184: Chapter 184 Mo Yuan Spy, Harboring Evil Thoughts

Twilight, like ink, slowly stained the horizon.

The clamor within the Council Hall had not yet dissipated; figures crisscrossed, laughter echoed, and the light panel beside the Covenant Stele lay quietly, like a settled chess piece, declaring the reconstruction of a certain order.

Yet, beyond this scene interwoven with warm gold and laughter, in the depths of a rift in the Void Realm, everything was twisted into another form.

There was no light there, nor the transmission of sound, only a dead and silent nothingness.

Twelve mechanical Puppets floated in the darkness, arranged in a circle, their surfaces covered with dark purple rune patterns that rose and fell slightly like living things.

Their heads hung low, their eye sockets hollow, as if they were merely discarded wrecks.

Suddenly, the eye sockets of one of the Puppets lit up with a ghostly green light.

Immediately after, the other eleven synchronized by opening their eyes, their pupils reflecting the same scene—

It was a projection of the Eastern Wasteland Alliance Council Hall, captured by some kind of mental fluctuation, incomplete yet clear: Chen Wuwang stood on the high platform, the crowd laughed and responded, the rotation System was established, and the Alliance was reunited.

The images cycled, slowly and coldly playing back those scenes that should have been heartening.

"Order... is the deepest corruption." A whisper arose, not coming from the mouth of any Puppet, but vibrating directly in the Void Realm, like a murmur squeezed from countless throats.

Mo Yuan's consciousness was traveling between these twelve shells, drifting restlessly.

He watched as people from the Cangling Clan and Chiji Ridge repaired the diversion valve side by side, watched the Xuansha Tribe youth take the initiative to lead the liaison group, and watched the old man lean on his staff to arbitrate disputes—these clans, which had originally guarded against each other and been entangled in conflicts of interest, had actually begun to collaborate.

It was not forced, not a compromise, but spontaneous; they were treating this land as their own to fight for and to build.

He lightly swiped his finger through the Void Realm, and the image instantly split into several data streams, appearing deep within his consciousness.

He parsed it frame by frame: who spoke first, who stepped back, whose eyes had briefly wandered, whose palm rested on the edge of the Jade Slip for more than three seconds.

Every detail was dismantled, categorized, and marked.

"Efficiency increased by 73.6 percent." He silently recited in his heart, "Decision latency shortened to 0.4 seconds. Trust index... is climbing."

This was not a victory; it was a plague.

In the world he believed in, chaos was the hotbed of truth, and only pain could give birth to Awakening.

Only through tearing apart could one see the essence; only through collapse could there be rebirth.

But the Chen family was different.

They used rules to replace brute force, used the System to replace arbitrary decisions, allowing a group of wild dogs that would originally only tear at each other to sit down and share meat, even saying, "You take one more piece."

This was wrong.

This was too wrong.

His consciousness plunged violently into the depths of his memory, searching for that sealed-away pain—

Images flashed: amidst a torrent of data, the Puppet he had once parasitized was disintegrating. The metal skeleton snapped piece by piece, the chips melted in the high heat, and his consciousness was swept into an unprecedented reverse contamination. Those logic chains built by "spiritual energy codification" wrapped around like thorns, dragging him into an endless binary abyss.

A whisper that did not belong to this world rang in his ears: "Purge the heretics... Purify the balance..."

That was the whisper of Cthulhu, the source of his faith, yet also the only existence that had failed to redeem him at that moment.

He had lost.

He had not lost to power, nor to a conspiracy, but to a concept—that technology and the Heavenly Dao could coexist, and even resonate.

Since then, he had laid dormant. He had changed Puppet after Puppet, repairing his consciousness, accumulating power, and waiting for an opportunity.

He had originally thought the Chen family would be eager to expand, would suppress dissent with force, and would fall into internal chaos due to the expansion of power.

In that case, he could have taken advantage of the situation to enter, light a fire, and let the entire Eastern Wasteland fall into a carnival of self-destruction.

But he was wrong.

The Chen family did not oppress, but instead opened up technology; they did not monopolize resources, but instead shared mechanisms; they did not establish authority, but instead ceded the right to preside.

They did not want subjects, only collaborators.

This model was more terrifying than violence.

It did not rely on fear to maintain itself, but on binding interests, rule guarantees, and the recognition of people's hearts—once formed, it was like vines taking root in rock layers, the more it was suppressed, the deeper it grew, and the more it was cut, the denser it became.

If allowed to develop, within ten years, the Eastern Wasteland would no longer be a frontier wasteland of the Cultivation World, but would become an unshakable fortress, a lighthouse of a new civilization with technology as its bones and order as its blood.

And he, Mo Yuan, would completely lose his foothold.

"It is not that I chose you." He spoke in a low voice, the sound issuing simultaneously from the throats of the twelve Puppets, overlapping into an eerie ensemble, "It is you who forced my hand."

As his voice fell, twelve pairs of eyes focused in unison on a point in the center of the Void Realm.

A map outlined by spiritual energy appeared there—the entire territory of the Eastern Wasteland Alliance, with each clan's station marked in different colors, and connecting lines representing resource flow and communication frequency bands.

His consciousness began to simulate.

The first plan: Assassination.

Target Chen Wuwang, or key figures such as Chen Tiezhu or Chen Xiaodao.

Simulation result: Short-term turmoil, but the Chen family already had emergency mechanisms; the AI hub could take over command, and the Alliance System possessed risk resistance. Failure rate: 87.3%.

The second plan: Create a natural disaster.

Detonate the underground Spiritual Vein, trigger a geothermal eruption, and destroy the scheduling core.

Simulation result: Heavy casualties, inciting public anger, which would instead urge the clans to unite against a common enemy. Moreover, the Chen family mastered the geological monitoring System and had sufficient early warning time. Failure rate: 91.6%.

The third plan: Disintegrate trust.

Implant suspicion from within, amplify conflicts, and induce mutual slaughter.

Parameter input: "human weakness," "information asymmetry," "historical grievances," "sensitivity to resource allocation."

Run three hundred interference tests.

Result display: Although the initial destruction efficiency was low, once a crack was created, the rate of spread grew exponentially.

The probability of trust collapse on the seventh day reached 64%, and the possibility of the Alliance disintegrating on the fourteenth day exceeded 80%. Success rate: Highest.

The corners of his mouth lifted slightly, the arc of the muscle movement stiff and unnatural, like an expression that hadn't been used for many years.

"Then... let it begin with suspicion."

He no longer hesitated. Deep in his consciousness, he activated the thought encryption protocol, layer upon layer of rune chains wrapping around to completely seal this decision.

He knew that certain existences had been monitoring his actions, especially when he touched upon taboo concepts like "order."

Must not expose.

At least not now.

He had to silently bury the first seed.

It did not need to bloom immediately; it only needed to take root, quietly feeding on the nutrients of the trust that had just been established.

Waiting for the day when people sat around the Council Hall again to argue, not for better division of labor, but to accuse each other of hiding selfish motives; when behind their back-slapping laughter, they hid wariness of each other; when that hard-won unity turned into a game of mutual probing—

Then, he would appear.

Then, he would be the savior.

The only existence that could bring true "purification" to this fallen order.

The twelve Puppets slowly closed their eyes, the ghostly green light extinguishing one by one.

The Void Realm returned to silence.

But at the very last moment, the finger of one of the Puppets twitched slightly, the fingertip grazing the Void Realm, leaving an almost invisible rift—that was an anchor point to the real world, already quietly marked.

The operation had not yet begun, but the conspiracy had already taken shape.

He lay quietly in the darkness, like a behemoth lurking in the deep sea, patiently waiting for the moment when the prey let down their guard.

The next moment, he would be able to send out the first shadow.