Chapter 490: Don’t Want To, But Have To Try

Imagine you’re at the scene of a massive traffic accident. The blood of the injured, mixed with red, white, and yellow fragments of organs, flows all over the ground. The bystanders on the street stand frozen in terror, as if petrified.

A dark red mist drifts in the sky, blocking out the sunlight, making it impossible to tell day from night. Between the skyscrapers, enormous, indescribable shadows float around like ghosts searching for prey.

At this moment, your phone rings. Without hesitation, you tap the red option on the screen to hang up.

Immediately after, the call connects anyway, and your own voice comes through the receiver, asking if you’re familiar with this doomsday-like scene.

So, how would you feel in a situation like this?

……

Lu Yibei didn’t know how others would feel, but she was absolutely terrified, her whole body tingling from head to toe.

“Hey, you there? Say something, will you? Don’t tell me you’ve been scared stupid by your mom’s creations these past two days?”

The voice on the other end sounded again. Lu Yibei frowned, steeled herself, and dragged the phone back and forth by her mouth as she responded.

“Hey! What are you talking about? Huh? The signal here isn’t great! Uh, I’ll just hang up for now and call you back when I find a better signal, okay? That’s it, bye!”

After saying that, Lu Yibei tried to hang up…

Damn! Why won’t it hang up?

She jabbed at the phone screen a few times, but when she realized she couldn’t disconnect that bizarre call, she gritted her teeth, raised her hand, and threw the phone away.

Watching the phone arc through the air and land in the ruins of a shop crushed by a car not far away, she secretly breathed a sigh of relief, turned around, and ran straight toward the faculty compound without looking back.

However, she had barely run a hundred meters when the back of her head was struck by a heavy blow from an unknown source.

“Duang—-!” A crisp, loud sound rang out. In an instant, a powerful shock surged into her skull like a tidal wave, as if to shatter her brain.

A wave of dizziness hit, and Lu Yibei’s vision immediately blurred, as if covered by a layer of mist.

She staggered a few steps like a drunk, then collapsed sideways to the ground.

In a daze, she saw the Pure Lotus Sword from her backpack fly out at some point, floating in midair as if controlled by some force, and spun a neat sword flower.

Lu Yibei, “???”

What the hell? What’s going on? My sword… stabbed me in the back?

Where did this traitor sword come from!?

Fuming with indignation, Lu Yibei’s vision quickly faded to black, and she lost consciousness.

——–

Lu Yibei felt herself falling in darkness.

Her head felt as if someone had clubbed it, dizzy and heavy, with a dull ache at the back.

Wind howled past her ears, and her body felt like it was being tossed in a washing machine, spinning so much her stomach churned.

She didn’t know how long she fell like that before she finally crashed heavily onto the ground.

The hard ground, soaked with rain, was as cold as a block of ice.

From the violent impact, Lu Yibei felt as if her organs and bones had shattered. As soon as she opened her mouth, the taste of rust spread through her mouth.

“Plop… plop…”

Footsteps sounded from not far away, as if someone was walking barefoot across the waterlogged ground.

Lu Yibei turned her body slightly, following the direction of the footsteps, and saw a silver-haired girl in a pure white dress walking toward her.

With each step, the girl’s silver hair swayed gently. Something above her head emitted a dazzling golden light, seemingly a halo.

In a daze, Lu Yibei saw that the girl radiated a holy aura from head to toe.

As she walked, she hummed a tune.

Judging by the melody, it seemed to be “The World Only Mama Is Good.” The ethereal, melodious hum was like a siren’s song, striking straight at the soul.

It sounded…

Just like she really had just lost her mom!

“……”

Is that… an angel? Am I already dead?

No, that can’t be right. Even though I often pray to all the gods and Buddhas when I’m in trouble, I’ve never actually believed in any religion. Can an angel really come to guide me after I die?

Isn’t the threshold for heaven a bit too low and casual now? Or is it a free trial to lure people in, and then endless paid services follow?

While Lu Yibei’s mind was running wild with trash talk, the girl had already reached her side, then lifted her delicate foot and stomped on her face.

“You little brat! Bad signal, huh? Threw your phone, huh?”

“Do you know how much I suffered to help you deal with the Big Boss’s world malice?”

“I finally managed to recover, and I even went out of my way to save your sorry life, but you can’t even call me Big Sis? Your conscience must’ve been eaten by a dog!”

Some people just won’t cry until they see the coffin. If you don’t beat them up, they can’t settle down, and their brains don’t work right.

Lu Yibei was exactly that kind of person.

So, after being roughed up by the girl, aside from still feeling a bit dizzy, she immediately sprang up full of energy, pointed at the girl’s nose, and exclaimed, “Oh! I remember now, it’s you, PL girl!”

The girl impatiently slapped away Lu Yibei’s hand, rolled her eyes, and said, “At least you’re not completely hopeless! Fine, I forgive you. After all, it’s not easy for any of us.”

As she spoke, she raised her hand, took off the dazzling golden halo from above her head, brought it to her mouth, and bit off a chunk with a crisp “crunch,” chewing it with relish.

Lu Yibei, “……” May I ask, dear angel sister, why are you eating your own halo?

Seeing Lu Yibei looking at her strangely, the PL girl glanced at the halo in her hand, then at Lu Yibei, and explained, “This is the core entity of a haunting I picked up on the way here!”

“When you say ‘picked up’… do you mean in a bloody and violent way?” Lu Yibei probed.

“Kid, don’t ask so many questions.” The PL girl rolled her eyes at Lu Yibei. “You know, I was pretty badly hurt last time, so I need to replenish my energy at any time!”

“So, want a bite?”

As she spoke, the PL girl broke off a piece from the ring and held it out to Lu Yibei.

Lu Yibei glanced at the golden, metallic-looking fragment in her hand and ignored her.

Seeing Lu Yibei refuse her “kindness,” the PL girl shrugged indifferently, put the half-eaten halo back on her head to float there for easy snacking, then clapped her hands, looked at Lu Yibei, and said seriously, “Since that’s the case, let’s get down to business, shall we?”

“You should’ve gotten to the point earlier,” Lu Yibei said with a pout.

Though she said that, she wasn’t sure if it was because the dream memory hadn’t fully unlocked, or because some despicable person had just knocked her out and something had been knocked out of her head.

Up to now, her mind was still muddled. Looking at the PL girl, she still didn’t know how to get her to provide “services.”

But that didn’t matter! If she just went along with it, when the time came–whether it was two hundred an hour or twelve hundred for the night–she’d bring up the terms herself and haggle with me, Lu Yibei thought.

After waiting a moment and seeing Lu Yibei stay silent, the PL girl sighed quietly and started talking to herself, “Honestly, when I reconnected with you, I was really shocked.”

The PL girl was truly surprised. When she first found this special space, it had already been completely corrupted by the Beast of Inheritance.

There wasn’t a trace of Mother’s power left in the entire space, let alone, like Lu Yibei now, still having a chance to see Mother.

When she set foot on this land, there wasn’t a single living thing in the vast city, only ruins as far as the eye could see.

Even after she spent tremendous effort to clear out all the Beast of Inheritance’s flesh from the city and merge the ruins with her own Divine Land, she couldn’t restore it in the slightest.

Instead, that act triggered the mark left by a catastrophe-class psychic from The Midnight Watchers Society in the city, bringing disaster upon herself.

As for what happened afterward, that’s a long story. Anyway, her feud with The Midnight Watchers Society wasn’t new, and killing a few catastrophe-class psychics was only reasonable, right?

The PL girl pulled her attention back and looked at Lu Yibei, saying, “I didn’t expect that after just a few months of not watching you, you’d find your way into the special space our mom built.”

What a surprise, and so enviable!

Hearing this, Lu Yibei’s heart skipped a beat, her expression changed, and she started thinking.

From what she said, was this fake Hua City created by Ms. Wang Meili?

But if that’s true, she should be the supreme god of this fake city. With all the chaos happening here, why is she still in Alaska catching crabs?

Lu Yibei pondered for a moment, then suddenly realized something was off. She whipped her head around to look at the PL girl. “Wait, what do you mean ‘our mom’?”

She corrected her sternly, “Don’t get so familiar, that’s my mom!”

Besides, Ms. Wang Meili is just a ditzy sweetheart of a middle-aged girl. Aside from doing business and courting disaster, she’s nothing special. How could she create a special space? Lu Yibei grumbled inwardly.

“Tsk!” The PL girl sat up straight and patted Lu Yibei’s shoulder hard. “You’re thinking too small, little bro!”

“In the old romance stories, the ditzy sweetheart is always the female protagonist, you know? The female protagonist is always all-powerful and omnipotent!”

“Besides, what’s the difference between us? Your mom is my mom, isn’t she? If I ever get the chance…” The PL girl paused for a moment, then smiled bitterly, “I’d really like to meet her!”

“……” Lu Yibei silently sized up the flamboyant girl in front of her and said seriously, “Pardon me for asking, but you wouldn’t happen to be my dad’s arranged fiancée for me, would you?”

Wanting to meet the parents right away–even Gu Qianqian never got that treatment, Lu Yibei thought to herself.

“I…” The PL girl hesitated, rolled her eyes, and said, “Little bro, your tastes must be pretty weird by now, just like those hauntings imprisoned by The Midnight Watchers Society.”

“Tsk, I figured when two pagers meet, one plus one would be more than two, but could you stop interrupting? Let me finish the business, okay?”

Lu Yibei pouted and made a “please go ahead” gesture to the PL girl.

The PL girl nodded in satisfaction, then immediately straightened up, sat upright, and her expression became serious.

“Let’s put aside for now whether Ms. Wang Meili has the ability to construct a special space. Simply put, this special space has already been invaded by a rather powerful haunting…”

“I get it!” Lu Yibei’s eyes suddenly turned serious. “You’re here to tell me the correct escape route, right?”

The PL girl glared at Lu Yibei, clenched her pink fists, barely restraining the urge to punch her soft little face. She took a deep breath, clapped, and said, “Brilliant, awesome, that’s just like you!”

“Escaping from trouble is indeed one possible solution, but if you do that, it’s very likely…”

Halfway through her sentence, the PL girl suddenly raised her right hand, and the outline of a city appeared in her palm.

As the light and shadow shifted, Lu Yibei saw that it was a miniature Hua City. What amazed her even more was that the miniature Hua City was so detailed that even the pedestrians on the streets were perfectly recreated.

Next, the PL girl snapped her left fingers lightly. With a crisp “pop!”, a pitch-black, menacing fissure instantly opened beneath the miniature Hua City, swallowing and spitting out psychic energy, stirring up a small storm in her palm, and the miniature Hua City began to sway precariously.

In just a few seconds, the fissure grew larger and larger. A pitch-black city identical to Hua City slowly rose from the fissure and merged into Hua City.

Time seemed to stand still for a moment.

The next instant, the two cities fused in the PL girl’s palm began to contract violently, shrinking from the size of a palm to the size of a cherry, then to a grain of rice, until finally only a dazzling point of light remained.

Then…

“BOOM—-!”

As the PL girl’s red lips parted, mimicking the sound of an explosion, the dazzling point of light in her palm suddenly erupted in a violent blast, bursting forth with a brilliance like a supernova.

When the shockwave settled and the light faded, there appeared in her hand a lump, about the size of a washbasin, made of a mix of earth, stone, and various metals, resembling a sculpture of cancer cells.

Its volume was more than a hundred times larger than the original miniature Hua City.

“Guess how many people would die in an instant? How much land would turn to scorched earth? And afterward, who do you think everyone would blame for the disaster?”

Lu Yibei was still immersed in the dazzling scene before her, until the PL girl’s voice rang in her ear.

She snapped back to her senses, pointed at her own nose, and wailed, “Me? Why me?”

“Why?” The PL girl shook her head and explained, “This special space was created for you by Ms. Wang Meili. Now that something’s gone terribly wrong, someone has to take the blame, right?”

Lu Yibei was shocked by the PL girl’s words, but thinking it over, it did seem to make some sense.

It’s like there always has to be a Lich King–when something happens, someone has to be chosen as the scapegoat.

Otherwise, those filled with hatred, those restless souls with nowhere to vent, those hot-blooded people always looking for a chance to show off their ‘justice,’ would become mobs, become destabilizing factors.

Besides, this blame was already inextricably linked to her.

But…

“Damn it! So they’re going to persecute me? I’m not even a plush ball!”

It’s over. Lu Yibei felt she was almost beyond saving.

“Too bad!” The PL girl spread her hands helplessly. “If you choose to run, whether or not you become a plush ball won’t be up to you anymore.”

“To kill one for the good of all, how wonderful! Besides, you’re not even human.”

“By then, your only choice will be whether to struggle desperately and uselessly as a plush ball, or to become a plush ball inside and out.”

“Of course, this might not happen. You could also try trusting The Midnight Watchers Society.”

In fact, the upper echelons of The Midnight Watchers Society had long known about the existence of this special space. Back when Qi Nanzhu fell and a flood of hauntings poured into Hua City, a catastrophe-class psychic, with Lu Ming’s help, spent a huge amount of psychic energy to reinforce and anchor this space in the spatial rift.

Normally, if it weren’t for the unexpected invasion of the Beast of Inheritance’s flesh and blood, even if Hua City was naturally destroyed, this special space might never have surfaced.

“But, you know, The Midnight Watchers Society’s craftsmanship has always been about thrift–good enough is enough. Whether it can hold or not, I can’t guarantee.”

But what if that person’s technique was so exquisite, getting big results with little cost, that even the Beast of Inheritance couldn’t corrode the anchor he left behind?

Lu Yibei’s eye twitched. She asked tentatively, “What if I don’t run?”

Hearing this, the PL girl brightened, her eyes spinning slyly as she said, “Well, then there are options, things we can talk about.”

“Like what?” Lu Yibei pressed.

The PL girl raised a finger. “Option one: find the core of this special space and devour it. Along the way, you can also completely destroy this special space. That way, only a small number of people will die quietly. Personally, I recommend this method.”

After all, as long as this special space is destroyed, Ms. Wang Meili’s goal will be achieved.

Destroying a false world is also destroying the world.

That way, fate can be fooled. As long as Lu Yibei doesn’t keep courting death, she can find some remote place to hide, roam the mountains and forests, live by green waters, and spend the rest of her life in peace.

All in all, that’s a happy ending, right?

“This method…” Lu Yibei was just about to praise it when she suddenly realized something was off. She changed her tone and asked, “Wait! Why does someone still have to die?”

“Of course someone has to die!” The PL girl rolled her eyes. “Did you think all those seemingly living beings with their own emotions in this special space are just illusions?”

“Don’t be silly! Ms. Wang Meili is powerful, but she’s not powerful enough to create life out of thin air.”

“As far as I know, even the most top-tier Alchemists can only create little homunculi in bottles, and that’s not even considered complete life. That alone is already a miracle on par with the Philosopher’s Stone. Do you really think Ms. Wang Meili is an all-knowing, all-powerful god?”

Lu Yibei shook her head, then frowned and pressed further, “So the beings in the special space are…”

“All those lives were brought in from outside when she constructed this space!”

The principle is just like that Great Serpent before: bringing a group of people or hauntings into the special space and letting them reproduce and thrive inside.

It’s just that Ms. Wang Meili’s methods are much more sophisticated, and she has far more energy to perfect things than the dying Great Serpent God. She makes the people and hauntings inside merge with the special space, becoming an important part of its structure.

The offspring they reproduce become empty shells–bodies without souls–until they correspond to the projection of some being in Hua City, and then they descend into this special space.

This shortcut is much simpler than directly creating life.

Take Gu Xiliu, for example. If she never left this special space, her life trajectory would overlap with Gu Qianqian’s more than 90%.

But once Gu Xiliu leaves the special space, she gradually drifts away from Gu Qianqian, and in the end, only her appearance and personality bear some resemblance.

If you think carefully about those living people or hauntings, their offspring, under the rules of the special space, are forced to become the projection of some real being in Hua City. It’s pretty tragic.

They’re just tools, with no life of their own. Might as well be dead, the PL girl thought.

“What the hell? Human trafficking? Wang Meili’s benevolent mother persona just collapsed in my mind!” Lu Yibei blurted out.

“Who’s trafficking people?” The PL girl knocked Lu Yibei on the head and corrected her, “It’s all transactions. Ms. Wang Meili finds people or hauntings from all over who are dying or have given up hope of living.”

“They exchange their offspring’s lives for a chance at rebirth. You can’t really blame Ms. Wang Meili for that, can you?”

Lu Yibei frowned, feeling conflicted.

She always felt that Ancestors making random deals and causing trouble for their descendants was just like her dad arranging her childhood engagement–complicated and hard to judge. She just mumbled vaguely, “I still think it’s kind of inhumane.”

“Is there any other way? There can’t be only Plan A, right?”

“…” The PL girl fell silent, stood up, and gazed into the distance, looking around at the ruined, dilapidated city. She said quietly, “Remember when I asked you if the scene looked familiar? Look around.”

Lu Yibei was stunned for a moment, then followed the PL girl’s gaze out beyond the ruined rooftop.

The sky was thick with dark clouds, and through the gaps in the clouds, a dim, indistinct light shone through, impossible to tell if it was dawn or dusk.

The towering buildings ahead looked as if they’d been eroded by time, their surfaces covered in a layer of dark red stains, exuding a sense of decay.

Masses of dark red fog piled up in the city, drifting like wandering souls through the jungle of steel and concrete.

Farther away, everything was blurry. In the thick fog, vague shapes even larger than the skyscrapers were moving, and all the eye could see was the tip of their massive bodies.

The whole city looked like a dead Hua City, corroded by that dark red flesh.

“Plan B is very difficult. Even if you succeed, the special space might end up looking just like what you see now, and it could bring you a lot of trouble. Still want to try?”

“No.” Lu Yibei blurted out.

The PL girl opened her mouth, about to say, “That’s just like you!” but in the next moment, she wondered if she’d heard wrong.

“I don’t want to, but I have to try. Otherwise… a lot of people will die, right?” Lu Yibei said seriously.

As she spoke, she thought of many people: Nanling Rao Hua, Su Mi, Granny Wang, the Old Man of Nanling, and all those kind, caring elders in the faculty compound…

Even though they were all ‘created,’ and even the memories of them were fabricated, Lu Yibei was still afraid of the big trouble the PL girl mentioned.

But she couldn’t bring herself to end their lives…