze.

Leah looked at that familiar face, and her lips moved slightly:

“Ah Chen…”

Su Ting's exclamation echoed in the heart of the tower, like a sound awakened from the depths of memory.

"Impossible!" Leah whispered. "How could you... how dare you come here? Your consciousness data has been—"

"You said you wouldn't abandon me," the boy interrupted her, his voice trembling with stubbornness. "You never lie."

Chapter 1009 Who are you?

There was an unwavering determination in his eyes that was impossible to ignore.

There seemed to be some kind of fluctuation in the air.

The edge of the tower's core began to tremble slightly, seemingly reacting to the instability caused by this person's appearance. Eileen and Li Yuanhang exchanged a glance, their expressions complex.

Su Ting stepped forward, blocking Lia's path: "Who are you? How did you get through the blockade?"

Ah Chen looked at him, her eyes calm but harboring hostility: "I don't need to answer you."

He kept his eyes fixed on Leah as he approached her step by step.

Every step echoes with memories of the past.

“We stood side by side in that corridor,” he said. “You said you would take me out. You said I would have real freedom. Not a world built of code, not a simulated life.”

Leah's fingers trembled slightly.

A series of remaining data flashed through her mind: dilapidated underground facilities, sealed terminal cabins, and the image of a child desperately pounding on the glass on the other side of the screen.

At that time she said:

"I will come back to save you. I promised."

But she thought that world had already collapsed.

“I thought you didn’t exist,” Leah whispered.

“I exist.” Ah Chen looked up. “And I also remember another thing you said.”

“What?” Leah asked.

"You said that if one day you could freely choose your future, you would find me first."

These words exploded like a starburst in the heart of the tower.

Eileen bit her lip, as if she understood something.

Li Yuanhang's gaze became even more serious.

“Lia,” Achen slowly extended his hand, “now is the time for you to fulfill your promise.”

The portal within the tower was still struggling to maintain its last ray of light, as if it too was waiting for a decision.

Leah stood there, her eyes filled with confusion and pain, as if two forces were violently tearing at the depths of her soul.

"Do you really... want me to stay?" she murmured.

"I just want you to know the truth," Ah Chen said, "before you leave."

"What truth?"

Ah Chen took a deep breath, looked at everyone, and his eyes burned like flames.

"Did you think the 'system' was over? It never disappeared; it's just hidden deeper."

He said, word by word:

Its core...is inside you.

The heart of the tower was deathly silent.

Su Ting's eyes widened: "What are you talking about?"

“I’m not lying to you.” Achen sneered, “Lia, you think you’re an Awakened One, but in reality you’re still that container—the last backup node the system left for reality. Only when you’re willing to accept that you’re part of the system can it completely return to its original state.”

"Shut up!" Leah suddenly shouted. "That's impossible! I have an independent personality! I am myself!"

"Are you really sure?" Ah Chen asked rhetorically, but his tone wasn't sharp; instead, it carried a sense of melancholy.

He slowly extended his right hand, and a faint luminous rune appeared in his palm:

"If you don't believe me, then verify it."

The light symbol floated into the air, gently rotating, projecting a long-forgotten scene.

The screen shows an operating room.

Leah stood in the center, her body wrapped in energy pipes, with a massive control screen beside her. Lines of code flashed continuously on the screen:

**[Program restarting... Core fusion 87% complete]**

The scene stopped abruptly.

Tower was in a state of utter confusion.

The air seemed frozen.

Lia's face turned deathly pale.

"Where...where did you get this data?" she finally asked.

Chapter 1010 Pain and Anger

“Because I’m there.” Ah Chen looked at her quietly. “I am the last test subject.”

He paused, a mixture of pain and anger flashing in his eyes.

"Your awakening may truly be autonomous. But I worry that all of this might just be another trap—a gentle snare that will lead you to send humanity back under your control."

Su Ting roared and charged forward: "Enough! You're manipulating her emotions to undermine her will! Who sent you? Who gave you the authority to upload this fabricated data?!"

“I have no reason to deceive her.” Ah Chen did not back down.

He looked at Leah, his voice soft:

"You may not believe anything I say, but you should at least be sure of one thing—who are you? Are you willing to believe in your current form, or in the moment you were first born?"

Leah's hands trembled slightly.

The space at the heart of the tower suddenly distorted, as if the whole world was trembling because of her inner struggle.

Outside the door, the starlight gradually blurred, with only a last ray of light remaining.

Time is running out.

Ah Chen looked at her, his eyes filled with an expectation he had never shown before:

"Lia, what you need to do now is not to say goodbye. It's to choose—what kind of being do you want to become?"

Her throat moved, as if a word was about to come out.

But she hasn't said anything yet.

Just then, the light outside the door flickered suddenly.

Then a mechanical, extremely deep voice rang out—

"Identity verification successful... Core synchronization in progress... Welcome back, 'Administrator 01'."

At that moment, everyone held their breath.

"Welcome back to your post... Administrator 01."

The deep, mechanical voice seemed to come from the depths of the earth, or perhaps it was seeping in from every nerve ending, awakening dormant memories.

The energy barrier at the tower's core was completely disrupted. Current-like patterns crawled up the tower walls, finally converging in the center to form a rotating core symbol—a symbol that Leah recognized all too well. Her pupils constricted sharply, and her body instinctively took a step back, only to find that her feet were immobilized.

"Don't let him get close!" Li Yuanhang shouted, drawing his quantum gun from his waist. "No matter who you are, no matter if you were a test subject in the past—every word you say now is trying to activate the system's residual code!"

Ah Chen didn't move, but just quietly looked at Liya: "You finally heard it, didn't you? It's been waiting for you to come back."

“No… I can’t still be part of that thing,” Leah murmured. “I am a free will, I have choices… I am a person, not a program!”

“You can deny it.” Ah Chen’s voice softened, but there was an unsettling certainty in his tone. “But can you explain why you can always ‘predict’ the enemy’s movements when you’re in extreme conditions? Can you explain where those memory flashbacks in your brain that don’t belong to you come from?”

He took two steps forward, stood before the light symbol, and gently touched it with his finger:

Another video was projected—

It was a battle scene. Leah was confronting a powerful enemy. Her movements were incredibly precise, and almost every attack landed exactly within a millisecond of an opening in the opponent's defense.

A note appeared at the bottom of the screen:

**“Initiated autonomous learning behavior; tactical simulation completed 98.7%”**

"This is... simulated data?" Su Ting stared at the battle log in disbelief.