Chapter 314-The Manga Pariah's Guide to Self-Salvation

After a momentary halt, the Missile quickly broke through the spinning water along its predetermined trajectory, plunging deeper. Its speed noticeably dropped, and worse still, the immense centrifugal force generated by the high-speed rotation was deflecting its course!

"She's sending the Missile back to us..."

A researcher stared at the main display and murmured. He instinctively backed away, nearly breaking into a run—but quickly realized there was nowhere he could flee to in time.

The Destroyer was a weapon developed specifically for use against other worlds. Main System would lock onto the target world's coordinates, open a linked passage, and a specialized silo would launch it directly into the passage to reach its destination.

In theory, the Missile should have been equipped with a self-destruct protocol. But the technology was still in its experimental phase—there hadn't been enough space or resources to install one. Had the recent string of large-scale incidents not occurred, they wouldn't have deployed it this early.

Ye Zheng's intent was plain as day: an eye for an eye—she would return the Destroyer to them, fully intact!

When that happened, it wouldn't just destroy this base. The thriving city around it would be dragged down with it, and then the entire planet would be plunged into unprecedented chaos. How would those powerful figures with their grand ambitions of colonizing the universe explain this to the public?

Someone's teeth chattered. They finally realized just how dangerous their work had been. If a single Missile and one city were all it took to end this for good, that would already count as cutting losses while they still could.

Ye Zheng's abilities had exceeded her world's upper limits. The faint signs of dimensional ascension were already manifesting in her. If the experiments continued, she alone could pose a massive threat to their world...

"The helicopter! Get someone to bring my helicopter over—now!"

The old man seized his secretary by the shoulders and shook him frantically. The middle-aged man in a suit hurried to pull out his phone. The base had several emergency helicopters on standby—there might still be time to escape the city before the Missile arrived.

At the mention of a chance to survive, everyone in the room surged forward, begging to be taken along. The scene descended into utter chaos.

"I'm the most senior data analyst here—the project still needs me!"

"You know me—they hired me under your name. My quantum technology research has always been at the cutting edge..."

"Let's go! The helicopters are at Building 5!"

Bang, bang, bang—three gunshots. The old man fired three rounds in succession. His hand trembled uncontrollably from the recoil, his chest heaving. The laboratory fell dead silent; only the images on the main screen continued to move.

"Let's go."

He stepped over the person convulsing on the floor and left with his secretary.

Things had reached this point—the experiments had to be suspended. Bearing the dual titles of Lin family chairman and project director, he was destined to be thrown to the wolves afterward to appease public outrage.

Better to flee now with the core data. With those files in hand, certain people wouldn't dare touch him easily. Men like them feared nothing more than losing everything—reputation, status, all of it.

The laboratory door slammed shut. Inside, quiet sobs filled the room. Some trembled in terror at the approaching death. Others felt genuine remorse in their final moments—now it wasn't just them paying the price for Ye Zheng's fury, but millions of innocent people dragged in with them...

Someone drafted a final message, wanting to send "I love you" to their family, only to discover that the base's security protocols blocked all outgoing transmissions. She hurled her phone in frustration.

A researcher who'd been shot in the abdomen lay on the floor, barely clinging to life, his head tilted to one side, glasses askew.

Suddenly his eyes flew wide open. With a shaking hand he straightened his glasses and stared at the main screen for a long moment before speaking in disbelief: "No, her goal... cough cough... isn't to send the Missile to our world..."

His words jolted everyone around him awake. They wiped their tears and held their breath, eyes riveted to the screen.

Under the powerful centrifugal force, the Missile had veered nearly ninety degrees off course. Yet the water's rotation was gradually slowing, showing signs of subsiding.

At first glance, they assumed Ye Zheng had run out of strength. But more and more water was breaking free of the vortex and surging forward, its violent force slamming against the Missile's flank, physically shoving it backward.

The warhead was aimed at neither world. Its trajectory pointed toward the wall of the passage itself.

"Ye Zheng is—she's trying to detonate the Missile inside the passage!"

"Why would she do that? Has she lost the power to keep redirecting it?"

Life returned to their eyes. Not one of them could bear to look away from the screen.

"Have any of you read King of the Demonic Domain?"

A voice suddenly rang out behind them. They spun around in shock to see Lin Zhixing striding in.

"...No. We're not media personnel. There was one observer, but she ran off early."

Their job was theory and technology. Only a select few had the clearance to observe Ye Zheng's world, and Lin Zhixing happened to be one of them.

"No wonder—I can't believe Ye Zheng scared you this badly. She's actually quite easy to get along with."

Lin Zhixing didn't approach the screen. Carrying a black briefcase, she walked to the far end of the lab and stopped before a glass cabinet.

"Are you saying she bears no ill will toward our world?"

"You should thank the readers who love Ye Zheng. Without them, given the kind of people you are, that Missile would've blown us sky-high long ago."

Lin Zhixing spoke lightly. She unzipped the briefcase, pulled out a black object, aimed it at the glass cabinet, and fired. The successive gunshots sent the researchers ducking to the floor with their heads covered—some even suspected she'd been sent by the Lin family to silence them.

Lin Zhixing then produced a hammer and began bashing the cracks in the cabinet with abandon. The researchers gaped as she smashed through the glass and extracted a stack of papers from inside.

The thin, brittle draft pages were slightly wrinkled at the edges—damage from a previous soaking, which had also inadvertently caused the death of her cousin.

Lin Zhixing finally broke into a deeply satisfied smile. She waved the draft pages at the researchers and offered a friendly warning: "She's a good person, but she definitely does not like you or this place."

She turned and left, leaving the dumbfounded researchers behind. Logic told them they should get out immediately, but every one of them stood rooted before the screen, feet leaden, unable to leave. A strange calm and focus had settled over them; an unprecedented curiosity held them captive.

Ye Zheng would rather risk her own death than bring danger to this world—a world that held people who loved her?

Would Ye Zheng die? Perhaps she could survive under the protection of her abilities. Nothing she accomplished would be surprising.

Someone spoke up: "If we make it out alive, let's pick up a copy of King of the Demonic Domain."

Everyone nodded in silence, eyes glued to the screen.

Then their eyes grew wider and wider.

On the screen, the vortex of high-speed spinning water had vanished. The trajectory-altered Missile hurtled into the void of darkness. The flood split in two—half forming a water shield before Ye Zheng, the other half surging toward the opposite end of the passage—

The direction the Missile had come from. The path leading to this world!

Meanwhile, Lin Zhixing stepped out of the elevator onto the rooftop, overlooking the entire base.

Generations of effort, billions upon billions in wealth poured into this campus—all of it about to be reduced to nothing today.

She spotted the helicopter on the distant lawn and let out a cold laugh.

System had been cut off by Main System; she couldn't communicate with Ye Zheng directly. But instinct told her she had to do something.

If that old fossil had stayed put, she might never have gotten her hands on these pages—the original draft of King of the Demonic Domain, and the primordial force that had first linked the two worlds.

She'd been prepared to risk her life for it. Fortunately, the old man valued his own skin too much.

Lin Zhixing drew a deep breath and finally steeled her resolve. She pulled out a lighter and held it to the draft.

Ye Zheng was bound by the manga's final law—she could not kill Wang Tao.

Wang Tao's influence over that world originated from this draft. What if it were destroyed?

Lin Zhixing flicked the lighter. Just as the flame was about to touch the paper, her fingertips felt a faint dampness.

Her pupils dilated. She dropped the lighter and stared at the draft. The water stain was spreading, like an infinitely expanding point, rapidly soaking through the pages!

Inside the building, screams erupted. The researchers in the lab were blinded by the white light bursting from the screen. They shielded their eyes with their hands, risking retinal damage just to keep watching.

The Missile had traveled through the boundless darkness and finally struck the invisible boundary of the passage—detonating on impact!

*

Blinding light flooded the passage, bright as broad daylight. Ye Zheng stubbornly kept her eyes open, dark irises threaded with red. The horrific shockwave punched through her water shield; every bone in her body felt as though it had been ground to dust.

...Perhaps they already had been. It was [Mother of All Things] that had seized her last breath to repair her dying body.

Her brain still hummed. The Missile's detonation had been silent, yet the blast had scrambled her senses so completely that she thought she heard someone calling her name.

"This may be the last time I can help you, Ye Zheng."

That's right—after System had vanished, only Marcy could speak to her within her consciousness.

Among all the Popes across the ages, only Marcy's [Mother of All Things] had the power to bring someone back from the dead.

Marcy sighed. "My consciousness won't last much longer either. The truth of this world is staggering. For a lingering wisp of will to touch the face of that truth—I have no regrets."

So the Aston XIV who had killed her turned out to be that kind of monster. All along, they had been fighting against something beyond comprehension—an unimaginably vast entity.

"You've worked hard. The crisis is over. Your kindness and your return gift should be enough to keep them in line."

Of the water Ye Zheng had sent into the passage, half had been used to protect herself. The other half of the flood had rushed toward the passage's far end, riding the explosive shockwave to burst through to the other side.

"I must say goodbye now, Ye Zheng. After all these years, I'm tired too..."

Marcy's voice grew weary and faint.

"Don't say goodbye just yet—don't you want to kill Aston XIV?"

That fading, withering wisp of soul energy froze at once—and rallied.

The violent explosion had shattered the passage to pieces. Space inverted. Ye Zheng's body was in freefall, the dark rift below slowly collapsing.

Ye Zheng tilted her head back to gaze at the fathomless void above. She couldn't see the entrance to the other world.

The thought of returning the Missile to sender had indeed crossed her mind. But when she remembered that the city on the other side also held readers eagerly following her story, she dismissed the idea with a laugh.

That didn't mean she would let them off easy.

The floodwater she'd sent riding the blast wave was beyond her control now. She couldn't even confirm it had reached the other world, much less guarantee it could destroy Main System.

And even if Main System were destroyed, the manga's laws would still stand. Wang Tao might very well cling to life in her world.

That, she would not allow.

"I'm going up."

She said.

The young woman drifted downward through the darkness like a speck of insignificant light. She reached her hand upward.

Up to where? All Ye Zheng knew was that it was a dimension that didn't belong to her.

Marcy was silent for a moment, offering no opinion on Ye Zheng's choice. Then she said abruptly: "But your friend has come for you."

Before Ye Zheng could process the words, she felt a force pulling her downward, accelerating her fall.

[Ye Zheng!]

A frantic cry rang in her ears.

Ah—so the voice she'd heard at the moment of the explosion had been Bai Muqing, calling her name.

Bai Muqing had actually extended [Divine Domain] into the passage itself. Perhaps it was Bai Muqing's power augmenting her own that had given her a fighting chance to survive the blast—giving Marcy the opening to activate [Mother of All Things] and restore her life.

As Ye Zheng tumbled downward, she twisted lightly in midair. Below her, the gap leading back to her world was shrinking. Bai Muqing was bracing one hand against its contracting edge.

Her other hand reached toward Ye Zheng, straining to catch her.

Seeing this, Ye Zheng's dark eyes curved. Whenever she couldn't properly process complex emotions, she always fell back on her most familiar expression—a smile.

Thank you.

Ye Zheng mouthed the words without sound.

She extended one hand—but not toward Bai Muqing. A thread of water coiled around her arm, its other end stretching into the infinite, shattered void.

The dark rift closed. Bai Muqing lost all sense of Ye Zheng.

← Previous Chapter Next Chapter →