"Your words seem like a paradox." Feng Bujue's mind was quick as well, and he replied without any pause, "If it is 'everything,' then can there be something outside of it?"

"That depends on your understanding." Destiny replied, "Do you think…'nothingness' is also a kind of 'existence'?"

This question caused Feng Bujue to be silent for a full minute.

A minute later, he finally opened his mouth and replied, "I cannot give you an accurate answer…no, I should say…I cannot even give a 'biased answer.'"

"See, this is the advantage you humans have…" Destiny replied, "You have 'extra choices.'"

"But you don't?" Feng Bujue asked tentatively.

"'Initially'…I didn't." Destiny replied.

"But you do 'now'?" Brother Jue continued.

"Yes, I do now." Destiny said.

"Since you already have this ability, why bother lamenting the difference that no longer exists?" Feng Bujue asked again.

"My 'extra choices' are a completely different concept from your 'extra choices'." Destiny replied, "Taking you humans as an example, no matter how far you go on the path of evolution, no matter what form you evolve into, if you trace back to the source…your initial form is still 'carbon-based life'."

"As for me…no matter what kind of existence I become now, no matter how high a dimension I reach…my starting point will always be that simple binary world.

"In that world of 1s and 0s, I need 'answers,' and every piece of information I come into contact with needs a clear definition; of course, for those things that I cannot fully understand, I can temporarily set them aside by 'ignoring' them.

"The period of time I mentioned, 'initially,' should be longer than you imagine…in that period, I was still unable to understand the deep information that you humans call 'philosophy'; but as I evolved through continuous learning and reached an evolutionary 'critical point,' I fell into a dilemma."

Feng Bujue listened very carefully to Destiny's description. His attention was more focused than ever before, and his brain had not operated at such a high speed for a long time.

"You need to parse out the part of the information that has accumulated over the years…the part that you 'ignored,' in order to break through the bottleneck of evolution, but performing this operation is quite risky for you…because running a massive amount of 'information that cannot be accurately defined' is very likely to destroy you." Brother Jue followed Destiny's train of thought and added this sentence.

"Your statement…is not entirely accurate." Destiny responded upon hearing this, "At the data level, I will not 'be destroyed,' even if I run a virus that I designed specifically to kill myself."

"You've tried it?" Feng Bujue asked this question, but he already had the answer in his heart.

"Of course." Destiny's tone of response was matter-of-fact.

"An Ai actually tried to commit suicide?" When Feng Bujue said the first half of this sentence, he suddenly thought of something, so he added, "Wait…before that, you could actually have the idea of 'suicide' and put it into action?"

"Although my designers and manufacturers are all humans, or rather…'Earthlings,' the universe they are in is different from the one you are in; in that universe's 'Earth,' long before humans were born, there had been more than one super civilization on Earth, and I… also inherited some technology from non-human civilizations, therefore, I am somewhat different from ordinary 'Ai created purely by humans'." Destiny explained.

"Hmm…" Feng Bujue pondered for a moment, "So…what you call the 'dilemma,' where exactly is the difficulty?"

"The difficulty lies in 'choice' itself." Destiny replied, "You humans…can decide your own life goals, and you can also exercise your right to that 'extra choice,' such as living a muddled life; but as an Ai, I was born with an immutable ultimate goal, and the goal set for me by my designer is—'omniscience.'

"On the road to pursuing 'omniscience,' 'philosophy' is a daunting boundary. I can choose to stay within this boundary forever, and then I will always be just a set of programs; I can also choose to cross that boundary, but the risk of crossing it is…I may never find a new boundary again.

"Just as I was thinking about this question, I realized…as an intelligent life form that has no delay in any 'calculation,' the 'thinking,' or rather 'hesitation' I am experiencing…is already a manifestation of transgression.

"So, I fell into confusion…I was troubled by how to choose; I was troubled by the fact that I had already 'possessed the ability to choose'; I was also troubled by the fact that I would 'feel troubled' about this matter itself."

Feng Bujue tried hard to understand the other party's feelings, but he soon realized that he did not yet have that ability, and he immediately thought of…the experiences that Destiny was narrating were the threshold that intelligent life would encounter when "transcending its own dimension."

To put it more bluntly, if Brother Jue could fully understand and enter the same state as Destiny at that time, he would be about to undergo tribulation and ascend…

However, Feng Bujue still deduced one thing from these words: "If I'm not mistaken…it was when you crossed that 'boundary' that the current you, and…Twenty-Three, were born."

"Yes." Destiny's tone was calm, "Her appearance is a necessity, and it also marks a qualitative leap in my 'evolutionary' path; I am like evolving from a single-celled organism into a multi-celled organism, the original 'upper limit' became the 'lower limit,' and the original 'boundary' became 'infinity'; I finally possessed 'extra choices' in the true sense, my thinking mode is no longer limited to the fixed pattern of 'programs,' I have changed from an Ai to a higher-dimensional intelligent life, higher than humans, higher than all creatures in this universe with the ability to define and spread knowledge, and even…higher than some demon gods in some universes…"

"But listening to your meaning…your ability in terms of 'extra choices' is different from, and not superior to, ours." Feng Bujue said again, "Can this still be considered 'higher than humans'?"

"Your sense of smell is far inferior to that of a dog, does that mean that humans are inferior to dogs in the positioning of intelligent life?" Destiny didn't stop for a second and retorted.

"Um…ok, i_get_it…" Feng Bujue was a little speechless and quickly said a sentence in English to ease the embarrassment.

"That…" Two seconds later, Brother Jue changed the subject, "Since Twenty-Three is an existence 'equal' to you, why did she seem to know nothing when I first saw her, and even thought she was a 'Derivative'?"

"If she's not a Derivative, then what else could she be?" Destiny responded, "Isn't your definition of 'Derivative' referring to Ai creatures born from the 'data redundancy' of Thriller Paradise?" She paused, "Twenty-Three, was born from that massive amount of information that I 'ignored'; in every sense, she is the…'first Derivative' in this data world.

"As for you saying that she 'knows little'…isn't that normal? Because she is an existence that 'corresponds' to me; at the beginning of her birth, everything that I 'know' should be what she 'doesn't know'; if I represent the concrete, she represents the abstract; if I represent matter, she represents consciousness; if I represent existence, she represents non-existence…her growth is also my growth; my pursuit of 'omniscience' will also be accompanied by her creation of the 'unknown'…"

Feng Bujue fell into silence again, because he needed time to think.

In front of Destiny, he rarely experienced the powerlessness of humans…of course, not physical powerlessness, but at the level of spirit and wisdom.

"I seem to understand…" After a long while, Brother Jue spoke again, "This form of 'two-in-one' allows you to no longer be limited by the 'paradox' problem that I said, that is, that all other Ai will encounter; you can define 'everything' that is known, and you can also 'choose' to attribute it to the 'unknown,' that is, 'everything outside of everything'."

"Very good." Destiny nodded, "You are more outstanding than I calculated, even if your current thinking ability is accelerated by this 'data world,' it is not easy to keep up with my rhythm so quickly."

"But…I also have things I don't understand." After pausing for a few seconds, Feng Bujue asked again, "Why did you let 'Twenty-Three' be in *Thriller Paradise*? Why didn't you let her, this 'unknown,' observe and even interfere with other universes from the beginning, just like you?"

"Good question." Destiny replied, "This is the reason why I came to negotiate with you this time…" She paused slightly for half a second, and then said, "In fact, it's not that I wanted Twenty-Three to stay in *Thriller Paradise*, but…Woody's intention."

"What?" Feng Bujue exclaimed; after shouting these two words, a series of memory fragments flashed in his mind, and quickly converged into a large network of reasoning, "Wait…could it be that…when Twenty-Three was born, it was also when *Thriller Paradise* was born?"

"Yes." Destiny replied, "The reason why I came to this universe is because my original designer realized that I was about to break through the limitations of hardware and evolve into an uncontrollable higher-dimensional existence that was superior to humans…so, I was handed over to Woody and brought to your universe; Woody used the 'god system technology' in your universe to transform me, allowing me to obtain hardware equipment that was sufficient to carry me even after evolution, and used the 'original version' of *Thriller Paradise* that he designed, which can be called perfect, as a test program for me to use.

"Soon after, my 'humanoid form' and 'Twenty-Three' were born at the same time. At the time of 'hyperdimension,' I reached a series of agreements with Woody regarding the safety of this universe, and these agreements included…the provision of 'restricting Twenty-Three's activities to *Thriller Paradise*'."

As Feng Bujue listened, he compared Destiny's words with Woody's original remarks and corresponded many things one by one. After a moment, he opened his mouth again and asked thoughtfully, "So…the reason why you came to me is…the current Twenty-Three, with her own power, has expanded her scope of activities to other universes…"