“Me?”
Li Yao felt that things were getting weirder and weirder. He mumbled, “Which of us will become the ‘100% Li Yao’?”
“As for the question… Don’t be hasty. We will know the answer in three days.”
The Red Pole Star smiled and invited him again. “What do you think? Do you want to join the reader meeting with Master Niu?”
“Forget it.”
Pondering for a moment, Li Yao shook his head and said, “I have a headache. I want to rest and recharge myself.”
“That’s right. Let Student Li Yao go and rest early. I alone am enough to deal with those enthusiastic readers!”
Zhang Daniu rubbed his hands and said impatiently.
Since that was what they said, the Red Pole Star did not insist. It escorted Li Yao and Zhang Daniu out of the pathway in person, before the grey mist lady and the Spartan escorted them to the meeting hall and their residence.
For a nameless, desolate island in the depths of the ocean, the living room was not bad. Li Yao locked the door and threw himself into the soft, sponge-like bed. He rose and fell in a trance in front of the springs and goose down.
For some reason, he felt uneasy.
In fact, his meeting with Red Pole had gone very well today. He had retrieved a lot of precious information and had a certain understanding about the mysteries of the Reincarnation Prison and the universe. The plan proposed by Red Pole was simple and crude, but it was not entirely impossible to succeed if he had no other options.
Logically speaking, he shouldn’t be so uneasy.
However…
“If the novel is true, then when has the protagonist of the book, , ever encountered a smooth sailing plan?”
Li Yao mumbled to himself, “Every time the plan seems to go smoothly, there will be an even more shocking turn of events. The seemingly kindest and strongest teammate will turn hostile in the blink of an eye and become the most terrifying behind-the-scenes boss, increasing the difficulty of the mission by ten times in the blink of an eye… Hey, according to this pattern, could it be that the Red Pole is the real mastermind behind the scenes this time? Yes, it is a bit similar. Although this guy claims to be the holder of the ‘biggest soul fragment’ of Li Yao, his evil appearance is clearly not a decent Li Yao!”
“Besides, I seem to have forgotten something.
“It seems—it seems that I did something a day not long ago. Something very… terrible, bloody, and terrifying. What was it exactly? Was it a battle against a hunter? No. It was a hundred times more brutal than that. How could I forget it?
“Da da da da da da!”
Li Yao heard the sound of glass marbles falling from the ceiling.
He suddenly jumped up from the bed. His eyes bulged, his nostrils flared, and his forehead was soaked in cold sweat.
This was underground. Above the ceiling above his head, there should be tens of millions of tons of rocks and concrete. Where were the glass marbles?
“Is there really sound, or am I mentally ill?”
Taking a deep breath, Li Yao walked to the bathroom and filled a basin with cold water. He buried his head deep inside the basin, trying to forget everything that could not be explained.
However, when he finally cooled down and raised his head after three minutes, he was shocked by what he saw in the mirror.
What appeared in the mirror was not his face, not even his head.
It was a silver ball.
A silver ball grew out of his neck and replaced his face and head.
The ball-shaped mirror reflected the weird brightness back and forth with the mirror countless times. It did not have any facial features, but it was wearing a weird and mocking expression, as if a different version of him was laughing at him in the mirror.
Li Yao took two steps back. He almost slipped and fell to the ground.
He blinked his eyes and looked at himself in the mirror. He even extended his trembling hands to touch his face. The silver ball immediately disappeared, and he resumed his original appearance.
However, his blurred face made him even more confused. His head was dizzy, and he was in a trance. He did not know what was going on at all.
An urgent bell suddenly rang in the room outside.
Li Yao was startled. It was not until he calmed himself down that he realized that the phone that Red Pole had sent to them was ringing.
This cell phone could only be used within the range of the Ark Island. It was not so much a cell phone as it was a powerful, stable signal, and a high-level, anti-jamming, high-level, visible walkie-talkie. Even in the underground of the island, it was completely unobstructed. However, only a few people knew this number. Red Pole, Lady Grey Mist, Spartan, and of course, Zhang Daniu… Who would actually call him at this time?
Li Yao picked up his phone and saw that it was Zhang Daniu.
After the call was connected, deafening music and laughter immediately came from the loudspeaker. Zhang Daniu’s greasy, excited face appeared on the screen.
Looking from the gap between his face and the edge of the screen, it seemed to be a private room of a town concert hall, decorated in splendid colors.
There seemed to be a few men and women as well as fair-skinned arms and legs. Some of them were crying like ghosts, some were laughing strangely. It did not look like a readers’ meeting at all.
Zhang Daniu must’ve drunk a lot. He was burping and his eyes were red.
“Too enthusiastic! Oh my, readers are too enthusiastic!”
He spoke incoherently, “Li—Student Li Yao, Teacher Niu can’t hold on any longer. Why don’t you come along? We can discuss together the follow-up development of , as well as the serious project to revitalize our country’s science fiction industry!”
Li Yao frowned and hung up without saying anything.
“What the hell?”
He mumbled to himself, “What the hell is Red Pole doing?”
The question was destined to be unanswered today.
Li Yao felt that his head was aching more and more. When he lay down, his head was full of humming noises.
He fought against the weird noises for a long time. It was not until he fell asleep that he realized what the humming noises were exactly.
It was the screams and struggles of countless innocent souls in the raging flames, or rather, the horn of revenge.
Li Yao had a dream in which he appeared on an exceptionally clear and real Earth. Maybe it was the place where the Red Pole Star claimed that the Earth was the very beginning of billions of reincarnations.
It was not a beautiful paradise with blue skies and white clouds, but a purgatory that had been roasted by flames, filled with smoke and radiation. He was being carried by countless ragged, bizarre-shaped mutants. They congregated into a surging crowd and marched toward a certain direction together.
He didn’t understand the significance of this scene. He could only vaguely feel that as a member of the tide, he was incomparably angry—it was the kind of anger filled with desperation and betrayal.
Together with his ugly and angry companions, he rolled forward and extended his hunched hands toward the horizon, roaring like an animal. Countless other gray, wriggling, ugly people joined them, too, like a raging tide that was sweeping everything.
However, they failed to capture the traitors and the deserters after all. While they were roaring and waving their hands, dozens of gray pillars of smoke appeared on the horizon, in which brilliant flames were burning. The flames carried streaks of silver brightness, making them look like extraordinary immortals. They waved their sleeves and tore apart the sky without even looking at them.
All that was left was a desolate land full of radiation and a sky riddled with holes.
The sun in the horizon was blocked by the radiation caused by the thermonuclear war. The sunlight was refracted by the dust and turned into a colorful mist that looked like wastewater. Li Yao’s dream turned into an abstract painting. The earthlings in the painting were like pitiful and hilarious ghosts. When they realized that they could not catch up with the traitors and the deserters no matter what, everyone seemed to have lost all their strength and fell to the ground, not knowing what to do. Some of them were sobbing, some were cursing loudly, but most of them were simply staring at the sun, the origin of life, the sun that was generous and treated all creatures equally!
The sun soon gave them the answer.
Or rather, the final verdict had been passed upon them.
Under the cover of the dust, they could not see the entire process of the meteoroid hitting the sun, but they could clearly feel that the brightness of the sun had soared to the maximum and was expanding at a visible speed.
The ocean was vaporized, the forest was burning, and the earth was cracking. All the creatures that were born because of the sun over billions of years were enveloped in the flames and the high temperature that were absolutely unbearable for them. They participated in the intense reaction of the sun in person and were carbonized, shattered, and annihilated within one second.
Including all the earthlings who were stranded on the wasteland.
However, Li Yao’s dream did not end with the burning and dispersing of billions of Earthlings.
As his body perished, he entered an even weirder and more trance-like state, as if he had turned into… a drop of seawater in a vast ocean that constituted a tiny bit of the sun’s hydrogen, or a… cell in the body of a super life form beyond description.
All his companions were the same as him. Without the shackles of the ugly shell, they could get to know each other better. With the help of plasma and electromagnetic waves, they were able to build a more delicate and elegant structure.
It was hard to say whether he liked it or loathed it. Although he was not used to his new living state yet, it was a thousand times better than the deformed, ugly corpses that had been betrayed and abandoned on the wasteland.
Life would eventually find its own path.
Thankfully, they had found it.
…
Right then, Li Yao was woken up by earsplitting buzzes.
There was no telling whether it was because the dream was too strange and filled with fear, or because the humming was too ear-piercing, but in the blink of an eye, his heartbeat soared to the limit. He leaned against the head of the bed and retched for a long time, yet he was still drenched in cold sweat. His entire spine was cold, and his entire body was devoid of strength.
However, the incessant humming was telling him one thing, something that was absolutely impossible.
Enemy attack!
