Samsara Paradise: Dream Weaver of Connections.

Lin Yi glanced at Karen, then at Dorothea, who was supposedly a nun from a convent, standing next to her, and then gave Karen a look down the back of her neck.

The clarity of that gaze was roughly equivalent to having a note that said "Knock him out" stuck ten centimeters in front of her forehead and then shining a spotlight on it; anyone with a functioning brain could accurately receive and execute it.

Dorothea didn't move.

She stood there, still clutching the towel she had used to wipe Karen's sweat. Her expression shifted from tense to puzzled, then from puzzled to thoughtful. This thoughtful process lasted for about three seconds. Finally, she blinked and gave Lin Yi a look that seemed to say, "Are your eyes twitching?"

Lin Yi remained silent for a moment.

He deeply understood what it meant for life to ruin a person.

Dorothea had been cooped up in this mission site for so long, spending every day with a few silent wooden posts. Her social signal decoding module had probably degenerated to a primitive level due to long-term disuse.

The only emotions she can understand now are "smiling means happy" and "frowning means unhappy." Even nonverbal signals of moderate complexity, such as "giving an eye contact," are already at the Morse code level for her.

Lin Yi no longer relied on Dorothea. He cut into Karen's neck from the back with his right hand, and pressed his fingertips precisely on the carotid sinus, applying just the right amount of pressure.

Karen's pupils rolled upwards the instant the pressure was applied, and her entire body suddenly relaxed from the tense state of clenched teeth, her head tilted to the side, and she completely lost consciousness.

Dorothea saw Karen's head tilt to the side and he was motionless, and sighed, "You knocked him out? Didn't you say it was best to keep him awake?"

Lin Yi straightened up, and while he once again hovered his hand above Karen's left ankle to guide the construction of the last segment of the neural network, he gave Dorothea a look that said, "Look at an idiot."

The look in his eyes was rich with meaning, containing several layers of progressive implications, such as "Forget it, I won't argue with an idiot" and "Forget it, I'll let it go because you've had a really tough time before."

"When you're awake, it's best to focus on the entire process of nerve growth, but the key part of that process is the very beginning, from the cut to the middle of the thigh. That section has the longest nerve extension path and the most branches. The real-time feedback signals from the brain at that stage can indeed help nerve fibers find the corresponding muscle attachment points more accurately, preventing them from growing crookedly."

"Do you see this part down from the calf? Now the nerve growth area is only in the ankle and the sole of the foot. Although the neural networks in the ankle and the sole are dense and complex, their growth paths are very short. The longest nerve filament is only a short distance from the ankle to the toes. There is no need for long-distance navigation. So whether Karen is awake or not is irrelevant. He has passed the stage where he needs feedback from the brain to correct his direction. The rest of the work is purely an extension of the micro-terminals, which the brain can handle on its own."

Dorothea paused for a moment after hearing this, then looked down at the crumpled cloth in her hand, then at Karen lying quietly on the operating table. Finally, she looked up at Lin Yi and said something with a sense of sudden realization, like "I finally understand": "So when you winked at me just now, you wanted me to knock him out?"

"Yes. I was too busy to do it myself, so I asked you to do it for me. You looked at me for three seconds, then winked at me twice. I thought you understood and were going to do it, but it turns out you didn't understand and instead gave me a flirty wink."

Dorothea tossed the cloth aside: "Um... I'm sorry, I was just spacing out. I was wondering if there would be enough dried vegetable leaves in the porridge for tomorrow morning, because the little beetle stole a handful last night, and I didn't have time to make up for it."

Lin Yi did not continue the topic; he refocused his energy on the neural network finishing up in Karen's left ankle.

Meanwhile, in the war channel of the Paradise of Reincarnation, an extremely intense argument was frantically refreshing the screen at a rate of eight hundred messages per hour.

The war channel was crowded with a dozen or so high-level contractors online, but the three avatars that were arguing the most were Widow West, King Kong, and Dean.

The widow fired the first shot.

She directly sent a battle damage statistics table into the channel. The table was densely filled with data from the last defensive battle: the aliens lost more than 1.2 million lives outside the main city wall of the Paradise of Reincarnation, and the average thickness of the corpses piled up outside the city wall reached a chilling 30 meters.

"You're talking to me about a full-scale offensive? I don't deny that the medics have indeed mobilized a large army. But you know what kind of species the aliens are. They are twice as fast as us in open terrain. Once we engage them head-on on the plains, they don't need to fight a war of attrition. They can just keep cutting off our supply lines and retreat routes at the edge of the battlefield to slowly wear us down. The reason we were able to hold the city last time was because of the city walls. Are you going to take down the city walls, throw away the advantage of terrain, and throw your troops into the open to fight the aliens head-on? Isn't that ridiculous?"

King Kong posted a text message below, along with a shrug emoji: "Widow West's concerns are not without merit. In open field battles, my main force can withstand a frontal assault, but once the flanks are outflanked, my formation won't hold for long. We did encounter this situation when we attacked the alien fortress before."

The dean replied to that message: "I've considered everything you've said. But this time is different; this time I have outside help."

"Foreign aid? What foreign aid? Are you implying that there are other forces trying to interfere?"

“It’s not that time yet.” The dean typed a few words in the input box and then deleted them. Then he did something that no one in the channel expected—he temporarily added a new avatar to the channel’s member list.

The moment the avatar finished loading, the entire border of the war channel interface trembled.

The newly arrived avatar is a pure white flag with a white dove in the center embroidered with outstretched wings. The dove holds an olive branch in its beak, and the olive branch is wrapped with a circle of fine golden runes.

The name field below the profile picture clearly displays four words: Holy God.

The name was followed by parentheses, which stated "Sanctuary Paradise Faction".

There was a full three seconds of silence on the channel.

The widow west was the first to react. A cigarette slipped from her fingers, and ash fell onto the table, but she ignored it: "Holy God? The one that was pulled out of the Holy Land Paradise by that sacrifice?"

King Kong sent a string of question marks, followed by the text: "Wait, the faction tag is wrong, isn't it?"

The dean typed a line next to the image of the white dove flag: "Shut up and listen to what He has to say."

The moment the message from the Holy God appeared on the channel, everyone in the entire Samsara Paradise fell silent.

"Friends of the Paradise of Reincarnation, nice to meet you. The reason I am here is because I have sensed something that should not be in this world. Specifically—I sensed a very faint trace of divine power in those alien individuals you mentioned. That divine power does not belong to any known system in this plane; its source is the void."

"Your previous speculation that the large-scale migration of the alien species was to leave this plane was correct in its direction. However, your speculation only went as far as 'they want to leave,' without exploring why they wanted to leave. I will tell you the answer: there is a being that is calling them. That being used divine power to build a positioning anchor at the core of the alien species' lair, and the destination of the signal points to a series of brand new worlds. The reason why the alien species want to leave is because their king received that signal and knows that there is a new world over there that is more suitable for their survival."

“My purpose in joining forces with you is simple: to kill that guy. This is no loss for you; you were already planning to take down the Alien King and its fortress. I'm just adding an extra side quest to your mission. As for my reward, don't worry. Once I find that thing, its soul will be mine, and all the other spoils will be yours.”

After the message from the Holy God was sent, the channel was quiet for a few seconds.

Widow West put the cigarette back in her mouth and took another drag. When she exhaled, the smoke was much more stable than before. "Does this guy mean there's a god behind the mutants?" The dean replied, "That's right."

King Kong sent another message: "Then why don't you go fight it yourself? Can't you win?"

The Holy God replied with a message followed by an emoji that didn't seem like something a god would use—a small round face with a crooked mouth: "Because I am an avatar summoned under the restrictions of Paradise's rules, my authority is limited. I can easily deal with ordinary aliens, but if I go all out to attack the Alien King, I will violate this rule, and I will be kicked out by the will of the Void Tree before I even find him."

After God finished speaking, the dean quickly typed: "Okay, message received, cooperation established. We'll discuss the detailed tactical coordination later when we arrive. There are too many people watching in the channel, you can leave now."

Then he did something that stunned the Holy God himself in the Holy Land headquarters—he removed the white dove flag avatar directly from the channel member list.

In the central temple of the Sanctuary Paradise headquarters, a human-shaped statue carved entirely from translucent milky-white marble sits atop a high platform.

The statue's face was blurred and neutral, radiating an extremely soft, pale golden light. This light seemed to have a life of its own, flowing slowly across the statue's surface. Every so often, a wisp of light would detach from the statue's shoulder, drift towards the roof, and disappear.

The blurry outline of the statue's face trembled slightly the moment the dean kicked him out of the group chat, its original peaceful and serene expression transforming into a subtle curve between confusion and interest.

The Holy God was indeed taken aback. He had lived for countless years and experienced all sorts of bizarre situations, such as being worshipped by mortals, cursed by hostile gods, and banished by the will of the world. But being pulled into a group chat by a human contractor and then kicked out on the spot was something He had never encountered before in His long divine life.

He stretched out his hand, palm up, and a wisp of pale golden light fell from between his fingers, circling twice in the air before condensing into a miniature white dove. The dove flapped its wings and flew away from the temple's vaulted ceiling, passing through the layers of architectural structures and disappearing into the sky.

"The people of the Paradise of Reincarnation certainly have an interesting way of doing things. But it doesn't matter. I just came down to this plane to relax because I was bored anyway, and encountering an opportunity to potentially fill a gap in my divine office is a pleasant surprise. Who doesn't want more divine offices?"

While a god's divine status doesn't directly reflect their combat power, if a guy called the Toilet God stands next to a guy called the Sun God, most people would think the latter is more powerful, right?
While the divine office of the Holy God is already broad enough, having an additional divine office is never a bad thing.

He closed his eyes again, and the light surrounding him resumed its even flow frequency.

At the Muguang Missionary Site, Lin Yi was completely unaware of all of this.

All his attention was focused on the contraction of the last nerve ending in Karen's left ankle.

The moment it touches the target location, the current loop of the entire neural network completes its final closed loop. An extremely subtle bioelectric signal travels upward from the tip of the toes along the newly formed neural network, passing through the knee, thigh, and lumbosacral nerve plexus, and finally reaches Karen's cerebral cortex.

He took a half step back and slapped Karen twice.

After being slapped a few times, Karen let out a low, hoarse groan, her eyelids fluttering twice before she slowly opened them.

For the first few seconds after he opened his eyes, his vision was still unfocused, as if he had just woken up. It took his pupils about five or six seconds to refocus on the cracks in the stone tiles on the ceiling. Then he realized something and suddenly looked down at his legs.

Both legs were properly positioned below his pelvis, with a healthy skin tone and toes that displayed a natural, relaxed, slightly curled arc, a stark contrast to his previous dark brown, stump-like appearance, representing a difference of an entire species.

He tried moving his left big toe—the toe curled up and then fell back down.

The entire process was smooth and natural, with the joints exhibiting a completely normal range of motion.

Karen lay on the operating table, staring at her two legs that had grown back, remaining silent for nearly half a minute.

His face didn't show any dramatic changes in expression; he simply looked from his toes down to his thighs with a gaze that was a mixture of calm and bewilderment, as if confirming that the things he thought he would never have again in his life had truly grown back.

Dorothea watched him for a while, then let out a soft sigh, picked up the cloth, and walked out of the operating room.

She went outside, squatted down by the stove, threw the cloth into the washing tub beside her, and squatted for a while with her hands supporting her knees before standing up.

The little beetle reappeared beside her at some point, squatting half a head shorter than her and looking up at her, its bright eyes blinking twice through the gaps in the cloth.

Dorothea glanced down at her, then reached out and patted the gray-white cloth strip on her head: "He's better now."

When Lin Yi came out of the operating room, he felt his stomach was empty, so he found a place to eat something.

But before he could eat much, the dean strode over from the arched passageway, clutching his notebook in his hand. His expression was a mix of excitement and anxiety. Before he had even settled into his chair, he spoke to Lin Yi: "Doctor, there's something I need you to know."

Lin Yi swallowed the porridge in his mouth: "Sit still first, speak slowly, and don't jump."

The dean sat down on the stool, opened the notebook to a blank page, and scribbled a simple diagram on it with charcoal—a circle representing the alien fortress, a cross next to the circle representing the locating anchor, an arrow pointing upwards above the cross, and an outline with a question mark.

"There are people behind the alien species, no, there are gods. We previously speculated that the large-scale migration of the alien species was to leave this plane, which was the right direction but the wrong motive. They didn't leave because they didn't want to stay anymore, but because there were gods pushing them from behind."

Lin Yi placed the bowl of porridge on his lap: "Do you have any evidence?"

“I met a guy who called himself the Holy God, the incarnation of a deity from the Sanctuary Paradise faction. He said he sensed divine power fluctuations in the residual energy of the alien beings, and discovered that the thing behind the alien beings overlapped with his divine domain. He wanted to track down the deity hiding in the interlayer by eliminating the alien king and the locator anchor, and then reap his divine power.”

After listening, Lin Yi remained silent for two seconds: "So now we have a divine incarnation acting as an external aid, helping us track down the real big fish behind the alien species, on the condition that the divine office of the last fish belongs to Him, and the rest of the spoils belong to us?"

"almost."

"It's okay, don't trust that guy. When we fight the aliens, we can drag him along. After we kill the alien king, we can kill him too."

"Okay." After hearing Lin Yi's words, the dean nodded. To be honest, that was what he thought too.

There are no kind souls in the Paradise of Reincarnation, and the other party wasn't exactly a saint either, so the Dean felt no remorse for betraying him; on the contrary, he felt immense pleasure. (End of Chapter)