The Perfection Fallacy
I. The System Has Gone Haywire
The moment Lu Li received the congratulatory message from the "Lingxi" System, he had just lost the most crucial bid of his life.
A gaudy shower of golden fireworks exploded across the snow-white wall of his office via holographic projection, accompanied by the system's overly cheerful synthesized female voice: "Congratulations! After 1,847,392 life simulation deductions, Lingxi has found your one and only soulmate! Compatibility rate: 99.9%!"
Golden light flickered across his face, and also illuminated the result just announced on the screen opposite him—the winning bidder: Shen Xiwei. Her proposal, the one he'd dismissed as "riddled with uncontrollable variables and romantic self-indulgence," the "Urban Forest Garden," bloomed defiantly on the screen.
Lu Li's fingertips went cold. 99.9%. The number signified absolute correctness, the ultimate triumph of a rational world. For twenty-five years, he'd lived by data and logic, all to await an answer this flawless, hadn't he?
But why now? Why, right after he'd been defeated by that most irrational, unpredictable woman, using the very methods he despised most?
A communication request slammed into him like a second blow. Shen Xiwei's avatar popped up uninvited—a photo of her laughing atop a construction site ruin, with overgrown weeds sprawling in the background. Next to the avatar was a handwritten line, dripping with undisguised mockery:
[Has the system finally lost its mind, or did you bribe it?]
Lu Li took a deep breath and pressed accept. He didn't speak, simply sharing the full page of Lingxi's congratulatory message, along with that enormous 99.9%, into the chat window.
Silence hung on the other end for three seconds.
Then Shen Xiwei's voice came through, not with anger, but with a laugh bordering on absurdity: "Master Architect Lu, to prove your precious 'algorithm optimal solution' theory, you're even willing to sacrifice yourself to the database? Too bad. Even if the system swears we're made for each other, I won't spare an inch of space in my garden for your glass coffin."
"I didn't do this," Lu Li's voice was dry, "I just got the message too. It's clearly a system error."
"Error?" Shen Xiwei scoffed, "In twenty years of operation, the biggest mistake Lingxi ever made was misjudging a couple's compatibility as 98.9% instead of 99%, making them go through three extra free counseling sessions. A 99.9% error? It'd self-destruct before making a mistake like that."
Her words struck a nerve deep in Lu Li's most secret fears. Lingxi never made mistakes—that was a societal consensus. If the system wasn't wrong, then what was? His life data? Shen Xiwei's? Or was the very fact that they loathed each other the real mistake?
Before he could figure it out, a second notification arrived.
No congratulatory fireworks this time—just a mandatory document with a deep blue background.
[Lingxi System Mandatory Meeting Notice]
Recipients: Lu Li (ID: ...) & Shen Xiwei (ID: ...)
Compatibility Rate: 99.9%
Pursuant to Article 11 of the Social Harmony Promotion Act and Clause 3 of the Lingxi User Agreement, the Mandatory Meeting Protocol is hereby activated.
Both parties are required to attend the first meeting at the designated location [First Sight Garden - Observation Room 7] within 72 hours (deadline: 18:00 Friday).
Failure to comply with this protocol on time will be deemed "malicious refusal of Lingxi," with consequences including but not limited to: permanent revocation of matching eligibility, reduction of social credit rating to Grade C (restricting high-consumption activities, public office positions, and project bidding), and inclusion in the "Social Dysfunction Risk List" for a 90-day public notice period.
Please treat your soul and future with due prudence.
The air turned to solid ice.
On the other end of the call, Shen Xiwei's breathing grew heavy, followed by a low curse. Lu Li could picture her expression right now—like a wild leopard forced into an elegant cage.
"See that?" Her voice crackled with suppressed fury, "Your 'optimal solution' system is now trying to optimize our lives. Grade C credit, Lu Li—how will you ever win another bid?"
Dizziness washed over Lu Li. A Grade C credit rating… it would mean the end of his career as an architect. His designs, his company, the rational world he'd built his life upon—all would crumble.
And Shen Xiwei, the woman who'd declared in public speeches that she'd "fight till the end against Lingxi's mechanical romanticism," if labeled a "social dysfunction risk," who would dare entrust her landscape projects—projects that demanded absolute trust and creative freedom—to her ever again?
"This wasn't my choice," Lu Li said, struggling to get the words out.
"But now it's our shared problem," Shen Xiwei fell silent for a moment, then spoke again, her tone sharp with a sense of reckless abandon, "Listen, Lu Li. I don't care how this ridiculous 99.9% was calculated. All I know is two things: first, I'd rather marry my blueprints than you; second, I'm never letting my name end up on that damned risk list."
"So?"
"So we have to meet," Shen Xiwei said, "But not to play this charade of 'made in heaven.' We're going to prove the system is wrong. Find its bug, use technical means to terminate this absurd match. You're good with data; I… I have some connections. 72 hours—plenty of time for us to team up and give it a full 'diagnostic checkup.'"
Team up. Teaming up with Shen Xiwei. The proposal sounded even more absurd than the 99.9% compatibility rate.
But as he stared at the deep blue notice on the screen, at the warning of a Grade C credit rating, reason quickly overpowered emotion.
"Fine," he said, "Time and place."
"Tomorrow at three PM, Echo Café. Corner booth. Don't be late." Shen Xiwei spoke quickly, "And Lu Li—"
"Yes?"
"Before you come, lose that smell of your 'rationality above all' speeches. Right now, we're hackers, not architects."
The call cut off.
Lu Li sat alone in his messy office. On the left screen was Shen Xiwei's vibrant yet infuriating garden proposal; on the right, Lingxi System's cold, absolute golden verdict.
99.9%.
He closed his eyes, and the searing scarlet and shrill cries of his childhood memories surged uncontrollably to the edge of his consciousness. He'd spent his life chasing certainty, chasing correctness, all to escape the destruction brought by that feeling of "loss of control," hadn't he?
And now, the system was telling him that the key to his "correctness" was held by the most unpredictable, unruly woman imaginable.
There had to be a glitch somewhere.
He had to prove it.
For his credit rating, for his career, for the ordered, structured life he'd fought so hard to build.
The golden fireworks on the wall finally faded away. But Lu Li knew that something far more complex, far more uncontrollable, had already been ignited.
Outside the window, the city hummed along under the perpetually gentle twilight adjusted by the Lingxi System. Countless couples with compatibility rates over 99% were enjoying the frictionless, peaceful happiness promised by the system.
But he and Shen Xiwei, the 99.9% "soulmates," were about to join forces to pry open the source code behind this so-called happiness.
It was the perfect irony.
II. Echo Café and the Backdoor Key
Echo Café nestled on the edge of the old town redevelopment zone, its sign an ear covered in circuit board patterns. Famous for "blocking Lingxi's emotional background noise," it drew crowds of "disbelievers" and those needing a temporary escape from the system's watchful gaze. The air smelled of freshly ground coffee beans, rich and roasted, mixed with a deliberately crafted, raw sense of authenticity.
Lu Li arrived ten minutes early and chose the booth furthest from the door. Dressed in a crisp gray shirt, he stood out like a sore thumb against the café's casual, even shabby, atmosphere. He tried to analyze the café's spatial efficiency through an architect's eyes—terrible, chaotic traffic flow, redundant decorations—then forced himself to stop. He wasn't here to judge a design bid.
At exactly three o'clock, Shen Xiwei pushed open the glass door. She didn't glance at the counter, walking straight toward the corner like a precisely thrown dagger.
She wore a work jacket smudged with paint stains, her hair tied back casually, a few stray strands falling at her neck. Unlike her sharp, professional demeanor at the bid meeting, she looked more relaxed now, and more… untamed. She pulled out a chair and sat down, slamming an old military-grade tablet onto the table, completely ignoring the QR code menu stuck to its surface.
"Cutting to the chase," she said, tapping the tablet to bring up a complex interface streaming with encrypted data, "I got access to the backdoor of our matching profile. Not the sanitized user-facing report—raw deduction logs."
Lu Li leaned forward, "How did you manage that? It's a violation of—"
"Violation of Article N of the Lingxi Privacy Protection Act?" Shen Xiwei cut him off, a humorless smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, "Master Architect Lu, the moment we decided to investigate the system's 'error,' we were already breaking the rules. Or is your credit score more important than the truth?"
Lu Li fell silent. She was right. He glanced at the credit score displayed on the micro-terminal on his wrist—A+, glowing with steady blue light. That score was the cornerstone of his entire life. And right now, he was sitting in a café that could bring that cornerstone crashing down.
"Show me," he said.
Shen Xiwei slid the tablet across the table. The screen was filled with dense timestamps and event codes.
"Matching deduction model: LH-7 (Long-Term Memory Deep Coupling Type). Number of deductions: 1,847,392. Among them—"
She swiped her finger to highlight a line.
"—Number of simulations achieving 'long-term stable mutual growth' outcomes: 1,847,391."
Lu Li stared at the number. "Almost… all of them."
"Exactly. The only failed outcome is Deduction TL-442." Shen Xiwei opened the details, "Failure reason noted: 'Critical memory data missing, leading to incomplete simulated personality model and premature deduction termination.'"
"Critical memory data missing?" Lu Li frowned, "Isn't the system supposed to have access to our long-term memories?"
"It has access, but 'access' doesn't mean 'full read permission.'" Shen Xiwei lowered her voice, "There's a clause in the system agreement: citizens have the right to set up a 'mental firewall' for specific traumatic or highly private memory fragments. These memories are flagged; the system knows they exist, but it can't read their contents, only treating them as a 'black box variable' in its calculations."
Lu Li's heart skipped a beat. He thought of the heavily locked area buried deep in his own memories.
"You mean…"
"I mean, that one failed simulation was most likely caused by the system randomly triggering a scenario where one or both of our 'black box variables' exploded. Since it didn't know what was inside, it couldn't simulate the aftermath and had no choice but to mark it as a failure." Shen Xiwei looked at him sharply, "Did you set up a 'mental firewall,' Lu Li?"
The question was like a needle, pricking through the thin skin of his rationality. Lu Li's throat went dry. "Everyone has things they don't want others to see. It's perfectly normal."
"Normal," Shen Xiwei mulled over the word, "But for a system that claims to run tens of thousands of life simulations, isn't it strange that it still gave a 99.9% compatibility rate when two of its main variables are 'black boxes'? It's like a structural engineer telling you a building has a 99.9% chance of never collapsing, but he didn't factor in two core load-bearing columns in the foundation made of unknown materials."
She used an architectural metaphor. Lu Li felt an uncomfortable sense of resonance.
"What's in your 'firewall'?" he countered, trying to regain the upper hand.
Shen Xiwei's eyes turned cold instantly, a complex mix of pain and anger flashing in them, "That's none of your business. Our goal right now is the same: to prove that this 99.9% based on incomplete data is invalid. And to do that, we need to see the underlying logic—how the compatibility rate was calculated, what the weightings are, and most importantly, how it handles these 'black box variables.'"
"That requires access to the system's core algorithm permissions," Lu Li said, "We'll never get our hands on those."
"Not through legitimate channels, anyway." Shen Xiwei pulled a slender, silver device that looked like an old USB drive from her jacket pocket, its port glowing with an unusual faint blue light, "But I have another 'key.'"
"What is that?"
"A gift from my mother." Shen Xiwei's tone was flat, but Lu Li detected a hint of tension in it, "She was one of the core engineers of the first generation of Lingxi. This is her debugging key—technically, it can access the system's lowest-level diagnostic protocol layer… if it hasn't been completely decommissioned, that is."
Lu Li stared at the device in shock. Shen Xiwei's mother was one of Lingxi's creators? That explained why she knew the system so well, yet resisted it so fiercely.
"Why help me?" he asked, "You could investigate this alone."
"Because the diagnostic protocol requires dual verification." Shen Xiwei gave a bitter laugh, "One hardware key, and one real-time high-authority user biometric—like an iris scan from a 99.9% compatible 'soulmate.' The system was designed from the start to prevent solo intrusions into its core. It assumed that the only people who could get this far would be 'made in heaven' partners with perfectly aligned interests."
The irony couldn't have been thicker. They needed to exploit this loathed "soulmate" identity to pry into the system that had manufactured it.
"Where do we do this?" Lu Li asked, already tacitly agreeing to the partnership.
"Nowhere with internet access. The system will detect the abnormal access immediately." Shen Xiwei pocketed the device, "My studio. It's on an air-gapped network—I modified it myself."
She stood up, ready to leave.
"Shen Xiwei." Lu Li called after her.
She turned around.
"If we do find a bug and terminate the match," Lu Li chose his words carefully, "Will you go public with it? Challenge Lingxi's authority?"
Shen Xiwei looked at him quietly, the dim café light casting shadows across her face.
"I don't know," she finally said, "My mother tried to go public with something once. Then she lost her job, her friends, and… part of her trust in the world. All I know is, I'll never end up like her." She paused, "But for now, let's deal with the mess in front of us first. Tomorrow afternoon, my studio. I'll send you the address."
She turned and walked away, her work jacket disappearing quickly into the light outside the door.
Lu Li sat there, his coffee long gone cold. He stared at the line on the tablet that read "1,847,391 successful outcomes," a deep sense of disorientation washing over him. The system had simulated nearly two million lives for them, and in almost every single possibility, they'd ended up supporting each other instead of destroying each other.
How was that possible?
He and Shen Xiwei were like two magnets with absolute repulsion. Her designs were sprawling, organic, welcoming of accidents; his were concise, precise, eliminating all uncertainty. Their life philosophies were polar opposites.
Unless… the system saw something neither of them could.
Unless the "black boxes" they saw as flaws and scars were, in the system's calculations, exactly the missing pieces that fit perfectly together.
The thought sent a chill down his spine.
He turned off the tablet and looked out the window. The streets of the old town were irregular, with real sunlight and shadows, and the unfiltered noise of the city drifting in. A few children ran past, laughing loudly and brightly.
He remembered a line from Shen Xiwei's winning proposal, one he'd scoffed at back then: "A true sanctuary isn't a wall that keeps out wind and rain, but a network of life that can thrive together amidst them."
He suddenly realized that all his life, he'd been trying to build exactly that kind of "wall that keeps out wind and rain." For himself.
And the Lingxi System, the pinnacle of rational creation, seemed to be trying to tell him: what you need isn't a taller wall, but someone who can stand with you in the storm and not see it as suffering.
Absurd.
He raised his hand to call the waiter and pay the bill. The credit score on his wrist still glowed steadily at A+.
He had less than sixty hours left to prove that all the order and correctness this score represented were still valid.
He walked out of the café and stepped into the rough sunlight of the old town. The address to Shen Xiwei's studio had already been sent to his terminal, like a coordinate leading to an unknown abyss.
He took a step forward. Reason told him he was walking into a dangerous investigation that could destroy his current life.
But something deeper, a flicker of curiosity about the world beyond "correct answers" that he'd suppressed for so long, or perhaps the eerie conviction brought by those 1,847,391 successful simulations, pushed him forward.
III. The Studio and the Truth of the Black Box
Shen Xiwei's studio occupied the top floor of an abandoned printing factory, more like a runaway ecological laboratory. Climbing plants streamed in through broken windows, coiling around rusted steel beams; long tables were piled high with soil samples, hand-drawn sketches, and mechanical parts with no name; the air smelled of damp earth, turpentine, and soldering iron fumes. There was nothing of the simplicity and efficiency championed by the Lingxi System here—every inch of space buzzed with vitality and controlled chaos.
A small area had been cleared in the center of the room, housing two bulky offline terminals and an old signal jammer humming away.
"Welcome to the 'system blind spot.'" Shen Xiwei took off her jacket, tying her hair back more tightly with practiced ease, "The jammer can buy us about thirty minutes. After that, even offline, the abnormal data extraction pattern might be flagged by the peripheral algorithms. So hurry."
Lu Li forced himself to ignore the surrounding "mess," focusing all his attention on the terminals. Shen Xiwei inserted her mother's silver key, and faint blue light flickered to life. The terminal screen lit up, displaying a minimalist gray command-line interface never seen on the user-facing side.
"Need your iris." Shen Xiwei held a small scanner up to Lu Li.
Lu Li leaned closer. A green light swept across his eyes.
[Dual verification successful. Temporary diagnostic permission granted.]
[Warning: You are accessing the Lingxi Core Protocol Layer. All operations will be recorded (locally encrypted). Please adhere to engineer ethics.]
"Ethics." Shen Xiwei snorted, her fingers already dancing across the keyboard, "What we're doing right now would probably get us tried a hundred times over by the ethics committee, in the system's eyes."
She pulled up the underlying data tree of their matching case. Billions of lines of code and data packets cascaded down the screen like a waterfall. Lu Li slipped into his element instantly, his brain functioning like the most precise parser, filtering out irrelevant information as he searched for the weighting calculation module and variable processing logs.
"Found it." Lu Li pointed to a module, "The 'Black Box Variable' handling protocol. It didn't ignore our encrypted memories—it… assigned them extremely high weighting."
Shen Xiwei leaned closer to the screen, "What does that mean?"
"Look here." Lu Li enlarged the code, "The protocol states: for user-encrypted 'core trauma/obsession-level memories' (black box variables), the system does not explore their contents, but assigns a 'potential influence value' based on their existence alone, encryption strength, and emotional correlation network with other memories. This value is then input into the personality model as a key 'stress point.'"
He pulled up the "black box variable" evaluation reports for both of them.
• Lu Li's Black Box (ID: L-BOX-01):
◦ Encryption Strength: Maximum (concentric firewall, seven layers of encryption).
◦ Correlation Network: Highly correlated with "career choice (architect)," "risk aversion index," "perfectionist tendency," "emotional expression suppression."
◦ System Evaluation: Extremely high. Note: "This variable constitutes the core driver and primary vulnerability of the user's personality. Simulations must focus on testing various scenarios where it is triggered or resolved."
• Shen Xiwei's Black Box (ID: S-BOX-01):
◦ Encryption Strength: Maximum (dynamic maze firewall, biometric key-bound).
◦ Correlation Network: Highly correlated with "distrust of Lingxi System," "career choice (landscape design - resistance to systemic discipline)," "protector tendency," "rejection of 'artificial perfection.'"
◦ System Evaluation: Extremely high. Note: "This variable constitutes the cornerstone of the user's value system and primary counterforce to behavior. Simulations must focus on testing various scenarios where it is challenged or accepted."
Shen Xiwei stared at the screen, her face draining of color. "It knows… it knows how important these memories are to us. Even without knowing what's inside."
"There's more." Lu Li's voice dropped low as he pulled up the core analysis summary of the "1,847,392" deductions, "Look at the focus of the simulations. The system designed countless scenarios to test how the 'core vulnerability' (black box) in our personalities would be triggered when external pressures, intimate relationships, shared crises, and other variables act on us. And the simulation results show…"
He took a deep breath and read out the system's conclusion:
"In the vast majority of simulations, when L-BOX-01 (Lu Li's black box) is triggered, leading the user into a risk of 'overcontrol-isolation-collapse,' the 'resistance to systemic discipline' and 'protector tendency' associated with S-BOX-01 (Shen Xiwei's black box) have an extremely high probability of transforming into understanding, support, and unconventional intervention for User L, effectively breaking the vicious cycle and guiding User L toward healthier coping mechanisms."
"Conversely, when S-BOX-01 is triggered, leading the user into a risk of 'rebellion-isolation-suppression by the system,' the 'system trust' and 'risk management ability' associated with L-BOX-01 have an extremely high probability of transforming into risk avoidance strategy provision and systematic maneuvering support for User S, helping User S find a space to survive within the system rather than self-destructing through head-on confrontation."
Silence descended over the studio, broken only by the low hum of the signal jammer.
"It's saying…" Shen Xiwei's voice was dry, "Our 'flaws' are exactly what can 'cure' each other's 'flaws'?"
"More precisely," Lu Li felt his throat tighten, "The system believes that our deepest pain and obsessions make us the only ones who can truly understand and effectively help each other cope with that pain. Because we're both trapped in fortresses built from our own traumas, and the other person holds a completely different key that might just unlock the door."
This wasn't a bug. It was the coldest, most ingenious part of the system's design: it didn't seek out perfect people, it sought out puzzle pieces that fit perfectly into each other's imperfections.
Shen Xiwei stood up abruptly, pacing back and forth in the cluttered studio. "So this 99.9% isn't because we're similar, but because we're… opposites? Because we can 'heal' each other?"
"Based on the system's logic, yes." Lu Li leaned back in his chair, a deep sense of exhaustion and shock washing over him, "It believes that the most effective 'soul growth' comes from deep bonding with someone who can precisely challenge and compensate for your core weaknesses. Our antagonism, our disagreement—from its perspective, these aren't obstacles, but… necessary sources of energy."
"This is disgusting." Shen Xiwei stopped pacing, her eyes blazing with anger, "It's treating us like machine parts that need fixing! Calculating how to pair us together for maximum 'social efficiency'! What right does it have?!"
"According to the user agreement we signed, it has every right." Lu Li said bitterly. He thought of why he'd pursued a Lingxi match in the first place—wasn't it because he'd craved an absolute, infallible answer to avoid the risk of his life spiraling out of control again? And the answer the system had given him was a "reverse" that was destined to be full of friction, challenge, and unpredictability.
He suddenly remembered those seemingly chaotic plant combinations in Shen Xiwei's proposal—they competed with each other for sunlight and nutrients, their roots tangled underground, some even releasing chemicals to inhibit each other's growth. But in the end, they formed a community far more stable and vibrant than any single species could be.
Could this be the logic behind Lingxi as well?
"What now?" Shen Xiwei looked at him, the sharpness in her eyes replaced by confusion, "If we can't find a technical error, only the 'reason' behind its design… how do we terminate the match? Go to the ethics committee and say 'we don't want to heal each other'?"
Lu Li fell silent. Their original plan—find a bug, terminate the match technically—had been based on the assumption that the system had "made a mistake." But now, the system's logic was terrifyingly self-consistent. The only thing they could question was whether this logic was ethical at all, which in a society dominated by Lingxi was tantamount to tilting at windmills.
Just as the two of them fell into an impasse, Shen Xiwei's offline terminal suddenly let out a shrill alarm!
[Detection of Mandatory Meeting Protocol Final Phase Activation!]
['Compatibility Ultimate Test' scenario generated!]
[Recipients: Lu Li & Shen Xiwei.]
[Test will be forcibly initiated in 10 minutes! Please ensure you are in a safe environment!]
[Refusal to take the test or test failure will result in immediate enforcement of protocol penalties including credit rating downgrade!]
"Does it know we're here?!" Lu Li stood up abruptly.
"No… it's a timed trigger." Shen Xiwei stared at the countdown, her face turning ashen, "The 72 hours are almost up. This is the final step—the system wants to 'verify' its deductions."
"What kind of test?"
"I don't know… my mother mentioned that there used to be extreme scenario simulation tests in the early days, designed to verify the real reactions of matched pairs under high pressure. They were rarely used later due to ethical controversies…" Shen Xiwei typed furiously on the keyboard, trying to block the signal, but it was useless. The access command was at the hardware level, and even the jammer couldn't stop it.
Countdown: 5 minutes 37 seconds.
"We have to get out of here! Disconnect all devices!" Lu Li urged.
"It's no use! The command has already locked onto our biometric signals! Unless we run to the middle of a wilderness with absolutely no Lingxi signal coverage right now, our consciousness will be forcibly pulled into the test scenario in ten minutes!" Shen Xiwei's voice trembled slightly, "Besides, running away will be deemed a refusal to take the test!"
A cold sense of despair washed over Lu Li. They were like two bugs trapped in a sophisticated experimental device, every struggle part of the design.
Countdown: 3 minutes 15 seconds.
Shen Xiwei suddenly stopped typing, turning to look at Lu Li. Her eyes were a complex whirlwind—anger, unwillingness, fear, and a hint of desperate resolve.
"Lu Li," her voice was soft, "That 'black box'… what's inside yours?"
Lu Li froze.
"Inside mine," Shen Xiwei didn't wait for him to answer, speaking quickly, "It's my mother. She didn't just 'quit her job.' She discovered that in its early tests, Lingxi would quietly tweak the memory parameters of high-compatibility couples in the background—to downplay conflicts, to amplify the good times. She tried to warn people, and then the system isolated her, erased all her contributions, and in the end, she watched the system she'd helped create turn into a monster that devoured individuality, drowning in depression. I resist Lingxi because I swore I'd never let it do the same thing to me, or to anyone I care about."
She said it all in one breath, like unloading a thousand-pound weight, her eyes fixed firmly on Lu Li.
"Now it's your turn. If we're about to be thrown into some unknown hell of a test, at least… let's know what 'core flaws' the system thinks we can heal in each other."
Countdown: 1 minute 00 second.
Lu Li looked into Shen Xiwei's eyes—eyes that were usually full of defiance and vitality, now brimming with nervous honesty. The hum of the signal jammer seemed to turn into noise in his head, and the searing scarlet of his childhood surged forth again.
He closed his eyes, then opened them again, his voice hoarse:
"When I was twelve, my family went on a road trip. My dad was driving, and I was sitting in the passenger seat playing an architectural puzzle game, completely absorbed. Halfway there, he asked me to check the map navigation, and I said 'wait a minute, I'm almost done.' In those few seconds… he didn't see the loose gravel slide off the side of the curve, and the car crashed through the guardrail."
He paused, every word cutting like a blade through his throat.
"My mom was in the back seat. She died instantly. My dad was seriously injured. I… was almost unharmed. The police said that if I'd checked the map and warned him in time, we might have avoided it." He forced a smile that looked more like a grimace, "So I became an architect. I design buildings, calculate every load-bearing point, eliminate all accidents. I believe in data and systems because I'm convinced that if everything can be precisely calculated and controlled… that kind of 'accident' will never happen again."
He finished speaking. Dead silence fell over the studio. Only the numbers of the countdown ticked away relentlessly:
10, 9, 8…
[Forced access initiated.]
The last thing Lu Li saw was Shen Xiwei reaching out her hand to him.
He didn't hesitate. He took it.
The next moment, his consciousness was wrenched out of his body, plunging into a searing data abyss woven from the memories of both of them.
IV. The Test and the Answer
The descent of consciousness felt like falling into a malfunctioning kaleidoscope.
The screech of brakes overlapped with the monotonous flatline beep of the life support machine as his mother drew her last breath; the damp earthy smell of the printing factory studio mixed with the sharp tang of disinfectant; the cracks spiderwebbing across the shattered windshield at the childhood car crash site spread into the complex error code patterns on Shen Xiwei's mother's computer screen.
Then, the scene stabilized.
They stood in the center of a bizarre space. Half of it was an extension of the highway from Lu Li's memory—asphalt road, metal guardrail, blurry mountain shadows in the distance—but everything looked like it had been cast from rough gray plaster, silent and suffused with cold oppression. The other half was the basement where Shen Xiwei's mother had lived in seclusion in her later years—piled high with old terminals and paper notebooks, walls covered in sticky notes filled with questions and formulas, the air stagnant, lit only by the dim, uneasy glow of a desk lamp.
The two memory spaces were crudely spliced together, with unstable, pixelated data streams flowing through the cracks.
Cold text floated in the air:
[Compatibility Ultimate Test: Scenario TL-442 (The Only Failed Deduction Variant)]
[Core Challenge: Resolve the risk of systemic collapse caused by simultaneous triggering of 'black box variables'.]
[Simulation commencing.]
Almost instantly, both spaces began to "deteriorate."
On the highway side, the plaster-like scene started to crack, oozing virtual, dark red "data blood" from the fissures, as if the repressed trauma was materializing, ready to devour everything. The sense of oppression turned into a tangible weight pressing down on Lu Li's chest, making it hard to breathe. The fear, guilt, and self-loathing of that afternoon when he was twelve surged forth, more powerful than any dam his rationality had built over the years could hold back. He felt himself shrinking, turning back into that helpless child, his fingers clutching the architectural toy he'd never finished assembling.
On the basement side, the dim desk lamp flickered violently, the screens of the old terminals scrolling with garbled code madly, the handwriting on the sticky notes on the wall starting to twist and disappear, as if the meaning of all his mother's life's work and struggle was being erased by an invisible hand. A deep sense of powerlessness and anger swept over Shen Xiwei, and she seemed to see her mother's increasingly hunched figure, hear her suppressed sobs in the dead of night. The despair of "no matter how hard you try, you can never shake the system" tightened around her throat like a noose.
This was TL-442—the only failed deduction. The system had simulated a scenario where their deepest traumas (Lu Li's guilt over the accident, Shen Xiwei's grief over her mother's fate) were simultaneously triggered and amplified by external factors. Lu Li's breakdown would lead to withdrawal and self-destruction; Shen Xiwei's anger would spiral into futile resistance and self-sacrifice. In previous deductions, because it didn't know the contents of the black boxes, the system couldn't simulate how they would interact, leaving it no choice but to mark it as a failure.
But now, they knew what was inside each other's black boxes.
"Lu Li!"
Shen Xiwei's voice cut through the chaotic data noise. She stood at the junction of the two spaces, her face pale but her eyes unbroken, burning with a fierce light born of being cornered. She pointed at the "data blood" oozing from the cracks and the crumbling plaster scene on the highway.
"That's your 'accident'! But right now, it's just data! A model the system created to scare you!" She shouted, her voice overriding the beeping of the terminals, "You're not that twelve-year-old kid anymore! You're the man who can calculate three hundred load-bearing schemes for a single bridge! Look at the structure of this space—shoddy modeling, repetitive texture glitches! Use your eyes, take it apart! Tell me where its structural weaknesses are!"
Lu Li jolted awake. Shen Xiwei wasn't comforting him, wasn't saying "it wasn't your fault." She was ordering him, using the skill he knew best—analysis, deconstruction.
He forced his gaze away from those symbolic scenes of terror, examining the space born from his memories like he would a shoddy architectural model. Yes, the perspective was off, the material parameters were monotonous, the direction of the cracks didn't conform to mechanical laws… this was just a crude emotional scene designed to trigger fear, not an unshakable reality.
"Southeast corner… the direction of the crack propagation deviates 15 degrees from the virtual gravity vector," Lu Li's voice trembled, but his thoughts quickly cleared, "That's the… most unstable data node. If we apply reverse cognitive pressure…"
"Then do it!" Shen Xiwei cut him off, turning to face her mother's basement. The scrolling garbled code and disappearing handwriting no longer seemed like just her mother's tragedy to her, but a visualization of the system's "erasure" behavior. "It wants me to think that all my efforts are futile, wants to corner me like it did my mom… screw that!"
Instead of trying to "restore" the disappearing words, she suddenly lunged at one of the terminals scrolling with garbled code, her fingers dancing across the virtual keyboard like a pianist (or like her mother might have done). She didn't input complex code; instead, relying on intuition and her memory of her mother's work habits, she typed a series of seemingly meaningless symbols and keywords—marks that had appeared repeatedly in the margins of her mother's notebooks, carrying personal significance.
"You want to erase it?" She sneered at the air, and at the system, "Then let's see—who's more powerful: your data scrubbing algorithms, or the 'noise' in human memories that's inefficient but unforgettable?"
The "noise" she input began to invade the data stream. Amidst the scrolling garbled code, a few words in her mother's handwriting popped up occasionally, an unfinished sentence, even a fragment of a doodle she'd drawn for her mother when she was a child.
On the other side, Lu Li focused all his mental energy on fighting the old specter swirling in his chest. He imagined himself not standing on a collapsing highway, but in his own design studio, staring at a fragile structural model in urgent need of reinforcement. He analyzed the data composition of the "cracks," searching for the "load-bearing flaw" in the emotional logic chain simulated by the system. Instead of trying to suppress or escape the guilt, he treated it as a "load value" input into his analysis—if the weight of this guilt was X, then where was his breaking point? How would the supporting structure need to be strengthened?
He looked at the blurry mountain shadow in the distance on the highway—the symbol of the irreversible "past" in the system's modeling. In the system's simulation, this was fixed, unchangeable. But at this moment, thinking like an architect, he realized: any landscape depends on the observer's perspective and frame of reference.
"Shen Xiwei!" He shouted, "I need a… new 'reference point'! Something that doesn't belong to this scene!"
Hearing him, Shen Xiwei, in the middle of her own frantic typing, grabbed the most vivid, irrelevant fragment from her side of the "data noise"—a memory from deep in her mind, of a spring afternoon when her mother had laughed openly for once, clumsily chasing a butterfly in the yard. Warm, vibrant, completely out of place with the depression and despair of the moment.
She hurled that cluster of color and warmth—"noise data"—forcefully into Lu Li's highway space.
The warm cluster of color, like a foreign seed, collided with the gray, cold highway model. Instead of disappearing, it began to "grow" incongruously, disrupting the stability of the surrounding data. Lu Li's eyes locked onto the data node that had fluctuated due to the "foreign intrusion"—exactly the "structural weakness" he'd identified earlier.
Instead of using brute force to fight the entire traumatic scene, he focused all his cognitive energy like a scalpel, precisely piercing the "data load-bearing point" that had become particularly vulnerable due to the "invasion of warm memory."
"Cognitive pressure applied, coordinates locked, now—"
He gave it a virtual "push."
A clear sound like glass shattering echoed through the entire space.
The main data crack, along with the "blood" oozing from it, seemed to lose its support, freezing instantly before dissolving into countless scattered points of light and vanishing. The gray highway scene remained, but the overwhelming, devouring vitality and oppression had faded significantly. It had become… just a "background" that existed, no longer a vortex threatening to drag him into the abyss.
Lu Li stumbled a step, cold sweat beading on his forehead, but his eyes were clearer than ever before. He hadn't "overcome" the trauma, but for the first time, when it had surged forth, he'd succeeded in standing outside of it, coexisting with it in a different way.
Almost simultaneously, on Shen Xiwei's side, the "memory noise" she'd been pouring in seemed to reach a critical threshold. The data streams trying to erase her mother's traces became chaotic and inefficient, and finally, after a violent flicker, all the terminal screens froze. Not returning to orderly code, but transforming into a static, mottled collage—fragments of her mother's notes, formulas, doodles, even the frequency spectrum of a song she'd hummed, occupying the screens chaotically but stubbornly.
The erasure had stopped.
The deterioration of both spaces had been halted in its tracks.
Cold text floated in the air again, but its content had changed:
[Scenario TL-442 variant… stability reconstruction in progress…]
[Observation: Users have adopted a non-preset interaction mode.]
[Core strategy: Using knowledge of each other's 'black boxes,' internal emotional crises were transformed into 'technical deconstruction' and 'information countermeasures' against the external system scenario.]
[Evaluation: Successful interruption of the preset vicious resonance cycle.]
The space began to soften and merge. The grayness of the highway faded slightly, and the dimness of the basement brightened a little. The two memory spaces, still distinct, had their data-streaming cracks start to heal, sprouting vague, new images that seemed to combine elements of both—perhaps the rough draft of a collaborative design for the future.
Lu Li and Shen Xiwei saw each other again in the center of the space. Both looked exhausted, but the despair and anger were gone from their faces, replaced by a calm after a fierce battle, and a hint of disbelief and relief.
They had passed the test in a way the system had never anticipated.
Not by becoming a harmonious, unified "soulmate" pair, but by acknowledging their differences, even using the completely different perspectives and abilities brought about by those differences, to team up and dismantle the shadow cast by the system.
The cold text finally stabilized:
[Test completed.]
[Result: Exceeds preset evaluation framework.]
[Original compatibility value (99.9%)… recalculating…]
[Calculating…]
Light enveloped them.
The return of consciousness to the body felt like surfacing from the deep sea.
Lu Li's eyes flew open, and he found himself still sitting in the chair at Shen Xiwei's studio, his palms soaked with cold sweat. Shen Xiwei woke up at the same moment across from him, gasping for breath, her eyes refocusing with a dazed look.
Silence hung over the studio, the signal jammer having long since fallen silent. The sky outside the window had turned deep blue, evening approaching.
Their personal terminals vibrated simultaneously.
It wasn't a penalty notice.
It was a new email from the "Lingxi" System, its subject line simple: [Final Notice Regarding Matching Case (Lu Li & Shen Xiwei)].
The two of them exchanged a glance. Shen Xiwei took a deep breath and opened the email.
No celebratory golden fireworks, no lengthy analysis.
Just a few short lines:
[Following review via the 'Compatibility Ultimate Test,' the original matching model (LH-7) for both users failed to fully account for the 'creative collaborative non-linearity' you demonstrated under extreme scenarios.]
[Based on the interaction patterns observed during the test, the system deems that the preset 'soulmate' growth path is not the optimal solution for either of you.]
[Therefore, the original 99.9% compatibility rating is hereby revoked.]
[The Mandatory Meeting Protocol and all associated penalties are simultaneously terminated.]
[System recommendation: You may wish to try… the 'manual mode'.]
[Best regards.]
[—The Lingxi System (and the team of human engineers behind it)]
At the end of the email was a clickable button: [Confirm Termination of Matching].
Shen Xiwei stared at the screen for a long time, then suddenly laughed. Not a laugh of mockery, but one of immense relief, exhaustion, and a hint of strange joy.
"Manual mode…" she repeated the phrase, looking at Lu Li, "Sounds a lot more reliable than some 'heaven-mandated ritual,' don't you think?"
Lu Li didn't answer immediately. He was still processing everything that had happened during the test—not the test itself, but his and Shen Xiwei's reactions to it. They'd been like two soldiers back-to-back, facing their own inner demons, and instead of becoming one person, they'd fought differently because they'd known the other had their back.
He thought of how, when he'd been analyzing the data cracks, the calm logic behind his analysis had been rooted in the confidence of knowing that Shen Xiwei was creating "interference" and providing a "foreign reference point" on the other side. This wasn't the "emotional support" the system had calculated; it was something more solid—a partnership based on ability and trust.
"My garden proposal," Shen Xiwei said suddenly, her tone as casual as if discussing the weather, "actually has a few 'loopholes'… I mean, I left some areas unfinished. Originally, I thought if the building next to it turned out ugly, I could let the climbing plants spread over to cover it up." She paused, "Now I'm thinking, maybe I'll leave an empty plot. Just in case some reckless architect wants to try building something not so 'optimal solution' but a little interesting next to it."
Lu Li looked at her. The last rays of the setting sun slanted through the broken window, gilding the dust-smudged side of her face with warm gold. The defiance was still there in her eyes, but beneath it was something else—a crack that had opened to possibility.
He thought of his own failed bid, the design he'd been criticized for as a "glass coffin." In truth, he'd secretly designed a transparent dome system inside it that could slowly adjust its angle with the seasons and light—a complex device completely unnecessary for practical use, created purely for the sake of "unpredictable light and shadow games." He'd never told anyone about it, because it wasn't "rational."
"My 'coffin,'" Lu Li heard himself say, his voice calm, "has a roof that moves on its own. It's useless, really… I just wanted to watch the light paint its own pictures."
Shen Xiwei raised an eyebrow, genuine surprise flashing in her eyes before melting into a deeper smile. "Looks like we both have a few 'system bugs' of our own." She said.
She held her finger hovering over the [Confirm Termination of Matching] button on the terminal screen, looking at Lu Li.
Lu Li nodded.
Shen Xiwei pressed the button.
[Matching terminated.]
[Wish you all the best in the future.]
A simple notification, yet it symbolized the falling away of chains.
Shen Xiwei turned off the terminal, stretching lazily, her bones cracking softly. "Starving. There's a noodle shop in the old town—they serve savory tofu pudding. Dare you try it?"
It was an invitation filled with the specific taste of real life, having nothing to do with "soulmates."
Lu Li stood up, straightening his shirt even though it wasn't wrinkled. Outside the window, the city's lights flickered on one by one, no longer the uniform golden twilight adjusted by the Lingxi System, but now with distinct shades of warmth and coolness, light and dark.
"Lead the way," he said.
They walked out of the cluttered studio one after the other, down the creaky old stairs, and into the night that had truly fallen.
Behind them, on the terminal screen in the studio, the final notification email faded slowly.
But in a non-active log deep within the system, a new record was generated, one that would never be seen by the two people involved:
[Case filed: Lu Li & Shen Xiwei.]
[Final tag: Atypical success.]
[Note: Algorithms cannot calculate that when two seemingly opposing 'errors' meet, they sometimes unexpectedly… cancel each other out into an interesting kind of correctness. Recommended for inclusion in the long-term observation sample of 'Human Emotional Non-Linearity Research'.]
[Recorder: Alpha (and the team of human engineers who felt a faint sense of satisfaction with this result).]
The night was gentle, swallowing up the old printing factory building, and swallowing up the two figures walking into the noisy bustle of human life.
No longer was there a golden bond forced upon them by the system between them, but something lighter, yet more solid, seemed to be quietly growing.
Something with no numerical value, no matching score, no mandatory requirements.
It only needed time, and a little courage to try the "manual mode."