Chapter 29: Who Exactly Are You?

"The fog is dissipating!" someone in the crowd shouted.

It wasn't just him who noticed; the Brazilian military and the Xia rescue team had all spotted it.

After the tornado raged, the fog persisted for over two hours before beginning to dissipate at a speed visible to the naked eye. The temporarily erected data analysis station was urgently testing various data within the fog.

"What exactly is the situation inside?" General Balotelli asked impatiently.

"According to the data, the dark matter energy within the fog is dropping rapidly..." Suddenly, a researcher, his face filled with terror, cried out, "There are five living beings walking out of the fog!"

"Emergency preparation!" General Balotelli's expression turned stern, and the soldiers immediately held their weapons, surrounding the front.

The five figures in the distance stumbled closer, and the vigilance of the people around them relaxed.

General Balotelli watched the five figures warily, his gaze finally settling on Silva. "Where are the others? What about the townspeople?"

Silva lowered his head in shame, as if everything was his fault. "They... they are all dead..."

Before General Balotelli could react, Director Zhou shoved him aside and asked anxiously, "Where is Yang Yi? Where is Yang Yi?"

Helen, Silva, Jane, and Hamid all looked simultaneously at Daniel behind them. Seeing their expressions, Director Zhou's heart sank.

Daniel opened his mouth. He remembered the figure that had tried its best to throw him out of the rift; she seemed to be enduring indescribable pain, her beautiful face submerged within it... Daniel came to his senses. Everyone waited tensely for his answer. He said with difficulty, "The rift has closed. She... she didn't come out."

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Yang Yi had heard a theory that human pleasure has a threshold. Assuming the peak of everyone's maximum pleasure threshold is 100, then the pleasure derived from seeing beautiful scenery is about 10, the satisfaction from gourmet food is 20-30, the satisfaction for a nicotine addict or an alcohol addict is 40-50, the satisfaction from soft drugs is 60-90, and the pleasure from hard drugs breaks through the human threshold, heading straight for 200 and above.

At this point, a person becomes immune to all pleasure below 200; beautiful scenery, gourmet food, sex, and even ordinary drugs can no longer produce pleasure for them. They can no longer derive meaning from ordinary life.

At this very moment, experiencing that ultimate pleasure again is the only goal. Everything else—family affection, love, morality, ethics, order—is secondary, because they cannot derive pleasure or meaning from these things. They can only become a beast or a zombie parasitized by drugs, with the sole purpose of keeping them alive being to experience that ultimate pleasure again.

Addiction also brings continuous physical pain. Only by constantly stimulating their pleasure threshold can they feel they are alive. Even knowing full well that the abyss lies ahead, they will jump down without hesitation.

At the moment the Life Source merged, Yang Yi felt a satisfaction she had never experienced in her life. It was as if a person who had endured hunger for years suddenly ate a Manchu-Han Imperial Feast, a satisfaction from soul to body, from internal organs to hair, from the inside out. No, no, no, appetite could not represent this pleasure at all. This was the ultimate satisfaction of the soul, an enjoyment that transcended the body and reached the spirit directly.

Only now did she personally understand why addicts could not escape temptation—once their pleasure threshold was raised to a level they could not bear, they could only become slaves to desire.

Slowly opening her eyes, her black pupils seemed to have a vortex spinning within them, but upon closer inspection, they were like a deep, bottomless pool.

Every detail of the surroundings suddenly rushed into her mind: the smell of decay in the turbid air, the foul breath generated by long-term stagnation, the scent of blood, the dust and particles floating in the air; the churning clouds in the sky, and the unknown stars above the dark clouds; the satisfied smiles on the faces of thousands of corpses, their withered skin, their shriveled pores...

Everything was intruding into Yang Yi's mind in a more detailed and subtle way. If Yang Yi's previous resolution of the outside world was 720p, now, as if she had wiped the dust off the glass, her resolution of the outside world suddenly rose to 1080p, and her perception of all things became more precise and subtle.

Her power was stronger than before. Everything was reflected in her mind, from the vast, dark, turbid sky and the entire gloomy land to a single scorched leaf and a creature lurking in the mud. Only now did she discover that this land was actually a small island situated in boundless black water. The black water in the lake was silent and lifeless, with not a trace of life.

She realized that she was now several times stronger than before absorbing the Energy Source. If she previously viewed everything through human eyes, now her consciousness had detached from herself, formless and intangible, filling the surrounding air, omnipresent.

She suddenly realized that in this vast black lake, she controlled everything and could also destroy everything with a wave of her hand. She was the master of this heaven and earth.

At the same time, her emotions fell into a state of calm and tranquility. The anger she felt at first upon seeing the ground covered in corpses vanished, and the shadows of the past became light and airy. These shadows had once affected her life and even shaped her personality.

And now, they were like floating clouds, gently blown away by the wind.

Her body floated in the air. Her expression shifted from the pain of enduring soul hunger at the very beginning, to the satisfaction of the Life Source merging into her body, to now, where her face showed neither sorrow nor joy, cold and indifferent like a stone statue sitting high upon a lotus throne.

She surveyed this dim world, like a god gazing indifferently upon the human realm.

"Who are you?" she asked.

Silence reigned everywhere; no one answered, but she waited peacefully.

After a while, a voice said, 'I am you, you are me; we are originally one.'

"Oh? If we are originally one, why are you so obsessed with seizing my body?"

'Since you are full of disgust for this world, why not let me take the lead?' that voice said.

"How I feel about this world is my business, but having someone wanting to replace me right beside my bed is simply unpleasant," Yang Yi said.

That voice fell silent.

Yang Yi had always thought this voice was another personality split from her schizophrenia. But everything that had happened: her familiarity with the name of the Fire Demon God "Asarthe," the altar stone chair that only she could see, her hunger for the Life Source, and the "other personality" that had always urged her to accept and face all this—she had to suspect whether this voice inside her was truly herself or an "outsider."

'Was the Life Source delicious?' that voice suddenly asked.

Yang Yi's face involuntarily twitched, revealing an expression of satisfaction and lingering taste. "It was delicious! Unprecedented satisfaction... I believe there is nothing on Earth more satisfying than this."

'This is merely the Life Source of over 4,000 people. Just imagine, how many people are there on Earth?' that voice coaxed gently. 'How many intelligent races are there in the universe? These grand feasts are all waiting for you to pluck, to absorb, to enjoy... When that time comes, you will be the most powerful existence in the universe! The entire universe, whether the God Race, the Worms, or Laplace, K'ang Zhong Ying, Hao Gan Kai... Kuai Jing... They will all prostrate themselves before you and bow their heads in submission. You will be the sole ruler!'

Except for the first few races, which could be expressed with similar sounds, the latter few races could not be expressed in Earth languages. Just hearing those syllables, Yang Yi felt an infinite, vast, and ancient aura rushing at her. In the vast universe, it seemed as if several faint, indistinct gazes were "looking" here, following those strange syllables.

Listening to the voice's description, Yang Yi's face was full of longing, as if she had already completely immersed herself in the future it described.

"As long as I absorb the Life Source on Earth? Complete the most primitive accumulation?" she asked softly, her face bearing a trance-like and strange expression.

That voice seemed to chuckle lightly.

Yang Yi's face was intoxicated, immersed in that feeling of controlling everything. She asked, "Is this your goal?"

'No, it is ours.'

Yang Yi suddenly laughed.

"I always thought you were my other personality, that you were me and I was you. But now, I have finally confirmed," Yang Yi's intoxicated expression slowly faded, and her eyes returned to clarity, "you are not me."

These names she had never known, this grand ambition she had never dreamed of, were not something she—Yang Yi—could have produced.

That voice was not surprised. 'Of course, this is my first time speaking with you. You and your subconscious's self-talk are too noisy. It has been hinting at the existence of me within your body, reminding you to beware of me.'

Yang Yi fell silent. So the voice from before was indeed her other personality, a personality formed by the subconscious under the stimulation of a true outsider. For so many years, it had been hinting at her, reminding her: there is more than one existence within the body.

"Then why have you suddenly appeared now?" Yang Yi asked, then answered her own question: "Because I 'ate' the Life Source? You think that after I enjoyed such a thing, I can no longer refuse its temptation? So there is no need to hide anymore?"

'No. Because we now have a common goal. Even if you are unwilling, you have stepped onto that inevitable path.'

A groundless panic made her tremble, as if something unpredictable, something capable of overturning her life, had happened, and she remained ignorant.

She tried to cover her unease with anger and contempt, retorting loudly, "What goal? What inevitable path? Conquer the universe? That's simply ridiculous!"

That voice was not provoked by her; it gradually fell silent.

Its silence made Yang Yi's anger seem so ridiculous.

"Who are you exactly? Why are you inside my body? Why can only I see the stone chair? Is all of this because of you?!" To break this terrible silence, Yang Yi asked immediately after.

"What is the relationship between the god Wei De mentioned and you? Why could the Life Source sacrificed to that god be absorbed by me—no, by you!"

A silence.

It answered no further questions, as if it had never spoken to her, as if everything had been nothing but an illusion.

"Come out! What do you want? Is the appearance of dark matter connected to you? What is the God Clan? What is the Turbomite? Since when have you entered my body? You parasite! Get out of my body..." A pile of questions accumulated in her mind, unanswered; she raged, cursed, and pleaded, yet received no response.

Unease seized her heart, as if in some unseen way one of her feet had already stepped into a trap, yet she knew not where the trap lay, nor what lay beneath it.

It seemed her fate had been nudged by an invisible great hand, the countless possibilities of the future merging into a single line at a certain node; whether she wished it or not, she would inevitably walk a road of no return.

She felt lost and terrified; this unease gradually formed a surge of anger, threatening to burst forth, wrenching her from the abnormal calm that had followed her absorption of the Life Source.

With nowhere to vent this anger, she swept her telekinetic power over her own body like a madwoman; her skin felt as if scraped by a steel brush. Enduring the pain, she shouted: "Come out!"

Self-harm served no purpose other than to cause her own pain.

This pain should have been sharp and unbearable, yet after the pleasure brought by the Life Source, all other perceptions had grown dull; even pain had become numb, no longer as swift as before.

It was as if this mass of Life Source had not only raised her threshold for pleasure but also lowered her sensitivity to other sensations.

Would there come a day when she became numb and cold toward everything in the human world, like a true "God," treating all things as straw dogs?

Why panic? Isn't this exactly what you wanted?

Standing in the filthy night, she asked herself: Have you not long been weary of all this? Have you not always found the entire human world boring?

If merely numbing one's own perceptions and emotions could grant infinite power, would that not be a very profitable bargain?

No, no, no. At least not at the cost of more than four thousand lives... These were all vibrant lives; they could laugh, cry, feel sorrow, grow angry, and think. They had originally lived peaceful lives, yet now they had become a lump of energy, a battery, a pile of firewood... Humans cannot be treated thus... at least not...

These people were not killed by you; the Life Source was not something you actively merged with. You resisted; you had already exerted every effort to refuse. This was unavoidable; you even paid the price of trapping yourself in this space.

No, the essence condensed from the lives of those four thousand people now resides within me; this is sinful! If I remain indifferent to all this, unmoved by innocent lives passing before my eyes, and regard absorbing their Life Source as a matter of course, then...

A chill slowly crept up her spine; gradually, her entire body felt as if immersed in ice water, a coldness more unbearable than pain.