A man among dragons, building a mysterious ancient church.

Chapter 372 Harmonizing the Underlying Code
"He's awake, he's awake. It seems his main body hasn't lost control." As always, every time Xu Lie completes an advancement and opens his eyes, he is surrounded by hundreds of guardian clones discussing him.

It's really lively.

Before his clones could chatter on, Xu Lie spoke first: "Alright, I've already created dozens more clones and brought them with me."

"As the saying goes, I'm giving you seven days off now. Go have fun if you want, but don't cause trouble in San Francisco. Let the North American parish branch preach peacefully."

Upon hearing this, hundreds of clones erupted in cheers: "Original body, we respect and love your teeth!"

Unexpectedly, the clones were genuinely surprised that the original body, who used to always assign them tasks and never give them a break, was being so generous today!

Smiling as he saw off his clone, Xu Lie leaped up and arrived at the Source Castle. The Source Castle, which had seemed so stable in the past, now trembled slightly in Xu Lie's eyes as he finally reached Sequence 1.

However, the amplitude of the tremor was so small that it was almost undetectable, especially at positions less than sequence 1.

"Main body, is it complete? How is the humanity?" Bao Lie asked casually from his bronze throne. Ever since Xu Lie ascended to the higher sequence, his clones would ask this question almost every time he advanced, which had become a routine.

While observing the faint trembling of the Source Castle, Xu Lie replied, "Not bad. That arrogant divinity that disregards the world and sees everything as if it were a novel doesn't affect me yet."

Bao Lie also deserves credit for this. As clones, they are the best anchors for the main body: "So, main body, you've given all the previous clones a break. Am I just going to...hehehehe."

Xu Lie glanced speechlessly at his clones, feeling that his excellent maintenance of his humanity was largely due to these unique and vacation-loving clones: "Wait a minute, let me check the source essence."

Now, Xu Lie finally has the ability to see for himself the problem with the source matter. It is the contradiction that the source matter is constantly in conflict with the underlying code of the Dragon Clan's universe, forcibly operating out of contradiction.

The original Dragon Universe was like an incredibly precise mechanical structure, and the nine external source substances were like nine gears that did not belong to this mechanical structure.

When two completely different mechanical systems collide, it should cause enormous damage, resulting in significant harm to both sides.

Fortunately, the nine elemental substances did not collide forcibly, but instead, through their own characteristics, they were inexplicably and forcibly embedded into the dragon system.

Gears that are completely mismatched can somehow function within the mechanical framework of the Dragon Clan universe. As a result, each time a gear operates, it causes minor damage to the gear itself and the entire mechanical structure.

To put it simply, imagine putting nine computer programs onto an Android phone. They shouldn't be able to run, but if you force them to, they'll eventually start malfunctioning and break down.

Xu Lie has always felt a strong sense of crisis and has never forgotten the excruciating pain that accompanied him when he first regained his memories.

After each promotion, he would visit the familiar Yuanbao Castle, hoping to find a way to reconcile the contradictions between the two.

Previously, we couldn't identify the specific problems, but with Sequence 1, we finally had the qualifications to participate.

Upon hearing this, Bao Lie's expression turned serious, and he stopped joking around.

He was well aware of the importance the Main Body placed on reconciliation. In fact, it could be said that their consistent efforts to cultivate talent were precisely to have enough high-sequence powerhouses to help reconcile the conflicts between the Nine Origin Elements and the Dragon Universe.

To avoid the disastrous outcome of the nine elemental entities and the Dragon Universe perishing together, and everyone being wiped out.

Realizing the seriousness of the situation, Xu Lie quickly shut up and quietly stood by. Xu Lie's mind gradually became immersed in the entire Source Castle, spreading outwards along the outermost gray mist of the Source Castle.

With the Source Castle as a medium, the vast Source Castle seemed to transform into Xu Lie's eye, allowing him to truly glimpse the root of the Dragon Clan universe.

It is not an eye in the physical sense, but a conceptual singularity, a higher-dimensional existence from outside the universe.

At this moment, it is beginning to examine this new world in which it inhabits in a gentle yet undeniable way.

This is an indescribable, wondrous space where condensed starlight, soul information, and interwoven laws coexist.

It does not belong to the astral realm, nor the spiritual realm, nor even to the real material world, yet it seems to be the source of the astral realm, the spiritual realm, and the material world, the root of all things.

Here, it seems as if everything can be seen, yet everything also seems to exist. The propagation of light exhibits extremely subtle deviations, and the saturation of colors is slowly diminishing, as if the entire world is being silently reduced in dimension.

It collapses from vivid reality toward a more fundamental and abstract mathematical structure, yet expands rapidly, cycling endlessly without end.

The Source Castle has taken root here so forcefully that every operation and interaction of everything here exudes a resistance to it, like skin that is spontaneously healing, trying to squeeze out this external object.

However, not far from the Source Castle, there are eight equally mysterious and strange Source Entities, standing firmly there, and no matter how the universe resists, it cannot shake the nine Source Entities in the slightest.

Even the Dragon Clan universe's every instance of exclusion and interaction with the nine primal substances is forcibly distorted and transformed into the laws of the mysterious system after flowing through the nine primal substances.

Extraordinary abilities—dragon blood materials possess extraordinary properties, allowing for the creation of magical potions; this is how they are transformed. Using the Source Castle as a medium, Xu Lie could faintly sense the resistance and exclusion from the Dragon Clan universe, but there was no intense pain or feeling of spacetime collapse.

Even the Source Castle, in turn, influences the flickering time and space here. The time and space of the lowest-level code of the Dragon Clan universe seems to be suppressed by the Source Castle. The fickle fate cannot exclude the Source Castle and can only let the Source Castle stand here.

A sudden realization flashed through Xu Lie's mind—the King of Time and Space, the Beacon of Destiny.

As the universe repels the Source Castle, Xu Lie, using the Source Castle as a medium, can clearly "observe" the slowness emitted by the underlying code of the universe, which is imperceptible to ordinary people.

That wasn't an alarm; it was more like... a massive and incredibly sophisticated system encountering a new, unrecognizable instruction with extremely high privileges, causing a sluggishness in its operations.

Like some massive and sophisticated code, a new programmer, after looking at it, felt there were too many bugs and volunteered to input some new code to fix them.

As a result, Shi Shan's code could still run, but it was even more sluggish and difficult than before, and it would inevitably throw an error after running for a long time.

The fundamental laws of the Dragon Universe—the underlying protocols that maintain elemental balance, life cycles, and causal chains—are attempting to analyze, dismantle, and drive away this external instruction, but due to its absolute high dimensionality, it is trapped in a logical dead loop.

"It's not advisable to continue this conflict." Xu Lie shook his head. If things continue like this, things will be fine in the short term, but in the long run, either the nine primordial substances will be driven out of the universe, or the universe will collapse, or both will perish at the same time.

Xu Lie's own spirituality rose, becoming the interface and debugging platform between two different systems, connecting to the Source Castle and the universe respectively. Simply put, he became the compilation workshop between different underlying codes.

Using the same example as before, nine computer software programs were run on the Android system on a mobile phone. Now, what Xu Lie is doing is personally acting as the Windows virtual machine within the Android system.

From this, we can see the Source Castle, which symbolizes time, space, destiny, and the spirit world, and even more so, the underlying code of the Dragon Clan universe, which is magnificent, complex, and like an infinite web of laws woven from the brilliance of billions of stars.

Each line represents a rule, a concept, a cornerstone of existence.

Xu Lie attempted to reconcile the situation, but he did not forcibly modify the underlying code of the Source Castle. Even if he could do it, it would be self-destructive.

It is not about forcing all the laws of the universe to bow down and submit, which is beyond the limits of any existence.

Xu Lie only needed to reconstruct the underlying code of all the interaction rules involving the Source Castle and the Gou family in the Dragon Clan universe.

For example, time normally moves forward and never goes back, but in the Dragon Raja universe, there is also the concept of rebooting.

Xu Lie only needs to copy and paste the power of the Source Castle, and add many new concepts of the Source Castle such as historical projection, replay, and time worms next to the restart.

This was a silent reconstruction, in which countless lines of the Dragon Clan's world laws related to the Source Castle were altered, becoming even more redundant.

The whole process was not destructive, but a system upgrade. As for whether the system would be more laggy after the upgrade, Xu Lie said he didn't care, as long as it didn't crash.

After a period of busy work, Xu Lie withdrew from this state of reconciliation mediated by the Source Fortress, feeling his own exhaustion, and looked at the quiet Fortress Lie: "How long has it been?"

"A day has exactly twenty-four hours."

Xu Lie's spirituality was reduced by about one-tenth. After all, he didn't reconstruct it himself. What Xu Lie did was to actively copy the laws of the Source Castle and paste them into the underlying code of the Dragon Clan Universe. The Dragon Clan Universe upgraded itself and didn't need Xu Lie's spirituality.

To harmonize for a day, does it cost one-tenth of one's spirituality?
This is just the consumption of using source material as a medium for a long time and the process of copying and pasting, which is still acceptable.

Xu Lie calculated the time and losses and couldn't help but sigh, "I really hope they can advance to Sequence 1 soon, or that I can advance to Sequence Zero Error soon."

"?" Yuanbao blinked. "So, the problem with the nine source materials is very serious? Someone needs to mediate immediately?"

“No, that’s not it.” Xu Lie shook his head calmly and denied it: “Don’t underestimate our nine source substances. They are something we brought down from the narrative layer. They can contend with the underlying laws of the Dragon Clan universe for a long time.”

"It just feels so troublesome. There are too many conflicting points, and even more source laws that need to be copied and pasted. The workload seems endless."

"I don't want to spend years and years trying to reconcile these feelings. What's more painful than being in jail is working while in jail 24 hours a day, without stopping."

"Instead of that, let the church members rise to Sequence 1 and then go to jail, cough cough, no, to carry out the great cause of protecting the universe."

"Or I could split into two Sequence 1 clones after reaching Sequence 0 to reconcile them."

Yuanbao blinked, wanting to say that his clone wasn't human, but the real body was a real dog, taking a break while his subordinates or clones went to jail, right?

(End of this chapter)