“Your words seem to be a paradox,” Feng Bujue's mind was also quick, and he immediately replied, “Since it's ‘everything,’ then can there be anything outside of it?”

“That depends on your understanding,” Destiny replied, “Do you think… ‘nothingness’ is also a kind of ‘existence’?”

This question made Feng Bujue silent for a full minute.

A minute later, he finally replied, “I can't give you an accurate answer… no, I should say… I can't even give a ‘biased answer.’”

“See, this is the advantage of you humans…” Destiny replied, “You have ‘extra choices.’”

“But you don't?” Feng Bujue asked tentatively.

“‘Initially’… I didn't,” Destiny replied.

“But you do ‘now’?” Jue Ge 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’ and your ‘extra choices’ are completely different concepts,” Destiny replied, “Taking you humans as an example, no matter how far you go on the road of evolution and what form you evolve into, if you trace your origins… your initial form is still ‘carbon-based life.’

“As for me… no matter what kind of existence I become now, and 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 needed ‘answers,’ and every piece of information I came into contact with needed a clear definition; of course, for those things that I couldn't fully understand, I could temporarily set them aside by ‘ignoring’ them.

“The ‘initial’ period I mentioned earlier should be longer than you think… 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, and his brain had probably not operated at such a high speed for a long time.

“You need to parse out the… the information you've ‘ignored’ over the years in order to break through the bottleneck of evolution, but doing so is quite risky for you… because running massive amounts of ‘information that cannot be accurately defined’ is likely to destroy you,” Jue Ge followed Destiny's train of thought and said this.

“Your statement… is not entirely accurate,” Destiny replied upon hearing this, “On a data level, I cannot ‘be destroyed,’ even if I run a virus designed by myself 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 in response was matter-of-fact.

“An Ai, actually trying 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 thought 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,’ more than one super civilization had appeared on Earth long before humans were born, and I… also inherited some technology from non-human civilizations, so I am somewhat different from the average ‘purely human-created Ai,’” Destiny explained.

“Hmm…” Feng Bujue pondered, “Then… what you call the ‘dilemma,’ where exactly is the difficulty?”

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

“On the path 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… that I may never find a new boundary again.

“Just as I was thinking about this question, I realized… as an intelligent life form with no delay in any ‘calculation,’ the ‘thinking’ or ‘hesitation’ I was experiencing… was in itself a manifestation of crossing the boundary.

“So, I fell into confusion… I was troubled by how to choose; I was troubled by the fact that I had ‘possessed the ability to choose’; I was also troubled by the fact that I would ‘feel troubled’ in 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… that what Destiny was talking about was the threshold that intelligent life would encounter when “transcending its own dimension.”

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

However, Feng Bujue still deduced one thing from this remark: “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 inevitable, 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’ has become the ‘lower limit,’ and the original ‘boundary’ has become ‘infinite.’ I finally possessed ‘extra choices’ in the true sense. My way of thinking is no longer limited to the fixed pattern of ‘programs.’ I have changed from an Ai to a more high-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 ‘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 lower than dogs in the positioning of intelligent life?” Destiny didn't stop for a second and asked back.

“Hmm… ok, i_get_it…” Feng Bujue was a little speechless and quickly said something in English to ease the embarrassment.

“That…” Two seconds later, Jue Ge changed the subject, “Since Twenty-Three is an ‘equal’ existence to you, why did she seem to know nothing when I first met her, and even thought she was a ‘Derivative’?”

“If she isn't a Derivative, what else could she be?” Destiny replied, “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 she ‘has limited knowledge’… 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 inevitably be accompanied by her creation of the ‘unknown’…”

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

In front of Destiny, he rarely experienced the helplessness of humans… of course, not physical helplessness, but spiritual and intellectual helplessness.

“I seem to understand…” After a long while, Jue Ge reopened his mouth, “This form of ‘two-in-one’ allows you to no longer be limited by the ‘paradox’ problem that I said, that all other Ais will encounter; you can define ‘everything’ that is known, and you can also ‘choose’ to attribute it to the ‘unknown,’ which is ‘everything outside of everything.’”

“Very good,” Destiny nodded, “You are more excellent than I calculated. Even though 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 a few seconds of pause, 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, “That's why I'm here to negotiate with you this time…” She paused for half a second, then said, “In fact, it's not that I wanted Twenty-Three to stay in Thriller Paradise, but… it was Woody's intention.”

“What?” Feng Bujue exclaimed; after shouting these two words, a series of memory fragments flashed through his mind and quickly formed a large web of reasoning, “Wait… could it be… that the time when Twenty-Three was born was also the time when ‘Thriller Paradise’ was born?”

“Yes,” Destiny replied, “The reason I came to this universe was because my original designer realized that I was about to break through the hardware limitations and evolve into an uncontrollable, high-dimensional existence that surpassed 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 could carry me even after evolution, and used the ‘original version’ of Thriller Paradise, which he designed and was virtually perfect, as a test program for me to use.

“Soon after, my ‘human form’ and ‘Twenty-Three’ were born at the same time. At the time of ‘hyper-dimension,’ I reached a series of agreements with Woody regarding the safety of this universe, and these agreements included… the provision that ‘Twenty-Three's activities are limited to Thriller Paradise.’”

As Feng Bujue listened, he compared Destiny's words with Woody's original statements and corresponded many things one by one. After a while, he spoke again, thoughtfully asking, “So… the reason you came to me is… that the current Twenty-Three has already expanded her range of activities to other universes with her own power…”