A step forward

As Qin​​‍‍‍​​⁠⁠‌​​⁠​​‍⁠‍‍⁠‍​‌⁠ Zhilu uttered the words “better to kill by mistake,” the darkness in his eyes receded, leaving only steadfast resolve.

With that breath still lingering near his ear, An Yu gazed into his eyes. In this moment, he felt as if he had truly stepped into the Commander’s inner world. The suffering inflicted upon Qin Zhilu throughout his life would have been unbearable without such iron determination. That coldness and indifference, that obsessive faith and self-sacrifice; they were all written in the stars.

“Commander.” He instinctively grasped the other’s hand. The leather glove happened to be on his own hand; through the hide, he felt the contours of Qin Zhilu’s fingers and palm. “You don’t have any certainty that becoming the core of the Chaotic Reaction will allow you to lead its direction, do you?”

Qin Zhilu’s expression appeared somewhat softened in the dark. “When there is only a single thread of hope before you, you must try even without certainty, because I have no other choice.”

He looked down at An Yu’s hand and whispered, “Give the gloves back to me. They’re a bit large on you. When we return, I’ll have the shop custom-make a few pairs for you.”

An Yu shook his head. “I’ll give them back when we return. It’s truly cold here.”

Qin Zhilu reached out and ruffled An Yu’s already messy white hair. “The District 99’s Super-aberrant knows your weakness; that makes you feel insecure, doesn’t it?”

“Mhm…” An Yu nodded slowly, his eyes falling on the holster at Qin Zhilu’s waist. “Can you give me your gun too?”

Qin Zhilu was surprised. His hand moved to the grip. “It’s not impossible, but would you even dare to fire it?”

“I wouldn’t,” An Yu answered honestly. “But having one more ranged weapon on me makes me feel a bit safer.”

Qin Zhilu couldn’t help but laugh. He deftly unclipped the holster and tucked the gun into An Yu’s waistband, murmuring, “The Commander’s coat, the Commander’s gloves, the Commander’s knife and gun. Without realizing it, all my belonging have become yours.”

He looked at the snowstorm outside the window and muttered to himself, “Perhaps that is exactly how it should be.”

Outside, Kaos was apologizing to Sienna. His tone was low, stating that his father’s disappearance and the constant threat of mental manipulation by the Super-aberrant had left him mentally exhausted. Jiang Xiao, having no interest in meddling in their interpersonal drama, served noodles for An Yu and Qin Zhilu and brought them in.

Qin Zhilu stood up. “I’ll eat outside.”

Jiang Xiao looked surprised, then glanced at An Yu. “Are you coming too?”

An Yu shook his head, sitting alone in the corner of the inner room clutching his bowl. Jiang Xiao had filled it to the brim; as he bowed his head to drink the broth, his golden eyes were faintly reflected in the liquid. People around him said his gaze had changed much since he first arrived at the Spire, but at this moment, those eyes looked no different than they did back in the slums. Ling Qiu used to say they were beautiful but vacant, as if he had forgotten many things since birth.

An Yu’s heart suddenly skipped a beat.

Frost blew in through the small window, falling into the bowl. For no reason, he suddenly recalled the final lines of Sleeping in the Abyss:

“He forgot His own vastness, and reenacted His death…

The abyss thereby calls, an overlap of voices awakening Him.

To reconverge with Them.”

An Yu murmured the words unconsciously.

A dark shadow suddenly fell over his soup.

He looked toward the window. A crow stood on the frame, its black feathers laden with frost.

Even its eyelids were weighed down, squinting through a slit as it stared at him with shrewd yet decaying eyes.

An Yu measured its Genetic Entropy. It was just an ordinary bird on the verge of freezing to death. He brought it inside and used his chopsticks to place a few strands of noodles before it.

The crow refused to eat, simply standing on the floor staring at him. An Yu ignored it, huddling into the corner and closing his eyes in exhaustion.

The memory of his recent death lingered, repeatedly draining his spirit.

The empty activity room, the tall hunter’s silhouette lunging down from the pillar, the gleaming axe splitting his scalp and crushing his skull… and the surge of fury at the moment of death, the obsession to seize the axe and counter-kill, grew more vivid with every memory rewind.

Through repeated recollection, the fear of death began to fade, but the humiliation of being slaughtered grew stronger.

An Yu snapped his eyes open.

“Reenacting His death,” he whispered to the crow. “Perhaps time reversal is like the space folding before; until I master it completely, it can only be triggered passively. The trigger is a near-death experience, or rather, a fated death.”

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The unfinished half-bowl of noodles gradually solidified. The scent faded, leaving only the increasingly clamorous sound of snowstorm…

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In his peripheral vision, scattered residents of District 99 appeared; they smiled as they pressed themselves against pillars or crawled on the ground, gradually merging with their surroundings.

Don't scrape

Don't copy

Halfway there, An Yu looked back. Every house behind him was distorted, merged into the earth. The end of the horizon was no longer a clear line; it met the sky, and the fractured sense of space caused a splitting headache.

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Those who touch the coffin are swallowed.

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An Yu took a deep breath and reached out to touch it tentatively. Unexpectedly, his fingers felt no pain upon hitting the ice. He thrust his hand straight inside, merging into the frozen layer to touch the drifting red.

Don't scrape

Don't copy

He snapped back to reality. The red current was still surging, as if trying to flee the ice. The golden halo of the coffin began to circulate along the contours, following a strict and orderly trajectory, sealing the red currents within.

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The howling wind and the tremors of the earth violently pulled his consciousness back. An Yu’s eyes flew open. He was alone in the room, but frost had almost filled the space, leaving only a small clearing around him. The crow was gone, leaving behind a single black feather. His terminal showed that seven or eight hours had passed. It was now 03:05.

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A massive shockwave from outside shattered the frost blocking the door, but immediately, more frost poured in through the small window, blocking the exit again. In an instant, the room was packed with ice, trapping An Yu in a tiny space.

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Don't copy

An Yu’s pupils contracted. “Jiang Xiao!”

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Jiang Xiao gasped, “I can’t break it. I’ve tried. The frost is too heavy; he’s intentionally isolating you…”

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Using his captain privileges, An Yu took control of Jiang Xiao’s drone. He maneuvered the mechanical drone to avoid the pull of the wind, searching frantically around the reaction center until he finally found Qin Zhilu.

Qin Zhilu stood on the opposite side of the reactor from Jiang Xiao. The ground beneath his feet had already merged into the reactor; even his feet seemed to have grown into the earth. The kaleidoscopic vortex was like a massive beast with its maw open wide before him, but he stood motionless. He expressed no genes, standing there as a mere human, gazing up at the reactor.

The drone tilted upward. At the center of the towering reactor, An Yu saw a familiar pair of eyes. Sienna’s, filled with tears. Above her was a pair of massive, frenzied red eyes. Kaos’ gaze no longer looked like his own; or rather, he had finally shed his disguise.

Jiang Xiao panted over the channel, “I don’t know what Kaos said to Sienna. When I woke up from the dream, Sienna had already used herself to infect Kaos. Law was a step too late. The Chaotic Reaction started instantly. Sienna actively submerged herself in it, but she couldn’t control the reaction as she expected. The center is still Kaos…”

Qin Zhilu interrupted him. “Because she wasn’t strong enough. Not determined enough.”

His voice was steady as ever amidst the roaring snow. In the footage, a few tears fell from Sienna’s eyes, crimson as blood. They fell from the sky but were quickly absorbed back into the vortex.

“How did he lie to you…” Qin Zhilu whispered. “Did he claim he was worried about being controlled by the Super-aberrant and asked you to infect him first?”

Sienna could no longer answer. Those spirited eyes struggled violently within the chaos, but were swallowed in an instant, vanishing into clusters of indistinguishable matter.

Jiang Xiao said desperately, “Regardless of why she let Kaos get the genes, Law, let’s retreat! Have the Main City send thermal weapons and level this place!”

“It won’t work.” Qin Zhilu stood before the storm, staring unblinkingly at Kaos’ eyes high above, as if staring into the eye of the hurricane. “If thermal weapons could solve the problem, the disaster of District 95 wouldn’t have been buried underground only to crawl back out in District 99.”

He paused for a moment. “Perhaps the only way to solve a disaster is to let it return to its source. And the source of disaster will eventually choose self-annihilation.”

He took a step forward, looking at the increasingly massive and crazed red eyes in the sky. “Who do you think will win the center of the reaction?”

An Yu shouted, “Commander!”

Qin Zhilu’s steps paused. He looked back from the edge of the storm toward the unharmed wooden hut.

“Jiang Xiao, your critical temperature has been reached,” Qin Zhilu instructed. “I will try to keep the heat death as far from here as possible, but you’d better take him away soon.”

Jiang Xiao’s eyes were bloodshot. “Law!”

“An Yu.”

Qin Zhilu looked up at the drone. On the screen, those dark eyes were as serene as ever, like a deep sea that never held any emotion.

“I’m sorry I didn’t have time to teach you more,” he whispered. “If not having a supervising superior makes you feel insecure, then leave the Spire. Don’t forget, you only stayed in the Main City for that little bakery.”

Ling Qiu hadn’t had the chance to teach An Yu about bread, mercy, courage, and love. Qin Zhilu thought he could. But in the end, he was not worthy of having those things.

“Commander!” An Yu’s soul trembled. “You said you weren’t certain!”

“But it is the one thread of hope I must bet on.” Qin Zhilu paused. “I am betting my life on a single chance for Order.”

Before the words had finished, a thunderous roar erupted. A violent gust of air billowed out from the safe house; the rebar and stones of the walls shattered and exploded, mixing with shards of frost as they fell through the air.

The high-frequency space folding and tearing did more than just rip the house apart; it left An Yu’s body covered in lacerations from flying debris. The tears in his clothes whipped in the wind, exposing bloodied flesh beneath. His white hair lashed against the bloodstains on his cheeks, revealing bright, golden eyes that shone with a soul-piercing intensity amidst the dark blizzard.

An Yu’s consciousness felt as though it were being buffeted by mountain gales and tidal waves, but he couldn’t discern their source. He could no longer find that familiar figure in his field of vision. Instead, the colossal reaction vortex, forged from heaven and earth, grew even more massive. He stared up at the reactor, his golden eyes seemingly replaying the vision of that figure walking into it, step by step.

“Commander…”

Qin Zhilu had vanished into the chaos, yet the thing perched high at the center of the vortex was still Kaos’ frenzied red eyes.

Kaos’ voice hadn’t changed much; it still sounded timid, even now.

“My father was the coward. The Mystery buried the seed of power right under his nose, yet he was foolish enough to put up a futile resistance for humanity. Any smart person can see that chaos is the world’s endgame. Just as this Commander from the Black Tower chose to merge. Though it wasn’t his original intent, in terms of the result, he made the smart choice.”

An Yu’s gaze swept across the reactor, still unable to find Qin Zhilu’s eyes.

Yet, in a daze, he felt as though he were being watched by the Commander. Although nothing seemed to have happened after Qin Zhilu walked into the Chaotic Reaction, An Yu felt that the entire mass of reactants was undergoing a silent, subtle change.

Finally, he deigned to look at those crazed red eyes. “You killed Colonel Disf.”

“The son inherits the father’s work. He rejected the opportunity Heaven gave him, so naturally, I am the one to carry the legacy.”

An Yu didn’t say a word. He stared at those frantic, ugly eyes high in the air and took a step forward.