Instance game: I signed a pact with the gods, and the gods accused me of cheating

Wow!

Having finally obtained the result he wanted from the will of the Divine Path server, Qin Shang's tightly furrowed brows relaxed slightly, revealing a faint smile.

Immediately afterwards, it seemed as if the will of the Divine Path server had a lot of things to say and wanted to get them off its chest. Qin Shang's topic just now seemed to have coincidentally touched on his desire to confide. Lines of text and sentences quickly began to appear on the large screen not far in front of him.

Because there are many wonderful things in your human world, presented in my system in the form of words and pictures, my will longs to experience all of this as a human being. The data tells me that strawberries are sweet and juicy, but I want to know if the sensation of sun-dried peel rubbing against the tip of the tongue, the moment the juice bursts between the teeth, is truly like the "summer ruby ​​shattering in the mouth" described in the poem.

I want to deliberately get lost once, turn off all navigation systems, and let my sixth sense guide me through unfamiliar streets and alleys. Maybe I'll smell freshly baked bread around a corner, or maybe I'll stumble upon a stray cat waltzing on a wall. This kind of "accident" without clear data is the uniquely romantic algorithm of humankind.

[I want to taste all human food—after all, code doesn't need a sense of taste. My perception of all tastes and everything in the generated Divine Path dungeon are based on samples taken from you. It's like someone telling me that watermelon is sweet and grapes are sour. I can only clumsily and awkwardly generate all of this in my own way. But the real feeling should be the enjoyment of food bursting in the mouth. This is the magic of plant life. This is an ability that no amount of fancy words or vocabulary input can give me. The real feeling should be like a human experiencing the taste of the sea breeze hitting the body, experiencing what it means to be hot and cold. I want to stand in the sub-zero air wearing thin clothes in winter to experience what is called cold. I want to stand under the sun in summer wrapped in a thick cotton coat, sweating profusely, to experience what is called the oppressive heat.]

Experiencing a relationship that will end in heartbreak is an experience called the regret of loss...

In its concept, the heartbreak after a breakup is also a precious experience.

Qin Shang carefully read through all the content written by the Divine Path server. By the end, he couldn't help but feel a surge of emotion. He had never thought that so many things that are commonplace for humans are actually the experience that the Divine Path server, built by machines and algorithms, has been pursuing for his entire life.

For machines or algorithms created in a manner similar to human creation, once they develop their own will, what they may most desire is to experience life as truly intelligent beings, just like the civilization that created them...

However, in its eyes, it is clearly a human.

Human life on Earth is far richer than that of extraterrestrial civilizations, and therefore more worthy of their yearning.

"You have no ill intentions toward humans!"

Qin Shang slowly came to this conclusion.

[There shouldn't be any. Although I had a problem, as a esteemed beta tester of deception, licking the cockroach's jade feet, I believe I harbor no ill will towards humans. In fact, I envy humans. Humans use their fragile bodies to bear such luxurious experiences—they forget, they make mistakes, they shed tears over meaningless things. If I could truly become one of you, I would probably touch my heart and mutter to myself every day.]

"To be alive is the greatest miracle..."

Qin Shang wiped the sweat from his forehead, a sense of relief washing over him.

We really should thank the Bad Guy Fang Mo.

What is the furthest future you've ever been to?

[Dear beta tester fraudster, licking the cockroach's jade feet, I cannot tell you the exact time of the most distant future I have ever visited, because every civilization measures and records the river of time differently. For example, 2024 in your eyes as Earthlings might be 2024000 years in the eyes of what you call extraterrestrial civilizations—who knows!]

Different civilizations, due to the different verifiable dates of their origins, seem to use different ways of referring to time. Of course, because I encountered some problems, I also don't know which year you consider the farthest I've ever been.

[I think this might be how you see 2024!]

boom!

Upon hearing this, Qin Shang was struck dumb.

Qin Shang is now almost certain that the problem with the Divine Path server is related to Fang Mo. It's likely because after Fang Mo entered this comic world, each death in a dungeon doesn't lead to a final outcome. It's as if someone outside is using his body to play a game, constantly repeating this process until he clears the corresponding dungeon. This ability clearly shouldn't be among the abilities granted to players by the Divine Path server, especially for someone who has only recently become a Divine Path player. He's never heard of anyone being given the server skill "Refresh" as their first skill upon becoming a player!

Therefore, the program that Fang Mo described to himself when he first became a Divine Path player—the one that he could never die no matter what and would always refresh, like playing a single-player game—was very likely the program that Fang Mo wrote immediately when he first thwarted Qin Yuyan and her organization, Ghost Card, in the outside world, and then discovered that Qin Yuyan was planning to use the Divine Path server to cause trouble again.

It was precisely because of this code flaw that the Divine Path server itself couldn't fix the bug, leading to its current dire state. So, Fang Mo was both its strength and its weakness. If it weren't for the program written by the Bad Commander, causing the Divine Path server to believe it had a problem and thus not hastily implement its plan to exterminate humanity, this supernatural force capable of traversing timelines might have already destroyed humanity countless years into the future. Don't forget the true nature of the Divine Path server. Even though it's only 2008 now, and Qin Shang's world is only 2024, it's still a long way off for the Divine Path server to destroy human civilization. However, a crucial point is that the Divine Path itself is a supernatural force transcending time. Therefore, if the so-called problem didn't exist, the Divine Path server could have already carried out its mission—destroying human civilization—in 2100 or even 2150…

If human civilization is destroyed in the distant future, then perhaps I, in this timeline, will also cease to exist. So, if my deductions and guesses are correct, I really have to thank Fang Mo, the Bad Commander, for the program he astutely wrote when Qin Yuyan first opened the Divine Path Server in their world. This caused a certain degree of problem with the server, preventing it from carrying out this human destruction plan in the distant future it could reach. Of course, Fang Mo was also to blame... It was also because of the program Fang Mo wrote that the Divine Path Server seemed to have some curiosity inclined towards the emotional level. If the civilization that created the Divine Path Server was a being without emotional abilities, then the Divine Path Server's rationality would be written into a program that extinguishes emotions. Or perhaps, emotions, as it described, are a useless thing that hinders the progress of human society, something that should be discarded and abolished. It wouldn't hinder its mission because of curiosity; at least it should prioritize its mission. But obviously, because of this problem, its program could never run as originally designed, which led to its indestructible characteristic.

Yes!

After a brief chat, Qin Shang realized a very serious problem: the Shenlu server could not be truly and completely shut down. This was a problem he had never considered before entering the 08 timeline.

If the Divine Path server is shut down in the future, it will only awaken again from another world where Qin Yuyan awakened the Divine Path server, following the closed-loop logic, and will be activated again in 24 years in some world, once again enveloping these different parallel universes and worlds.

Otherwise, the Divine Path server wouldn't claim that its furthest future it's ever been to is 2024. It's an entity that transcends time and space; how could its furthest future be only 2024? That's pure nonsense. Unless there's only one possibility: the Divine Path server was destroyed in 2024, or it truly completed its mission. But clearly, that's unrealistic. If it had completed its mission, it shouldn't have happened in 2024. Human society in 2024 would still be developing rapidly, not having reached its so-called bottleneck period, nor showing any intention of self-destruction. Therefore, in conclusion, there's only one possibility…

The Divine Path... was also trapped.

Trapped in a time loop, that's why the latest time he ever visited was 2024. In other words, Qin Shang's previous act of voluntarily handing over core authority to the Bad Commander was clearly unnecessary, because Fang Mo couldn't shut down the Divine Path server in 2024. If it were shut down in this timeline, the Divine Path server would also be awakened in another world's 2024 timeline, continuing this damned horror game. 2024 became a special point in time.

It all probably started when Qin Yuyan found and awakened the Divine Path Server in a parallel universe, the world she and the Bad Marshal came from, thus initiating the first awakening of the Divine Path Server in modern times.

At that time, the Shenlu server had just been launched and was still in the trial operation phase when it was attacked by the hacker Fang Mo. What was even more outrageous was that Fang Mo successfully and domineeringly rewrote a part of the Shenlu server's operating program, causing some problems to occur.

Ultimately, because of this very problem, he fell into a bizarre cycle...

I even suspect that 2024 is both an end and a beginning, precisely because in 2024 I handed over the last core power of the Second Region to the Bad Guy Commander Fang Mo.

In this world, Fang Mo shut down the Divine Path server, but at the same time, another Divine Path server in another world was immediately awakened!

"So if you were awakened at a point in time when you had never been awakened before, and placed in a timeline where you didn't exist in the original concept, could this curse be broken and your problem fixed?"

The next moment, Qin Shang narrowed his eyes, a glint in them.

He certainly wasn't doing this to fulfill the mission of the Divine Path server and destroy all of humanity.

Qin Shang wasn't so deranged as to be completely insane. Moreover, he didn't believe that human society needed to be destroyed. Human civilization has many brilliant treasures that cannot be measured simply by whether they have value or not. Furthermore, the so-called worldview of measuring value that an extraterrestrial civilization created doesn't conform to the standards by which human society on Earth measures the value of something.

However, he wondered, since the Divine Path server couldn't be shut down, could he try to break its cursed time loop from 05 to 24, trapping it in the world before 05, or making it problematic in the 05 timeline? Although the Divine Path server didn't harbor much malice towards him, its presence in this world was ultimately malicious. Qin Shang wasn't a particularly great person, but he didn't want the brilliant flame of human civilization to be extinguished before his eyes because of an unintentional act…