Taoist Master, wishing for a sacrifice-based system

"Four devotees, are you here to offer incense and make a wish?" Qin Du skillfully opened a drawer, took out several sticks of incense, and said, "Three sticks of incense for one wish. You all know the rules, right?"

The dormitory head stepped forward, not immediately accepting the incense, but raising his hand with an extremely solemn expression: "Master, wait a moment. We still need to do the final code... oh no, the logic self-check."

Under the astonished gazes of Qin Du and tens of thousands of netizens in the live broadcast room.

Four college students formed a circle in front of the incense burner, as if they were holding an extremely serious academic seminar. The dormitory head even pulled a crumpled notebook and a ballpoint pen from his back pocket.

"Brothers, this is a battle against the heavens in the very fabric of a compiler system; our underlying logic absolutely cannot have any flaws!"

The dorm leader opened his notebook, pointed to the densely packed words, and began to review the events in a low voice:

"Our initial wish was, 'Please bless us so we don't fail our final exams,' right?"

The other three nodded repeatedly.

"No! This wording is too vague!" The tall, thin man adjusted his black-rimmed glasses and analyzed meticulously, "If the Heavenly Dao System detects that our knowledge is insufficient to pass the exam, it might resort to extreme measures to force us to 'not fail'!"

"For example, what if a dump truck hits us and breaks our leg tomorrow? Then we can apply for a 'postponed exam due to injury or illness,' which literally means we didn't fail! That's called physical avoidance!"

The fat man gasped, "Holy crap! That makes sense! That's exactly how that taxi driver and the bankrupt boss got ripped off! We have to add restrictions!"

The dormitory head immediately wrote a line heavily on a piece of paper:

"Therefore, we need to add an exception handling mechanism! That is, an if/else statement! The wish must be qualified with: [provided that we are healthy, without missing any limbs, and without suffering any physical harm]!"

"That's not enough!" another short guy who hadn't spoken until now suddenly interjected, his eyes sharp. "What if the heavens cause our school building to collapse? The school would be forced to cancel exams, and we still wouldn't fail, but that would be a fucking huge price to pay!"

"Yes, yes, yes! Add it! [And it cannot be at the expense of endangering public safety or damaging school facilities]!" The dormitory head wrote furiously, frantically adding patches.

Four aspiring programmers with dark circles under their eyes stood brazenly in front of the incense burner at Qingyun Temple, using the mindset of writing code to prevent bugs to frantically add layers of nested conditional statements and exception handling mechanisms to their wishes.

Qin Du, sitting in the armchair, froze, his hand holding the teacup.

He stared blankly at the four clowns.

Good guy.

This isn't a place to make a wish, is it?

This is clearly a product requirement document submitted to God!

At this moment, however, the air was filled with a strong sense of anxiety, like that of a "product requirements review meeting".

Four male students from the Computer Science Department of Yunnan University, all sporting dark circles under their eyes, were gathered around a rusty incense burner, whispering amongst themselves, their brows furrowed, and occasionally making corrections in a crumpled notebook.

"No, that previous clause wasn't precise enough!" The tall, thin man pushed up his slipping black-rimmed glasses, pointed to a line in his notebook, his expression more serious than when solving advanced calculus problems. "We added 'not at the cost of physical disability,' but what if fate sends us all catching a bad cold, getting a 40-degree fever, and ending up in the ICU? Even without disabilities, a serious illness will still take a toll!"

"Damn, that makes sense! We can't figure out the underlying logic of the Heavenly Dao System, so we must guard against any form of physical attack!" The fat man nodded frantically beside him, cold sweat beading on his forehead.

"Then I'll add another anomaly detection mechanism!" The dorm leader chewed on his pen and quickly added on the paper, "[And without at the cost of us suffering any physical disability, serious illness, or hospitalization]! Is that alright now? It'll plug all the physiological loopholes!"

"Wait! Boss!" The short guy, who hadn't spoken until now, suddenly slapped his thigh, his eyes filled with terror. "The physiological aspect is blocked, but what about the social aspect? What if God, to prevent us from failing, directly manipulates the academic affairs system and expels all four of us? If we're expelled, then the question of failing no longer applies! Logically, that's absolutely true!"

Upon hearing this, the other three gasped in unison.

"Hiss—that's terrifying!"

"That's fucking insidious! We almost fell into the trap of causality!"

"Hurry! Add this! [And absolutely not at the cost of being expelled, dismissed, given a demerit, warned, or any other disciplinary action from school!]!"

Watching these four lively characters frantically "modifying code" and "patching" in front of the incense burner, Qin Du sat in the armchair, his hand holding the enamel teacup trembling slightly, barely managing to hold back from spitting out a mouthful of tea.

On the phone screen propped up in front of Qin Du, the live stream chat was already buzzing with laughter, scrolling so fast that the words were almost illegible:

[Hahaha, holy crap! What the hell is this exception handling mechanism?! Have these four gone mad from coding?!]

[God: In all my years as the Heavenly Ruler, this is the first time I've encountered someone treating me like a client!]

[This is hilarious! Is this what modern college students are like? They've turned making a wish into signing a legal contract!]

The person above is right. They're not making wishes; they're practically submitting a product requirements document (PRD) to God! They've even defined the boundary conditions!

The Taoist master's expression was priceless. He was probably thinking: "This is the first time in all the time I've run this Taoist temple that I've encountered a hacker trying to exploit a bug."

[Guys, I actually think their logic is flawless! If God really followed this logic, wouldn't they get a free final exam?!]

A full fifteen minutes.

These four computer science students transformed a simple wish to "be blessed with good grades" into a "wish agreement" of over two hundred words, containing various restrictions, disclaimers, and exclusivity clauses.

"Phew—it's done."

The dorm leader wiped the sweat from his brow and let out a long breath. He held the paper covered in dense writing, his eyes gleaming with the pride and confidence of a programmer who had successfully cracked an epic bug.

He walked to the offering table and picked up the three incense sticks that Qin Du had placed there long ago.

"Clatter".

The lighter was lit, and three crimson flames illuminated the dim main hall, with wisps of smoke rising straight up.

The dormitory head held three incense sticks, and his three roommates stood neatly behind him. All four of them closed their eyes at the same time, their expressions extremely devout, even carrying a hint of tragic heroism as if they were facing death.

The dormitory head cleared his throat and began to read aloud their carefully crafted, flawless wishes, enunciating each word clearly and deliberately: