Chapter 225: Purification

She slowly raised her head, her gaze heavy as she looked at the crowd gathered before her.

They seemed certain she would not kill; reporters shoved microphones toward her, their questions—filled with suspicion, malice, selfishness, and hostility, all designed to chase traffic—poured over her relentlessly.

"What is your opinion on the paper published by the MBA Knowledge Base? Is your gene truly identical to that of the alien creatures in Diego City?"

"Are you really human? Why do you dare not provide a genetic test report?"

"Did you truly bring the disasters upon Earth? Is your salvation of humanity merely to raise humans as livestock, forcing them to worship you as a savior?"

"Did you deliberately release these centipede monsters in this city? To further consolidate your image as the God of Humanity?"

"Did you destroy thirteen military bases in the Ark Country because the Ark Country discovered the truth that you are not human?"

"During the last apocalypse, did you go to the Otherworld to kill alien creatures, or did you go to feast on human lives?"

"Are you the Evil God? Did you bring the disasters upon Earth?"

……

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

Her brain hummed; the volcano accumulated within her body boiled internally, wanting to break through the barriers and erupt wildly and powerfully.

This volcano had been suppressed for over twenty years; recently, she had found it increasingly difficult to hold it back.

Perhaps… it is time to let everything fall silent…

She thought silently, with a cold, precise, almost artistic desire for destruction.

Right now, just a thought, merely a single thought.

No blood is needed; that is too dirty.

No screams are needed; that is too noisy.

I can stretch this second into infinity, freeze all the noise in their open mouths, and lock every malicious gaze within their eye sockets.

Then, like a top sculptor treating excess clay, I will erase them.

Let these people, along with the city beneath their feet, lose color and texture. Starting from the edges, they will silently turn into the finest, most uniform powder.

Not death, but the direct revocation of their existence.

Let this boiling, ugly city, full of the noise of low-level life, become an absolutely pure, absolutely clean work of art, titled—Purification…

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

Or, more elegantly: let everyone who has ever harbored malicious thoughts toward me crystallize from within. Frost-like, beautiful yet deadly patterns would appear on their skin until their entire bodies became crystal-clear glass statues, refracting brilliant light under the sun.

They would become the newest decorations in my manor, eternally displaying how beautiful and silent the price of defying the gods can be.

And that child… ah, a weapon that was used.

I can "handle" her separately.

Without harming her, I would simply peel her memory of that "hatred," which has been polluted, from her consciousness like pulling out a roll of dyed film, crush it into a wisp of fine dust between my fingertips, and then blow it away.

She would forget everything, gaining a pure blank slate.

How perfect, how pure!

This is the good deed I should do, not standing here to be judged by a flock of lambs!

Suddenly, a shiver traveled from her tailbone all the way to the back of her head; a tingling chill brought her back to her senses.

A deep sense of void and self-loathing surged into her heart.

Can I do this?

Will I do this?

…I will not…

This is the most ridiculous, most tragic part, isn't it?

She held a paintbrush stained with paint, yet she shackled herself with the rule of "not dirtying the canvas." And they, using the most brilliant and abstract shared narrative of human civilization, painted a beautiful future for her, like a carrot dangling before a donkey, easily kidnapping her ridiculous principles.

Yang Yi felt nauseous.

She realized: she loathed them, and loathed even more the version of herself who was still choosing not to destroy them.

This restraint was not virtue, not mercy, but her greatest flaw and weakness.

Yes, flaw! Weakness!

Get lost…

Before I can still maintain this fragile human form, before I can still convince myself that this filth is worth enduring for some higher reason—

Get out of my sight!

In the end, she did nothing.

She simply shook the egg liquid off the barrier with an action so slow that everyone could see it clearly.

Then, she raised her head; her gaze had returned to calmness, but beneath that calmness, a black vortex slowly turned in the depths of her subconscious, swallowing away a few more points of the faint light belonging to humanity.

She turned and left; every step made the ground tremble slightly, the aftershock of something colossal being forcibly suppressed within her.

The crowd automatically parted a path in the dead silence, not out of respect, but out of the most primal instinct of life: fear of a natural predator.

They would never know that they had just wandered around the boundary between yin and yang at the gates of hell.