Chapter 455: Future Chess Piece

The door closing made a very light sound.

Chu Che did not sit back in the chair immediately.

He stood in the center of the Examination Room, his right hand resting on the gold‑thread‑bordered glasses frame, maintaining the posture of pushing his glasses. The cool touch of his fingertip against the glass arm transmitted, and he held it for a full seven seconds.

Then, his hand lowered.

Sunlight outside the window spread across the white tiled floor, the scent of disinfectant had not yet fully dissipated, and the hum of the air‑conditioner sounded unusually clear in the quiet Examination Room. It was an extremely ordinary afternoon. Yet the boy who had just left the Examination Room concealed behind the old door deep in his soul an entire collapsed world.

Chu Che walked to the examination desk and sat down.

He unscrewed the Thermal Cup, poured out half a cup of warm water, lifted it and took a sip. His Adam's apple rolled, and the swallowing sound was amplified twice in the spacious room.

The water was warm—37 °C, the same temperature as the human body.

He set the cup down, and his fingers unconsciously tapped the tabletop twice, lightly.

That apocalyptic image kept turning over and over in his mind.

The Blood Moon dominated the heavens. The main thoroughfare of Jiang Hai City was swallowed by dark‑red, fleshy vines. A gigantic faceless, bizarre entity knelt amid the ruins of the Gymnasium, its shoulders teeming with small flying monsters. Jiang Yuan, with a broken right arm, kept fighting; Chen Shao's Demon Eye dimmed to mere specks; Xu An's ruler snapped in two.

The Federation and Eden Garden, two factions that had been battling for an unknown number of years, stood back‑to‑back upon the ruins of civilization.

—and then they all died.

Chu Che's fingers stopped.

Not because the scene was especially horrific. He had seen more graphic sights in the emergency room: large‑area tearing injuries at a car crash, skulls shattered after a fall, the final gasp exhaled after a tube was removed in the ICU. To him, death was a datum, not an emotion.

What made him pause were the three sentences Su Ming uttered before death.

"Before its wings are fully grown."

"Find it."

"Kill it."

Chu Che leaned against the chair back, his gaze falling on the fluorescent tube of the ceiling light.

Lu Yu is a reborn one.

A reborn one sent back by the Time Marrow Worm from the apocalypse he himself had created.

The goal was clear—assassinate the god.

The matter itself was not unusual. Chu Che had run through thousands of timelines in the editor's simulation model, and a few would always produce one or two "chosen ones" who wanted to defy fate. The probability was low, but not zero.

What was unusual was another thing.

Chu Che lifted his hand and nudged his glasses. The lenses bore no fingerprints, clean enough to be used as surgical instruments.

—the reverse of the Time Marrow Worm.

A parasitic entity of the Time Law, it feeds on the Causality Law and nests in Paradox. Its essence is a concretized "Time Reversal Permission," and its power ceiling depends on the host's will strength and the length of the causal chain it devours.

Strong?

Strong.

But can it be strong enough to break through a "god" that controls the world's underlying rules?

Chu Che's mouth twitched.

Impossible.

In that memory he saw his own creation. Those bizarre rule imprints, every stroke he could recognize; they were the ultimate, perfectly iterated endgame version. To create a being of that tier, one's understanding of the Time Law could not have blind spots.

For the Time Marrow Worm to reverse causality, it must tear a fissure in the timeline. The fluctuation generated by this process, on the level of rules, is no different from setting off fireworks at his doorstep.

Noisy. Very noisy.

A "god" already perched atop the food chain could not fail to hear the fireworks in its own domain.

Not to mention the moment Lu Yu crushed the worm's body— the Time Law underwent massive distortion, the causal chain was brutally reversed, ripples spreading across the entire apocalyptic space. The commotion seemed ready to burst onto his face.

Yet the "god" did nothing.

No interception. No interference. No repair.

Did nothing.

Chu Che's fingers paused on the tabletop for three seconds, then flicked extremely lightly.

A crisp "snap" rang distinctly in the quiet Examination Room.

He smiled.

Not the gentle, doctor‑type smile used as a façade, but a low, short chuckle that rose from deep in his throat.

—because the answer was too obvious.

Like a major surgery where every pre‑op check has been completed, anesthesia is sufficient, and the scalpel's cut is precise to the millimeter. No accident, only design.

"Future Me" didn't fail to notice the reverse of the Time Marrow Worm.

"Future Me" deliberately let it go.

Chu Che stood up.

He didn't have the habit of pacing. When thinking, he preferred to stand still, like a high‑speed precision instrument, all energy poured into internal processing while the outer shell remained motionless.

Why let it go?

The answer to that question lies in the memory fragment that Lu Yu fast‑forwarded.

Federation and Eden Garden.

From start to finish.

Jiang Yuan and Chen Shao, the strongest forces of the two camps, only after the skeleton of civilization shattered did they temporarily shake hands on the ruins.

Too late.

Chu Che's simulation model activated instantly. No editor assistance was needed; his own brain was sufficient.

Humans have a fatal flaw, written in their DNA—internal strife. When external threats are insufficient to forge consensus, a group's first reaction is always infighting: seizing resources, battling for discourse power, carving territories, forming cliques. The Federation and Eden Garden are the most typical examples. One demands order, the other freedom; neither yields, and the power that should be directed outward is entirely consumed by each other.

"Future Me" became a god, rewriting the world's underlying logic. Logically, humanity should have quickly united against a common enemy.

But they didn't.

Because the alliance came too late, the foundation of trust had long been worn away by countless betrayals and civil wars. Jiang Yuan and Chen Shao fought side by side on the apocalyptic ruins, not out of reconciliation, but because there was no other way.

This kind of passive, desperate, last‑minute forced alliance—

was far too inefficient.

Chu Che pushed his glasses.

The lenses refracted a thin line of cold white light.

He thought of a phrase: version update.

"Future Me" has already spotted a bug in the script. Evolution's efficiency is insufficient, humanity's resistance is too scattered, and the internal friction between the Federation and Eden Garden has lowered the civilization's ceiling by at least two tiers.

So "Future Me" did something very simple.

Opened a backdoor.

Let Lu Yu go back.

Chu Che actually laughed out loud this time.

The sound was faint, but the mirth was genuine.

Such genuineness has been rare ever since he became "Dr. Chu".

It was appreciation for his own work.

Lu Yu is a letter he wrote to his past self. No, more precise than a letter—a patch.

A hot‑update patch to fix the "human internal friction" bug.

Look, the attributes on this youth are perfectly aligned. He hates the divine, so he will spare no effort to oppose the Weird, which is his underlying drive.

He is clever, possessing all memories and combat experience from his previous life, able to become top‑tier combat power in a short span. He is deeply scheming, adept at disguise, and can move between the Federation and Eden Garden simultaneously—Su Ming trusts him, and Chen Yao also trusts him.

A perfect catfish.

A tie that connects the two camps.

A catalyst that forces humanity to unite early and accelerate evolution.

And he himself is completely unaware of this.

He thought he bore the mission to assassinate the divine. He thought that Time Marrow Worm was Su Ming's last hope exchanged for his life. He thought he was a player, laying out a world‑shaking grand game.

But from start to finish, he was on the board.

The board of "Future Me".

Also the board of "Present Me".

Chu Che lowered his head and looked at his hands. These hands have performed thousands of cardiac surgeries—opening chests, cleaving bones, suturing, stopping bleeding—each motion precise to a fraction of a millimeter. They have also, through the editor, created countless Weird—Cavity Person, ghost‑wall, Smiling Dummy, midnight nightmare, Laughing Demon.

Now, they are about to perform an even more precise operation.

To cultivate a god‑killer.

So that on his pursuit of the "God", he will do for the "God" all the work that needs to be done.

Unite the two forces, accelerate the evolution of the anomalous, select the strongest human genetic combination, and forge in the flames a seed capable of bearing the New World.

Wait until everything is ready.

Wait until humanity, stirred by his catfish, becomes sufficiently strong.

Wait until the finish line of evolution appears in view.

Then, the "God" steps from behind the curtain to the stage, receiving all the results.

As for Lu Yu himself?

When a tool is spent, it naturally gets returned to the toolbox.

Or discarded.

Chu Che walked to the window.

On the playground of Qiu Ce Yuan, the last batch of students who had completed their physical exams were heading toward the teaching building. At the very end of the line, a thin youth in standard school uniform kept his head down, his steps neither fast nor slow, maintaining a perfectly appropriate distance from everyone around him.

Ordinary. Quiet. Harmless.

Carrying the weight of an entire apocalypse.

Chu Che took off his glasses.

Without the lenses shielding them, his pupils, under the afternoon sun, revealed their true color—not the black or brown that humans should have, but a kind of shimmering, flowing gray‑gold, the imprint the Weird Editor wrote into the base of his body.

He watched Lu Yu's back.

"Since you are the protagonist of the age,"

His voice was pressed down so low that only he could hear it. The curve of his mouth widened slowly, shifting from gentle to something more essential. It wasn't a laugh. It was the satisfaction of a creator reviewing the sketch of his next work.

"How could there be no suitable stepping stone?"

He put his glasses back on.

The elegant, gentle, flawless Dr. Chu returned.

Chu Che sat at the examination table, opened the virtual interface of the editor. Translucent data streams flowed at his fingertips—Karma value, Weird material library, rule templates, deployment coordinates—all the options spread out like a hand of cards.

"Strength, then..." Chu Che tilted his head, adopting a seriously thoughtful expression.

Then he selected a number.

On the interface, a new edit command began to take shape.

At that moment, a knock sounded from outside the door.

"Dr. Chu, the next batch of students has arrived."

"Please come in."

He lifted his head and gave the entering students the standard, gentle smile that relaxes people to their very core.

The white incandescent lamp in the Examination Room glowed steadily.

Outside the window, Lu Yu's back vanished at the corner of the teaching building.