Chapter 225: Purification

She slowly lifted her head, gazing solemnly at the crowd gathered before her.

They were certain she wouldn’t kill—reporters shoved microphones into her face, each question brimming with suspicion, malice, self-interest, and hostile intent, all designed to harvest clicks.

“What is your opinion on the paper published by MBA Zhiku ? Is your DNA truly identical to that of the alien lifeforms in Diego City?”

“Are you even human? Why won’t you release your genetic test report?”

“Did you bring the disasters upon Earth? Are you saving humanity only to breed them like livestock and demand worship as a savior?”

“Were those centipede monsters in this city deliberately released by you, to further cement your image as a god among men?”

“Did you destroy thirteen military bases in Akka Nation because they uncovered the truth that you are not human?”

“Last time, during the apocalypse, did you go to another realm to kill alien lifeforms—or did you go to feast on human lives?”

“Are you the demon god? Did you bring these disasters upon Earth?”

……

The murmurs around her gradually coalesced into a buzzing, nauseating wave of sound.

Her mind rang with noise; the volcano pent up within her boiled internally, desperate to burst free and erupt without restraint.

This volcano had been suppressed for over twenty years, and lately, she had found it harder and harder to hold it back.

Perhaps… let everything fall silent…

She thought silently, driven by a cold, precise, almost artistic desire for annihilation.

Right now—just one thought, only one thought.

No blood—that would be too messy.

No screams—that would be too loud.

I can stretch this second infinitely, freeze every noisy word in their open mouths, lock every malicious gaze in their eye sockets.

Then, like a master sculptor discarding excess clay, erase them.

Let these people, along with the city beneath their feet, lose color, lose texture—fade silently from the edges into the finest, most uniform powder.

Not death—erasure of their very existence.

Turn this boiling, ugly, cacophonous city of lowly life into an absolute pure, absolute clean artwork—titled simply: *Purification*…

Oh, Thomas would surely marvel if he saw this artwork I created with my own hands.

Or perhaps more elegantly: let every person who harbored malice toward me crystallize from within—skin blooming with frost-like, beautiful yet lethal patterns, until each body becomes a translucent, luminous Liuli statue, refracting brilliant light in the sun.

They will become my estate’s newest ornaments, eternally displaying the exquisite, silent cost of defying the divine.

And that child… ah, a weapon used.

I can “handle” her alone.

I won’t harm her—only gently peel away the memory of her polluted “hate,” like unspooling a stained film reel, twisting it into a wisp of dust between my fingers, then blowing it away.

She will forget everything, granted a pure, blank void.

How perfect. How pure.

This is the good deed I ought to do—not stand here enduring judgment from a flock of sheep!

Suddenly, a shiver raced from her tailbone up to the back of her skull, a tingling chill snapping her back to awareness.

A deep void, a profound self-loathing, surged into her heart.

Can I do this?

Will I do this?

…I won’t…

Isn’t this the most laughable, the most tragic part?

She holds a brush caked in paint, yet shackles herself with the rule: “Do not soil the canvas.” And they, using humanity’s most brilliant, abstract collective narrative, painted her a beautiful Yuanjing —like a carrot dangled before a donkey—easily kidnapping her ridiculous principles.

Yang Yi felt sick.

She realized: she despised them—and more than that, she despised herself for still choosing not to destroy them.

This restraint is not virtue, not mercy—it is her greatest flaw, her weakest point.

Yes, flaw! Weakness!

Get out…

Before I lose this fragile human form, before I can still convince myself this filth deserves to be endured for some higher reason—

Get out of my sight!

In the end, she did nothing.

Only with an excruciatingly slow motion, visible to all, she gently shook the egg off the barrier.

Then she raised her head—her gaze had returned to calm, but beneath that calm, a slow-turning black vortex stirred in her subconscious, swallowing a little more of the faint glimmer of humanity.

She turned and walked away, each step causing the ground to tremble slightly—the residual tremor of something immense and terrible forcibly suppressed within her.

The crowd parted silently, not out of respect, but from the primal, instinctive terror of facing a predator.

They would never know they had just wandered, unawares, along the razor-thin border between life and death.