Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

Alice returned to the ground half an hour later. Upon landing, she found the direction she expected and landed precisely in the city that, geographically speaking, should be Boston. Or rather, in the Boston that the woman named Diana knew.

She sought the center of this world, and she believed that the center of this world was also searching for her. Because encountering the woman named Diana was the most obvious clue imaginable—an ordinary woman, powerless and possibly not even alive, could never possibly bump into a witch on the street who had unlocked her genetic potential and possessed numerous protective mechanisms!

She sensed something was amiss from the start, which is why she was willing to spend time talking to Diana instead of directly using memory reading or simply unleashing a magic cannon attack. Now, she couldn't help but be thankful for her initial caution, because it prevented the situation from escalating. After all… even as an invited guest, causing chaos and destruction in the host's home was never a good thing.

[But why hasn't the master of this world come looking for me yet? Didn't He bring me here? Is He asleep, severely injured, or perhaps about to die? Well, this universe is, after all, the Son of Heaven's pasture; even if there are true gods, they must belong to the Son of Heaven's power. Or is there some kind of rebellion against the Son of Heaven existing in this world?]

That's not very realistic.

The girl thought to herself, and she was shocked to find that when she landed on the ground, what appeared in front of her was not the Diana house she had left earlier, but a school with a huge area—and it was a school she recognized.

“MIT…why am I here?” Alice frowned, her mind racing through information about MIT in the Final Destination 2 world. She knew of this place, but she had little connection to it. If she had to pinpoint a connection, the only link between her and the institute was that of the professor whose last name was Kessler!

“Professor Kessler’s son is an Awakened One, which is why I know him. And my first battle with the angels was triggered through him, but what does that mean? The first person I met was Diana, and if there’s any implication, then she should be the more important one. Her relationship with Professor Kessler… Ah! Why did it take me so long to notice!”

An idea that had only occasionally crossed my mind suddenly became clear and distinct. As numerous inconspicuous clues were extracted from my memory and verified one by one, the correctness of this hypothesis became increasingly evident.

This world, this world called Final Destination 2, is actually more than just Final Destination 2; it also contains at least one other storyline completely unrelated to the 'Final Destination' element. And in this storyline, there are other male and female protagonists!

I noticed it before! I anticipated it before! But why did I completely forget about it?

Alice recalled the records she had kept during her first investigation of Professor Kessler and his son. At that time, Professor Kessler had deduced the impending catastrophe facing Earth from prophetic drawings left behind by William Doss—the same Dossler who was Lucinda, the revelation from fifty years prior. And what would have happened if she hadn't intervened?

Professor Kessler may not find the angel, but he will certainly investigate the veracity of this prophetic calamity. He has his reasons, and his obsession stems from the fact that his wife died in one of the disasters depicted in the prophetic drawing.

He would definitely investigate the authenticity of this drawing, while most other people wouldn't bother to verify such things. First, he's an astronomy professor, and few people possess his computational abilities. And even fewer people would have such an obsession. Furthermore, the remaining three disasters predicted in the drawing were all located in Massachusetts, making it extremely rare for someone to personally witness and verify them.

[So this was practically tailor-made for him. On this planet where the future is already predetermined, he is the destined protagonist. He will definitely investigate and he will definitely find out. And after confirming the authenticity of the drawing, he will definitely investigate the information about the drawing's creator, Lucinda, and then he will definitely meet Diana!]

Diana's daughter, Abby, is an Awakened One. Professor Kessler's son is also an Awakened One. They are close in age and temperament, so it's easy for them to become acquainted and form a bond. This bond almost certainly guarantees that they will be taken away by the angels at the Last Judgment, and in the new era, become the new Adam and Eve!

"So that's how it is..."

"Besides the unsolvable survival horror film 'Final Destination 2,' there's another story in this world. I'll tentatively call it 'Apocalypse...The Prophet.' In this story called 'The Prophet,' Professor Kessler and Diana are the male and female protagonists, respectively. They will discover the arrival of the Last Judgment and will rush to find a way to escape. But the theme of this story isn't escape, so in the end, they should die in a solar storm, at most breaking free from their obsessions before they die. And after their deaths, the story will end, and this era will come to an end."

"Professor Kessler and Diana are the main characters in the story, but their child is the true protagonist of this era... Well, Adam and Eve are protagonists, aren't they? Damn it... I clearly guessed it back then but overlooked this. If I had paid attention earlier, the situation wouldn't have become so complicated."

She rubbed her head vigorously, her distressed expression and emotions filling her both inside and out.

After meeting the Emperor, she felt something was amiss. The difficulty the God had set for this world was clearly only high for sixteen or seventeen people, but it was far from enough to overcome the full difficulty of Ju-on. Therefore, she and her group shouldn't be facing a difficulty that surpassed Ju-on's in comparison. Even with the unfortunate letter from the God, if she simply ignored it, the God shouldn't have been so determined to destroy them in this world.

But now, even if the quasi-saint Emperor doesn't act, the difficulty of the Doomsday Judgment alone already exceeds the limits of what a typical reincarnation team can handle. At least for the Indian team, which they themselves overturned, there's practically no chance of survival. The Japanese woman might survive, but the others would be certain death. And if the Emperor does act, then that Japanese woman is also doomed.

This is a difficulty that an ordinary reincarnation team could not handle. Facing a quasi-saint orchestrated from behind the scenes, and enduring thousands of cycles of the Doomsday Judgment, should have been a certain death sentence. Therefore, this horror movie world must have other solutions, and those solutions are the Adam and Eve of this new era!

"The optimal solution for navigating this world is to find the male and female protagonists within the seven-day buffer period given by the Supreme God. Then, follow them, gaining their trust while avoiding attacks from angels... or rather, Death. Before the final judgment arrives, find a way to board the light boat that the angels will use to take Adam and Eve away... because angels are merely puppets that act according to fixed rules, they have no emotions and don't care about their companions. So, whether you defeat them or bewitch them, as long as you leave on the light boat and don't stay on the ground to hinder the operation of the Emperor's script, the angels will no longer interfere with us, the reincarnators who weren't originally part of the script."

"...So, the emperor really didn't let her off the hook; she really wanted to wipe them out completely."

During their meeting on the sixth day, at the very end, the Heavenly Prince had told her that as long as she didn't leave Earth, she would only make one final move, and the attack would be limited to a depth of one thousand kilometers below the Earth's surface. The witches initially thought she was holding back, and that they could safely weather this event by hiding at a depth of one thousand kilometers or less. However, they never expected that leaving Earth was the true path to survival, and the Heavenly Prince's words had completely severed that lifeline!

[She certainly can't act arbitrarily in this universe, at least not towards us reincarnators. Otherwise, the difficulty assessment by the Main God would become a joke... It's obvious that once someone reaches the fifth level of the genetic lock, they'll be kicked out of the Main God's space. This means the fourth level of the genetic lock is the strongest a reincarnator can reach. So, with a punch of that strongest power, how could an ordinary reincarnation team possibly survive?]

Therefore, something must have happened that forced the Supreme God to loosen the restrictions on her. Although we don't know exactly what happened, it must be related to our actions on Earth.

“We’ve made a mistake…” Alice covered her face, feeling as if her nerves and spine were frozen. “We shouldn’t have expanded so aggressively from the beginning. Confronting the Doomsday Judgment head-on would have been suicide… We should have acted like a normal Reincarnation Squad, focusing only on our immediate surroundings and gathering intelligence without causing any impact on the outside world.”

The girl was filled with regret, yet along with it, a realization dawned on her. Why had they made such a huge fuss? Why had they desperately gathered every available resource, attempting to withstand the seven horns of this apocalyptic judgment head-on? Hadn't they decided from the beginning to bide their time, hand over the captaincy to Zheng Zha, and simply end this world peacefully?

"Whether it's me, Patchi, Saito Hajime, or even the main personality Zhao Yingkong who vaguely guessed the 'truth'... what is the reason that they are so convinced that 'as long as they know the information sent by the God, they will definitely be silenced by the God'?"

"...We were already part of the Emperor's scheme from the very beginning. And I only realized it now."

"—There's still time!" She suddenly raised her head, her sky-blue eyes once again igniting with fighting spirit.

Just then, she caught sight of a figure. She immediately recognized him as the true master of the divine realm, the living being who had shown her the truth of this world. He had finally appeared before her.

Author's Note:

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

I swear I haven't planted any foreshadowing from the very beginning of this volume, not a single one. All I've been doing is resolving previous foreshadowing. I really wanted to move the plot forward quickly to the end... but if the story is incomplete and disjointed, wouldn't that be worse than a long and tedious story? _(:з」∠)_

Section 23: Similar Yet Different Flowers

It was something that looked like a human, with human limbs, a human figure, and a human outline. But apart from that, all the details of its features and physique were indistinguishable. Perhaps tall, perhaps short, perhaps fat, perhaps thin—its shape was changing every moment, like billions of photographs superimposed and played rapidly. Even with focused observation, no fixed value could be obtained.

The figure was like that, and so was the face. Alice could only barely make out that it was a face, with eyes, a nose, a mouth, and ears. But she couldn't discern the exact arrangement or distribution of the features, let alone define whether it was beautiful or ugly.

His voice was like the chanting of thousands of people in unison, complex and varied, yet containing a strange and eerie rhythm. If an ordinary person heard His voice, their brain would instantly overload and burn out from receiving too much information. No, perhaps they wouldn't even need to hear His voice; just seeing His appearance would cause their thinking to fall into a vicious cycle, driven by a subconscious desire to obtain a fixed value to define and categorize Him, thus driving them to madness.

Without a doubt, this is the true god. The only extraordinary being that Alice had ever encountered in the past, remaining in the world before she entered the cycle of reincarnation.

Mortals cannot see a true god unless the true god deliberately compresses his power or even prepares a vessel for his descent. Otherwise, his head will explode the moment he makes contact with him. Even if he is lucky enough not to explode, becoming a madman is the best outcome.

Alice is no ordinary mortal—although she hasn't reached the realm of the extraordinary or unlocked the fourth-order genetic lock, she certainly isn't an ordinary mortal. Moreover, she isn't entirely ignorant about these extraordinary beings; at least, she knows how to control her volatile thoughts and channel them to a suitable frequency, thus establishing the possibility of communication with them.

She thus heard His voice clearly.

To be precise, it wasn't sound, but rather some kind of abstract message directly transmitted to the brain. These messages arranged countless wondrous patterns and decorations, which then combined to form a series of continuous concepts.

At the beginning of the era, the very first scene recorded in all her vision appeared.

There were originally no gods in this world, and this planet was originally nothing special. History only flows once, and at the end of history is not destruction. Without external interference or obstruction, the myriad races on earth lived freely. Ancient apes evolved into humans, and humans built civilizations, from slave societies to feudal times, from dynastic struggles to the rise of industry, from capitalism to world wars. Civilization developed freely without any hindrance, advancing step by step forward.

Until one day, a white-haired woman with a pair of white wings fell from somewhere in the void, covered in wounds, and landed in an ordinary forest. She was found by a girl who lived alone in the forest, who took her home to treat and recuperate her.

The white-haired woman was badly injured. Even though the wounds on her body had healed, the boiling energy, rules, and a whole host of things that couldn't even leave a record refused to let her make a single movement, not even blinking.

However, this is actually not a big deal. The life level of this white-haired woman has long surpassed that of all living things on this planet and even within hundreds of thousands of light-years. She could survive even if thrown into the sun, and her injuries would heal sooner or later. All that's needed is time, and that time won't be very long for her.

So, nothing happened after that. The world continued to turn, the future continued to flow, and civilizations outside gradually developed. Many, many years passed after the end of the world war, and it wasn't until the twenty-first century arrived and mortal civilization began to touch the outer stars that the woman's injuries showed no improvement.

The woman with white hair will not grow old, nor will she die. But the girl who brought her back from the forest and took care of her was just an ordinary mortal. In this ordinary, mundane world, without miracles or magic, she was destined to grow up, grow old, and die like an ordinary girl.

The girl seemed to harbor some special affection for this angel who had descended from heaven. For sixty years, until her death, she remained in the small house deep in the forest, caring for this white angel who could neither move nor speak, and whose eyes never blinked. She spoke to her many times, but until her death, she received not a single word in response.

And so, the girl died.

Many years later, due to resource conflicts, a world war broke out on Earth, with nuclear weapons as the primary means of attack. The devastating energy destroyed human civilization on the surface, leaving only a few remnants of humanity to eke out a living on the legacy of their ancestors.

Perhaps because the legacy of the old era was relatively abundant, centuries later, after the nuclear winter ended, humanity, having long forgotten the past, built a new civilization amidst the ruins. This civilization developed rapidly, advancing at breakneck speed. Before long, they returned to a time shortly after the end of World War I. Then, at this very moment, a young girl who looked exactly like the girl from before discovered the white-haired woman who hadn't recovered after a thousand years. Just as before, she took her back to her home and cared for her as she had a thousand years ago.

Sixty years passed, and the second girl died as well. The white-haired woman still hadn't recovered from her injuries, and several hundred years later, a meteorite carrying some kind of terrible alien virus fell from the sky, destroying the nascent Second Era civilization.

The third era began. Perhaps due to viral modifications, the cellular structure of humanity in this era differed from previous ones. They could sense and manipulate free-floating energy in the world and utilize it. For this reason, the civilization of the third era gravitated towards magic rather than the pure technology of the previous era. The legacy of the previous era could not provide sufficient assistance, so it took nearly three thousand years for humanity to return to a world where civilization was spread across the globe, on the verge of a world war threatening the void. And at this time, a third girl appeared in this world, bearing the same appearance as the previous two.

This time, the girl is a magician skilled in manipulating puppets. She discovers a white-haired woman in an ancient ruin, and unlike the previous two generations, this girl possesses extraordinary potential, able to sense the still-turbulent power within the white-haired woman. She brings the woman back to her research institute and spends a long time helping the woman calm the boiling energy within her—she succeeds, and she fails. Her success lies in finally finding the right strategy: channeling the seemingly endless boiling energy within the white-haired woman into puppets. While creating extraordinary puppets resembling angels, the boiling energy gradually diminishes, albeit negligibly. But little by little, it accumulates, eventually resolving the woman's predicament.

Her failure lay in the fact that she was going to die.

The information that 'an ageless angel is hidden within the Puppeteer's mage tower' was leaked for some unknown reason, resulting in many powerful forces in the world pressuring her to hand over the 'angel'. She refused, and so war broke out.

The war began quickly, lasted short, and ended just as swiftly. No matter how gifted the puppeteer, she was still just a person; without crossing the threshold of the extraordinary, she was destined to be defeated. She endured for seven days, and on the seventh day at dusk, she used a self-destructive forbidden spell to curse all living things around the mage tower. Dragging her riddled body back to her laboratory, she touched the angel's cheek one last time before her body completely crumbled into dust, her soul becoming fuel to sustain the curse that killed all living things around the mage tower.

That area thus became a forbidden zone, and no one was allowed to set foot there for decades afterward. Decades later, the planet's inhabitants were wiped out by a failed magical ritual before they could even venture into space.

The third era has ended. Though the puppeteer is dead, before her death she had arranged for the automated mechanisms within the magic tower to continuously create puppets and channel the white-haired woman's out-of-control power into them. While the stored resources were exhausted within a few decades, even with humanity extinct, her automated magical mechanisms for resource gathering remained unhindered.

And so, many, many more years passed, perhaps over a thousand. The sealed angels finally regained their most basic abilities. However, as early as the third year after the destruction of the world, the puppeteer's soul had already been completely consumed. Moreover, the extinction brought about by this uncontrolled magical energy was a complete and thorough annihilation; no remnants of the previous era remained, so naturally, a fourth era would not arrive.

What were the white-haired woman's true feelings for those three girls who shared the same appearance and the same affection for her? There were no records on this planet, and not a single thought of hers would be revealed without her permission. The only known fact is that after regaining her power, she used it to rebuild civilization, orchestrating everything behind the scenes according to the historical development of the first era, and then, in the sixtieth year after the end of the world war, completely erasing everything. She let history repeat itself in the same way.

One era, ten eras, one hundred eras.

That girl never appeared in this universe a fourth time. And from the beginning of the hundredth era, the white-haired woman would sometimes disappear, and then soon return with someone who had the same appearance as that girl, but whose whole body was filled with an otherworldly aura.

She tried to recreate the very first scene of the first era, but no matter what she did, even if she modified the girl's memories, personality, habits, and thoughts to be exactly the same as the original girl, the person who ultimately appeared beside her was no longer the original one. No matter how similar they are, a similar flower is ultimately not the original flower.

So she killed them. Whether they were brought back from another world or created by her own hands, all the girls who had been with her for years, months, or days were killed by her without exception, crushed into dust, leaving not even a trace of a quark in this world. And about two hundred epochs later, she left this planet completely, and this time, she never returned.

She left, but the angels she left behind continued to carry out her original commands. Civilizations on the planet were created and destroyed time and again. Countless histories piled up, gaining depth, and settled in the mantle, gradually forming a nascent life form composed of information—many planets had such nascent life forms, but they remained nascent until their stars withered and collapsed. This planet was no exception, until the end of the third thousandth era, when a puppeteer with the same face as the three girls ventured into the mantle, retracing history, examining history, and in this process of continuous examination and descent, life on the planet obtained the first driving force for its incubation.

Until now.

“So I created a god.” Alice looked at her hands, a half-smile on her face. “In that case, you must be Gaia of this planet.”

The life form before her expressed a message of agreement.

"Then I roughly understand the whole story. This really is an innocent disaster. I should have gotten plastic surgery and changed my name before coming to this world. In the end, the culprit is actually because I have this face?"

She lowered her eyes, but quickly opened them again.

“No, that’s not it.” She shook her head gently. The words the Emperor had emphasized earlier surfaced in her mind—'You are her, because you and she are both counterfeit goods, lacking uniqueness. Both are mass-produced items that can be destroyed or created at will.'

Before we knew the origin of everything, this might have been the truth. But now that we know the origin and the actions of the emperor, this statement seems so false.

The more she emphasized it, the more it showed how much she cared. All she ever wanted was the original one, or those three girls. Anything that appeared later, no matter how similar, was merely an imposter. Given her ability to travel to other worlds and abduct counterparts from external or pseudo-canonical worlds, and her background of later hooking up with a boss who could trade on equal footing with the main god, the possibility that she couldn't resurrect a mortal who hadn't yet reached the transcendent realm... was undoubtedly extremely low.

Therefore, there is only one answer.

"That girl... was a non-existent imposter from the very beginning."

Author's Note:

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

Working hard to finish up the thread... I swear I didn't create any plot holes today _(:з」∠)_

Chapter Twenty-Four: Dreams Never Come True

There are only two kinds of people in this world who are impossible to resurrect from the dead, even beings at the level of gods may be helpless. The first kind are those who are not yet dead, and the second kind are those who do not exist.

The emperor in this world watched that girl die before her eyes; given her keen eyesight, it's highly unlikely she wasn't completely dead. Therefore, the first possibility is ruled out, making the second extremely likely.

[A person who doesn't exist... The Empress herself probably knows that too.]

The records detail everything the Emperor encountered during that first era, and the more detailed the account, the clearer the problems become. The fourth stage of the gene lock is that of a transcendent being. From Zhang Jie, we learn that reaching the middle of the fourth stage requires overcoming inner demons and completely unifying one's spiritual will to establish the foundation for immortality. The Emperor had undoubtedly surpassed that level at that time. So, how could an ordinary girl possibly move her heart?

In the eyes of extraordinary beings, mortal objects are as fragile and insignificant as dust. Even Alice herself, when fully focused and with all her abilities activated, could distinguish the fine dirt, oil, and even parasites on the skin of 'ordinary beautiful girls' with her eyesight alone. Even if she tried not to look, her nose could distinguish urea, lactic acid, and other substances in the sweat of ordinary people, no matter how much perfume they wore.

She found it hard to imagine that a transcendent being like the Emperor could feel any attraction to something so... filthy and smelly. But she also knew that perhaps she was just being naive. After all, she didn't possess a truly immortal heart, and naturally, she couldn't perceive mortals in the same way that transcendent beings did. Perhaps, in the eyes of a being at the Emperor's level, there was no difference between a beautiful woman and a parasite.

Alright, let's leave aside the Emperor's affairs for now. So, what's the story with that girl? A love affair spanning three lifetimes sounds romantic, but if we delve deeper, there are things hidden behind it that are worth pondering.

Sixty years of unwavering devotion is already quite bizarre. If this could be explained as a coincidence or a special talent, then the other girl in the second era who waited for the emperor for sixty years could only be described as too deliberate and blatant. As for the third one... it's absolutely impossible that there wasn't a mastermind behind it all.

Therefore, considering the strange alternation of the three eras, the timing of the girl's appearance, and the fact that the fourth era after the extinction of humanity had not yet arrived, along with Alice's previous knowledge that the existence of the fourth stage of the gene lock could suppress destiny and achieve immortality, the whole story became clear to her.

“Long ago, in the later part of the first era, there should have been a god in this world—no, something that came close to but did not reach, something on the verge of transcendence but not quite… something that might not even have reached that level. Based on my speculation, this thing was very likely the aggregate of human civilization's general consciousness… something like Alaya.” Alice looked at the extraordinary being before her and asked with certainty.

—The living creatures gave an affirmative answer.

"Really? That makes much more sense," Alice thought, lowering her eyes.