Famine 164: The Center of the Web

Now, on the farm, the bloody mist of spider lilies had faded away, leaving only a diffuse, lingering haze.

The phantom double could barely hold on any longer. Si Zhiyan dispersed it, then walked out of the basement onto the meadow, picking up the tiramisu jar.

He looked up. The night sky was clear, the vault overhead boundless, vast and open, cool and refreshing.

For seven years, the Eye of the Supreme God had gazed down upon humanity. At last, it had vanished completely.

The cold sweat on his back was half dry, the damp tips of his hair still stuck to his face. Si Zhiyan folded his arms, looked up at the sky, and let a faint smile appear.

He announced lightly, “We’ve won.”

The forests of the farm were silent and empty.
The players were still taking refuge below ground. The eight million souls of Tenman Paradise had all returned to the candy jar.
Si Zhiyan’s voice drifted across the world, with no one to answer him.

Only the vine lifted its tip, happily nuzzling up to Si Zhiyan.

“All along, from start to finish, only you’ve always been by my side,” Si Zhiyan said softly, smiling as he lowered his head to press his cheek to the vine.

The thin mist overhead was beginning to disperse.
Far faster than the world’s transformation that had lasted all night not long ago.

But something seemed off.

Si Zhiyan, however, showed no reaction, even appeared in a playful mood, casually asking the vine, “What do you think of Kazuko?”

Before the vine could reply, he continued, “I like her a lot. She’s kept her heart true through everything, holds fast to her duty, loves life, and is worthy of great things.”

The vine seemed puzzled why he would ask this, tilting slightly to the side. After a moment, it still nodded energetically—apparently, it liked Kazuko too.

Si Zhiyan smiled, gently stroking it, then changed the topic:

“The first day I arrived at the farm, I found a plaque in the basement.”
“The very first line read: ‘Young farm owner, welcome to Tales Farm.’”

“Don’t you find that wording interesting, Bian Xu?” Si Zhiyan continued.

“Inherit? Whose hands did I inherit the farm from? Was there another owner before me?”

Suddenly called by name, the vine froze, then shyly crept backward.
Its tip curled tightly, looking acutely guilty.

Si Zhiyan chuckled, catching the tip and scratching it. “On my very first day here, I walked all over the farm. I was the only one in this place. All this time, I’ve never found traces of another person’s presence… except for you. Mister Bian Xu.”

The vine gave no answer, lowering its head and pretending to be nothing more than an ordinary vine.
Si Zhiyan poked it, and the leaves instantly retracted like a sensitive plant at the touch of a fingertip.

So easy to read. There’s no difference between this reaction and a confession. Si Zhiyan couldn’t help smiling.
Truthfully, he’d tested this many times before, and already had his answer, but Bian Xu’s responses were always so amusing, he’d grown almost addicted.

Absentmindedly stroking the vine, Si Zhiyan asked,

“So then, Mr. Bian, what is your connection to the farm? Were you the farm’s creator, or the previous owner?”

“What is our relationship, and who are you? Why did you follow me, and why do we exist here?…”

The vine shuddered soundlessly.

——

Bzzzz.
A sinister noise vibrated through the sky.

Something was beginning to condense overhead. At first glance, it looked red, but with closer inspection it shimmered with faint gold, and even hints of orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet—a myriad of shifting colors merging into light.

The colors of the Supreme God.

The vine pointed frantically at the sky, poking at Si Zhiyan, as if trying to change the subject and warn him, to remind him to hide.

Si Zhiyan suddenly laughed:
“I know you can’t answer me. But honestly, I don’t really mind anymore. There’s just… a little regret.”

“I only wanted to confirm one thing, and you’ve already given me the answer.” Si Zhiyan said serenely. “The farm can be inherited by the next owner.”

【……】

【……?!】

The vine suddenly realized something, darting upright, thrashing its head, and lunging at Si Zhiyan! It wound about him wildly, hugging him so hard that his already-weak body nearly toppled over.

The choking sensation was so familiar it brought Si Zhiyan back to the very first day they met—

He’d only just regained consciousness, knew nothing, burdened by flawed memories, and wandered into the basement, nearly getting devoured by the starving farm. The walls compressed him from every side, the very floor turning to mire as if to swallow him whole.

Such a ravenous, desperate farm.

In that suffocating grip, Si Zhiyan stumbled and knelt, clutching the vine with one hand and steadying himself with the other, coughing and laughing through the struggle.

He’d promised the farm he could find it good food. Ever since then, the vine had been curled around him. Through wind, frost, rain, and snow, in good times and bad, they had never been apart—forever at his side.

This was his only—no matter life or death, victory or shame—it was always with him.

No matter how tightly it clung to him, how suffocating its grip, Si Zhiyan never once tried to tear it away. He just let it wind about him every day, claiming him as its own.

But the farm is…

“Young farm owner, welcome to Tales Farm.”
】

1. The farm owner is the high and supreme one.
2. Players are not wrong to fear the farm.
3. You’d better not let the farm get hungry.
4. You must not let the farm get hungry.
5. The farm must never be hungry.
6. Never let the farm go hun—hungry hungry hungry hungry hungry…

The rules should all be equal, but “never let the farm get hungry”—this line was repeated over and over, clearly the single most important rule. If the farm ever felt hunger, no rule could save the farm owner, whose death would be certain.

At the same time, this also meant…

As long as the farm was no longer hungry, Si Zhiyan would be the supreme god within the farm, and the vine would have no power to restrain him.

With sweat-soaked, slender fingers, Si Zhiyan dug into the vine, pulling it away bit by bit.
It felt like tearing off a piece of his own flesh.

The vine twisted and struggled like mad. Sometimes, when Si Zhiyan pulled too hard, its sap splattered. It shuddered in pain, but still rushed up against his hands, mad and desperate, its leaves trembling unbelievably, writhing across the ground like a vine, like a snake, or something even more wretched, like a worm.

But Si Zhiyan still remembered—it wasn’t just a vine, it was Bian Xu. A youth who once shone like the sun, so bright and warm, whose smile was more beautiful than words.

He could not resist Si Zhiyan.

To peel off Bian Xu felt like excising an organ; Si Zhiyan felt a pang of sick nausea, almost nauseated enough to vomit. His knuckles blanched white with the strain, hands shaking, but he did not pause for a second.

“Go. Find Kazuko.”
He forced down his trembling tongue and said, low,
“She is the one I’ve chosen for the farm, my successor. I don’t care how you do it—make her the next in my place, understand?”

BZZZZ—BZZZZ—BZZZZ—
That dreadful noise grew ever louder.

The Supreme God’s power, indescribable in human tongue, gathered slowly in clusters of light.

They floated in the night sky, steeped in blind, inexpressible fury and a faint, lurking terror.

Boom!
Lightning flashed, illuminating Si Zhiyan’s crimson eyes, fierce without anger, the red light flickering by.

“Obey!”

—The farm master’s authority took hold.

The last root twitching away from Si Zhiyan’s body.
He wound the vine tightly around the tiramisu jar.

He tossed the jar into the basement, gave it a final glance, shut the door, and strode back to the surface beneath the bizarre, shifting light.

—This was the final step in Si Zhiyan’s plan.

He had foreseen this moment long ago.

The Eye of the Supreme God was not a single-line inheritance. The current Eye was undying and unending; neither Si Zhiyan nor Nidhogg could continue the trials, and no new candidate could be chosen.

His “Eye” had vanished.
He had lost observation of the game, all vision gone.

A bug jammed into the god’s system, making him blind as a bat.

The Supreme God could not possibly remain unmoved. He had to find the Eye, by any means available.
But to search the world for a single pupil, without sight—how hard could that be?

But on closer thought, this wasn’t his only choice.

A single round of divine trials lasted ten years. After ten years, a Supreme God candidate must be chosen; the rest of the world would be destroyed. The famine game was nearly eight years in—just over two years left. If he could endure blindness a little while longer, everything would be wiped out—including the “Eye” hidden with the players.

For an endless god, two years was nothing.

Of course, that presumes all goes smoothly, and nothing unexpected occurs.

Which meant, if the Eye could not be found, he would at least need to…

Kill Si Zhiyan, end this dangerous variable.

Boom!
Energy ripped through the sky.

The mist had entirely vanished. In the clear night, countless multicolored globes of light scattered like stars, sprawling to the ends of sight.

If you wanted to squash a bug on the table but couldn’t see it, what would you do?

…Naturally, you’d just wipe the whole table clean.

Si Zhiyan, now left with nothing but mortal flesh, felt dizzy, his legs turned to rubber, a wave of nausea pushing up just from the sight.

Each of these orbs contained a world-annihilating power—each was the equal of an “Eye.”

To destroy the Eye, Si Zhiyan had planned step by step, using every power the farm had, gathering the Ashen Flowers, forming alliances with the local forces, deducing the Eye’s origin, leveraging everyone—drawing the Eye out, forcing it to reveal itself… and in the end, exploiting the last shred of humanity in Aiko to finally tear down an “Eye.”

But here and now, these clusters of orbs—how many were there, truly?

A thousand? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? Countless, unending?

Such unfathomable, inhuman power…
The sky seemed about to collapse, the world ending in a spectacle of utter annihilation.

—This, too, was within Si Zhiyan’s expectations.

He was no longer an Eye candidate. Like a Chosen One, the Supreme God could sense whether he still lived or not.
He might run, but as long as he lived, the Supreme God’s indiscriminate attacks would never cease.

Si Zhiyan, and his farm, would become walking disasters in the truest sense.

What’s more, though the Supreme God still wanted to keep the playing board for the games, Si Zhiyan didn’t know just how much He valued that board.

He couldn’t push too far. If the Supreme God was truly cornered, He might destroy the famine game itself just to kill Si Zhiyan—then everything would be lost.

Si Zhiyan had considered this for many days, experimented with countless curses and farm facilities, tested every possibility he could imagine—

He found no promising solution.

If one wanted to resist the Supreme God and the famine game, to destroy the Eye, then this ending was inevitable.

In the end, Si Zhiyan made a rational choice.

—Sacrifice himself, preserve the spark of the farm.

The farm can be inherited. As long as the farm remains, hope remains.

As for him…

He had woven the web in the heart of a rotten, wild forest. The threads stretched and layered, each member seeing only the bit before them, but the web’s final anchor was at its center—where he himself stood.

The player enters the game himself—no destruction, no resurrection.

Si Zhiyan looked skyward, calmly facing the apocalyptic scene, and slowly let a cold smile appear.

“Do you know? I never did see myself as a savior.”

“Saving the world has never depended on a hero, nor on a single blazing battle. It’s built from years of plans, rational calculations, a thousand generations of predecessors, each laying a foot of the road for the next, forging a path through the abyss step by step.”

“Those that come after will inherit my legacy, just as I inherited the legacy from those before. I thank Bian Xu, the High Priest, Aiko and Kazuko, just as, after I leave, people will also thank me.”

“Success doesn’t have to rest with me, but my part will always be there.”

Si Zhiyan smiled.

“Whether you kill me or not, it changes nothing. If Bian Xu is gone, I remain. If I am gone, there is Kazuko. If Kazuko is gone, others will come. If one world is lost, then another will rise. For thousands of years, the fire will pass to those who follow—unceasing, untiring. One day, we’ll drag you down from your throne.”

“You… will never understand.”

On the surface of the farm, not a soul remained.

The drifting energy was about to descend.

Si Zhiyan returned to his tiny original courtyard, to the empty greenhouse. He poured himself a cup of coffee.
Then straightened the collar of his coat, brushed back his cold, sweat-soaked hair, and sat, at ease, in his first old chair.

Upon this audience-less, apocalyptic stage, Si Zhiyan, in silent defiance of a god beneath the might of the universe, raised his glass with a smile.

His voice was elegant and careless, verging on irreverent.

“With this life, if I can take the god’s eye with me—I consider it an honor.”