Chapter 238: Who Is Yang Yi?

A known primary base of the Divine Punishment Organization is hidden deep within a abandoned Cold War-era nuclear bunker beneath the Arctic permafrost.

Theoretically, it should be impregnable—five layers of composite outer armor, an independent ecological recycling system, an anti-detection field tuned to counter Awakened abilities, and over three hundred Awakened guards branded with Veed’s spiritual imprint.

Yang Yi took only five minutes.

Two minutes after the coordinates provided by the Xia State intelligence department were confirmed, Yang Yi arrived at the Arctic and gently clenched her fist toward the empty air before her.

The permafrost trembled; thick layers of frozen earth and rock twisted as if squeezed by an invisible giant hand.

The base’s outer armor shattered like brittle pastry, exploding into silent sparks; the Divine Punishment Organization’s Awakened guards didn’t even have time to raise an alarm before everything around them—the walls, the floor, the air, the light—collapsed inward in frantic compression, hurling them into a dark void via unseen mental force.

There was no explosion, no fire; a hemispherical crater roughly five hundred meters in diameter appeared in its place, its walls gleaming with a glassy texture formed only under extreme heat and pressure, reflecting a cold, eerie hue under the polar twilight.

Yang Yi’s figure emerged at the center of the crater, as if she had always been there.

She wore a simple white shirt and slacks, over which a long trench coat hung, its hem gently swaying in the lingering spatial currents.

Her face held no expression—no relief of victory, no ripple of success—only the focused calm of someone carrying out a task.

Veed’s primary consciousness had long since transferred; he never put all his eggs in one basket.

But like the most skilled hunter always leaves a lingering scent, Veed left something here—a thread of divine thought.

Yang Yi sensed it.

The divine thought clung to an object at the crater’s base that had not been vitrified: half a broken, black-green altar stone carved with totems.

When Yang Yi’s gaze fell upon it, the altar stone glowed faintly, and a phantom figure emerged from within.

“Remarkable efficiency, my loyal master… five minutes, from location to elimination—faster than I anticipated by a third. Your ability’s growth rate is impressive… yet it also means you are drawing closer to your divine throne…”

Yang Yi stared at the phantom, her eyes unshaken, as if observing an inanimate object.

“It seems you’ve learned quite a bit from the human world during this time.” Her voice was calm. “Next time, bury yourself deeper.”

“Indeed, humans still have their merits—especially their methods of dealing with their own kind. Truly ingenious, and astonishing!” Veed’s tone brimmed with surprise and admiration.

“I merely sowed a few seeds of ‘cognition’ across this human land. Their fear, selfishness, and delusions about the unknown became the perfect nourishment for those seeds. All of this was done for you, my loyal master—only to help you see the true nature of this species—you will eventually be wounded by what you seek to protect.”

Yang Yi had no interest in wasting words; she moved her fingers, ready to crush the phantom.

“Why not talk? Who else in this world could you speak a single honest word to?” Veed’s voice was gentle, considerate. “I see your loneliness. Across this entire Earth, your kind cannot understand you—they are so foolish, so blind…”

Veed pointed at empty air, as if millions of invisible humans stood there.

“Individual humans may occasionally display flashes of insight, fragile kindness, negligible reason. But once they form a group…” His voice carried the detached tolerance of one who understands inevitable laws, “their intelligence plummets exponentially. Fear spreads among them, lies accumulate, responsibility dissolves, and individuals drown in collective emotional foam.”

“They don’t need complex truths—only simple enemies. They don’t need difficult freedom—only clear directives. They don’t want to bear the weight of their own fate—only a master to whom they can surrender everything, and thus blame everything.”

“You give them data, they search for conspiracies. You give them survival plans, they question your motives. You reveal the cold truth of the universe, and they’d rather believe you caused the disaster.”

“They forge weapons from your deepest pain, twist your greatest sacrifices into proof of your ambition. Did you see the protests in Diego City? Those cries and roars, those banners demanding your trial… that is the humanity you risked everything to protect!”

Yang Yi lowered her eyes, hiding the weariness within, her expression indifferent.

“Freedom is poison to them! Yang Yi, freedom means choice, choice means responsibility, responsibility means unavoidable failure and pain. Deep down, what they truly crave is a clear path, a powerful shepherd, and a whip they can be struck with when needed—so they need not think, only follow. In the past, they sought kings, religions, gods, ideologies; now, they’ve found you—a being with divine power yet still clinging to a laughable sense of responsibility, willing to carry them forward.”

Veed’s voice sank into a seductive whisper:

“Do you feel lonely, Yang Yi? Standing among crowds, yet separated by thick glass. Every decision you make is judged by the most malicious standards; every sacrifice you make is seen as ulterior motive; your very existence has become the focal point of their fear and hatred.”

“You protect them, yet they long to drag you off your throne and trample you into the mud. This loneliness… doesn’t it feel familiar?”

Yang Yi stood silent in the Arctic wind, as if listening intently.

“Because this is our loneliness,” Veed’s voice carried a touch of shared sorrow. “Standing at higher dimensions, enforcing laws no one understands, bearing infamy, maintaining a precarious balance. The demon god is lonely. His servants are lonely. And you are becoming precisely such a lonely shepherd. Your loneliness is not because you did something wrong—it is because your position, by its very nature, ensures separation from the flock.”

“Admit it, Yang Yi. You are no longer one of them. Your battlefield lies among the stars; your enemies are cosmic laws; your duty is the survival of civilization—not appeasing a group of children who can never be fed enough or educated properly. Return to your rightful place. A shepherd needs no love from his sheep—only obedience.”

“If they refuse to obey… then eat them.”

The wind seemed to halt; the crater sank into a stagnant silence.

Veed’s eyes reflected swirling galaxies from the depths of the universe, awaiting Yang Yi’s reply.

Yang Yi stood still, her trench coat’s hem swaying in the cold wind.

Her face remained expressionless, yet within her dark pupils, a faint, almost imperceptible ripple stirred.

She slowly lifted her gaze toward a point in the empty air.

“Humans are indeed full of flaws. Groups are indeed foolish and easily controlled. Freedom and responsibility are often heavy burdens for them.” Her voice rose, calmer than before, even faintly amused:

“I am human too. I share the same flaws. I will not eat my own kind. I will reform them—reform the sources that produce these flaws.” Yang Yi took a step forward; her white sneakers crunched against the vitrified ground, the sound echoing far in the silence. “Humans are shaped by their environment and beliefs. Change their environment, and you change their thoughts and behavior.”

Veed emitted a low sigh, as if echoing from distant stars.

“You’ve begun thinking in terms of ‘reform’ and ‘source’ when it comes to civilizations. Yang Yi, look at yourself—do you remember our first real conversation? In that sinful Red Building.”

Yang Yi did not pause; she continued walking toward the phantom and the altar stone’s remains.

“Back then, you yearned for ultimate transcendence. You despised human greed and stupidity—yet still refused to abandon that laughable humanity, to embrace greater power.”

Veed’s voice carried the distant echo of memory, tinged with faint mockery: “You clung to that pitiful human cognition—the memories, preferences, moral codes of the insignificant individual called ‘Yang Yi’—as if it were the only floating log in a flood. You said then, ‘Can transcendence that costs the self still be called transcendence?’”

Yang Yi stopped three meters from the altar stone. She could instantly annihilate it and the attached thought-thread—but she did not move, only silently watched Veed’s phantom.

“And now?” Veed smiled. “Where has the Yang Yi who feared losing her ‘self’ gone? You’ve actively suppressed your emotional responses, stripped away unnecessary feelings and anger, replaced intuition and attachment with cold reason. You are moving farther from the human definition of ‘Yang Yi,’ and closer to the ancient, grander ‘essence’ upon the divine throne.”

“You resist alienation in your heart, yet your actions accelerate toward it—because only then can you obtain from Him the power to preserve human civilization. This is the mission you willingly took upon yourself.”

“But is this mission truly so important to you? Could it be, perhaps, that this is merely a respectable excuse you chose for your own transformation? How much of your so-called self, your so-called humanity, remains now?”

“Your self-imposed boundary—the principle of not killing your own kind… how long will you hold onto it?”

Veed’s voice carried pity; his dark-brown eyes gazed at Yang Yi with the tenderness of an elder watching a student.

The wind swept across the crater, lifting fine ice crystals that struck Yang Yi’s face—yet not a single eyelash trembled.

“Finished?” Yang Yi’s voice was utterly flat. “You may have inherited Veed’s psychological knowledge, but like the Divine Punishment Organization, you possess only the surface. Humanity is not a sacred, untouchable totem—it is a flawed survival code evolved under specific conditions. When the environment shifts to cosmic-scale survival selection, the code must change. Strip away inefficient emotions, strengthen rational decision-making—this is the most advantageous choice now. As for betrayal of the self…”

She finally lifted her gaze, staring directly into the phantom—as if seeing through it to Veed’s true body far away.

“Perhaps it isn’t important at all.” She lowered her eyes, her voice as light as a snowflake, honestly dissecting herself before this alien visitor: “The six-year-old Yang Yi didn’t believe the twenty-year-old Yang Yi was herself. The sixty-year-old Yang Yi will find the thirty-year-old Yang Yi foreign. The concept of ‘Yang Yi’ is not constant—it is stage-based; it is the present.”

“Who is ‘Yang Yi’? A temporary collection defined by a specific DNA sequence and twenty-odd years of limited experience. Before gaining power, her goal was inner transcendence. After gaining power, she was transformed by it—sometimes she doesn’t even know who she is.”

“But the one thing she can be certain of is writing a few meaningful strokes onto the ledger of civilization’s survival. If this alienation increases the probability of those strokes existing, then losing the self, fully transforming into… some entity—may be the greatest value the temporary collection called ‘Yang Yi’ can achieve.”

Veed fell silent for several seconds, as if digesting this declaration of ‘return.’ Then he smiled.

“Brilliant… truly brilliant! You’ve finally begun walking toward your divine throne… Welcome back, my master. I will ‘help’ you accelerate this journey…”

In the instant his words ended, the last thread of Veed’s divine thought vanished like a pencil mark erased by an eraser.

Only Yang Yi remained in the crater, standing amid the Arctic wind and silence.

She looked up, toward the heavy, leaden sky above—the vast shadow invisible to human eyes, drawing ever closer.