Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

This marks the end of the previous era.

Section Fourteen: Enlightenment

The world was destroyed in two days.

First, the solar wind, carrying endless flames, fell from the sky, smoothing the mountains, evaporating the oceans, and erasing all traces of humankind from the earth's surface.

This phase lasted for one and a quarter days, during which all life on the earth was wiped out—humans were burned to charcoal, birds and beasts turned to ashes, and even the tenacious bacteria that survived in the sea had their cell structures destroyed by the high-energy rays in the solar wind, thus disintegrating and decaying into a life source rich in organic matter.

After one and a quarter days, the angels descended from the heavens in their light arks, wielding light swords that could disintegrate all things, their outstretched wings of light capable of easily destroying the physical projectiles the remnants used for self-defense. Whether they rode in enormous spaceships, circling the Earth to avoid the impact of the solar winds, or built shelters beneath the poles, using solid rock layers and thick glaciers to block heat radiation—the angels could find them swiftly and destroy them.

Of course, the angels weren't just after 'humans,' so they ignited flames in the earth's veins, causing the asthenosphere to erupt. Then, a global volcanic eruption began.

The survivors didn't make it to the second day. As one and a quarter of the timeline ended, and the remaining three-quarters were still flowing along the timeline, the planet's surface fell into a lifeless silence. And everything was just as the Book of Revelation's Doomsday Seven foretold—

When the first angel sounded his trumpet, hail and fire mixed with blood poured down from the sky. A third of the earth, a third of the trees, and all the green grass were burned.

[When the second angel sounded his trumpet, a mountain like a burning mountain was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned to blood, a third of the living creatures of the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.]

One-third is just a general figure, but extinction is a real, utter annihilation. As the angels departed in their arks of light, as decisively as they had come, Alice strolled along a scorching concrete road. Her feet trod on molten lava and boiling iron, yet these dangerous things did not harm her in the slightest.

Because this is merely a record, something that has already happened. She uses the unique perceptive means of an information magician to recreate the landscape of that time. But in the end, it's nothing more than an interactive documentary film—she can indeed get responses from the characters constructed by those messages, but this is actually just a manifestation of her searching for these ancient information, much like opening a Baidu search bar, entering a question, and getting results.

She can't change anything. Even if she saved the world here, the real Earth wouldn't change. This is history, things that have already happened. And changing history is not the same as changing the past.

"At least I've verified that the angels' world-destroying actions did indeed follow a fixed process. It's just that this civilization could only last until the next day. However, regarding those anomalies, that meme temporarily named 'Death,' I haven't found an answer here. Is it because the world was destroyed too quickly? Was there no need for 'Death' to intervene before everything came to an end?"

Alice pursed her lips, muttering uncertainly to herself. Because she hadn't encountered multiple 'memes' simultaneously like Patchouli had, her information was still incomplete. And it was precisely because of this deficiency that she had to continue.

“We must continue tracing back.” She reached out and picked up a piece of metal that still retained some shape from the scorched ground. It should have been a general’s medal, but the general had already vanished into thin air, and the medal should have melted completely soon after.

Changing the world as recorded is meaningless. But if she wants to continue traversing the river of history, she must do something to serve as a coordinate. This is why she took something with her or changed something when she stayed in different eras before, because only in this way can she be considered to have a connection with the past, and only in this way can she accurately travel back in time and reach the era she wants to touch.

If this era doesn't work, then we'll go to the previous one.

This place merely records the world, and for an information magician, viewing these records is like traversing a long, distant dream. The time spent in the dream may be long, but in the outside world it appears as only a fleeting moment.

So she put away her medals and began the second era of retrospection.

She arrived in the era when the general was still alive, during the Gulf War, and picked up a piece of shrapnel from the soil of Yugoslavia. With this shrapnel as her guide, she continued her journey back to the mid-19th century, when the Colt Arms Factory, which manufactured shrapnel, had just been established, and participated in the Civil War between the factory owners and slaveholders.

She continued her journey, passing through Shanhaiguan, where she watched the Shun army be defeated by the whip-wielding soldiers at the Battle of Shanhai Pass. She went to Lyon, France, where Joan of Arc, still a child, received divine revelation. She came to the walls of Jerusalem, watching Saladin enter the holy city. Then she reached the forests of Teutoburg, where she and Arminius watched their battle plans before the Romans were attacked.

She went up and up, and up again. And then, once again, she arrived at the Garden of Eden.

There were still two children, a boy and a girl. This time, the boy was braver than the girl. The boy's name was Fu Xi, and the girl's name was Lü Wa. This time, she gave the boy a gourd as a gift to gather information, but both the boy and the girl failed to pronounce her name correctly, calling her Lilith.

She still didn't pay much attention and went straight ahead, arriving at the end of the second era.

This time, the mortals held out longer than she had anticipated. Before the apocalypse, they had built an underground base the size of Iceland at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. They then reinforced it with materials far more advanced than those used by human civilization of this era. The solar storm of the first horn was withstood by seawater and a heat-insulating shell. The subterranean eruption of the second horn was not immediately affected because the base was located in the center of the Pacific Plate. Then, at the end of the second day, a meteor fell from the sky, striking the core of the base. Then, an alien heat-resistant virus, emerging from the meteor, cleansed the world for the remainder of the day.

[When the third angel sounded his trumpet, a giant star, burning like a torch, fell from the sky into one-third of the rivers, streams, and springs. This star was called "Absinthe," and it turned one-third of the water bitter; many people died from drinking this bitter water.]

The world was once again destroyed, irreversible, yet the traces of memes remained unseen. Therefore, Alice once again moved forward, taking steps towards the more distant past.

She lived through another era.

A similar world, a similar history, a similar past, similar people. In this third era, everything she witnessed was almost identical to that of the first and second eras—Neanderthals still went extinct, the Yellow Emperor still defeated Chiyou, Christ was still crucified, the West still overwhelmed the East through the Industrial Revolution, the world was still at war, the US and the Soviet Union were still vying for supremacy, and shortly after the end of the second millennium, the world was once again facing destruction.

She came to Eden for the third time; this time the boy was named Deucalion and the girl Pyrrha. Both were Greek, and their accents were quite pure. However, this time, they still called her Lilith.

She sensed something was wrong. But her goal hadn't been achieved yet, so she had to continue tracing back.

In the Fourth Age, she changed her strategy. No longer acting in accordance with history, she defied it, rewriting the eras she lived in into chaos. Before the Qing army entered the pass, she personally slaughtered the garrison at Shanhaiguan and 30,000 elite Manchu troops outside the pass. On the eve of the Age of Exploration, she unleashed a massive cataclysmic event that swept across the European coast, destroying all ports. Before Attila led her invincible Hunnic army into the Western Roman Empire, she personally strangled the Hunnic king in his tent. At the banquet where Xiang Zhuang performed his sword dance, she ensured that Xiang Bo fell into a drunken stupor before he could even rise.

She changed a lot, destroyed a lot, and reversed a lot. Then, she arrived at Eden in the Fifth Age.

The boy's name was Izanagi, and the girl's name was Izanami. Even though she had given herself a random name, the two children still called her Lilith.

Even going against history, she still acquired this strange concept. This means that her being called Lilith is unrelated to her actions in the records, and since it is unrelated, the situation becomes even more perplexing.

Lilith, Lilith… This name doesn’t exist in the original Holy Scriptures of the Papacy. Her origin is in ancient Babylon, as she is a night demon in Akkadian mythology. In Sumerian, it should be pronounced LILITU (莉莉图), but it wasn’t until around 700 BC that scholars changed the pronunciation to LILITH (莉莉丝) according to their pronunciation habits.

It wasn't until the 10th century that the name Lilith was incorporated into the papal mythology in the biblical apocryphal text, Bensla's Knowledge. And it wasn't until nearly a thousand years later, after the Dead Sea Scrolls were unearthed, that the name was widely used due to its mystery, becoming a forgery that almost overshadowed the original text.

Alice didn't understand why she had gotten involved with this guy. She couldn't help but feel a pang of regret; perhaps she shouldn't have revealed her name in the very first era. But as that thought surfaced, she also had a feeling—'Even so, it's still futile.'

She was somewhat at a loss.

But I must continue my journey. I haven't found the origin of the 'meme,' nor have I devised a solution to deal with death. To give up now and return to Earth would be to waste all this time. And for us, such a waste would be fatal.

[Damn it, I don't even touch men, so how does Lilith, which represents the concept of sexual intercourse, relate to me? Is there some other trait I possess that overlaps with the concept of Lilith? A demon king from hell? A princess from the demon realm? That's even less likely!]

Alice frowned. She realized that her journey back in time was no longer simple; something beyond her control was happening. This change might be harmless to her now, but it could very well be fatal in the future. But the future is the future, and compared to the current crisis, the risks of the future were not unacceptable.

"Hmm... In the Dead Sea Scrolls, the chapter 'The War Between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness' mentions that the Angelic War was started by Lilith. Because she sought a physical body from the Creator, attempting to become equal to the Creator, and was rejected, the Angelic War ensued. And the Celestial's status on this planet is equivalent to the Creator, and she also mentioned another Alice from hundreds of millions of years ago... Could it be because of this?"

She banged her head hard.

"This feels rather far-fetched... Isn't there a more reasonable explanation?"

The feeling was extremely uncomfortable, as if she had fallen into a giant, invisible net, and although she could feel it, she had no idea how to escape. She had to take several deep breaths to calm herself down and continue her actions.

There was no point in staying here; she had to continue tracing back in time. She took a deep breath, suppressing all distracting thoughts, and then focused her will on the deeper layers of historical records.

This is the fifth era she has traveled through, approximately one million years from the present day. Humanity has thus experienced five extinctions, each following a similar trajectory and ending in the same manner. However, if this million-year cycle is taken as the basis, then six hundred million years would represent six hundred cycles.

In other words, the world has been destroyed and rebuilt three thousand times.

Three thousand times... This is only the fifth time, just the beginning. If I keep going, eventually I'll see the origin of the 'meme,' the sixth angel. Yes, once I see it, I'll return immediately, without delay... That's decided!

Alice thought to herself that she had once again arrived at the next stop in her journey of regression, at the end of the sixth era, at the moment when the world faced its sixth death.

After the sixth time came the seventh, and after the seventh came the eighth. Then came the ninth, the tenth, the eleventh... the hundredth, the two hundredth...

She descended deeper and deeper, not only her spirit, but also her body, preserved within the mantle, sinking ever deeper with her journey. From one hundred kilometers underground to two hundred kilometers, from two hundred kilometers to three hundred kilometers. And as she went deeper, her body traversed the mantle faster and faster, drawing ever closer to that marker, that extreme value drawn by the goddess-like, divine being—one thousand kilometers underground!

But she knew nothing of this. Because while she was in retrospect, she was troubled by something else.

She felt that this world recorded in the records... seemed to... have come to life?

Section 15 - The plot was not skipped; this is hereby emphasized.

Zheng Zha felt as if he were dreaming, a nightmare. In the dream, he and his companions fell into a strange and chaotic space, like a pile of shadows stacked together. Then, countless strange, shadowy alien creatures swarmed in, brandishing sharp claws and attacking them.

They are much weaker than angels. But their numbers are in the hundreds of thousands, and they cannot be eradicated.

One by one, his companions collapsed... not dead, but severely wounded and too exhausted to move. He had no choice but to settle the rest in a secluded cave that he had painstakingly found. He himself stood at the cave entrance, defending against the hordes of monsters that surged towards him like a tide.

The demon-headed broadsword he used as a weapon had broken long ago, and the protection Margot and Norrell had placed on him quickly crumbled and became ineffective. But that didn't matter; weapons were ultimately just forms, and he could unleash his power with his fists and feet, although... it might hurt a little.

How long had I been guarding the cave entrance? I couldn't remember. An hour? Two hours? A day? Two days? Or perhaps longer?

I really don't remember. My memories have become blurred with the battle, and my limbs have lost all feeling from repeated swings. If it weren't for the [Fusion] technique always being effective and the energy supply always keeping up, I probably would have been exhausted long ago.

Whether I remember or not doesn't matter, because I'm pretty stupid. I'm not as smart as my companions, and I'm not very good at controlling my rationality. So at least, I can do some manual labor that doesn't require much thought. All I need to do is block the doorway and keep killing.

The killing continued.

The killing continued.

Zheng Zha suddenly opened his eyes.

................................................

"You're awake?" A woman's voice came from not far beside him, flat and monotone. He could easily recognize that familiar voice in his mind.

[It's Knowledge... I survived? And what about everyone else...?]

The soft touch of the elastic mattress came from behind, and as the sense of touch returned, nerves, tendons, limbs, and flesh responded one by one. The scattered gaze gradually focused, and the scene directly above became clearly visible at the very bottom of the retina.

An unfamiliar ceiling...

My throat first felt slightly itchy, then my lungs regained sensation, and a burning pain suddenly burst forth from my chest. This burst of fire then traveled up my trachea, all the way into my esophagus, past the root of my tongue, and then transformed into tangible words that came out of my mouth.

"water……"

A cool liquid soothed his throat and calmed the fire in his lungs. However, apart from his lungs, other organs in his body also experienced intense pain. Some felt like burning, some like being pricked by needles, and some felt like being immersed in strong acid, causing him unbearable agony.

“Relax, you’re not thirsty, and your lungs aren’t injured. It’s just phantom pain caused by your mind taking over your organs again. Now, try looking around.” Patchouli’s voice came as the liquid rolled down. Her tone was still calm, but there was a special magic in her voice. Soon, Zheng Zha felt those strange pains disappear rapidly, and his consciousness was finally able to take over his body again.

What came into Zheng Zha's view was a small, enclosed hall. The walls were steel, and the ceiling was made of an unknown metal. There were no windows, nor many unnecessary decorations. He was lying on a hospital bed in the center of the hall, surrounded by many instruments whose purpose was unclear but which looked very powerful. Next to the instruments, Patchouli Knowledge was intently manipulating a screen that was flashing with massive amounts of data.

"Where is this..." He started to speak, but then changed his mind and asked, "How long have I been asleep? Where is everyone else? Aren't they here?"

“Everyone else is fine. I’ve assigned them some tasks, but you’ll see them soon,” Patchouli replied without looking up. “You’ve been asleep for two days, and it’s been nine days since we arrived in this world.”

Zheng Zha's pupils contracted sharply, and he instinctively jumped out of bed, only to find that his body was now brimming with power. He clenched his fists, and his joints cracked and popped, as if inexhaustible energy was gathering from his limbs and bones, rushing up his brainstem along his spinal cord, making him feel full of energy.

"I slept for two days?! How is that possible?!"

“That’s true, and you’re the only one who slept for two days. The rest of the people were back to work within thirty hours at the latest. Then I assigned them to disaster relief, infrastructure construction, and internal affairs management. Although they caused a lot of trouble at first, they learned quickly after seeing the personnel losses caused by the mistakes. Now they are basically all competent in their positions.”

Patchouli tilted her head and turned her neck to look at him sideways.

"As for you, because you overexerted too much of your mental energy in the battle, and your body was also severely worn out, I had to spend a long time giving you a full-body repair. However, this should be considered a good thing for you—your mental energy is much more active than before, which should be the second time you have broken through to your mental peak. If the information Zhang Jie provided is correct, you should now be in a semi-open state of the third stage of the gene lock. Although you have not fully reached that level yet, you can now use the abilities of the third stage and smoothly mobilize the two alien energies in your body."

She immediately looked away.

"Congratulations, you have finally reached the same level of power as me. Without the aid of pre-prepared items and rituals, I can no longer defeat you in a battle that begins at visual range. And once you fully master the power of the third stage of the Gene Lock, the title of the strongest in the team should be well-deserved for you."

"I... third stage?" Zheng Zha looked at his hands in disbelief. He could indeed feel an explosive power surging through every muscle in his body. Not only that, after his mind became sharper, the blood energy in his brain and the true qi in his dantian became more docile, giving him a feeling of complete control. It was as if... he could now use 'explosion' directly within his body without needing a weapon!

“I suggest you don’t do that. This lounge is fragile and can’t withstand your damage.” Patchouli flicked her fingers, and the light screen that had appeared in front of her quietly turned off. She stood up, and the automatic door to the small hall opened quietly—she then extended her hand in a gesture of invitation.

"Let's go. You've recovered, but time is of the essence. We can discuss any questions on the way."

"What happened these past two days?" Zheng Zha nodded and followed Patchouli towards the door. "Is this the Lop Nur base? Why does it feel so deserted? What happened to us before? Did you rescue everyone?"

"This is indeed the Lop Nur base, but we're not in Lop Nur now. Before the solar wind died down, I modified the entire underground base. After it died down, I used the energy extracted by the stellar extraction tower as a power source to move the base out of the underground towards the center of the Eastern Continent. The entire operation was completed twelve hours ago, and we are now located in East China, directly above the alluvial plain of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. It's normal that you can't hear any human voices, because most of the work in this base is now handled by automated robots, while the living have more important things to do... You'll find out soon enough."

[The base is flying? Is it like Hamunaptra? The two of them really do look alike... Hmm, has Margot Lloyd returned too?] Zheng Zha thought to himself. Having experienced the Hamunaptra empty fortress, he was obviously somewhat immune to this situation, so he wasn't particularly surprised.

"As for what happened these past two days, it's quite simple." Seeing that he didn't ask, Patchouli didn't dwell on that point and instead shifted the focus of her narrative to the next item. She waved her hand, and a floating screen of light unfolded in the quiet corridor where the two were walking, revealing a model of the Earth made of solid light and enveloped by solar wind.

"The solar storm lasted for thirty hours, and after the storm subsided, the angels descended from the sky in cone-shaped light boats." The solar wind wall outside the Earth then dissipated, and countless points of light, numbering around ten thousand, appeared in the sky above the Earth. They then descended and began to engage the ground.

“Before they descended, Alice and I had constructed a mechanical army of over two hundred million, along with various protective measures. Then my army engaged them in battle, the exchange ratio being roughly one to ten thousand—one lightship for ten thousand combat robots of varying specifications. I was close to victory due to our numerical advantage, but unfortunately, these guys couldn't afford to lose. While their main force was engaged with my army, they sent an elite force to infiltrate the ley lines and trigger a mechanism that had been dormant for who knows how long. And then…” She made an explosion gesture. “Boom—!”

The Earth before Zheng Zha's eyes immediately turned a deep red!

"And so, the massive volcanic eruptions that swept the globe began. I won the battlefield but lost the campaign, so I had to send the remaining robot legion and the gradually awakening team members to act as firefighters, rescuing as many survivors as possible before the widespread volcanic eruptions. As for myself, I stayed in the base, maintaining a large-scale leyline ritual to ensure that the land beneath my feet would not erupt."

Zheng Zha exclaimed "Ah!" His gaze towards Patchouli became somewhat complicated. After a long while, he said with some difficulty, "I thought you... were more cold-blooded than I imagined."