Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

The base is rapidly transforming into a city. If Zheng Zha could still see many open-air production lines and workers when he set off yesterday, today he can see less than thirty percent of that number—the number of people hasn't decreased, but the sheer number of machines and factories has increased, obscuring them below. And if he waits until tomorrow, when he stands on that stage again, he probably won't see a single exposed worker in his field of vision… the mechanical structures might even be level with the stage itself.

After all, before he set off, the Lop Nur base where Patchouli was located was still a platform suspended in the air. When she returned, all she saw was the central tower that had been connected to the ground—although the internal structure was the same as before, the change in appearance was enough to make anyone astonished.

“Alice,” Patchouli said softly, her eyes closed, listening to the sounds of the machinery operating. “To build a city from nothing, a city that may very well become the cradle of the next era of civilization. Hundreds of millions of people toiling under our will, billions of warriors obeying our commands. Doesn’t that… feel a bit like being a king?”

“Don’t think like that, Patchouli. We can’t be kings. We can be witches, hermits, sages, prophets. But heroes and kings are forever out of our reach. Because we can’t bear the burdens that heroes must bear. Those hopes, those prayers, the blood and tears of billions of lives… We can’t bear them, so even if we can uphold the rituals of kingship, we ourselves can’t be kings.”

"Is that so..." Patchouli's voice was as soft as a dream. "I... wanted to try harder."

"Don't dwell on things you can't do."

"Ah."

"........."

"........."

Alice?

"Yes?"

Are you feeling nervous?

"...a little bit."

"Me too."

"What should we do then?"

"do not know."

"Think of a way?"

"I don't want to think about it."

Patchouli stretched and suddenly jumped out of Alice's arms. She lightly touched the air with her toes and drifted down into the steel city, following the trajectory of the air currents.

Come and chase me.

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

Today, Jiuyuan is also happily cultivating immortality...

—After finishing typing, I used the newly created charm to pull from the Goddess Pool and got Rin (I suspect I'm a fake 9).

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Houtu

Time sometimes passes slowly, and sometimes it flies by very quickly. There are two days left until the end of the twelve-day deadline set by the main god, and in this rare period of leisure, the time available for relaxation is short.

After some playful banter, the two parted ways again. While the core of the plan remained unchanged, many miscellaneous tasks and details still needed to be addressed. They couldn't afford to be complacent until they had resolved them all.

Patchouli returned to the central control tower, where she allocated resources to further upgrade the base beneath her feet and prepare defenses for the Fifth Horn. Alice, on the other hand, left the tower and headed towards the now-silent border of the battlefield.

She has a promise to keep, and now is the time to fulfill it.

"Zhao, you've been watching for so long, it's time to come out." She said softly to the air beside her, circling above the border battlefield as she spoke. Gazing at the land that had been bombarded by artillery fire and energy beams, resembling lunar craters, she immediately unleashed a series of soul-suppressing spells around herself.

Zhao Yingkong's figure quietly appeared about three meters to her side.

"How did you find me?" The assassin girl raised an eyebrow, asking with some confusion, "I thought I had honed my skills in concealing my presence to the extreme. The area I was just sneaking in was even a spatial rift that was completely cut off from reality. Logically speaking, all sound, light, heat, and electrical signals should have been cut off, and even the causal connection should no longer exist."

"You have no reason to be able to find me."

“I didn’t see you.” Alice glanced at her. “I just felt that at this point, you should have come to me to keep your promise.”

"And, didn't you return the body to your alternate personality?"

“I see. Since it was a miscalculation, I have nothing to say. After all, this is hardly my forte.” The main personality, Zhao Yingkong, shrugged. “As for control of the body… until half an hour ago, this belonged to my alternate personality. Honestly, my alternate personality actually had feelings for Captain Zheng Zha that went beyond camaraderie. I originally planned to take back control yesterday, but she insisted on holding on until after Zheng Zha left before handing over the body to me… I’m a bit helpless.”

"...You seem to be happy about this?"

"I am enough for my brother to love me. Although my alternate personality is still me, her essence shows signs of being separated from mine. If I fail, she will not disappear, but will live on in my place in this body. If I succeed, I will exchange a human body from the Supreme God to accommodate her thoughts. She is more like my sister than my alter ego, and I will naturally not mind my sister seeking her own happiness."

“Poor Zheng Zha.” Alice pursed her lips, squeezing out a few crocodile tears from the corners of her eyes. “I hope he can afford the price of his philandering.”

“I think he can afford it, as long as he’s willing to pay,” the main personality, Zhao Yingkong, replied. “Alright, let’s not worry about these trivial matters anymore. Are you going to keep your promise and help me overcome the inner demons of the fourth stage of the gene lock? Now?”

"Now."

"here?"

"here."

“What should we do? Like we planned before… live on the brink of death? I don’t think there are any enemies around here who can put enough pressure on me.” She carefully examined Alice. “You seem to have gotten stronger again. Are you about to reach the third stage of the gene lock? But even in this state, it’s impossible for you to pose a threat to me.”

"Well, without prior preparation, I certainly can't hurt you in this position. So, I've made some changes to the previous plan. Because I've gathered a lot of information underground these past few days, what I'm going to do now is a more superior and reliable way to contact the inner demon than the previous strategy."

Alice stretched out her hand and beckoned to the ground. The next moment, a fierce wind swept across the desolate border battlefield. Cold and chilling, countless shadowy humanoid figures roared and howled in the wind. The roar of artillery fire and the trembling sound of particle beams piercing the air simultaneously reached their ears. In just a few seconds, this desolate border battlefield, where not even a single screw remained, had been picked up by the cleaning robots, transformed into a truly desolate ghost town!

“Let me ask you, Zhao.” Alice stretched out her hand and pressed down, causing the countless swaying, shrieking ghostly figures to freeze abruptly, as if trapped insects in amber, unable to move. “Do you know how to advance from the third to the fourth stage of the genetic lock?”

"You just get the hang of it as you practice; I haven't paid much attention to these details."

“Yes, you unlocked the fourth-tier gene lock on Earth, where there are no threats whatsoever, while you were training. That’s why you’re here now.” Alice nodded. “Because your fourth-tier power was forcibly propped up by the genes and residual power of that nameless assassin, you have no idea how to advance from the third to the fourth tier. For you, that barrier simply doesn’t exist.”

"………………" Zhao Yingkong was silent, but after a few seconds, the silence turned into a slightly embarrassed and angry expression.

"So you know that?" she countered. "You haven't even reached the third stage of the gene lock."

“I haven’t reached the third stage yet, but that doesn’t mean I’m completely ignorant of future information,” Alice replied. “After leaving Greece, I gained some insights, and from those insights, I compiled information on how to advance from the third stage of the genetic lock to the fourth stage.”

She stretched out her hand and began weaving the spell she would need to use later in mid-air.

"It's actually quite simple, because the gene lock is essentially just a state of being, representing the organism's control over its own body. The first level is the power to control every limb, the second level is the power to control every muscle, the third level is the power to control every neuron in the brain, and the fourth level is the power to control every segment within the gene."

“From the outside in, from the shallow to the deep, we gradually explore and master it. That’s what the Gene Lock is.” She gently clenched her other fist and slowly tightened it. “Patch and I are actually both at the third-tier limit level. We can do what the third tier can do, but the efficiency, methods, and systems are different. The main god only recognizes our enhancements, not our level. It just takes time and opportunity to cultivate the Gene Lock.”

"Once I unlock the first stage of my genetic lock, unlocking the third stage will be just a matter of time. All that's needed is time to accumulate, and it is precisely because of this that I can confirm how to obtain the fourth stage of extraordinary power."

Alice said, scattering her hands to unleash the woven spell, creating intricate patterns around the two of them. These patterns were an aggregation of several mythological concepts of the underworld—Zhao Yingkong recognized some of them, but couldn't understand their meaning.

The witch didn't intend for her to understand it either.

“To reach the fourth stage, you need to awaken every single cell in your body and then integrate them all into one, so that there is only one voice within your body. In other words, you must integrate the subtle, fragmented thoughts of sixty trillion individual cells and form a single collective. From then on, your thinking will no longer be altered by external influences; you will become a unique, unreplicable, independent being, not something that can be easily created with a cloning machine.” Alice turned her head to look at Zhao Yingkong. “What do you think this fourth stage I’m describing is like?”

"...Alaya. Alaya with self-awareness."

“Yes, that’s right,” Alice replied. “Your fourth stage was forcibly created. You haven’t experienced the stage of integrating all the internal noise and fully grasping the power in your own hands. So you are only an incomplete fourth stage. Even with the power of that nameless assassin as an aid, achieving near-fourth-stage instantaneous destructive power… your essence is still broken. Therefore, you have no chance of overcoming your inner demons, no chance of defeating the monster lurking deep within your genes.”

"What I need to do now is to help you fill in the gaps in your experience at this stage, to give you a chance to start over and repeat the breakthrough process from the third to the fourth stage with your own strength and will. To help you go from incomplete to complete."

"...What should I do?" Zhao Yingkong, the main personality, asked in a deep voice, "What do you plan to do?"

"This is a border battlefield, where millions of lives have been buried in the past few days. In those days, six billion living people and tens of trillions of lives on this planet perished in the final judgment. I can use this border battlefield as the core of the ritual to awaken the scattered thoughts of those hundreds of trillions of dead souls, and then infuse them all into your body, letting them occupy every cell in your body, giving rise to tens of trillions of independent consciousnesses. And what you have to do is to integrate them into one."

"Your remaining embers are a very effective countermeasure, and since you've actually reached the fourth level, this will be a plan with a high success rate. Of course, there's also the possibility of failure, and the consequences of failure... I think you can imagine."

She said, and she wasn't worried at all that Zhao Yingkong would refuse.

"It'll just turn me into a raging beast." Zhao Yingkong shrugged, a relaxed expression she didn't usually show. "However... your plan sounds somewhat reasonable. So... I'll cooperate with you."

"That's good." Alice raised her hand, and in the next instant, the countless mangled figures on the battlefield came back to life. They screamed, emitting terrifying cries, and their bodies, in unison, swirled in the air as Alice turned her finger, transforming into a massive black vortex. Within seconds, this vortex rapidly expanded outward, instantly forming a towering, ghostly tornado!

She gestured for us to come in.

"One last question for you, Miss Alice." Before stepping into the tornado, Zhao Yingkong suddenly turned around and asked Alice a question.

"Please feel free to speak."

"Since this is a method you developed, why don't you use it to become a fourth-tier cultivator yourself? Power is only truly reliable when it's in your own hands, don't you think so?"

"...You should have overheard our conversation half an hour ago when Patchi and I were on the Central Tower."

“Okay, I admit that stealthily eavesdropping isn’t a good habit. I apologize for that.” The main personality, Zhao Yingkong, twitched her lips as she replied. “But what does that have to do with the question I asked?”

“I said that Patchouli and I could never become kings. Because we cannot bear the expectations, hopes, and endless blood and tears of all living beings. I thought you would understand why I could not use this method to reach the extraordinary after hearing this… It seems I was wrong.”

"...I just don't like to use my brain much."

“Alright, then I’ll tell you why.” Alice sighed deeply. “Because it’s fate, it’s cause and effect, and when I accept this power, I’m also affected by it. The desire of all living beings to survive and develop will influence my thinking. Patchouli can’t bear it because her power attribute is not suitable for these curse-like things. As for me… I don’t want to get entangled in these causes and effects.”

"The reason I can't bear those burdens isn't because I can't, but because I don't want to. If I achieve my goals by relying on the will of all living beings, even if I become extraordinary, I will inevitably be bound by this destiny and karma. And my actions will be subtly changed by this, and I will... prioritize the preservation of civilization in this world. If I accept this destiny."

Zhao Ying raised an eyebrow.

“It doesn’t seem like a big deal,” she said. “If it’s a deal of this magnitude, I think it’s acceptable. After all, we were originally planning to maintain the existence of this world, and if we fail, we’ll be finished. And on that basis, isn’t more power necessary?”

“You’re right,” Alice nodded. “But I can’t tolerate this happening.”

“My heart is too small to hold anything more than Patty. If I had to choose between the survival of a world and Patty’s safety, I would choose the latter without hesitation. And I don’t want to change that mindset.”

“I can’t tolerate it.” The girl clenched her fists tightly. “I can’t tolerate my heart changing, I can’t tolerate becoming something that puts Patsy second… so this kind of ritual is meaningless to me, I will never use it. Even if I’m going to die the next second, it’s the same!”

A few seconds of silence fell over the air.

"...You really are a strange person." The dominant personality, Zhao Yingkong, looked at Alice quietly, as if she had only truly recognized this person in front of her at this moment. She then turned her head, and this time, her steps toward the Ghost Tornado did not falter.

The next moment, her figure vanished into the wraith. A few seconds later, a flame rose from within the tornado formed by the wraith. The flame rapidly expanded and churned outward, instantly covering a third of the wraith.

The ceremony began.

Alice turned her gaze to the vast distance. She seemed to see the endless murmurs of the dead drawn in by the vortex of the ritual, converging here until they were burned away by the flames, or until the flames were extinguished. But whatever the outcome, it would be beneficial to Alice.

"Thus, the dead souls find peace. They are purified in the flames and then redistributed in the new era."

"Therefore, 'Houtu' established 'reincarnation'."

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

I don't know if there will be a next section. I'm thinking of going to bed early tonight. _(:з」∠)_

Even if there's a second quarter, it definitely won't be as long as a regular quarter _(:з」∠)_

Section 30, Day 12

Zhao Yingkong's victory or defeat in the psychological war, and the final outcome, are only within her control. All Alice can do is maintain the ritual and establish a barrier in the wasteland of this border battlefield to block the view of others and the angels, in order to prevent...unexpected things from happening.

I'm not afraid of death, nor am I afraid of failure; I'm only afraid of losing Patchouli.

Alice thought to herself as she gently pressed her chest, feeling the rhythmic beating of the organ inside her.

What is the purpose of this heartbeat?

The answer speaks for itself.