stonecrandall Chapter 39: A Moment of Moral Examination
Chapter 39: A Moment of Moral Examination
He slept for a long time.
It wasn't the kind of normal sleep; it was the kind of sleep where the body pays off all its debts at once—he had already overdrawn his physical strength before #003, plus sitting in his personal space for thirty-six hours, plus those eight death records, his body completely stopped working the moment he lay down.
When he woke up, the light in his personal space hadn't changed. There were no windows, no natural light; the light came through the walls, even and constant, making it impossible to tell what time it was. He had lived in prefabricated houses on construction sites for many years, and the light there was the same kind of timeless light; three in the morning and two in the afternoon looked exactly the same.
He lay in bed for a while, taking a moment to assess his physical condition.
The shallow scratch on the back of his right hand, made by a piece of wood, had completely scabbed over. It felt slightly raised to the touch, but it didn't affect his grip. The salt stains on his coat were still there, forming hard white lumps on his wrist and shoulder. He picked up the coat and rubbed the salt stains with his thumb. The salt crystals shattered and fell onto the sheet, tiny and white.
He put down his coat, sat up, and put his feet on the ground.
The floor is concrete; all the floors in this space are concrete, nothing else is laid on them, but the temperature is room temperature, not cold. He measured it when he first entered the space, touching the floor with his hand to feel the temperature and noting it in his memo: "Floor: Concrete, room temperature, approximately 22-24 degrees Celsius, no moisture, no vibration."
He stood up, walked to the table, and opened the memo.
He sat at the table for about two hours.
He wasn't writing; he was reading. He flipped through memos #001, #002, and #003 from beginning to end, turning to the pages he found useful, placing them side by side on the table, and then sat and read them.
This is a habit he developed on overseas construction sites—after a project ends, he lays all the logs side by side on the table, doesn't immediately make a summary, but first looks at them, letting his brain find patterns in the information on its own, and then he starts writing. This method is more effective than making a summary directly, because when the brain is "actively looking for patterns," it will ignore some things, but when it is "passively immersed," it will notice different things.
On his third viewing, he noticed something.
On page 19 of the memo #003, there is a line that reads: "Moral Torture Node #003: Fang Yuan's ankle injury. Xu Kai's plan requires abandoning players whose actions have been impaired. Xie Chengzhou chooses: Do not abandon, build a temporary passage. Result: Cleared. Fang Yuan chooses to stay and dies."
He stared at that line of text for a long time.
Triggering conditions: A player's mobility is impaired, someone suggests giving up, and Xie Chengzhou chooses not to give up. But the result is different—#003, his choice did not prevent death, because Fang Yuan himself made a decision he had not anticipated.
He wrote on a new page of the memo:
"Cross-copy rules, moral dilemmas, and preliminary framework:"
I. Triggering conditions: A player's action ability is impaired + someone proposes an efficiency-first solution (abandoning the impaired player).
II. The Structural Perspective: The settlement data from the three instances shows that the "Never Give Up" approach received additional weighting in the scoring—#001 received a "Cooperation Coefficient" bonus, #002 received a "Survival Rate Bonus," and #003 received a "Construction Evasion Strategy - Special Record." The Structural Perspective records Xie Chengzhou's choices at each morally challenging juncture.
III. To be verified: Is the constitutive model based on the choice of "testing" or "rewarding"? The mechanisms for the two are different. If it is a test, then there exists a certain "correct answer"; if it is a reward, then the constitutive model has a bias. Where does this bias come from?
IV. Abnormal Data: Solution #003 is logically superior, but Fang Yuan died. This shows that "the solution that doesn't give up" does not equate to "no death." The result of the moral dilemma node is not "choosing the right answer prevents death," but rather "choosing the right answer will be recorded by the constitutive model."
Fifth, inference: The constitutive model does not select "those who can ensure everyone's survival," but rather "those who choose to seek a third path even when some may die." These are two different things.
He paused after the line “These are two different things”.
He had dealt with this situation many times on construction sites—when resources and time were limited, someone suggested "abandoning this and concentrating resources on that." His reaction was always the same: first ask, "Is there a solution that preserves both?" and only accept abandonment if he confirmed otherwise.
He didn't know if this was right. He knew it was his operating procedure.
He added a note after that line: "To be verified: Is this specification one of the reasons the constitutive theory chose me, or is the constitutive theory reinforcing this specification?"
Then he closed the memo.
Before leaving his personal space, he glanced at the shelf next to the toolbox.
Of the five slots, two are currently in use: one is the "Steel Maggot Behavior Recorder" prop brought out by #003, and the other is the iron testing hammer obtained during the settlement of #001. They sit on the shelf, looking no different from tools on the construction site, but the texture is different to the touch—about 20% lighter than real-world tools of the same size. This is the first time he's noticed this detail, and he added a line to his memo: "Prop texture: About 20% lighter than real-world tools of the same size. Material: Unknown. Does it affect functionality: To be verified."
He put the memo in his coat pocket and walked towards the door.
The entrance to Yuan City was an arched doorway. The walls on both sides of the doorway were made of exposed concrete with bolt holes left after the formwork was removed. There were some rust marks in the holes, which were real rust, not decorative. Xie Chengzhou had noticed this detail when he first entered Yuan City. He poked his finger into the bolt hole and found that the rust was real oxidation, not paint.
He went inside.
The main street of Yuan City is a passage about twelve meters wide, with various stalls and small shops on both sides. The roof is an industrial-style steel structure, and natural light leaks down from the gaps in the roof structure, forming several beams of light on the ground, with dust floating in the beams.
During his last visit to Yuan City, he spent about ten minutes observing the physical logic of this space and concluded that it was a real construction, not something created out of thin air. It had a construction logic, structural nodes, and load paths; every steel beam of the roof truss was under load, not just for show. He didn't know what this meant, but he recorded his observation.
He walked about thirty meters into the main street and stopped in front of a stall selling information.
Several stacks of papers were displayed on the stall, listing the rules and prices of various realms, ranging from twenty to two hundred source coins. He glanced at them, but didn't find the realm he needed, so he continued walking inside.
"C-0047".
He paused and looked in the direction of the sound.
An elderly man sat on a bench on the right side of the main street, wearing faded work clothes, holding an enamel mug that appeared to be drinking tea, but the mug was not hot. His left wrist was uncovered, and the serial number was clearly visible: C-0003.
Mr. Qian.
Xie Chengzhou walked over and said, "Hello."
"Sit down," said Old Qian, moving aside to make room for Xie Chengzhou on half a bench.
Xie Chengzhou sat down.
"You've advanced to the next level," Old Qian said, "Level 1." He didn't look at Xie Chengzhou's wrist; his gaze was fixed ahead, towards the main street. "Have you seen the evaluation report?"
"What assessment report?" Xie Chengzhou said.
Mr. Qian placed the enamel mug on his lap. “Constitutive Sample Evaluation Report,” he said, “After the upgrade, a constitutive sample will be generated. It should be a piece of paper on your personal space, on your desk.”
Xie Chengzhou mentally reviewed the contents of the table—when he left, there was a memo, three copies of the record side by side, and a skill list in the form of a construction acceptance form, but he didn't notice any other papers.
"I didn't see it," he said.
"It might be under the drawings," Qian said. "Constitutive models sometimes don't put things in conspicuous places." He paused for a moment. "Go take a look; it might be useful."
Xie Chengzhou stood up. "I'll go for a bit," he said.
"Hmm," said Mr. Qian, picking up his enamel mug and continuing to look ahead.
He returned to his personal space and lifted the drawings on the desktop.
Below the drawings was a sheet of A4-sized paper. The paper was different from the skill list; it was thicker and stiffer, like paper used for formal documents. He picked up the paper and turned it over to look at the front.
The title is: "Constitutive Protocol Sample Evaluation Report"
The subtitle is: "Sample Number: C-0047 | Evaluation Node: 1st-Order Promotion | Generation Time: After Settlement #003"
The format was the familiar engineering test report format—the left column was the "test items", the middle column was the "current value", the right column was the "design limit", and the far right column was the "remarks".
He read the paper from top to bottom.
Constitutive Protocol Sample Evaluation Report
Sample Number: C-0047 | Evaluation Node: Level 1 Promotion
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━
Current design limit of the test item (remarks)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━
物理耐久 41/100 100入场时基準值38，#003后+3
Mental resilience 67/100 100 No history of breakdown within the country, consistently stable
Rule parsing speed 82/100 100 Talent-based - Vulnerability Intuition Weighted
Construction Willpower 91/100 100 is an abnormally high value, constitutive key tracking item.
Collaboration Trust Index: 58/100; 100; Domestic Proactive Collaboration Behaviors: 9 times
Loss of tolerance threshold 74/100 100 #003 Death record: 8 people, no breakdowns
Reconstructor Compatibility ██/100 100 [Not visible at current tier, gradually unlocked after Tier 1]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━
Note: This report is automatically generated by the constitutive protocol. The values are the output results of the constitutive evaluation model and do not represent the absolute capability limit.
The "Construction Will" item is marked as follows: The current value exceeds the mean of the same class sample by 3.2 standard deviations, which is a statistical anomaly.
The organization is continuously monitoring the changing trends of this project.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
He read the paper twice.
He paused on the line “Construction Will: 91/100, abnormally high value”.
Having worked on construction sites for twelve years, he knew what "abnormally high values" meant in test reports: it was neither good nor bad; it was a data point that needed continued observation, a variable that exceeded the normal model range, and a signal that made engineers frown—not because it would definitely cause a problem, but because it was outside the model, and things outside the model require extra attention.
He paused for a longer time on the line “Reconstructor compatibility: ██/100, currently invisible to the class”.
This line is obscured. It's not that there are no values, but rather that the values are obscured, like a test report where the result of a test item has been crossed out with black ink, leaving only the title and notes.
He mentally reviewed the details, then folded the report, put it in his coat pocket, took out his memo, and wrote on the last page:
"Constituent Sample Evaluation Report - First-Order Promotion Node".
Key stats: Construction Willpower 91/100, exceeding the average of the same level by 3.2 standard deviations, constitutive annotation tracking.
Reconstructor Fit: The value exists but is obscured. The reason for obscuring it: Is it because the current class is invisible, or because the constitutive doesn't want me to see it? These two have different meanings.
Physical durability 41/100: Low. This is an item I need to prioritize improving before the next dungeon.
Collaboration Trust Index: 58/100: Moderate. There were 9 instances of proactive collaboration within the country, a significant number, but the index is only 58, indicating that our assessment standard for "collaboration quality" is stricter than that for "number of collaborations." To be verified: What kind of collaborative behavior would improve this index?
Conclusion: Constitutive structure is quantifying me. The unit is not one I fully understand, but the trend is readable.
He closed the memo, took the report out of his pocket, glanced at the line "Will to Build: 91/100" again, and then put the report back in his pocket.
He stood up and walked towards the door.
Mr. Qian was still on that bench, the enamel cup still on his knees, his posture unchanged.
Xie Chengzhou sat down next to him. "I've finished reading it," he said.
"What's the problem?" Mr. Qian asked.
"The 'Reconstructor Compatibility' option," Xie Chengzhou said, "is obscured."
"That's all you can see at Tier 1," Qian said. "The higher you go, the more you unlock." He paused for a moment. "Your 'Building Will' attribute," he said, "is the highest I've ever seen."
Xie Chengzhou remained silent.
“Mine,” Mr. Qian said, “was 78 back then.” He picked up his enamel mug, took a sip, and said, “78 was enough. Your 91,” he paused, “is being watched by the institute.”
"Is it a good thing or a bad thing to be watching me?" Xie Chengzhou said.
"Both," Qian Xuesen said. "The fact that the constitutive model is watching you means it thinks you're worth watching. But the fact that the constitutive model is watching you also means it will give you a more difficult situation."
Xie Chengzhou went over these two sentences in his mind. "The next scene," he said, "when will it start?"
"I don't know," said Mr. Qian. "Wait for notification." He glanced at Xie Chengzhou. "What did you build inside?" he asked. "#003."
"A temporary passage," Xie Chengzhou said, "was built using the boom of an abandoned crane and timber from the site to bypass the area where the steel maggots were gathered."
Mr. Qian nodded. "Wooden materials do not transmit vibrations," he said. "That's right."
Xie Chengzhou glanced at him. "You've done something similar," he said.
"#009," Qian said, "the mine pit. The threatening entity is sensitive to ground vibrations, so I used discarded support timber from the mine pit to build a temporary platform, bypassing the main vibration transmission path." He paused for a moment, "The principle is the same, only the materials are different."
Xie Chengzhou noted in his memo: "Qian Lao · C-0003 · #009 · Mine · Abandoned support timber · Temporary platform · Bypass vibration transmission path. Cross-copy construction strategy: vibration isolation with wooden materials."
He closed the memo. "Thank you," he said.
"It's nothing," Qian said. "How's your database coming along?" he asked.
"Three copies," Xie Chengzhou said, "isn't enough."
"Enough is enough," Qian said. "A database isn't about being as big as possible, but about being as accurate as possible." He placed his enamel mug on the bench. "Do you know what the most valuable part of your database is?"
"I don't know," Xie Chengzhou said.
“You’re an engineer,” Qian said. “Every rule in your database has an explanation of its physical mechanism, not just ‘Rule A triggers condition B,’ but ‘Rule A triggers condition B because of physical mechanism C.’ This difference,” he paused, “is not in most people’s databases.”
Xie Chengzhou went over the question in his mind but didn't answer immediately.
He mentally reviewed his notes: the correlation between wave vibration and steel maggot sensing response, the vibration isolation principle of wood, the physical logic of concrete as a partition, the load analysis of the trestle bridge sinking node—he wrote physical explanations next to each rule, not because he deliberately wanted to, but because the rules and physical mechanisms were intertwined in his mind, and he couldn't just remember the rules without remembering the reasons.
"I didn't think it was special," he said.
"Most things that are valuable," Qian Zhongshu said, "are not special in the eyes of the people who own them."
He picked up his enamel mug and looked towards the main street.
Xie Chengzhou sat there for a while, then stood up and said, "I'll go back first."
"Hmm," said Mr. Qian, "at the next site, pay attention to physical durability." He added, "41 is too low."
Xie Chengzhou glanced in his direction. "You've seen my report," he said.
"No," said Mr. Qian, "I could tell from the way you walked in."
Xie Chengzhou went over the sentence in his mind but couldn't find a way to refute it.
He put his hand in his coat pocket to make sure the report was still there, then headed towards the exit of Yuan City.
The pillars of light on the main street were still there, the dust was still moving, and a few players stopped in front of the stalls, talking in hushed tones. Xie Chengzhou walked over without stopping. As he passed a stall, he caught a glimpse of something written on a piece of paper: "#004·Dam·Rule Fragment·One Hundred and Fifty Source Coins".
He paused and glanced at the paper.
Then keep walking.
He built his own database.