Chapter 234: Fear the Power, Not the Virtue

The talks had not yet officially begun, but thousands had already gathered in the square outside the venue.

Venue security was fully armed and on alert, with awakened individuals secretly patrolling the surroundings.

At the main entrance of the venue, participants of the Lisibao talks were entering in orderly fashion.

Attendees included key scientific personnel from relevant fields, European officials involved in resource integration, awakened individuals from the European Jueguan Bureau, engineering staff, environmental protection organizations, and international observers attempting to demonstrate a spirit of cooperation.

The atmosphere carried a subtle tension; in the eyes of the crowd directed at Yang Yi, there was not only anticipation and awe, but also an indescribable undertone.

As Yang Yi walked toward the venue, she listened while several scientific experts outlined the recent collaborative directions of key European laboratories.

She nodded lightly, a faint, polite smile tugging at her lips, occasionally asking a question—usually met with overly enthusiastic or excessively flattering responses.

Amid this facade of harmony, the event unfolded with sudden, unforeseen force.

The previously strict and orderly atmosphere was instantly strangled, as if by an invisible hand, the moment the first word burst from the speaker.

A meticulously edited recording, its volume abruptly amplified, exploded without warning from a portable speaker hidden somewhere in the crowd.

“—I hate this world! I wish this broken world would explode right now!”

The sharp, uncontrolled, tear-filled voice of a young woman stood in terrifying contrast to the calm, detached figure standing before the venue.

“I hate humanity more! Ugly! Selfish! Hypocritical! Malicious! Stupid! Short-sighted!”

Each word was a poisoned ice pick, driving deep into the warm air.

The expressions of hundreds of attendees froze; conversations, note-taking, even breathing ceased—only the recording’s shattered accusations pounded against every eardrum.

A wave of uneasy murmurs rose from the square, but was drowned out by the amplified volume of the speaker.

“I’d rather be a maggot! A maggot wriggling all day in shit! Than be human!”

Someone’s tablet slipped from their hand and shattered with a crisp crack—no one turned to look.

Every gaze, magnetized and frozen, was locked onto the figure standing before the venue.

The last traces of Yang Yi’s programmed, polite smile melted away like snow under sunlight.

No shock. No panic. Not even a flicker of offended anger.

She simply stopped, glanced around, then tilted her head slightly—as if listening intently to an unfamiliar melody.

The air thickened, solidified.

Those closest to Yang Yi—those who had been trying to approach her, even with looks of admiration—now brimmed with unease.

They could clearly see the shadow of her lowered eyelashes, the rhythmic, gentle tapping of her fingers against her phone’s casing.

An invisible, suffocating pressure spread like spores through the air.

They unconsciously leaned back, desperate to put distance between themselves and her.

“You’re all dead in the apocalypse—what’s it to me? Even if the whole world collapses—I’d be thrilled!!!”

The recording reached its climax—the most lethal part. The madness and despair in the voice threatened to burst free of the speaker’s confines.

At that moment, Yang Yi lifted her head.

She did not look toward the corner where the recording played, nor did she survey the hushed crowd around her.

Her gaze seemed to pass beyond them, fixed on some distant void—or perhaps merely resting blankly on a point in the air.

She found it utterly tedious. Boring beyond measure.

Everything before her was exactly as predicted. Not the slightest surprise.

To her, these people were no longer “human” at all, but mere hybrids driven by biological hormones, swept along by emotion, manipulated by public opinion, controlled by survival anxiety, shaped by culture, molded by stance and prejudice, blinded by stupidity and short-sightedness, and coerced by self-interest.

They were simple code responding predictably to input, protozoa reflexively reacting to external stimuli, pigs blind to tomorrow’s slaughter, fixated only on their troughs of feed, flies and cockroaches that only bred and buzzed.

Nothing else.

In the past, out of pathological pride and boundless vanity, she had harshly demanded perfection of herself, constantly dissatisfied, even disgusted and hateful toward herself.

Why punish herself so? How absurd. Why live under the gaze of these protozoa? Why live under the expectations of these swine?

She should think “I feel,” not “What will they think?”

This is my world. I am the protagonist. Everyone else is a supporting character in my life. All should serve me—not me serving them.

I am the sole center of the world. The only star on its stage. I—I am the King of the World!

My words are the only truth. If anyone opposes me, they are wrong. If the world believes them right—then the entire world is wrong.

I can rule this world—therefore I am right.

Everyone should be grateful for me, admire me, take pride in seeing my figure, revere my words as holy scripture, consider it an honor to earn even a glance from me!

If I show them kindness, they should faint with ecstasy—as Christians do upon seeing the face of God—no, in this world, I am God!

In my world, all religions are heresy! They must smash every clay idol in every temple, tear down every grand cathedral, burn every scripture—the Bible, the Blue Scripture, the Daozang, the Buddhist sutras—because I am their savior, and I alone must be their god!

If they refuse to abandon their faith and convert to me, they are traitors, betraying my hard-won salvation. They should be locked in concentration camps like WWII’s squids, burned on pyres as Christians once burned heretics.

This is the punishment my god—me—inflicts upon them.

If they accepted God’s great flood as natural and believed humanity deserved to repent, then they should see my punishment as an honor!

They should scream in agony on the pyre, praying to me, chanting my glorious name!

They should kneel day and night in concentration camps, begging for my mercy!

They should willingly offer me their loyalty—I may take it whenever I wish, like plucking a melon from my own garden.

They must surrender everything to me: spiritual devotion, faith, allegiance… and material and relational possessions—money, power, family, partners, children, even life itself!

Humanity is my livestock. The entire Earth is my pasture.

Not like this…

Her lips slowly, slowly curved upward.

She smiled lightly.

The laugh held no warmth—only a barren, icy mockery, born of seeing through everything.

At last, she turned her gaze toward the crowd and the distant square—every skin, black, white, yellow, brown; every eye, green, blue, black, brown—shrank involuntarily.

Even those far away, who had seemed calm due to distance, felt a bone-deep chill as her gaze swept over them. The murmur of whispers vanished entirely, replaced by a suffocating, oppressive silence.

Everyone waited—waiting for her defense, her denial, her anger, or… something worse.

Yang Yi spoke. Her voice was quiet, yet clear across every corner—calm, terrifyingly so, even more devoid of emotion than when she had inquired about related projects before the recording played.

“Finished?” she asked, as if confirming an insignificant detail.

No one dared answer.

She nodded, as if reaching her own conclusion.

Then, she tilted her head slightly, quietly gazing at the crowd in the square.

“Yes,” she said, her tone still soft, yet each word sharp and clear, “those were my words.”

She admitted it.

So directly. So bluntly. Not a shred of concealment or explanation. The shock struck many like a thunderclap—thoughts briefly blanked.

She… just admitted it?

Admitted to that mad, anti-human declaration full of destruction?

Yang Yi’s gaze swept the crowd again—this time, with unprecedented scrutiny.

She watched faces filled with fear, doubt, uncertainty, and now emerging anger and condemnation; she saw in their eyes the reflection of the “other.”

She saw how easily their emotions were manipulated by a recording, how swiftly they abandoned data and logic to embrace crude moral judgment, how deeply rooted was their instinctive xenophobia—“those not of our kind must have different hearts”—and most fatally, their short-sightedness.

They heard only hatred. Saw only the latent danger of a “monster.” They chose to forget who pulled them from the apocalypse, who resisted the constant threats of alien life, who tried to carve a path—however uncertain—for their survival.

They were ruled by fear, led by public opinion, desperate to find a tangible target for their inner unease.

Disappointment.

She had long since stopped feeling anger or sorrow—only a faint, smoke-like disappointment remained.

Like molten lava flowing into the deep polar sea, slowly hardening into cold, lifeless rock.

It was all so absurd. Every effort at patience, every attempt at communication, every presentation of evidence—was like playing the qin to a cow, or explaining mathematics to a single-celled organism driven only by instinct.

“And then?”

She spoke again, her voice finally carrying a faint, soul-freezing sarcasm.

She tilted her head slightly—as if genuinely curious.

“You heard it. These were my words, spoken at a specific moment, under specific circumstances. They reflected a fleeting emotion, a partial thought. Ugly, perhaps. Extreme, perhaps. But they are one true fragment.”

She paused—as if looking at the crowd, or perhaps at empty air—yet the air pressure in the square rose.

“Now you know. You know the ‘god among men’ you placed your hopes in harbors such vile thoughts toward you, toward this world.” Her tone remained even, yet each word cut like a blade: “So then? What do you intend to do?”

Her gaze was calm: “Will you condemn me morally? Judge me through public opinion? Petition some organization to imprison me? Or…” her voice dropped lower, yet grew clearer, edged with a chilling, almost seductive tone, “...try to control me—or eliminate this potential, massive instability?”

Silence.

No one dared respond. No one dared meet her eyes.

Under her calm questioning, they felt their half-formed suspicions and fears laid bare, exposed to the icy air.

Only now did they realize what manner of being they faced.

Not a political figure to be pressured. Not a public idol to be manipulated by public opinion. But an individual who could erase S-class alien life, or wipe out any nation on Earth.

Their prior “no-kill” principle had briefly made them forget the violent essence of that power—giving them a foolish, misplaced sense of safety.

Fear the power, but not the virtue.

The ancient proverb struck like ice water poured over their heads, chilling them to the bone.

A deeper, primal fear—the kind a mortal feels when suddenly cast into ancient times, facing an incomprehensible, immeasurable, invincible force.

Yang Yi watched their silence, watched their fear finally drown out every other emotion—her last flicker of human complexity extinguished.

What remained was pure, drifting, indifferent apathy.

“It seems you haven’t decided yet,” she said lightly, as if her piercing questions had been an afterthought. “It doesn’t matter.”

She turned away, refusing to look at anyone, and walked straight toward the hall, her steps steady, her back straight.

“If you have objections, or want to do something, I welcome you anytime.” Her voice drifted over, the final word so light it was nearly inaudible, yet heavy as a thousand catties: “The meeting will proceed as scheduled.”

She vanished into the shadow of the hall’s entrance, leaving thousands of men and women on the square, still frozen in unease and fear.

The sunlight remained, but no one felt the slightest warmth.

The echo of that recording still trembled in the air, but what chilled them more was Yang Yi’s final words, and the indifference in her gaze as she left.

It was not compromise, not a declaration of war—but an announcement: that she had utterly lost interest in “seeking understanding.”