He has been reincarnated through countless worlds, adorned with billions of mythological terms!

Yun Yi's voice wasn't loud, but it was like an invisible hammer, striking their chests again and again.

No one answered.

The lead hunter lowered his head, staring at a snail shell that had been crushed on the ground.

The shell was broken, and the dried mucus clung to the gravel, gleaming dimly under the streetlights.

He suddenly laughed.

Gone was the previous madness; instead, there was a quiet, resigned smile.

"No," he answered for everyone. "We turn our parents into weapons."

"We treat living people as cannon fodder."

"In order to survive, we don't value other people's lives."

He looked up at Yun Yi.

In those bloodshot eyes, most of the madness had faded, revealing what lay beneath—exhaustion, despair, and a faint trace of something that could almost be described as relief.

"We're no longer human."

Behind them, a hunter suddenly spoke.

The voice was muffled, as if it were squeezed out from the deepest part of the chest.

"I vomited for three days after the first time I killed someone."

"The second time, I felt nauseous all day."

"On the tenth time, I remained expressionless."

"By the hundredth time, I had forgotten what they looked like."

He paused, his Adam's apple bobbing.

"But I remember the first meal my mom made for me—millet porridge, pickled vegetables, and a burnt fried egg."

"Back then, our family was poor, and eggs were a rare treat. She couldn't bear to eat them herself, so she gave them all to me."

He lowered his head and looked at his hands, which were covered with blue veins and deformed joints.

"These hands have killed hundreds of people, but they've never properly held her even once."

Yun Yi listened in silence, their distorted figures reflected in his golden pupils.

Another hunter chimed in, "You're right."

"We're not considered human anymore."

"But we were just ordinary people back then."

"The cycle of reincarnation chose us, threw us into world after world, forced us to kill, forced us to become stronger, forced us to crush our conscience bit by bit and swallow it down."

"If we don't kill, we'll die."

"If we don't kill, we won't even get a ticket to the next world."

"Do you think we want things to turn out this way?"

The sound echoed in the night, carrying the anger and resentment suppressed for hundreds of worlds.

The third hunter took over, his voice hoarse like sandpaper: "I've reincarnated through more than eighty worlds, watching my teammates die one by one before my eyes."

"In the first world, ten people went in, but I was the only one who came out."

"In the second world, twenty people went in, but only one came out."

"The third, the fourth, the fifth..."

His voice grew softer and softer until it was almost inaudible.

"I have lived in more than a hundred worlds, killed hundreds of people, and seen countless monsters, demons, monsters, and ghosts—but I have never seen a world that would make people like us feel a pang of conscience."

He looked up at Yun Yi, his eyes filled with no pleading, no fear, only a weary, empty gaze.

"You're saying we're not human."

"Then tell me, how can one live like a human being in a place like this?"

The wind stopped.

In the night sky, the clouds dispersed, revealing a half-moon, cold and pale.

Moonlight spilled into the garden, onto Yun Yi's moon-white divine robe, and onto the nine hunters kneeling on the ground, their faces disfigured and their lives nearing their end.

Yun Yi looked at them for a long time.

Then he spoke.

"I don't know what the Cycle of Reincarnation is like, nor do I know how it forces you to kill, become stronger, and lose your conscience."

His voice was not loud, even gentle, but every word was like a needle, precisely piercing the deepest wound. "But what has been done cannot be washed away."

"Besides, you chose these things yourselves."

"You say that if you don't kill someone, you'll die."

"But you didn't kill the enemy—at least not all of them."

"You killed people weaker than you, people who hadn't provoked you, people who trusted you. Your parents."

The lead hunter's body jolted violently, as if he had been slapped hard across the face by an invisible hand.

"Reincarnation is beyond our control, and paradise is irrational—but choosing what kind of person to become is always our own choice."

Yunyi's voice echoed softly in the night.

No one spoke anymore.

About five or six seconds passed.

One of the hunters moved.

He didn't stand up, but instead, with a slow, heavy movement, reached his hands into his clothes.

When Yun Jin saw this, she instinctively hugged Yun Yao even tighter, her lips pressed tightly together.

But what the hunter pulled out wasn't a weapon.

It's a photograph.

The photo was so wrinkled that the edges were repeatedly folded and unfolded, leaving deep creases.

The photo shows a middle-aged woman wearing a floral dress, standing in front of an old residential building, her eyes narrowed into slits as she smiles.

"My mom," the hunter said softly. "This was taken on her fiftieth birthday. She was very happy that day because I told her on the phone that I had found a good job and that she shouldn't worry."

He placed the photo on the ground, weighed down the corner with a small stone, then looked up at Yun Yi.

"I'm not begging you to let me go. I just beg you... don't let my mother know what her son has become."

He closed his eyes.

Yun Yi lowered his head and looked at the photo on the ground.

The moonlight shines on the photo, and the woman in the floral dress is smiling so happily.

Yun Yi withdrew his gaze.

"To be honest, it's a shame you guys aren't actors."

His voice was as calm as a stagnant pool, "No matter how good you are, you can't change the fact that you are not from this world, you are demons from beyond the heavens."

"And I, as the god of this world, have the responsibility and the necessity to eliminate you extraterrestrial demons."

The moment the words left his mouth, they shattered the last hope of the nine hunters.

At the same moment, the nine people were ejected into the air.

The residual power of the gene-editing agent burned wildly in their bodies, telomeres shortened at a visible rate, and cell division reached its limit.

The pained and desperate expression vanished instantly, replaced by a resolute determination to go all in.

They can only gamble on one thing now—that even the native gods must be subject to restrictions in this locked-down world.

As long as there are restrictions, they have hope.

This is their last gamble.

Nine figures rushed towards Yun Yi from different directions, their speed so fast that they left afterimages in the air.

The sounds of muscles tearing, bones dislocating, and blood vessels bursting rang out simultaneously—their bodies were disintegrating at a visible speed, like a machine operating at its limit, with every part emitting its final, mournful cry.

Upon seeing this, Yun Yi simply sighed softly and raised his right hand.

The movements were so slow that everyone could see every detail clearly.

Spread your fingers slightly apart, palm facing outwards.

"Xi Sheng".

The sound wasn't loud, but the whole garden could hear it.

A light shone in my palm—soft, warm, like the morning light of spring; pure, intense, and purifying light without any impurities.

A burst of light erupted from the palm, spreading in all directions at an unimaginable speed.

Wherever it passed, the air was scorched with a faint golden trail, the dew on the grass evaporated instantly, and a layer of fine cracks appeared on the surface of the pebbles on the ground.