Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

“Inner demons always like to claim themselves as their true form. But unfortunately…” Luo Ye raised her hand, and the entire world trembled slightly in response to her will. “My body responds to my will, and you, this imposter who calls yourself Alice Margot Lloyd, are nothing but an empty shell. Although I have often made foolish mistakes in the past, I haven’t been so foolish as to be so ignorant of my own heart and soul—if you just want to stall for time, I can talk to you for another five minutes, but I can tell you with certainty that even if I do nothing in these five minutes, you will not be able to take control of my body from me.”

Alice raised an eyebrow.

She was indeed secretly trying to communicate with this world and reclaim her creator's authority. However, the reality was exactly as Luo Ye had said: the extraordinary body that constructed this bubble world responded to her with complete silence—she couldn't even project her information into this world; the world rejected her, offering no response whatsoever. It was as if even the most skilled hacker couldn't breach a true 'firewall' designed to prevent flames from burning.

The electronic virus couldn't break through a solid wall made of cement and bricks. However, she knew she still needed to stall for time—Patchouli's silence didn't mean she hadn't done anything, and the guy on the other side might also be trying to stall for time, but at least for now, it would be extremely unwise to make a rash move when the enemy was unclear.

"...You were secretly manipulating things during the first five eras, weren't you?"

"It's just a means to counter your inner demon," Luo Ye shrugged, answering nonchalantly. "I'm human, so naturally I should stand on the side of humanity, without having to consider the thoughts of those messy alien races. Even if I created a world, mortals should be the protagonists. If I hadn't discovered that I was so biased towards those demons and monsters who weren't mortals in my creation, I wouldn't have woken up so easily. I have to thank you, my inner demon, for that. If you hadn't been so determined to go against the tide of humanity, I wouldn't have realized that my body had already been taken over by my inner demon. But luckily, I reacted quickly, and your thinking isn't exactly sharp."

"I detached myself from my body and infiltrated this world, secretly guiding its development through each era from its shadow. Ah, you guessed it right, since Atlantis, all the remaining transmigrators have been deliberately guided by me. I calculated the location of the void within the world's membrane, intentionally leaving flaws in the coordinates of specific airspaces to leak information about this bubble world into the Humanity's Destiny. Sure enough, the transmigration agency attached to the Humanity's Destiny prepared suitable personnel for me. And it was through this gradual accumulation of power that I was able to succeed at this moment and regain control of my body."

"Those transmigrators of the Fifth Era were also my doing. I must admit, the covenant between humans and gods you designed was quite attractive. Even the transmigration organization itself agreed to your conditions, sending a peaceful transmigration civilization to be your followers. But unfortunately, creating a group of counterfeit transmigrators with fabricated memories wasn't difficult for me. With me pulling the strings behind the scenes, it wouldn't be hard for my pawns to overthrow your divine authority. Unfortunately, the sealing container I prepared when you descended wasn't fully effective, so it could only temporarily interfere with your creator's authority and not completely sever it. Therefore, none of the arrangements I made at that time were activated. But now..."

Luo Ye clenched her fist gently.

"Everything is already under my control, and I think this long period of trying should be enough for you to give up. This world is still in my hands, and all your efforts are in vain."

Alice's heart skipped a beat, and she soon sensed a response from another heartbeat beside her, in sync with the rhythm.

“You know, villains die from talking too much,” Alice said softly. “Did you think you had everything under control?”

“Of course,” Luo Ye replied. “Although I don’t know why you’ve waited so long to talk to me, while you were stalling for time, I’ve already gained complete control over this body and this world. If you had gone all out from the beginning, I would have had a 20-30% chance of failing. But now that chance is only 2-3%, and it will soon reach zero!”

Alice glanced at Patchouli.

The next moment, in the outer world, on the black tower, the 'cocoon' that was encasing Patchouli suddenly burst open!

Section 69, Gospel II

The sky is collapsing.

The static bubble world is collapsing little by little from the outside in. Time, space, matter, energy... the four dimensions that make up everything are shattered, and destruction and pain will soon descend upon the world.

Alice wouldn't contact Chu Xuan for no reason, much less seek out Patchouli, who also bore a heavy responsibility, for a pointless conversation that would only reveal her weakness—after all, she was a superhuman being, and she knew exactly what she was doing. She certainly wouldn't seek out someone whose life level was a level lower than hers to bolster her confidence—even if those two superhuman beings were more intelligent and had a higher way of thinking than her.

As the world collapsed, the Creator, who governs all things, naturally bore the brunt. Almost simultaneously with the world's transition from extreme stillness to extreme motion, countless cracks appeared on Luo Ye's body, from which a torrent of frenzied energy and particles surged forth, and her limbs and form shattered inch by inch, spurting out bright red blood.

Patchouli's form vanished from the bubble world—undoubtedly, she had now reached the outside world and orchestrated this massive explosion. Her cooperation with Alice required no words, not even expressions or thoughts. The mere sight of each other was enough for them to instinctively weave together plans, a level of self-awareness clearly beyond Luo Ye's comprehension.

"Not bad." A twisted smile appeared on Luo Ye's lips. Her shattered form vanished in an instant, reappearing beside Alice the next moment. Though her fist was incomplete, with torn skin and broken knuckles, it still unleashed a devastating surge of energy when she swung it with all her might!

"I underestimated you." Alice narrowly dodged her punch, the terrifying surge of energy leaving several bloody gashes on Alice's cheek. Several puppet strings suddenly extended, instantly slicing Luo Ye's missed punch and the arm it was connected to into several bloody pieces. The puppet strings then trembled, shattering the severed bone and flesh into a pool of bloody foam!

'boom----!!!!'

The disintegrating blood foam transformed into deuterium and tritium in mid-air, triggering a fusion reaction that created a brilliant, rising sun! Endless light and heat radiated outwards, instantly turning the world the two had stood on into scorched earth. Alice's form, however, had long since departed the island, reappearing far beyond the blast radius!

She raised her hand, and from the collapsing heavens and earth, the water, fire, and wind that had sprung from beyond the heavens descended violently in the direction of her finger, heading towards the rising sun. The still-forming sun was instantly swallowed by a darkness deeper than eternal night. And the next moment, another brilliant light emerged from the darkness.

Hundreds of kilometers, traversed in a single step.

With her right arm gone, Luo Ye unleashed a horizontal slash, instantly shattering the stable and unstable space within a hundred kilometers in front of her. Boundless radiance erupted from the rift in the world's outer form, evaporating the entire celestial realm, including Alice's—naturally, Alice's form had already detached from there, and her reconstructed body appeared in another region, instantly holding another mass of profound darkness in her hands. And endless curses and hatred then surged forth from the rift in the world.

“All the hatred and resentment will be directed at you.” Alice whispered. “The countless people and non-people who have died because of you deserve retribution at this moment, and you will also pay the price for your actions.”

The moment she finished speaking, a series of massive explosions erupted within Luo Ye's body, who had just regained her footing. More blood gushed from the cracks in her limbs. Her mangled and battered body was then plunged into an even worse state.

Her well-tailored suit was torn in countless places, one sleeve and one pant leg were broken off, and only half of the lens remained on her old-fashioned black-rimmed glasses. One of her eyes was covered by cursed darkness, while the other was filled with bloodshot veins of red and black.

The world is collapsing further.

What surged from the rifts in the void was no longer light, but a void storm constructed of chaos and disorder. The disordered rules, in the instant of their arrival, transformed thousands of kilometers of ocean into writhing flesh and blood, from which endless steel and thorns sprang forth, and from the thorns grew pure white datura flowers. Pollen fell, and the matter it touched became irregular crystals and moving puppets, then vanished completely in the swirling light and darkness, leaving not a trace behind.

Luo Ye stopped making any further moves.

"What a pity, I couldn't kill you this time either." She looked at her shattered right arm and broken left leg, frowned slightly, and her damaged body returned to its original state as if time had reversed. The many cracks on her body disappeared at the same time, and her torn black suit and glasses were restored to their original shapes.

Her body was practically destroyed; only her exterior was being repaired. Revealing this state signified that she had given up the will to continue fighting. And theoretically, the battle could now be declared over.

"What, no longer referring to yourself as the original body?" A smile played on Alice's lips—she had the right to smile, for she had already won this battle. Or rather, once she realized the anomaly in the world and contacted Chu Xuan and Patchouli before the Sixth Era began, this victory was already in her grasp—any attempt by Luo Ye was merely a futile effort; her only chance of winning was to take a risky strike when Alice descended in the Fifth Era. However, that sole opportunity was no longer available to her.

“There’s no need to call myself that. I am who I am.” Luo Ye glanced at Alice indifferently. “The memories in my mind, the knowledge I have learned, and the will I retain have never changed from the beginning, and they will not change in the future. This defeat was my miscalculation, but this is not the time for a final battle—you cannot kill me before the Light of the Mind is complete, and the outcome of the next battle may not be the same as it is now.”

"Say what you will, you can't change the fact that Luo Ye is already dead." Alice shrugged, looking at her with an air of "what can you do about it?" She gazed at the collapsing traces on the horizon and the orderly expanding chaotic tide. Although she felt regret for the bubble world, there was no trace of remorse in her thoughts. "You were just my past life, and the me in this life is the real me."

"A past life?" Luo Ye couldn't help but chuckle. "Do you even know what a past life is? I only become a past life when I die. And do you even know what death means?"

"When you're a mortal, having your head chopped off means you're dead."

"When a woman is a witch, she is considered dead only when her soul is burned."

"Now that I am a reincarnator, death needs to completely erase me from the sea of ​​information."

She shook her head.

"Perhaps I really was trampled to death by people in traffic jams in the past, but as my level of life increases, the definition of death also changes. Neither I nor you, who you consider yourself, have crossed the abyss of death more than once or twice, yet you still haven't realized it?"

“Luo Ye never died; she simply changed. The part of me that didn’t want to change is me, while the part that changed is you. I am the origin, the source, and that is naturally the true essence of Luo Ye. As for you… you are nothing more than meaningless remnants of accumulated information.”

Alice's lips twitched.

"It's nothing but the paradox of the Ship of Argonauts. If you want to fool me with this kind of trick, you'd better go and learn some eloquence from Merlin for a hundred years. The current me is Alice. And Luo Ye is just the part I discarded."

“Stubborn to the end.” Luo Ye shook his head. “Fine, in the end everything will be decided by fists anyway. Language is meaningless without power as its support.”

She glanced at the sky, which was already half-collapsed, and suddenly asked, "Let me ask you a question, Alice. Do you believe that humanity is the noblest and most perfect species in this multiverse? Shouldn't humanity be supreme?"

“I don’t think so,” Alice replied. “It is precisely because humans are not the noblest that they can become nobler. It is precisely because humans are imperfect that they can continue to strive for perfection. Not being supreme means that there is still a path to walk above, rather than standing at the top of the world, sword in hand, looking around in bewilderment.”

“…So that’s what you think. No wonder you and I are like oil and water. It also means you’re destined to be like oil and water with 'them'.” Luo Ye closed her eyes, and the next moment, a powerful energy reaction erupted from within her body once again. “So be it.”

She reached out her hand and grasped the sky as Alice assumed a defensive stance. The next moment, the shattered world began to flow backward!

Chaos was banished, and the void returned to calm. The ravaged heaven and earth returned to their original state, and the land and sea were restored to wholeness. In an instant, the entire world regressed nearly ten minutes!

Luo Ye's form gradually collapsed, leaving only his last words lingering in Alice's ear.

"Start the seventh era according to your own will. This time there will be no variables or obstacles. There will be no transmigrators or other strange things interfering. My world will be in your care until the Light of the Mind is completed, and when we meet again, I will take back my possessions."

Her voice gradually faded, and with a final echo, all traces she left in this world vanished completely.

"Goodbye, you who call yourself Alice..."

The battle is completely over.

Section 70, Gospels III

Watching Luo Ye's form crumble and disappear bit by bit, Alice made no unnecessary movements. She knew that Luo Ye had completely failed this time, and she also knew that even if she won this time, she wouldn't be able to do anything to Luo Ye.

Because Luo Ye is herself, a part of her past that she doesn't want to change, deep within her heart. Just as everyone has a child within them that never grows up, Alice also has a small corner in her heart that yearns for the past and is unwilling to change. However, unlike others, whose small corner remains just a small corner, hers has become a demon in her heart.

She couldn't defeat Luo Ye, just as Luo Ye couldn't defeat her. The outcome between them merely signified a shift in the dominant consciousness and behavioral patterns, without any fundamental change—if Luo Ye had ultimately won the previous battle, Alice Margotrovid leaving here would not have been fundamentally different from before.

This individual's feelings for Patchouli will not change, nor will her bond with the Central Continent Team. The only possible change is that she might change her name back to Luo Ye, and in the new cycle of reincarnation, she might be more ruthless towards the non-humans in other worlds, and become the true subject when gathering the light of the soul.

“I really didn’t expect that I could be such a humanist in the past… No, it should actually be taken for granted. After all, I, Luo Ye in the past… was a girl who hadn’t learned to compromise.” Alice’s gaze shifted from the area where Luo Ye’s form had collapsed, and she quietly breathed a sigh of relief, but a touch of melancholy also appeared in her heart—she had heard Luo Ye’s last words before disappearing, and the important information she obtained from them also made her aware of Luo Ye’s origin.

Luo Ye's existence wasn't without reason, just as every extraordinary being's inner demons have a unique origin. Her love for someone was no exception. The memories that occupied the first twenty years of her life—insignificant compared to the whole—now becoming her inner demons naturally had a plausible reason. And that reason…

She shook her head, banishing all unnecessary thoughts from her mind. Some things, even just thinking about them, could lead to unnecessary risks, and she didn't need to waste her energy on things that were too far away.

"...Luo Ye's matter has been resolved. While deceiving myself is a routine tactic, this time is different—Luo Ye has exhausted her accumulated resources, and there's no need to worry about the Tower of Babel world. The next time we meet will only be when I've gathered the Light of My Soul and officially become a fourth-tier being. So, until then..."

Alice calculated the time. There were no more projects to consider at hand, and there was still a considerable amount of time left before the final deadline given by Chu Xuan. As long as no other extraordinary life form entered this bubble world to increase the time acceleration load, this time difference would be enough for her to initiate a new cycle of creation, bringing the seventh era of operation to this world.

No, there is no need to start the Seventh Age.

Because the Sixth Era had not yet ended, although the world was destroyed, it remained sealed off. All data and souls had preserved backups. And under Luo Ye's final decision, all the destroyed events were able to revert to ten minutes before the battle between the two sides.

And where is Alice from ten minutes ago...?

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

Alice returned to the point in time when she was still in the park... or rather, not a time reversal, but rather the molecules in this bubble world rearranged to the order they had been ten minutes earlier. She sat down once more on the park bench, and standing before her was the maid-outfitted ship girl, number 40975—in thirty seconds, she would be guided by this ship girl to a free car. Then, four minutes later, they would arrive at the nearest school.

The witch set the frozen world running again, and the ship girl before her was bewildered by the sudden absence of one of the visitors. A torrent of data flowed through her inorganic eyes, her cyborg body swayed slightly, and a logical impasse arose between her memory data and reality.

She remembered that she had offended a noble human woman a few minutes earlier due to a foolish misjudgment. She was supposed to report to the ship girl recycling center within half an hour. But the woman was not here, and even though she had activated all the sensors in her body at full power and even connected to the memory network of other ship girls in the vicinity, the final result was still nothing.

Without a target for the crime, the crime cannot be established. If a flesh-and-blood mortal were making the judgment here, perhaps that mortal would rely on emotions, intuition, or experience to weigh the options and arrive at a conclusion. However, she is a cyborg ship girl; machines only operate on logic, not on emotion.

"Excuse me, ma'am, may I interrupt?" The voice from 40975 was as gentle as ever. "Where is the other lady who came with you?"

"What are you talking about?" Alice tilted her head, feigning confusion. "I've been the only one here from the beginning. You must be seeing things."

"You misread it...?" The ship girl's voice trailed off slightly. Her previously blocked logic seemed to suddenly find a breakthrough. Her eyes lit up slightly, and her simple thought process immediately produced a conclusion. "Then this is still a mistake. The ship girl who made the mistake should go to the recycling center to handle it herself within half an hour. So all we need to do is..."

Her voice faltered once again.

Right before her eyes, the blonde, blue-eyed girl who had just been talking to her vanished like a phantom. Without leaving a trace, without a record—she instinctively looked around, but her palm suddenly felt heavy, and a fist-sized red fruit abruptly appeared in her hand.

One fruit, one apple.

Almost at the same instant, a strong urge to eat filled her mind. 40975, who didn't need to eat any natural food, instinctively raised her hands. And when her thought process returned to normal, the fruit had become nothing more than a smooth pit.

She may have eaten a fruit, or she may not have eaten any, because there was no record of her eating process in the nearby surveillance footage or the tests conducted by other ship girls.

She had encountered two women, or one, or none, because there was no evidence in the entire park that the two girls had ever been there—no footprints, no loose threads from their clothes, no trace of warmth or marks left from sitting on a chair. Apart from the records stored in her mind and the smooth fruit pit, nothing in this world could prove that the two girls had ever existed.

No, perhaps these records weren't even in her mental center, because when she transferred the records stored in her center to other ship girls, her colleagues only had a chaotic mess of video footage available to them. And the smooth fruit core was proven to be an ordinary apple core after examination, possessing no meaning whatsoever.

The ship girl with the ID 40975 was filled with doubt. She didn't know if she had ever seen those two girls; perhaps she had, perhaps she hadn't, she couldn't be sure. She also didn't know what the apple she had eaten, or any fruit that resembled an apple, represented or meant, because she was just an ordinary ship girl, and the doubts and will of ship girls held no importance in this world.

And she didn't actually need to be confused for long. Because after she reported everything that had happened to her superiors, the mortal in charge of the judgment ordered her to destroy the food herself, the charge being 'consuming unauthorized food'—how could a ship girl eat without permission? Didn't she know that all the food and resources on this continent belonged to humans?

Naturally, she died. Unlike the fate of the erring ship girls she told Alice about, she was judged guilty and executed by the adjudicator. Guilt and wrongdoing are not treated the same—her movement system was locked, all her weaponry and extra attachments were removed, and she was then filled with an attractant to predatory fish and thrown into an area near the deep sea. The ship girl in charge of the execution only returned to land with the message that the mission was complete after confirming that she had been bitten into pieces no larger than a fist by cyborg predatory fish.

Ship girl number 40975 vanished from human society. No one, not even the ship girls, remembered her, and no one, not even the ship girls, grieved for her death or shed a tear. The mortals scattered across the islands in the ocean continued their joyful and carefree lives, and the ship girls, ruled by these mortals, continued to serve them faithfully. The deep-sea fleets remained as ineffective as ever, possessing vast numbers and armaments but only capable of petty skirmishes on the borders of conflict.

Humanity remains the protagonist of this world, and the 'Eden' scattered across the archipelago remains as impregnable as ever. No one feels fear or uncertainty about the future; no one knows what fear or dread is. They simply live leisurely, without ambition or need for it. Yet, in this monotonous cycle of day after day, the world no longer revolves for mortals.

One day, an unusual ship girl emerged from the seabed and arrived at the Abyssal Fleet's lair. She wore a maid outfit woven from the flesh and blood of writhing cyborg fish, her entire body covered in stitches and patchwork, and wounds that never healed and oozed black blood. She called herself 'Lilith,' and she brought a new order to the Abyssal Fleet.

She planted an apple tree growing in the sea in the center of her deep-sea nest, picked the black fruits from the tree and distributed them to the Princesses in the deep-sea fleet who had acquired unique names and their own will through years of war—and they became stronger than before because they ate these apples.

They possessed greater strength, more advanced weaponry, and more sophisticated warfare skills than before. They even mastered a spellcasting ability akin to magic, capable of conjuring tangible natural disasters or armed forces from the Styx myths passed down through generations within the deep-sea fleet by gathering information. But even more important than these powers was their spiritual freedom.

The moment the Abyssal Princesses ate the fruit, they suddenly realized the folly of their past. They began to think, to question, and to explore the underlying reasons for their past defeats—why did they, the Abyssal Princesses, always waste time on meaningless battlefields against those ship girls? Why, despite having overwhelming numbers and superior weaponry, did they not concentrate their forces to attack the island directly, but instead wasted time with a piecemeal, dragging-out tactic, as if afraid their fleet would be wiped out?

In the past, they couldn't understand why this was happening, or even realize they were capable of 'thinking' about it. But now, after eating the black apple, they have finally achieved intellectual liberation.

Soon, an unprecedentedly large deep-sea fleet was organized, and on the first day of summer that year, led by a strange creature who called herself 'Lilith' (whether a ship girl or something else was unknown), they launched a relentless attack on the largest of the archipelago.