Chapter 38: The Root of Chai Si and Jin Xueli’s Confusion

Chai Si sat on a park bench, staring straight ahead with unfocused eyes.

He rested his elbows on his knees, leaning forward slightly, his large hands hanging loosely, a T-bar still tucked into the back of his waistband.

Everyone passing by on the path in front of him tried their best to remain nonchalant, backing away a few steps to give him a wide berth. A radius of several meters around Chai Si remained completely empty.

A short while ago, two young girls had approached from afar, glancing at him repeatedly while whispering and giggling to each other. But as they drew near, their expressions shifted; looking straight ahead, they quickened their pace and hurried past.

When people encounter a madman, their reactions are almost always the same: they steal sideways glances to check where the lunatic is, what he is doing, and how far away he is, while simultaneously maintaining a blank, indifferent expression to quickly distance themselves.

In truth, this was not the first time in Chai Si's life that he had been mistaken for a madman, nor was it the first time someone had cursed him to his face as one.

Yet previously, it was always because of his ferocious and violent demeanor, or his lethally heavy-handed actions. A reason like today's? Not once.

It had been more than ten minutes since he left the subway station.

Logically speaking, he should have returned immediately to Old Gai's place, handed the "Rumor" artifact over to Old Gai, and then contacted Huang Li to pick her up from the police. But before he could even flag down a taxi, Chai Si had to abandon his original plan and seek out a small park to step into.

...Because the "Rumor" artifact had hijacked his lips, teeth, and throat, using his own voice to speak sentence after sentence without stopping.

He had lost control of his own tongue. No matter how hard he tried to force it down, it would spring right back up, forming new words and phrases inside his mouth.

Whether it was his struggle against the artifact that twisted his features, compounded by his uncontrollable self-talk, everyone he passed on the road had cast sideways glances and given him a wide berth.

Chai Si didn't particularly care about the strange looks from others.

However, the artifact spoke at an extremely rapid pace. The moment a car horn blared on the street or an electric drill whirred at a construction site, he would miss whatever the artifact had just said. Though the words came entirely from his own mouth, even Chai Si had no idea what the content would be until he heard the sound.

He could have handed it over to Old Gai right away, but he had to suppress that urgency, patiently listening to every single word uttered by the artifact in hopes of understanding its operational mode and hidden risks as thoroughly as possible.

Because he had to ensure that every artifact delivered into Old Gai's hands was, at the very least, safe.

"When you create a rumor and spread it, what happens next?" he had asked as he walked away from the subway station.

Who could have guessed that the "Rumor" artifact was a chatterbox?

A single question seemed to have opened the floodgates.

The subway driver certainly had never asked his own mouth this question and thus had never activated the artifact, which explained why he had no idea such a scene could even occur: since the artifact lacked the capability to speak so much at once, it had commandeered Chai Si's tongue, babbling incessantly until now with no sign of stopping.

Despite its low intelligence, the sheer volume of information contained within it was by no means small.

"...Divided into four aspects: first, the generation of the rumor; second, the propagation of the rumor; third, changes in the rumor's credibility; fourth, the consequences of the rumor. Each aspect is further divided into several subcategories based on several different conditions. Now, I shall begin with the first aspect..."

How should one describe this feeling?

It was as if someone were holding a PDF hundreds of pages long that should have been printed as reading material, reading it aloud to you at an extremely high speed—using your own mouth, no less. The sensation was bizarre, overwhelmingly dense with information, impossible to retain the moment one's concentration drifted, and offered no way to ask for a replay because your mouth had been requisitioned.

And so Chai Si sat on the park bench, his upper face blank and lifeless, while his lower face remained very busy.

"...Under ideal conditions, a rumor crafted from a mosaic of real information can spread rapidly through an environment and demographic suited to its dissemination. However, it must be noted that while a rumor may be propagated at this stage, it does not mean everyone necessarily believes it. At this point, everyone still knows it is merely a rumor, and the possibility of it being disproven remains."

A rumor, the shorter it is, the less distortion and warping it undergoes during propagation. When it reaches a sufficient number of people in its original guise—that is, the first variable—the rumor acquires a certain degree of credibility... We can view the environment in which a rumor exists as a system; once credibility reaches the second variable, the rumor, acting as a 'macro-theme' within the system, generates a quantum response with multiple 'butterfly factors'."

Chai Si desperately wished to tell it to speak human language, but he himself could not utter a single word.

"Let us take an example," the artifact finally uttered the words Chai Si had been waiting for through his mouth.

"Suppose you release a rumor whose content is: 'Little Ming of the Warren Elementary School gets diarrhea when he eats people.'

"Assume the real materials constituting this rumor are: first, the student Little Ming actually exists; second, the residents of the Warren eat people from time to time; third, Little Ming occasionally has diarrhea."

...Hmm, I'll have to remind the faction hunters to wash up more often when I get back.

"...The rumor is relatively short, and the Warren is an environment well-suited for propagation... Assuming it successfully reaches the two variables of 'number of people reached' and 'credibility,' what happens next?

"The seemingly unrelated factors originally present in the Warren will at this point transform into 'butterfly factors.' What is a 'butterfly factor'? It is precisely the initial condition in the 'butterfly effect' that brings about change in a chaotic system.

"For example, Little Ming has a younger sister named Little Mei. Normally, Little Mei eats Little Ming every Wednesday night, but after hearing the rumor, she feels Little Ming might not be entirely clean, and thus chooses not to eat him this Wednesday."

...Forget about passersby; as Chai Si listened to the voice echoing from his own mouth, he felt very much like a madman himself.

"'Hungry Little Mei' becomes the first 'butterfly factor.'

"The second 'butterfly factor,' let us assume, is a captured hunter. The hunter suggests to the residents who captured him that they spare his life, and in exchange, he designs a battle royale colosseum for them."

Chai Si's throat and mouth were bone dry, but the artifact cared nothing for that.

"Since this is an example, for the sake of simplicity, we shall employ only two 'butterfly factors.'

"A hungry Little Mei comes out foraging and devours one of the colosseum's contestants. To compensate the master of the colosseum, she hands Little Ming over to him.

"The colosseum master wishes to select the most outstanding children, and, inspired by the recent rumor, names the colosseum 'Warren Elementary School'... Thus, the consequence of this rumor is that a 'Warren Elementary School' genuinely comes into existence within the Warren."

Chai Si was momentarily stunned.

He had originally expected the consequence of the rumor to be that "Little Ming gets diarrhea when he eats people" would come true—the realization felt like stepping out into empty air.

"You see, the part of the rumor that can come true can be 'Little Ming gets diarrhea when he eats people,' or 'Little Ming eats people,' or even 'Warren Elementary School exists'... The reason the final outcome manifested as the last one is because the 'butterfly factors' in the Warren environment steered the result toward 'Warren Elementary School.'

"Had we substituted other 'butterfly factors,' the part that came true could just as easily have been 'Little Ming gets diarrhea when he eats people.'"

True to form, the artifact then droned on through another example.

The result of employing different "butterfly factors" was that Little Ming did indeed get diarrhea when eating people.

In short, its operational model was: create a rumor—people hear the rumor—people believe the rumor—"butterfly factors" (if any) begin to interact with the rumor—and finally, the rumor comes true, or it does not.

...So in order to make a rumor come true and unfold as desired, one must streamline the types of consequences it might produce, correct?

By the time Chai Si arrived at this conclusion, his own mouth had already rattled off several more sentences.

If, prior to spreading a rumor, one were to subtly plant suitable "butterfly factors" in the environment beforehand like foreshadowing, it might help guide the rumor toward the desired outcome...

He had only pondered this for a few seconds, but his mouth was already busy steering the conversation in another direction, shifting from theoretical mechanics to practical execution. Chai Si hurriedly reined in his focus and listened a bit longer, only to hear himself suddenly declare: "...Therefore, the rumors created by the previous hosts of 'Rumor' can serve as operational references for the new host."

...Wait, does that mean he could query the rumors previously created by Westley?

"Unless deleted by the host, every rumor is recorded for future retrieval."

At this, the artifact finally paused for the first time, as if waiting for Chai Si's response.

"Tell me,"

Chai Si was finally able to speak with his own lips and tongue: "What was the rumor immediately preceding the 'Subway Serial Killer'?"

Prompted by the command, the artifact answered swiftly, almost making him bite his tongue.

"The 'Vulture' in the Warren can replicate itself into a second target human and use its pathway to enter the human world."

Chai Si's hands suddenly twisted together.

Yet another resident trying to enter the human world...

No, no, that wasn't the point.

The point was, why create such a rumor? Even if it came completely true, what would be the significance?

"Who created this rumor?" Chai Si confirmed during the artifact's next pause.

"Westley."

It seemed Westley had wanted to conjure out of thin air a resident capable of entering the human world. What was his objective?

"Date of creation?"

The date reported by the artifact was more than three months ago.

Considering that every rumor had to run its full course and reach its conclusion before the next one could be created, this was very likely the last rumor Westley ever crafted before his death.

The conclusion of a rumor boiled down to two outcomes: either it came true, or it fizzled out and vanished without a trace.

"Did this rumor come true?" Chai Si asked again.

"It just came true on November 17th," the artifact replied.

That was... the day after Westley died.