Prayer of Eye’s Crows

The Main‍‌⁠‍​​‍⁠⁠​‌‌‌‍⁠​​‌⁠⁠​⁠‌​ City was shrouded in pitch-black clouds. Heaven and earth seemed grim. Humanity’s strongest fortress appeared as fragile and tiny as dust, as if it would be swallowed in an instant.

As the camera zoomed in, one could see that those were not clouds, but a dense mass of flying birds.

Heavy snow had already buried the entire city, fiercely pouncing on the aberrants approaching the Main City. Fortunately, the Dome was still operating. The aberrant tide seemed to vaguely sense something nearby, but was still screeching and baring claws in search. They cast their gazes towards the Spire outside the Dome, but hesitated due to the powerful aberrant energy fluctuations there.

But the human Main City was now a trapped beast.

An Yu turned off the video, pressing his temples hard.

Actually, he didn’t need Black Tower to send this recording. The violent snowstorm and the deep exhaustion told him that the world was rapidly tilting towards endless chaos. Codex was right; he, as the “Order Body,” had been resisting all along, only he hadn’t realized it before.

After listening to An Yu’s report on District 14, the High Peak’s tone was calm.

“District 14 can be abandoned. Even if the crows’ spiritual curse spreads, we can only let it be for now. Corner, you must return as soon as possible.”

An Yu opened his mouth, trying to make his voice sound normal. “What’s wrong?”

“The chaotic red light in the battle report can now be observed by the human naked eye. Fluctuating red light fills the sky, passing through the Dome, all surging towards the Brain’s White Tower, towards Qin Zhilu.

“Law’s mental power has been at 30 for a long time. That number flickers frequently. Although he is still struggling to maintain it, when we tried to communicate with him, he no longer responded. We all know he has already stepped one foot into the abyss.

“Don’t forget the final negotiation between you and me. Humanity allows Qin Zhilu everything, but if he becomes a genuine threat, you must help humanity neutralize the crisis.”

An Yu gripped his terminal, his knuckles gradually turning white.

“Okay, I know.” His voice, however, held no emotion. “But I’m already in District 14. I’ll deal with the trouble here and go back soon.”

After hanging up, An Yu didn’t put away his terminal for a long time.

The octopus chibi popped up a message.
You seem to have something on your mind.
An Yu typed slowly.
People from Black Tower said the Commander has lost the ability to communicate. I haven’t had time to say a few more words to him.
Ling Qiu said human emotions are intense and fleeting, so for important people, one must tirelessly tell them repeatedly that they are important. Only then, over a long time, will they not forget.

An Yu thought, this period has been too rushed. Since the confession on the snowfield, he hadn’t had time to tell the Commander he loved him again.

The octopus chibi frowned on the screen, tapped the keyboard a few times, then shook its head.
He doesn’t seem to have lost the ability to communicate.
21 says he is chatting with him.
An Yu was stunned.
Chatting about what?
He is introducing Corner Bakery to 21. His input is indeed much slower than before, but he is still inputting.
An Yu pressed his lips together gently. After a long time, he instructed 716 not to look for 21 for now, letting 21 accompany the Commander for a while, and then put away his terminal.

He looked up, took a step forward, stood on the edge of the gully, and glanced down.

Behind him was the wilderness of District 14. District 14 was the largest Bait City, not only housing millions of residents in its center but also surrounded by the largest cultivated fields humanity currently relied on for survival. But now, the fields were desolate overnight, all grains rotten. The high mountain behind the fields was split from the middle. In the pitch-black gully hovered countless black crows.

Eerie eyes covered the crows’ spines and wings, opening and closing in scattered patterns as the flock flapped their wings. Endless eerie eyes stared at the sky from the abyss of the canyon.

Night fell, but a gentle recitation suddenly sounded from the canyon, like Sanskrit chanting echoing in District 14. The crow flocks flew and circled quietly in the air, converging into a monstrous black vortex. The vortex gradually moved from the depths of the canyon to the land, growing larger and larger.

In the earpiece, Bo, fighting in the residential area, panted slightly. “It’s starting again. People are beginning to walk towards death voluntarily.”

An Yu took a step forward. Through the pitch-black crow vortex, he saw the smiling Poet in the center.

Eye looked no different from their first meeting in the Main City, still wearing an elegant and gorgeous shirt. He had discarded the wheelchair. His slender figure stood where ten thousand eyes gazed, his smile gentle, possessing an innate bewitching power.

The book An Yu held in his arms trembled slightly.

[He once stripped low-dimensional creatures of their reason to obtain sacrifices, and only then gained omniscience. Eye inherited this part, so he always has an addictive charm; people unconsciously go crazy for him.]

The light, elegant prayer merged with the cawing of crows filling the sky. An Yu’s brow gradually furrowed, and he flexed his fingers irritably.

He heard groans coming from the bottom of the valley gully.

—Those humans who sought their own destruction were thrown into the valley by crows, their eyes pecked out, crawling on the ground until black wings grew, turning into crows and being swept back into the vortex. The Poet looked up at his new friends surrounding him, singing gently for them. Black threads gradually grew from those eerie eyeballs, merging into the Poet’s back. Sky-reaching darkness pressed down; only his blood-red eyes shone brighter.

After an unknown amount of time, the prayer stopped. The vortex was still hovering. Endless black threads gathered behind the Poet. He walked through the vortex with a smile, towards An Yu.

Walking up to An Yu, the Poet tore his shirt and turned his back.

On his back, extending from the nape of his neck to his waist, grew a vertical, eerie red eye, staring hollowly and directly at An Yu.

That was Zhan Xue’s eye.

The crow wind blew the Poet’s now very long hair into a messy dance, brushing over that eerie red eye. The Poet turned back and said gently to An Yu, “Long time no see, An Yu. And Codex, you came a bit faster than I imagined.”

An Yu gazed at him. “What are you praying for?”

The black vortex slowly dispersed. Flocks of crows flew behind the Poet, tethered by the black threads growing from the eye on his back. He opened an old manuscript taken from the church and said, “I pray for this world to head towards the fusion of all things. The sky collapses, the ocean seals in wax, the swamp swallows everything, and the earth cracks into the abyss. This is the only way I can save this world.”

An Yu frowned. “This is not a prayer; it is a curse.”

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“That was my night of despair.” The Poet’s eyes revealed sorrowful pity. “That night I completely saw the dead end of the world. I saw that I would become a link in the calamity. I thought my death was the last effort I could make for humanity.”

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Or rather, challenging the patience of the Order Body.

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“Because I realized we were all wrong.”

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“This world emerged from a mass of chaos; chaos gave birth to order. Only by letting Law completely lose control, letting chaos fully descend, and the world head towards heat death, can a new world be born, and a new order awaken.”

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He looked up, spread his arms, and laughed loudly towards the sky amidst bursts of crow wind. “GOING TO EXTINCTION TOGETHER, ISN’T IT GOOD?”

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In the next instant, space shattered and deformed violently. Black crows were folded and gathered one by one, then exploded and died in the narrowing of space.

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[Kill him.]

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[After we reunite, he will naturally listen to my voice.]

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[Eye’s cognition is very limited because what he inherited was prayer, curse, and bewitchment. And I am the vision spanning endless spacetime, and the container to restrain and contain him.]

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“No mercy.”

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“The Order Body doesn’t appreciate the cognition that gives rise to chaos.”

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An Yu walked forward, opened the book in his arms, and gently clamped it over the eye.

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“Codex didn’t tell you, right? Merging with you, we will all perish.”

“If you want to welcome the awakening of the god, you will eternally lose your own believers. If you give up, he will eventually become the thing he loathes the most.”

“So, Qin Zhilu indeed bears the world’s greatest sorrow; he can never obtain redemption.”

“Shut up.”

The golden pupils constricted into vertical slits, taut to the breaking point.

An Yu gazed coldly at the Poet’s gradually dimming eyes. “You just need to tell me how to make the thing inside me wake up completely.”

“Golden gears,” the Poet murmured, gazing at the sky. “The periphery of the red light is already wrapped by five golden gears, yet the chaos is still restless. There is still one central gear that has not appeared; that is the key to making all the gears operate in unison.”

His voice gradually shattered, disappearing into the sound of the snowstorm that suddenly howled up.

An Yu’s pupils constricted further, and the snowstorm stopped in an instant.

The Poet looked at the frozen snowstorm filling the sky, stunned for a moment. His gaze slowly turned to An Yu as he murmured, “You can already manipulate these shattered spacetimes at will…”

An Yu only glanced at him coldly. “The central gear, what is it?”

“He will eventually return to the high dimension…” The Poet’s voice finally faded away word by word. “Free to come and go in endless spacetime.”

The Poet died without closing his eyes. Although Zhan Xue’s eerie eye had been contained by the book, his own eyes kept staring at the sky, as if determined to witness the final ending of this world with his very own eyes.

When An Yu held the book that had merged with Eye back in his arms, he vaguely heard the Poet’s voice flash through his mind, though it was only one sentence.

[An Yu, I hope Codex and I didn’t bet wrong.]

He lowered his eyes, letting the snowstorm fall again, covering the calamity that had descended upon District 14.

—So, you can lie too.

Codex’s voice sounded.

[Sorry, An Yu. After fusion, the fragments cease to exist; the three of us will indeed perish.]

—Can’t you and His fragments be separated?

[We were all once shells parasitized by fragments. After being parasitized for so long, our own parts were squeezed into a tiny point, difficult to separate, destined to be destroyed along with them.]

—Then why won’t I?

[Because you were originally an empty shell. Your human will grew later, standing side-by-side with Him. You are the exact opposite of us; while we were swallowed by Him, you gradually separated from Him. Moreover, He will fully revive from you and then leave. As I said, a human who falls and gets up will just walk away; he won’t turn back to step on the ant again.]

An Yu lowered his eyes and remained silent.

His human will had indeed grown later, coming from Ling Qiu, the Commander, Xi De, Grape, Bo, and Codex. Even from Yan Xi, Billy, Xu Shanshan…

[Go back. Face fate.]

“But the Commander said, don’t be pushed forward step by step by fate.”

[Yes, but he must have also told you that facing fate directly isn’t about accepting it, but—]

“But to tell it where we want to go.”

An Yu looked up at the pitch-black valley beneath his feet. In those slightly unfocused golden eyes, the light gradually gathered and sharpened.

Black Tower’s emergency notification popped up abruptly on his terminal.

“Dome breached, aberrant tide approaching the Main City!”

“Energy and communication across the city will be cut off shortly. Maintain silence to the maximum extent!”

“Qin Zhilu’s mental power lost defense, plummeted to 20!”

“Update! Qin Zhilu mental power 10!”

An Yu answered the call from the High Peak.

“Come back, Corner,” the High Peak said in a deep voice. “Only you can kill Qin Zhilu.”

An Yu gripped the terminal and responded.

“Okay.”