The cross was like the spread wings of a deity.

[The Dark​​‍​‍​‍​⁠‍​‌‍‌‌⁠‌⁠‌​⁠⁠⁠​ Wasteland.]

Yellow sand shrouded everything. The silent wasteland looked as if it had been split down the middle by a giant axe, forming a narrow and deep gully.

Dead creatures had turned into terra-cotta figures here, as the earth continuously churned corpses into itself. Tall human figures stood along both walls of the gully, stretching as far as the eye could see.

Tang Feng stood at the edge of the cliff, saying somewhat apologetically, “Whenever someone intrudes, these figures fall one by one in succession. The ground becomes fragmented and shattered, and the earth falls into a frenzy of reconstruction. During the last attempt to enter, Grape and I were separated. We were clearly right in front of each other, yet we could not reach one another. The figures kept blocking us; at one point, I doubted I would ever see him again.”

“It seems he doesn’t want you to enter,” An Yu said softly.

Spacetime here was distorted most viscerally and maddeningly: cold, hard, and forceful, just like that man.

His golden eyes gazed into the pitch-black abyss, as if staring into those familiar eyes.

“Then, I will go.”

Zhu Tao’s face was devoid of color. He stared at An Yu, but he didn’t warn him to be careful as he usually did. Instead, he breathed out, “Persuade Law. I don’t know what the right thing for him to do is. He can’t save the world, but I hope he can at least let himself go.”

Mechanical wings carried An Yu as he slowly descended, reaching the pitch-black core of the earth.

As he went down, Codex reminded him: [Law is similar to Sienna; he is connected to the earth.]

The yellow-earth figures lining the path were tall and solemn. Though they lacked grotesque features, they radiated a soul-shaking sense of oppression.

An Yu walked forward slowly, holding a torch.

—Codex, I heard from Ling Qiu that the earth’s core should be scorching hot, but here it is cold and dark.

[Mhm, because this is his inner heart.]

—And these figures aren’t aggressive like Tang Feng said.

[Because the one who has come is you.]

—Why? In the allegory, He is difficult to merge because of Chaos’s rebellion. The Chaos Body should repel the approach of the Order Body.

[I believe Law is still holding onto his will.]

[The Chaos Body certainly resists the arrival of the Order Body.]

[But Law will never reject you.]

An Yu’s footsteps paused slightly.

In the pitch-black canyon, there was only a cluster of shimmering firelight above his head.

—What exactly is the Innocent’s Rack?

[Its core is self-punishment. The rebellion of Chaos is not the first to occur. In His ancient memories, a weak god who refused to yield built a rack for himself, trapping himself upon it for eternity to avoid turning back to embrace sin. That resolute deity created a mechanism for the rack. Every bit of damage the rack receives is transferred to the person upon it. Thus, once an innocent person is bound to it, they can never obtain redemption; they can only find release through annihilation.]

…

[An Yu, are you listening?]

—Mhm.

An Yu raised his head and continued forward.

The faint light above illuminated a small corner around him; before and behind him was boundless darkness.

He suddenly felt a strong urge to hug his Commander.

Cold and desolate as this place was, he still allowed a person to recklessly intrude into his world, carrying only a single spark of light.

An Yu lowered his eyes, took off his leather gloves, and discarded them in the darkness.

On the long road, endless figures watched in silence. The wind in the gully was shrill, yet the flame above his head was never blown out, until he finally reached that dilapidated temple.

The mottled ruins seemed familiar; it was the dark high tower he had seen when peering into Qin Zhilu’s memories before.

[The High Tower of Chaos has been trampled into ruins, and upon the ruins stands the Innocent’s Rack. This is his sharpest resistance against the Chaos Body.]

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His Commander seemed to have turned into a sculpture, silently frozen upon the cross.

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When he looked up, the gaze of the statue seemed to shift, falling quietly into his eyes.

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An Yu cleared his throat and sat on the ground against the cross, looking up piously at the statue staring down at him.

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“So… I think you were right. It’s time for it to end.”

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Only, they were no longer so fragile.

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An Yu tried hard to clear his throat again, making his voice as clear as possible. “But perhaps there is still a faint, glimmering chance of survival to be found somewhere. I want to gamble. Though the odds are small, but—”

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The silence made everything around them grow dim; all sounds were hushed.

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“Actually, I’m very resistant to taking risks, Commander.” His voice suddenly collapsed, and he whispered, “I have no confidence at all. All along the way, I’ve tried to find clues in my memories to persuade myself to be brave, but I can’t think of anything. In the end, I only remembered what Ling Qiu once told me—”

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“Back in District 53, I used those words to force myself to bet my life. Only those words, only by repeating them over and over, did I finally make it here step by step. Now, perhaps I have to rely on those same words to grit my teeth and take the final step.”

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[Don’t be afraid, and don’t regret. Follow your own thoughts and move forward; do not look back.]

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“What?”

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[I have a small request as well.]

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[My request is that, whether I perish or not, you leave a tiny corner for me in your heart.]

[Even if you eventually turn back into a solitary little piece of bread, remember that you were once possessed by me.]

The moment the two old scars touched, An Yu’s entire consciousness and soul shuddered. The presence of spacetime instantly seized all his senses. He heard endless time flowing in cycles and saw layer upon layer of space stacking and dispersing before his eyes. Those dead, twisted, and chaotic spacetimes turned into grains of white stardust, oscillating in the universe according to his thoughts.

He felt as if he controlled the universe, yet was simultaneously embraced by it. In this infinitely vast void, only he and Qin Zhilu shared the solitude, eternally leaning on one another.

His consciousness drifted away in a flash, and he saw the Innocent’s Rack once more. But this time, he also saw himself, kneeling on the ground before the rack, looking up in adoration.

Qin Zhilu’s statue leaned down from above, knees on the ground, his upper body suspended in the air. The cross was like the spread wings of a deity. The man was shrouded in holiness, cradling An Yu’s cheeks and kissing away his tears.

An Yu panicked for a second and instinctively tried to call for Codex, but received no response from the depths of his consciousness. However, the moment the thought occurred, the answer he sought naturally entered his mind.

He had begun to accept the fusion, and thus was briefly separated from that spacetime.

A distant gaze seemed to come from the void. Only at this moment did An Yu finally realize His loftiness. An all-powerful, omniscient existence controlling time and space.

His inner consciousness vibrated violently. An Yu felt a sudden plunge and opened his eyes, only to find himself standing in a corridor.

The clamor of human voices gradually entered his ears. He looked into the nearest door: it was a small apartment crowded with seven or eight desks. Messy monitors and drafts occupied every inch of floor space. A dozen people were arguing, and the room was filled with swirling smoke that threatened to ignite the drawings.

But the strongest smell of smoke and the stench of alcohol came from behind him.

An Yu turned around blankly. A scrawny man with a bird’s nest of hair was sitting on the floor, surrounded by cigarette butts. He looked up, eyes bloodshot, and let out a drunken hiccup. “Super-aberrant Kindergarten is finished.”

“Huh?” An Yu didn’t react. “What?”

“I can’t find any more plot development points for Rabbit An! How did this happen? A character must be added to its side! It can’t go on being such a loner!” The man grabbed his hair fiercely and slammed his head against the wall. “I’m a useless screenwriter! I can’t think of anything!”

An Yu was startled by this display and stammered, “Loner? Doesn’t Rabbit An have a CP?”

“CP?” The man whipped his head around. “What CP? Are you talking about fanfiction? I can’t find any fanart of it on the whole network; the audience seems to think this character shouldn’t have a CP. Can the audience actually accept Rabbit An having a CP?”

“Uh…” An Yu almost doubted his own memory. He looked back into the small room again and finally spotted what looked like the “Fuxi Animation” logo on the messy floor. He said tentatively, “There is one… an octopus chibi. He…”

“An octopus chibi?” The man frowned deeply and jumped up from the floor. “How can a rabbit have a CP with an octopus? The rabbit would be suppressed to death by the octopus! Rabbit An’s fans are very toxic; they’d never accept it being so submissive… Wait, tell me first, what kind of octopus?”

An Yu was silent for a moment. “Is there any paper?”

Ten minutes later, An Yu put down the pencil, looking at the octopus chibi on the white paper that looked exactly like 716. He didn’t mean to infringe on 716’s portrait rights; he only knew how to draw 716’s face. Besides, in the real world, that octopus character did look just like 716.

“It looks roughly like this.” He paused and emphasized again, “It’s a black octopus with some power in their world. He has a cold personality, a bad temper, and isn’t very moral, but he’s fairly obedient to Rabbit An.”

“Gap moe! It’s the feeling of gap moe!” The man slapped his forehead. “I’m done for, I must be wasted. Why do I actually think this is a viable path? Wait here! I’m going to discuss this with our lead artist. If we use it, I’ll pay you. Wait right there, wait…”

An Yu watched the man dash into the room and slam the pencil drawing he had just made of 716 onto the table. Then the crowd began to gasp and cheer, and a pink-haired woman immediately grabbed her digital tablet.

The world before his eyes began to twist and deform. His consciousness then returned to the void instantly.

In the void, there was the sound of gears turning. An Yu looked up. In the endless universe, a massive central gear gradually emerged in the middle of the five golden gears. It led them, and they finally began to rotate in harmony.

In a flash, he understood.

[Spacetime Travel.]

As He approached awakening, An Yu briefly and completely possessed His ability to move freely through the timeline.

The debut of the octopus chibi in Super-aberrant Kindergarten had indeed been very sudden. He remembered back then, he was still dealing with a Super-Aberrant fused with a time vehicle in District 34. When his consciousness was flagging from the ordeal, the Commander had casually shared that bit of gossip over the comms.

He never imagined that the character had actually been created by his future self.

An image from his memory suddenly resurfaced. After completing the mission at the orphanage, the mirror fragments had gradually disappeared as spacetime was repaired. The first and third fragments vanished slowly, but the second disappeared instantly, as if snatched away by a hand from the void.

That fragment still carried the 1% of the Commander that had been sliced away and forgotten to be reclaimed. Now that the Chaos Body had fused completely, it meant that 1% coincidentally contained a shred of Qin Zhilu’s own complete will.

And he remembered that at the moment the fragment disappeared, the Commander had looked up at the sky and said, “It feels as if a familiar aura just passed by.”

The clue to that shred of hope finally revealed its traces before him.

He had to go further back…

An Yu cast aside all distractions and worked hard to grope along the trajectory of time, moving forward continuously…