Chapter 234: Feared for Power, Not Cherished for Virtue

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

The venue's security was fully armed and ready, with even awakened ones patrolling the surroundings in secret.

Before the main entrance, the personnel attending the Lisbon Conference were entering the venue in an orderly fashion.

The attendees included research backbones from relevant fields, officials from various European resource-integration nations, awakened ones from the European Awakening Administration, as well as related engineering staff, environmental protection organizations, and international observers attempting to display a posture of cooperation.

The atmosphere carried a subtle tension; the looks in everyone's eyes directed at Yang Yi held not only expectation and awe, but also a hint of an indescribable meaning.

Yang Yi walked toward the venue while listening to several research experts introduce the recent collaborative directions of key laboratories across Europe.

She nodded lightly, the corners of her mouth lifting into a very faint, perfunctory curve, occasionally asking a few questions, which usually received responses that were either overly enthusiastic or overly sycophantic.

Just within this seemingly harmonious atmosphere, the incident happened so abruptly.

The originally rigorous and orderly atmosphere, the instant the first word burst from the loudspeaker, was as if choked by an invisible giant hand.

That carefully edited recording of an argument, its volume suddenly raised, exploded without warning from a portable speaker in some corner of the crowd in the square.

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

The shrill, out-of-control young female voice, full of a tearing sensation, formed a terrifying contrast with the calm and indifferent figure before the venue.

"I hate humanity even more! Ugly! Selfish! Hypocritical! Vicious! Stupid! Short-sighted!"

Every word was like a poison-quenched ice pick, stabbing fiercely into the warm air.

The expressions on the faces of hundreds of attendees froze; the sounds of conversation, of note-taking, even of breathing, all vanished, leaving only the recording from the square, that accusation collapsed to the extreme, striking everyone's eardrums.

A wave of uneasy noise rose in the square before the venue, but was suppressed by the amplified volume from the speakers.

"I'd rather be a maggot! A maggot that burrows back and forth in shit all day! Than be human!"

Among the attendees, a tablet slipped from someone's hand to the ground, making a crisp cracking sound, but no one turned to look.

Everyone's gaze, as if attracted by a magnet and as if frozen, was nailed firmly to that figure before the venue.

The faint, programmed smile remaining on Yang Yi's face, like residual snow under the sun, slowly melted away completely.

There was no shock, no panic, not even a trace of offended anger.

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

The air was viscous as if solid.

The attendees closest to Yang Yi, those who had originally tried to approach, even with looks of some kind of worship, were now filled with unease.

They could clearly see the shadow of her eyelashes as she lowered her eyelids, and see her knuckles lightly, rhythmically tapping the casing of her phone.

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

They unconsciously leaned their bodies back, wanting to create distance from her.

"You all died out in the apocalypse, what does that have to do with me? Even if the whole world is destroyed—I would be happy!!!"

The recording reached its climax, the most fatal part. The madness and despair in that voice almost overflowed the constraints of the speaker.

Just then, Yang Yi raised her head.

She did not look at the corner that released the recording, nor even scan the crowd around her that had fallen silent as crickets.

Her gaze seemed to pass over them, cast toward the void in the distance, or perhaps it was just emptily fixed on some point in the air.

She felt utterly bored, extremely meaningless.

Everything before her eyes was within expectation, without a single surprise.

These people in her eyes were no longer "humans" themselves, but mixtures driven by biological hormones, swept up by emotions, guided by public opinion, controlled by survival anxiety, shaped by culture, molded by stance and prejudice, blinded by stupidity and short-sightedness, and driven by interests.

They were simple codes that would make fixed responses to a single input command, paramecia that instinctively reflexed based on external stimuli, pigs that could not see tomorrow's slaughter by the butcher and only saw the feed in the trough, and flies and cockroaches that only bred and buzzed noisily.

Beyond that, there was nothing.

Before, out of pathological self-esteem and infinite vanity, she had always demanded harshly of herself; she had always been dissatisfied with herself, even feeling disgust and hatred toward herself.

Why be so harsh on oneself? It was too ridiculous; why live in the gaze of these paramecia? Why live in the expectations of these pigs?

She should be "I feel," not "Will they feel."

This is my world; I am the protagonist. Anyone is a supporting character in my life; everyone should cooperate with me, not me cooperating with them.

I am the sole center of the world; I am the only star on the world stage! I—the King of the World!

What I say is the only truth; if someone opposes me, then they must be wrong; if the world deems they are not wrong—then they are all wrong.

I can dominate this world—therefore I am right.

Everyone should be grateful to me, admire me, take pride in seeing my figure, take listening to my words as holy scripture, and take receiving even a glance from me as an honor!

If I show kindness to him/her, he/she must faint from excitement, just as a Christian seeing the figure of God—no, in this world, I am God!

In my world, any religious faith is heresy! They must smash all clay statues in temples, overthrow all magnificent and gorgeous churches, burn all scriptures, the Bible, the Quran, the Daoist Canon, Buddhist sutras, because I am the savior who saves them; I should be the only god they believe in!

If they refuse to abandon their own faith and convert to me, then they are traitors, a betrayal of my hard work in saving them! They should be locked in concentration camps like the squid of World War II, and sent to the stake just as Christians in the past disposed of heretics.

This is the punishment from their god—me—upon them.

If they accepted the great flood sent down by God and regarded it as a matter of course, believing humanity should repent for it, then they should regard the punishment I send down as a privilege!

They should scream on the stake, praying to me, chanting my great name!

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

They should consciously offer loyalty to me—if I need it, I can take it away at any time, just like plucking melons and vegetables I grew in my own garden.

They should dedicate everything to me, whether spiritual love, faith, following... or secular material and relationships, money, power, family, partners, children, even life!

Humanity is livestock I raise; the entire Earth should be my pasture.

Not like this now...

The corners of her mouth, extremely slowly, curved upward.

She laughed lightly.

There was no warmth in that laughter, only a desolate coldness, mockery after seeing through everything.

She finally cast her gaze toward the surroundings and the distant square; wherever her vision reached, black, white, yellow, brown skins, green, blue, black, brown eyes, all involuntarily shrank back.

Even the crowd in the distance, who had been slightly calmer due to the distance, felt a bone-chilling cold as that gaze swept over them; the noisy whispers vanished completely, leaving only a suffocating, oppressive silence.

Everyone waited—waiting for her defense, her denial, her anger, or... something even more terrible.

Yang Yi spoke. Her voice was not loud, yet it clearly reached every corner, terrifyingly calm, even more untroubled than when she had asked about related items before the recording played.

"Finished?" she asked, as if confirming a trivial matter.

No one dared to answer.

She nodded, as if she had reached a conclusion herself.

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

"That's right," her tone remained light, yet every word was clear, "those are the words I said."

She admitted it.

So straightforward, so direct, without a shred of concealment or explanation. The massive impact made many people's heads buzz, leaving their minds briefly blank.

She... just admitted it like that?

Admitted that declaration full of destructive desire and anti-human tendencies?

Yang Yi's gaze swept over the crowd again, this time carrying an unprecedented meaning of scrutiny.

She looked at the faces filled with fear, doubt, wavering, and even beginning to show anger and condemnation, watching the image of that "alien" reflected in their eyes.

She saw their emotions easily manipulated by a recording, saw their tendency to quickly forget data and logic and plunge back into crude moral judgment, saw the rejection instinct of "those not of my kind must have different hearts" deeply rooted in their bones, and most fatal of all—short-sightedness.

They only heard hatred, only saw the potential danger of a "monster," yet selectively forgot who had dragged them out of the apocalypse disaster, who had been holding back the constant threat of alien creatures, and who had been trying to plan a path to survival for them, a path that might exist or might not exist at all.

They were dominated by fear, led by public opinion, and could not wait to find a definite, attackable target for their inner unease.

Disappointment.

Lately, she rarely felt anger or sadness anymore; there was only a faint disappointment like light smoke.

Like scorching lava flowing into the polar deep sea, slowly solidifying into hard rocks with no warmth whatsoever.

Everything was so ridiculous; all endurance, all attempts at communication, all efforts to present evidence, were like playing the lute to a cow, like explaining mathematical principles to a group of single-celled organisms that only reacted and reflected by instinct.

"And then?"

She spoke again, her voice finally tinged with a very faint, yet soul-freezing mockery.

She tilted her head slightly, as if truly curious.

"You heard it. This is a specific thing I said, at a specific time, in a specific situation. It represents my emotions of a certain moment, my thoughts from a certain aspect. Perhaps ugly, perhaps extreme, but it is one of the real fragments."

She paused, seeming to look at the crowd, yet also seeming to look at a void, causing the air pressure of the entire square to increase.

"Now you know. You know that the 'God of Humanity' you pinned your hopes on harbors such unspeakable thoughts about you, about this world." Her tone was steady, yet every word was like a knife, "So, and then? What do you want to do?"

Her gaze was calm: "Condemn me with morality? Judge me with public opinion? Jointly demand certain organizations lock me up? Or..." Her voice dropped even lower, yet became clearer, carrying a coldness that was almost seductive, "... find a way to control me, or... eliminate this potential huge unstable factor?"

Dead silence.

No one dared to respond; no one even dared to meet her gaze.

Under her calm questioning, people felt their own unformed suspicions and fears ruthlessly dissected and hung out to dry in this cold air.

They suddenly realized what kind of existence they were facing.

Not a political figure who could be pressured at will, not a public idol who could be held hostage by public opinion, but an individual with absolute power who could erase an S-class alien creature, who could erase any nation on earth, at any time.

The previous principle of non-killing had made them briefly forget the violent nature of this power, giving rise to a ridiculous sense of security born of pushing one's luck.

They feared power but did not cherish virtue.

The ancient warning poured over them like ice water, making their whole bodies cold.

A more essential thing—like mortals suddenly cast into ancient times, facing an immense existence that could not be understood, measured, or opposed, a fear originating from genetic instinct.

Yang Yi watched their silence, watched the fear churning in their eyes finally overwhelm all other emotions; the last trace of complex human light in her eyes also extinguished.

What remained was only a pure, elusive, indifferent apathy.

"It seems you haven't decided yet," she said lightly, as if the previous questioning that struck straight to the heart was just a casual remark, "It doesn't matter."

She turned around, no longer looking at anyone, and walked straight toward the conference hall, her steps steady, her back straight.

"If you have objections, or want to do something, I welcome it anytime." Her voice drifted over, the last word so light it was almost inaudible, yet carrying the weight of a thousand pounds, "The meeting will proceed as scheduled."

She disappeared into the shadows of the conference hall entrance, leaving thousands of men and women in the square, still unable to recover from their unease and fear.

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

The echo of that recording seemed to still vibrate in the air, but what was more chilling was Yang Yi's final words, and that indifferent look in her eyes as she left.

That was not compromise, not a declaration of war, but an announcement—an announcement that she had completely lost interest in the matter of "striving for understanding."