Chapter 29

“The mist is dispersing!” someone in the crowd shouted.

Not only he noticed it—the Brazilian military and China’s rescue team also realized this.

Since the tornado raged, the mist had persisted for over two more hours, then began to vanish at a visibly rapid pace; the temporary data analysis station was urgently measuring all data within the mist.

“What’s the situation inside?” General Barotelli asked impatiently.

“According to the data, the dark matter energy within the mist is plummeting…” Suddenly, a researcher’s face turned pale with terror: “Five living beings are walking out of the mist!”

“Emergency preparedness!” General Barotelli’s expression hardened; soldiers immediately raised their firearms and formed a line ahead.

Five distant figures stumbled forward, and the vigilance of those around them eased.

General Barotelli watched the five shadows warily, his gaze finally settling on Silva: “Where are the others? What happened to the townspeople?”

Silva lowered his head in shame, as if all blame rested on him: “They… they’re all dead…”

Before General Barotelli could react, Director Zhou shoved him aside and demanded anxiously: “Where is Yang Yi? Where is Yang Yi?”

Helen, Silva, Jane, and Hamid all turned to look behind them—at Daniel. Director Zhou saw their expressions and his heart sank.

Daniel opened his mouth, recalling the figure who had desperately thrown him out of the fissure—she had endured unspeakable pain, her beautiful face swallowed whole… Daniel snapped back to reality; everyone waited tensely for his answer. He spoke with difficulty: “The fissure closed. She… she didn’t come out.”

————

Yang Yi had heard of a theory: human bodily pleasure has a threshold. Assuming everyone’s peak pleasure threshold is 100, the joy from a beautiful scene is about 10, the satisfaction from fine food is 20–30, the satisfaction for smokers or alcoholics is 40–50, soft drugs yield 60–90, while potent drugs shatter the threshold, surging past 200.

At this point, all pleasure below 200 becomes inert to the person—beauty, food, sex, even ordinary drugs can no longer bring pleasure. He can no longer find meaning in ordinary life.

At this moment, only re-experiencing that extreme pleasure remains the sole goal; everything else—family, love, morality, ethics, order—is secondary, for he gains no pleasure or meaning from them. He can only become a beast or zombie parasitized by drugs, his only purpose in life being to relive that extreme pleasure.

Addiction also brings constant physical pain; only by continually stimulating the pleasure threshold can one feel alive—even if the abyss lies ahead, one leaps without hesitation.

At the moment the Life Source merged, Yang Yi felt a satisfaction unlike any she had ever known—like a man starved for years suddenly devouring a full Manchu-Han banquet, satisfaction radiating from soul to body, from organs to hair, from within outward. No, no, no—appetite could not represent this pleasure. This was the ultimate spiritual fulfillment, transcending the body, reaching directly into the spirit.

Only now did she truly understand why addicts could never escape their temptation—once the pleasure threshold is raised beyond what the body can bear, one becomes a slave to desire.

Slowly opening her eyes, her pitch-black pupils swirled like vortices; upon closer look, they were as deep and unfathomable as a dark pool.

Every detail around her surged into her mind—the rotting stench of stagnant air, the foul odor from prolonged stillness, the smell of blood, dust and particles floating in the air; the churning clouds above, and the unknown stars beyond the dark clouds; the satisfied smiles on thousands of corpses, their dry skin, withered pores…

Everything was now flooding into Yang Yi’s mind with far greater precision. If her previous perception of the outside world had been 720p, she had now wiped away the dust from the glass—her resolution had abruptly climbed to 1080p, her perception of all things becoming exquisitely refined.

Her power was stronger than before; everything was reflected in her mind—from the vast, dark, murky sky and the gloomy land, down to a charred leaf, a beetle lurking in the mud. Only now did she realize this land was a small island floating in an endless black lake—the water within was silent, lifeless, devoid of any trace of life.

She realized that now, she was several times stronger than before she absorbed the Energy Source. If her former self had viewed everything through human eyes, her consciousness now had detached from her body—formless, intangible, filling the surrounding air, omnipresent.

She suddenly understood: within this vast black lake, she controlled everything—and could destroy it at will. She was the sovereign of this realm.

Simultaneously, her emotions settled into a calm tranquility. The anger she felt upon seeing the corpses vanished; past shadows grew weightless, and these shadows had once shaped her life and even her personality.

Now, they were like drifting clouds, gently scattered by the wind.

Her body floated in midair, her expression now devoid of sorrow or joy—cold and detached, like a stone statue seated upon a lotus throne.

She surveyed this dim world as a god might gaze indifferently upon humanity.

“Who are you?” she asked.

Silence surrounded her; no one answered, yet she waited calmly.

After a long while, a voice spoke: “I am you, you are me—we are one.”

“Oh? If we are one, why do you constantly seek to seize my body?”

“You’re weary of this world anyway. Why not let me take control?” the voice said.

“How I feel about this world is my business, but for someone to constantly try to replace me in my own bed—that’s intolerable,” Yang Yi said.

The voice fell silent.

Yang Yi had always assumed this voice was a split personality born from her mind. But everything that had happened—her familiarity with the name “Asathde,” the altar stone chair only she could see, her hunger for the Life Source, and the persistent “other personality” urging her to accept and confront it—all forced her to question: was this voice truly herself, or an outsider?

“Was the Life Source delicious?” the voice suddenly asked.

Yang Yi’s face twitched involuntarily, revealing satisfaction and longing: “Exquisite! Unprecedented fulfillment… I believe nothing on Earth can match this.”

“This is merely the Life Source of four thousand people. Think—how many more people are on Earth? How many intelligent species exist in the universe? All these feasts await you—to harvest, to absorb, to enjoy… Then you will be the most powerful being in the universe! All of them—the Celestial Clan, the Vowei, the Laplace, the Kai Keng Zhong, the Hao Gan Kai…—will kneel before you, bowing in submission. You will be the sole sovereign!”

Except for the first few species, whose names could be approximated in Earth languages, the latter ones could not be expressed in any human tongue. Merely hearing those syllables brought Yang Yi an overwhelming sense of ancient, primordial age—as if several faint, distant gazes from across the cosmos had turned toward her upon hearing those unfamiliar sounds.

Listening to the voice’s description, Yang Yi’s face filled with longing, as if she had already fully immersed herself in the future it painted.

“If I absorb the Life Source of everyone on Earth—complete the most primal accumulation?” she asked, her expression dreamy and strange.

The voice seemed to chuckle softly.

Yang Yi, intoxicated by the feeling of absolute control, asked: “Is this your goal?”

“No. It’s ours.”

Yang Yi suddenly smiled.

“I always thought you were my other personality—you were me, I was you. But now, I’m certain,” Yang Yi’s intoxication faded slowly; her eyes cleared. “You are not me.”

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

The voice showed no surprise. “Of course. This is the first time I’ve spoken to you. Your subconscious mutterings were too loud—they kept hinting at my presence, warning you to beware me.”

Yang Yi fell silent. So the voice she had heard all along was truly her own split personality—a personality formed under the stimulus of a true outsider, whispering to her for years, reminding her: her body held more than just her.

“Then why did you appear now?” Yang Yi asked, then answered herself: “Because I ‘ate’ the Life Source? You thought that once I tasted it, I’d never refuse its lure again—so there was no need to hide anymore?”

“No. Because now we share a common goal. Even if you resist, you’ve already stepped onto the inevitable path.”

A sudden, inexplicable dread made her tremble—as if something unforeseen, capable of overturning her life, had occurred, and she remained oblivious.

She tried to mask her unease with anger and contempt, shouting: “What goal? What inevitable path? Conquering the universe? Ridiculous!”

The voice was not angered by her. It gradually fell silent.

Its silence made her anger seem absurd.

“Who are you? Why are you inside my body? Why can only I see the stone chair? Is all of this because of you?!” To break the terrifying silence, Yang Yi pressed on.

“What’s your connection to the god Weiss mentioned? Why could I—no, you—absorb the Life Source offered to that god?”

Silence.

It gave no answer to any question—as if it had never spoken to her, as if it had all been an illusion.

“Come out! What do you want? Is the appearance of dark matter connected to you? What is the Celestial Clan? What is the Vowei? When did you enter my body? You parasite—get out of me…” Questions piled in her mind, unanswered. She raged, cursed, begged—but received no reply.

Unease crept over her heart. It felt as if one foot had already stepped into a trap—but she didn’t know where the trap was, or what lay beneath.

It seemed an invisible hand had subtly shifted her fate—countless possible futures converged into a single thread. Whether she wished it or not, she was now inevitably walking a path with no return.

She felt lost, terrified. This unease slowly hardened into rage, desperate to burst forth, tearing her from the unnatural calm she had felt after absorbing the Life Source.

With nowhere to vent this rage, she went mad, using her mental force to scour her own body—her skin felt as if scraped by steel brushes. She screamed through the pain: “Come out!”

Self-harm brought only her own suffering—no effect.

This pain should have been sharp, unbearable. But after the Life Source’s pleasure, all other sensations had dulled—even pain had grown sluggish, no longer swift as before.

It seemed the Life Source had not only raised her pleasure threshold, but lowered her sensitivity to all other perceptions.

Would there come a day when she became numb and indifferent to everything in the human world—cold and detached, truly a “god” who regarded all beings as straw dogs?

Why panic? Isn’t this perfect?

Standing in the filthy darkness, she asked herself: Didn’t you long ago grow weary of all this? Didn’t you always find the entire world boring?

If numbing your senses and emotions grants infinite power, isn’t that a bargain?

No, no, no. Not at the cost of four thousand lives… These were living people. They laughed, cried, grieved, raged, thought. They lived quiet lives—now they’re reduced to energy, batteries, firewood… People cannot be treated this way… Not like this…

These people weren’t killed by you. The Life Source wasn’t absorbed by your choice. You resisted. You did everything you could to refuse. This was unavoidable—you even paid the price of being trapped in this space.

No. The essence of these four thousand lives now resides within me. This is evil. If I accept this calmly, remain unmoved by the innocent lives lost before me, and treat absorbing their Life Source as natural…

A chill crept slowly up her spine, then flooded her entire body like ice water—this cold was worse than pain.