Chapter 918: Despair→Joy

Base attributes: Strength C, Speed C+, Stamina B, Spirit A (unawakened).

Skill list: Hua's Fist Technique (mastered), Hand‑to‑Hand Combat (proficient), Basic Swordsmanship (novice), Great Void Sword Qi (sealed).

Special status: Calm (forced suppression), Despair (deeply suppressed).

Overall rating: Ordinary human high school student.

Using this panel against the Flame Herrscher rounds down to a guaranteed kill.

Heimu rubbed his fingers.

The data edit she just performed on Kaluoer sparked an idea for her.

Since the Painted World's Rule is gradually loosening as this world disintegrates, and since she can edit Kaluoer's wound, could she also tweak Hua's panel?

Of course, Kaluoer's injury is merely superficial; the difficulty gap between adjusting a normal girl's wound parameters and altering a protagonist's combat attribute panel is roughly like digging soil with a spoon versus scooping through the Earth's core with a spoon.

Moreover, she could feel that when she tried to extend her system permissions toward Hua's attribute panel, the entire Painted World responded in an extremely unfriendly manner.

A black‑purple data stream seeped from her fingertips, hair‑thin, slowly extending toward Hua's attribute panel.

The moment it touched the panel's edge, a powerful repulsive force rebounded from the surface, bouncing her data stream back several inches.

Simultaneously she felt a heavy gaze pressing down from the sky above, the Painted World's Rule warning her of overstepping.

Heimu squinted.

The rebound force just now was at least two orders of magnitude stronger than when editing Kaluoer.

But at the same time, she noticed another change: the Painted World's boundaries were collapsing at a visibly rapid rate.

The sky overhead, once blue, now shows massive data fissures at its edges, with dark‑purple cracks spreading to the horizon like a shattered tablet screen.

Distant building silhouettes flickered in and out, some skyscraper façades repeatedly flashing as if loading a webpage that never renders.

The world's Rule indeed opposes her, but its own stability is simultaneously waning.

The two forces ebb and flow; all she needs is to find the equilibrium point.

The black‑purple data stream surged from her fingertips again, this time thicker and denser, like countless tiny light serpents coiling together, lunging at Hua's attribute panel.

The panel's surface erupted in a cascade of glaring white sparks; the data stream and Rule Barrier clashed fiercely just under ten centimeters from Hua's body, emitting a faint sizzle.

She could feel the cosmic suppression intensifying wildly, as if an invisible hand squeezed her from all directions.

But that hand's force was waning; the world was disintegrating, lacking the power to handle both internal collapse and external invasion, though perhaps Aha was simply in a good mood today.

Pfft.

The Barrier on the attribute panel's surface shattered.

The black‑purple data stream instantly flooded the panel's interior, turning every parameter field into an editable state.

Heimu raised an eyebrow.

It actually succeeded.

She stared at the fully unlocked attribute panel before her, a hint of interest flashing in her dark‑purple eyes.

Since everything's been changed, which parameter should she start with?

She scrolled the panel down a few pages and found the status bar.

Mood: Despair.

She lightly tapped that entry with her fingertip, then swiped to the right.

Despair→Joy.

"Pff."

A sudden laugh came from Heimu's right side.

She paused, her finger still hovering, and slowly turned her head.

Hua remained where she was, gazing at the burning ruins, standing beside the charred streetlamp base.

But on her face, a dazzling smile blossomed at that moment.

She laughed again, louder than before, filled entirely with pure joy.

"... hahaha! hahahahaahaha!"

Hua bent over laughing, one hand covering her belly, her gray‑blue low ponytail swinging behind her.

Tears streamed down; halfway through laughing she probably thought it odd, yet her face showed only pure happiness.

She could no longer control the curve of her mouth.

Heimu felt a chill run down his spine as he watched the smile on Hua's face.

A girl who had just witnessed her home cratered by a meteor, her father likely already dead, standing at the edge of the Apocalyptic Wasteland, her face bearing a smile brighter than gaining admission to Tsinghua or Peking.

That's too perverse.

Honestly, the horror level of this scene surpasses even that Flame Herrscher at the pit's bottom.

Hua herself seemed completely unaware that she was laughing.

Her body laughed, but her mind remained immersed in the shock and grief from earlier, the two signals running simultaneously in her brain, creating an extremely bizarre sense of disjunction.

Heimu swiftly slid that entry back.

Joy→Calm.

The smile on Hua's face vanished instantly.

She straightened up, her expression shifting from exuberant joy to a slightly furrowed, calm contemplation; the curve of her mouth returned to its usual precise half‑degree, her icy‑blue eyes refocused on the Flame Herrscher at the pit's bottom, lips pursed slightly.

"The situation isn't optimistic; we need to devise a tactic!"

There was no transition, no gradual fading of the smile, as if someone flipped a switch on her face—snap, one expression replaced by another.

From a despairing, voiceless girl to a calm, analytical tactical commander, only two panel edits and one laugh‑to‑the‑point‑of‑stomach‑pain experience stood in between.

Heimu, watching this brand‑new Hua, suddenly found the ability a bit frightening.

Although she had previously dealt with countless Golden Descendant joy entries, considering herself quite proficient at "modifying character attributes".

But those modifications are carried out in the Data Space, with full permission support and environmental stability.

Now she is in a disintegrating Painted World, forcibly altering the protagonist's panel with patchwork permission fragments; the effect is roughly like using watercolor to retouch an oil painting—no matter how carefully you try, you can't restore the original.

Never mind.

Mood as a parameter is too delicate; if you don't get it right, it becomes even stranger.

She decides to skip all psychological parameters and flip the panel straight to the few most central pages.

In the next few minutes, Heimu's fingers slide across the translucent panel interface at an extremely efficient speed, clicking and dragging.

She flipped Hua's attribute panel from top to bottom, and every modifiable parameter was rewritten by her with violet‑black data streams.

The dark‑purple eyes stared intently at the rapidly scrolling rows of data on the panel, pausing occasionally to contemplate a fraction of a second, then resumed sliding.