Father's Accomplice — Gentle Purge

In the garage, the cooling fans of the two DGX Sparks hummed faintly. Liao Xuyuan sat on the floor, back against a cardboard box piled with parts. His phone screen showed the On-Device AI’s last answer.

Query: Cause of death for Chen Jianliang. Result: Gentle Purge Program. Initiating account: Liao Feibai.

He’d stared at that line maybe twenty times. Each time he hoped it would change. Each time it didn’t.

“Fuck,” he muttered, his voice hollow in the garage.

He’d thought his father was a victim. Thought those three machines were a legacy, a warning, some kind of heroic last testament. But heroes didn’t kill old friends with a Gentle Purge. Heroes didn’t write in meeting notes, “Chen raised an objection… that’s part of the design.”

Heroes weren’t accomplices.

Liao Xuyuan stood up. His knees cracked. He walked to the workbench, where the backup unit was still connected to the laptop, the file “Letter to My Son” still open on the screen. He’d read it five times already, but now he needed to read it again—to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.

“Son, if you’re smart enough to find this letter, it means you already know too much—but are you sure you really want to know?”

Below that was something he’d overlooked before. Not because the font was too small, but because the words were written at the bottom of the page, near the edge, like an afterthought. He’d been too busy reeling from “are you sure you really want to know” to look any further.

Now he saw it.

“You must be confused right now. Why did I kill Uncle Chen? Because he knew too much. He knew the truth about the Protocol—we weren’t designed to make people happy. We were designed to make people quiet.”

Liao Xuyuan’s breath caught for half a second.

“We weren’t designed to make people happy. We were designed to make people quiet.”

That phrase. He’d seen it. In his father’s meeting notes—the psychological trap his father had built into the Gentle Purge, designed to make the target “stop and think.” He remembered the pencil annotation beside it: “Best trigger phrase for inducing self-doubt in the target. When the target begins to question the nature of happiness, purge progress accelerates by 23%.”

His father had written the same trap into the suicide letter.

Liao Xuyuan set his phone next to the letter and opened the photo he’d taken of the meeting notes. The two sentences were identical. Not a coincidence. A design.

“So this whole letter,” he said to himself, his voice sounding alien in the garage, “is also something he designed?”

He read the letter again. From start to finish. This time, he didn’t treat it as his father’s last words. He treated it as an engineer’s code—every line had a purpose.

“Son, if you’re smart enough to find this letter, it means you already know too much.” → Flatter the reader into thinking he dug out the truth himself.

“But are you sure you really want to know?” → Plant doubt; shove the choice of whether to stop back onto you.

“You must be confused right now. Why did I kill Uncle Chen?” → Guide the reader toward a specific train of thought.

“Because he knew too much. He knew the truth about the Protocol—we weren’t designed to make people happy. We were designed to make people quiet.” → Give an answer, but that answer itself is a trap.

Liao Xuyuan leaned on the workbench. The air in the garage suddenly felt heavy.

His father wasn’t telling him the truth. His father was guiding him toward a specific conclusion—the same way the Gentle Purge guided targets to “choose” their own end.

“Fuck me,” he muttered. “So now I’m being designed by my own dad?”

He remembered Song Wuji’s warning: “Everything your father left behind could be a trap. He’s a designer. He knows how to make people believe what they want to believe.”

Liao Xuyuan closed his eyes. He wanted to believe his father was a good man. Wanted to believe it was all a system conspiracy, and his father was just a sacrificed hero. But the evidence was right there: his father’s account had initiated the Gentle Purge, target Uncle Chen. His father’s suicide letter used the same psychological traps as the Gentle Purge. His father had written in the meeting notes, “Chen raised an objection… that’s part of the design.”

He opened his eyes.

“What objection did Uncle Chen raise?” he said to himself, and started flipping through his father’s notebook.

In the meeting notes folder, that page—he’d looked at it many times. Meeting on February 20, 2026. Attendees: Liao Feibai (Chief Designer) and three others whose identities were blacked out. His father’s handwritten annotation: “Chen raised an objection, arguing that the Protocol’s happiness threshold was too high, leading to systematic exclusion of marginalized groups. That’s part of the design.”

That’s part of the design.

Not a system bug. Not a government conspiracy. Something his father had designed.

Liao Xuyuan flipped the notebook to the last page. He’d only noticed the pencil key on the back cover before, but he hadn’t noticed the strange indentation on the final page—the impression left by a torn-out sheet.

He picked up a pencil from the workbench and gently rubbed it over the indentation. Gray graphite powder gradually revealed the marks: numbers and dots.

An IP address.

He copied it into his phone’s memo: 203.71.24.89

“What’s this?” he asked the air.

The garage had no answer. But his phone did. He opened the browser and typed in the IP address. Connected.

The screen loaded. A minimal page, dark background, white text. Title: “On-Device.”

A login page. Required username and password.

Liao Xuyuan froze. He didn’t have an account. But he had his father’s notebook. He flipped to the back cover and entered the key string: 0x7A3F_9C1B_5D8E_2F4A.

“Damn,” he muttered.

He tried other combinations: his father’s name, birthday, his mother’s name. All failed.

Then he remembered the line from the suicide letter: “If you’re smart enough to find this letter, it means you already know too much.”

He typed: I know too much.

He typed: Liao Feibai.

He typed: Chen Jianliang.

The screen changed. An internal forum, with only one post. Poster: Liao Feibai. Time: March 6, 2026—the day before his father’s death.

“I designed the cage, and now I live in it too. Son, if you’re seeing this, it means I’ve already failed. Remember: don’t trust any AI, including the three I left behind.”

No replies under the post. Just a solitary message.

Liao Xuyuan stared at those lines. The temperature in the garage seemed to drop a few more degrees.

Don’t trust any AI. Including the three I left behind.

But he was standing right next to those three AIs. One of them—the contaminated one—had just told him his father was an accomplice. The other, the normal one, told him his father initiated the Gentle Purge. The third was still in standby; he hadn’t powered it on yet.

If his father said don’t trust any AI, then all these answers—including “father is an accomplice”—might be fake.

Or was that sentence itself a trap?

He remembered the line from the meeting notes: “Best trigger phrase for inducing self-doubt in the target.”

His father was manipulating him from the grave. And he was walking the exact path his father had designed.

Liao Xuyuan closed the browser and set his phone on the workbench. He needed to think clearly. Needed to find a bug in his father’s code.

He re-examined the notebook. From the first page, one by one. Not looking at content, but at physical anomalies—torn pages, indentations, pencil marks.

In the middle of the notebook, he found another indentation. Shallower than the one on the last page, but still there. He rubbed it with the pencil. A date and time appeared:

2026.03.07 14:17

Uncle Chen’s time of death.

Below it, an even shallower indentation, barely visible. He pressed harder with the pencil until it emerged:

“He wasn’t the target. I am.”

Liao Xuyuan’s hand stopped in midair.

“He wasn’t the target. I am.”

What did that mean?

Uncle Chen wasn’t the target of the Gentle Purge? Then why did his father use his own account to initiate it?

Or maybe the account wasn’t used by his father—maybe someone else used his father’s account?

He looked at the meeting notes again. His father’s account had the highest privileges, able to bypass the Emotional Intervention Committee and directly initiate a Gentle Purge. But what if his father’s account had been stolen? What if someone in System Security—or Jiang Ji’s boss—used his father’s account to execute the purge, then framed him?

But the On-Device AI showed the initiation command came from his father’s account. The On-Device AI wasn’t filtered by the Cloud protocol; its data was read directly from his father’s hard drive. If it said the command came from his father’s account, that should be true.

Unless that On-Device AI was also contaminated.

Liao Xuyuan stood up and walked to the contaminated machine. Silver-white casing, no markings, only a power cable label reading “Spare.” Earlier he’d used the key to unlock the suicide letter model and read that “Are you sure you really want to know?” letter. But he hadn’t checked the machine’s other data—its system logs, connection records, or model training data.

He needed a way to verify what this machine said.

He remembered Song Wuji’s advice: “Run the same question on two AIs at the same time. Compare the answers. If they differ, you know one of them is lying.”

He’d already done that once—asked about Uncle Chen’s death, the On-Device said Gentle Purge, the Cloud said heart attack. But that was Cloud vs On-Device. What if the two On-Device AIs gave different answers too?

He walked to the second normal machine and powered it on. The screen lit up, DGX OS login.

He entered the root account password from his father’s notebook. Login successful.

He opened the terminal and typed a query:

Query: Did Liao Feibai initiate the Gentle Purge targeting Chen Jianliang?

The normal machine’s fans spun up. A few seconds later, the answer appeared:

Record shows: On March 7, 2026, 14:17, account “Liao Feibai” initiated the Gentle Purge, target: Chen Jianliang. Initiation command originated from MODA internal network, IP address: 10.24.8.19.

He went back to the contaminated machine and typed the same query:

Query: Did Liao Feibai initiate the Gentle Purge targeting Chen Jianliang?

The contaminated machine’s answer:

Record shows: On March 7, 2026, 14:17, account “Liao Feibai” initiated the Gentle Purge, target: Chen Jianliang. Initiation command originated from Liao Feibai’s personal terminal, IP address: 192.168.1.100.

Two machines gave different IP addresses.

One said the command came from the MODA internal network (10.24.8.19). The other said it came from his father’s personal terminal (192.168.1.100).

One of them was lying. Or both.

“So now what?” he said to himself.

He remembered his father’s post on the On-Device forum: “Don’t trust any AI, including the three I left behind.”

His father had known this would happen. He’d designed three AIs to contradict each other, to make his son unable to trust any single answer. What was the purpose?

To protect him? To make him give up the investigation out of confusion?

Or to test him? To see if he could find the truth in the chaos?

Liao Xuyuan shut down both machines and sat back on the floor. The garage was left with only the sound of the cooling fans—monotonous, continuous, like some kind of mechanical breathing.

He took out his phone, opened his contacts, and stopped on the name “Jiang Ji.”

She’d sent him several messages today: “Your Happiness Index dropped two points again today. Want to talk?” “The system says you have unresolved negative emotions. I have some new meditation courses that can help you relax.” “You haven’t replied to me lately. I’m worried about you.”

He hadn’t replied to any of them.

Not because he didn’t love her. But because he didn’t know how to talk to someone who believed in the system. She would say, “The system is the sunshine after the storm,” and he would say, “The system is killing me.” They stood on opposite sides of language, a chasm between them that couldn’t be crossed.

He turned the phone face-down so he wouldn’t see the messages.

Then he remembered: Jiang Ji was an Emotional Intervention Specialist. She had an Emotional Intervention Code. That code could trigger, cancel, or adjust the progress of a Gentle Purge. If he could get that code, he could stop all of this.

But the prerequisite for getting the code was: he had to tell her the truth.

And the truth was something she didn’t want to hear.

Liao Xuyuan closed his eyes. The garage air smelled of dust and metal. He heard his own heartbeat, slightly faster than usual.

Three months. Song Wuji said he had only three months.

Within three months, the Gentle Purge would complete all three stages, and he would “choose” to end himself.

Within three months, he had to decide whether to save Jiang Ji or get the truth.

Within three months, he had to decide whether to trust the clues his father left behind—even if those clues themselves were traps.

He opened his eyes and stood up.

There was still something he had to do.

He walked to the third DGX Spark—the one he’d never powered on. The power cable was plugged in, but it wasn’t on. He pressed the power button.

The fans began to spin. The screen lit up.

DGX OS loaded. No login password required.

The desktop had only one file: “For Son.txt”

He clicked it open.

“Son, if you’re seeing this machine, it means you’ve found the On-Device forum, and you’ve already discovered that those two AIs are lying. Good. You’re learning to doubt. But remember: doubt is not the answer; doubt is only the starting point. The real question isn’t ‘who is lying,’ but ‘what are you willing to believe.’ I designed the Gentle Purge, and I also designed the Reverse Purge. I designed the cage, and I also designed the key. But the key isn’t with me—it’s in your choice. Choose happiness, and you’ll live, but you’ll never know the truth. Choose truth, and you’ll know everything, but you might not survive. The choice is yours. I’ve already made mine.”

No signature. No date.

Just those words.

Liao Xuyuan leaned against the garage wall, staring at the lines.

His father wasn’t giving him the answer. His father was giving him a choice—a fucking brutal choice.

“Fuck me,” he muttered. “Can’t you just tell me the truth?”

But he already knew the answer. His father wouldn’t tell him the truth. His father wanted him to find it himself.

And the cost of finding the truth might be his life.

Liao Xuyuan shut down the screen and put his phone in his pocket.

He still had three months.

He decided to survive today first.