Chapter 213: The Goddess of Luck Is Smiling

He paused for a moment, then said:

"Mercury asked me if I lacked confidence, if I was too afraid to take the next step. At that time, my heart was filled with regret and self-doubt—I told him I was indeed hesitating."

"Then Mercury produced a contract—more precisely, an agreement. He said he had borrowed the power of the god of commerce from mythology, allowing him to embed special clauses into the contract to deceive the Desire Stele and buy me time."

"The contract stipulated that Mercury was authorized to develop and use Underground Shelter No. 88, with the compensation being that upon contract termination, he would restore everything to its original state."

Wu Chang frowned, not immediately understanding what He Yun meant.

"So you're saying the time loop in the underground shelter was caused by the 'restore to original state' clause?"

He Yun shook her head:

"At first, I didn't understand either. Mercury told me then that it was as if I had entrusted all my wish and its authority to him—that his contract would stand in for my wish on the Desire Stele."

"If I became dissatisfied with the wish, or if I found a proper way to break the deadlock, I could terminate the contract at any time. Once terminated, the wish he had made on my behalf would immediately become void. According to the special clause, everything in Shelter No. 88 would revert to the state it was in before I signed the contract."

"At that point, I could resume the unfinished task of that day, fully prepared."

"And the wish I made was to return Shelter No. 88 to the state it was in before our plan began."

Mercury's method was convoluted; Wu Chang thought for a while before grasping what Mercury had done.

In simple terms, He Yun had not written her wish on the Desire Stele herself—she had used the contract to have Mercury write it for her.

As long as the contract was active, Mercury's written terms were functionally identical to He Yun's own.

The variable lay in the fact that the contract between He Yun and Mercury could be terminated at any time.

Once terminated, the terms He Yun had entrusted to Mercury were instantly nullified—like a doodle erased, never counted.

According to the scenario Mercury described to He Yun, they could use this method to harness the Desire Stele's power and restore the underground shelter to the state before the plan failed.

If, upon restarting the plan, they found the correct path, that would be ideal.

If they failed again and He Yun failed once more, it didn't matter—she could prepare backup plans during the extra time, crafting a viable solution.

When she felt utterly certain, she would terminate the contract, and under the 'restore to original state' clause, return to the moment when she stood before the Desire Stele, hesitating.

If the plan succeeded, this would be a perfect free ride on the wish.

But the key problem was this: if Mercury's contract could trick the Desire Stele, wouldn't tricking He Yun, whose mind was already in chaos, be child's play?

He Yun sighed, becoming like Xiang Lin's wife, and said:

"I'm such a fool, really. Under Mercury's persuasion, I ignored the several altered descriptions he made."

"Before making the wish, the Mother of Desire was nearly breaking free from her seal. He said he feared the deities within the Stone Temple might escape their seal and interfere with the shelter's return to the past, so he added a correction clause."

"He also claimed he worried I wasn't prepared enough, so he added an anti-accidental-trigger clause: only when I was truly ready, fully awake, and unaffected by any hypnosis or hallucination could I terminate the contract."

Wu Chang listened, grimacing, feeling trap after trap—internally cursing how dirty these contract players were.

He Yun gave Wu Chang a helpless look. "There were many clauses in the contract—I didn't have time to examine them carefully. And because of us, the Mother of Desire was about to break her seal; the whispering voices in my mind constantly disturbed me, making it impossible to concentrate."

"My thoughts were completely led by Mercury. When I came to my senses, I had already signed the contract in a daze. I only remembered the contract's existence again thanks to your help."

Wu Chang gripped He Yun's hand tightly, his eyes telling her it wasn't her fault.

Clearly, He Yun was too young—she had fallen for Mercury's deceit.

From the start, Mercury's goal was to trap Shelter No. 88 in the intermediate layer; the contract he prepared was, in fact, a prison.

The so-called correction clause was the very cause of the time loop—only a stable dimensional state and an unbreakable time loop could serve better as a Pillar of the Present World for large organizations to exploit.

He Yun's loss of past memories and her dazed state came from the anti-accidental-trigger clause.

Mercury, using some hidden clause, exploited He Yun's initial refusal to face reality, her desire to escape, and seized the chance to seal her memories.

Through his interactions with He Yun, Wu Chang could guess that her inner demon consisted of three parts.

Her former follower, He Yi, and herself.

The zombie mechs manifested from the Curse Mist represented her guilt over the deaths of her followers.

Her forgetting of the energy mine and the Ascension Plan stemmed from her guilt toward He Yi—he had never supported using the Stone Temple's power deeply, but had backed the plan only out of trust in He Yun.

Yet the failure of the Ascension Plan made her believe she had betrayed He Yi's trust.

As for the failure of her final mission to the Stone Temple, it was her own avoidance—repeated failures within the temple had shaken her confidence, forcing her to evade the responsibility she, as the decision-maker, should have faced.

She must overcome her three inner demons before she could truly remember the contract with Mercury and find the key to end it all.

Otherwise, even if she reached the Stone Temple, it would be useless.

Overcoming one's inner demons is extremely difficult, especially when misled—people only sink deeper.

Avoidance may be shameful, but it works.

Without external intervention, He Yun would find it nearly impossible to confront her demons and stop fleeing in this world born from her avoidance.

But unluckily, Wu Chang had appeared.

He Yun felt the strength coming from her hand, looked at Wu Chang, and said:

"Since I've remembered everything, it means I've made my choice now."

The moment she spoke, a contract appeared on the Desire Stele.

He Yun tore it off, crumpling it into a ball of waste paper.

"No!"

At the instant the contract was torn, a strange, agonized scream echoed through the main hall.

With the contract's termination, Wu Chang felt the entire Pillar of the Present World space undergoing some transformation.

Everything inside the main hall rapidly reversed, like rewinding footage—Wu Chang even saw He Yi's body, already turned into a human pillar, flying backward from outside the door; though the broken Desire Stones did not restore, the petrified flesh reverted to its state at the moment of death.

Outside the Desire Stele, a figure emerged and faded as time reversed.

When the main hall fully returned to its original state, a man dressed entirely in a suit, like a life insurance salesman, appeared before them.

This unmistakable attire was Mercury, the one Wu Chang had seen in the resentment.

The tearing of the contract caused time to reverse within the underground shelter, but had no effect on non-local players.

Thus, the figure now before them was not Mercury's true self, but a Mercury-shaped puppet—its appearance like a mall mannequin, with plastic clearly visible on its hands and neck beyond the suit, its face wearing a salesperson's fake smile mask.

But at this moment, the corners of this fake smile mask kept sagging, as if it could no longer hold its grin.

He Yun and He Yi couldn't make it out, but Wu Chang, through his Breaking Law Eye, saw clearly—the puppet before them had emerged from the destroyed contract.

And this puppet carried divinity!

This divinity did not originate from the puppet itself, but from Mercury—the one who engineered all this clearly possessed the power of a demigod or a low-tier deity.

The puppet turned its stiff neck slightly, looked at He Yun, and spoke in Mercury's voice:

"He Yun, you chose to end the hard-won peace and plunge the underground shelter back into crisis—you've disappointed me." Wu Chang's brow furrowed immediately; he raised a hand to stop He Yun from speaking, then stepped forward himself, using the puppet as a conduit to greet Mercury with a refined, amiable tone.

"What the hell did you just say about your mother?"

Mercury was stunned by the insult. He stared at Wu Chang and asked, "Did you destroy everything? Do you know how great a disaster you've caused?"

Wu Chang shrugged. "What can I say?"

All I can say is one word.

"Man!"

Wu Chang launched from zero frames, flying forward with a direct elbow strike.

Facing Wu Chang's attack, Mercury paid no heed—he simply took the elbow straight to the face.

If he could, he'd have told Wu Chang that what stood before him was merely a puppet Mercury had manifested in the Wasteland Realm, meant only to relay messages; even if you smashed it, it meant nothing.

But he quickly changed his mind, because after Wu Chang retracted his elbow, Mercury's puppet began bleeding from the nose.

"Title: Blasphemer"

!

"Title Effect: When wearing this title, if the target of your attack possesses divinity, you deal additional damage that strikes directly at the source. You gain extra resistance against divine powers, allowing you to ignore their effects and destroy their influence by attacking the source of the power itself."

The Blasphemer title's effect allowed Wu Chang to strike directly at the source when attacking a deity.

What did "strike directly at the source" mean?

It meant the pain from this elbow to the puppet's face traveled straight through the network cable and landed on Mercury's own face.

If Mercury had no divinity, Wu Chang truly couldn't touch him—but with divinity, he had to ask: had he eaten? If not, take this elbow.

"Impossible! How could you hurt me?"

Mercury's panicked voice came from the puppet's mouth. He tried to say more, but the puppet, struck by the Blasphemer's attack, suddenly shattered into countless fine cracks. Through the cracks, flashes of Lei Guang could be seen inside the puppet.

Immediately, Lei Guang spilled out from the countless fissures within the puppet, and the puppet's body exploded with a loud bang into fragments.

It was Divine Thunder—Wu Chang had used Divine Thunder.

Divine Thunder, from the Five Thunder Method, is for slaughter—smashing altars, destroying temples, punishing the wicked and eradicating evil.

It was perfect for dealing with a wicked god like Mercury.

Divine Thunder plus Blasphemer—this single elbow had shattered at least two of that bastard's front teeth.

To PUA He Yun right in front of Wu Chang? If he didn't smash that face now, how could Wu Chang ever walk the Wasteland Realm again?

As the elbow landed, Wu Chang momentarily glimpsed a blood-red last message dissolving before him.

【Help the boss shake off the shadows of the past. Don't let him blame himself for our deaths. And if you ever meet Mercury, punch him right in the face!】

As the blood-red message vanished, he faintly saw Zhuo Jie give him a thumbs-up and say: "Awesome. Well done!"

He had no time to focus on the reward from the blood-red message—he turned to look at He Yun.

Destroying Mercury's puppet was only to silence him. The true end would depend entirely on He Yun's side.

Wu Chang's destruction of Mercury's puppet shattered He Yun's final hesitation. She met Wu Chang's gaze, smiled confidently, signaled him not to worry, then turned toward the Desire Stele to examine its contents.

Only now did Wu Chang notice that, compared to the previous Desire Stele, this one was filled with far more text—nearly covering every inch of its blank surface.

As He Yun pulled out her computer and worked on the stele, He Yi explained the situation to Wu Chang.

After they discovered the power within the Stone Temple, He Yun had long tried to study and master it—but controlling this power was extremely complex, since the 88th Underground Shelter's dimension was fundamentally a technological one.

Finding a path to mysticism through technology was undoubtedly difficult.

But after a series of studies, He Yun truly found a way.

She realized the Desire Stele itself was a rule—in a certain sense, its power had already broken free from the control of the deity worshipped in the Stone Temple.

If they followed the primitive builders of the temple and came to the Desire Stele to make wishes, offering offerings, it would be inefficient—and soon, the deity in the Stone Temple would revive.

He Yun's solution was to not directly wish for things, but to program the Desire Stele like code—to write rules governing how energy was used.

If she could write a perfect rule, allowing them to directly harness the Desire Stele's power through technology, wouldn't that bypass the Mother of Desire entirely, granting lifelong benefits from just a few wishes?

This set of rules was the physical embodiment of He Yun's Dimension Ascension Plan.

When developing this system, Mercury—the outsider who understood mysticism—had deeply participated in its development and left behind many traps.

As a result, when the plan was finally implemented, numerous rules clashed, bringing the entire underground shelter to the brink of collapse.

The final expedition into the Stone Temple was He Yun's attempt to make one last revision to the rules, hoping to salvage everything.

But under Mercury's influence, the final rescue plan instead allowed Mercury to take complete control of the underground shelter.

Now that Mercury was gone, He Yun was free from external interference—and progress came quickly.

To achieve systematic control over the Desire Stele's power, He Yun had written eighteen rules. Drawing from the failures of the Ascension Plan and years of research—intentional or not—into the Catastrophe Mist's abilities, she quickly identified the loopholes and conflicts within the rules.

But at the final step, she stopped.

Wu Chang asked: "Trouble?"

He Yun's face showed hesitation. "Three rules remain. Their core logics are mutually exclusive—like an impossible triangle. I must delete one wrong one."

"But deleting any one will trigger massive chain reactions. I can't yet determine which outcome is optimal. Fortunately, I still have time—I can design a new algorithm."

Wu Chang stepped behind He Yun, placed his hand over hers on the keyboard, and leaned close to her ear:

"Three choices, right?"

He Yun's cheeks flushed slightly. She lowered her head, avoiding the warmth at her ear, and spoke softer: "Yes. Delete just one, and my new rules will run perfectly."

Wu Chang said: "Then leave it to me."

He Yun looked at Wu Chang with curiosity, "Can you tell which one has a problem?"

Wu Chang shook his head, "Can't tell."

"Then how are you going to choose?" He Yun asked, puzzled.

Three dice appeared in Wu Chang's hand, and he smiled, saying, "Of course by luck. I can already see the Goddess of Fortune smiling at me."

(End of chapter)