Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

Side Story: The Beauty Under the Moon

"Rebirth Cross, one B-level side quest, reward 8,000 points."

"I'll pay for it."

"The project was interrupted, various research instruments were damaged, and the corresponding data was basically lost."

"I'll go and get this done."

"Restoring the Earth to its original state requires a lot of resources, while maintaining the soul recall ritual and stuffing all the recalled souls into cloned bodies requires a lot of computing power."

"I'll pay for the resources, and I'll provide the computing power."

"Very good." Alice glanced at Zheng Zha, who looked obedient on the screen, and nodded slightly under his expectant gaze. "Then you can get lost."

"Get out of here!" Zheng Zha nodded hastily on the screen, and then the communication on the screen immediately showed as disconnected.

Alice sighed softly.

She was currently standing on the moon... or rather, on one-thousandth nine hundred and forty-fiveths of the moon. Beneath her feet was a ring formed from the moon's wreckage, ravaged by a group of extraordinary life forms, and beyond her gaze lay the azure Earth, resembling an apple bitten in the bottom.

Ah, that's right, an apple with a bite taken out of it. The damage caused by Zheng Zha's strike was about five times the combined destruction of everyone else. That's because that 'Primordial Chaos: Creation of Heaven and Earth' attack was fired from the sky, and Alice had just managed to dismantle the entire Antarctic crust into a floating iron planet…

Thus, this devastating attack, undoubtedly at the mid-stage of the fourth tier and enhanced with at least S+ level, directly ripped apart a thousand kilometers of the Earth's mantle from the surface to its depths. A massive fissure stretched from Antarctica upwards all the way to Oceania! Approximately several hundred gigatons of Earth's mass were brutally crushed and flung into space. And if left unchecked, the resulting chain reaction could potentially cause this poor blue planet to slowly crack in two over millennia!

Zheng Zha's first "expansion" was used in this very situation. He was just a hair's breadth away from accomplishing the feat of destroying the world. Naturally, feeling responsible for the mess he had made, Zheng Zha immediately contacted all his teammates, asking them to come up with a solution. The end result was that all sociology experiments, except for Chu Xuan's project, were terminated, and everyone's remaining vacation time had to be wasted on the project of piecing the destroyed Earth back to its original state.

This isn't difficult, at least not for the Central Continent team, which already possesses multiple fourth-tier combatants. Just as putting an elephant in a refrigerator only requires three steps, restoring a damaged Earth also only requires three steps. First, piece the shattered planet back together. Second, resurrect all the dead people and animals. Third, erase the traces of the planet's stitching and worldwide resurrection, and fabricate a plausible and normal history... The third step can even be omitted entirely. It can be said that the entire project is already quite easy.

...Well, it's not complicated, but it's not exactly easy. Reassembling the celestial body requires Alice to manipulate planetary-level gravity lines. Stitching together the damaged parts and rebuilding the structure requires Patchouli to control the nanobot swarm to generate a gray tide, which is necessary to successfully fill the cracks in the earth. Summoning the soul requires Zhao Yingkong and Zhao Zhuikong, two assassins respectively possessing the positions of Houtu and the Great Emperor of the Eastern Peak, to meticulously and protractedly control the large-scale soul-summoning ritual set up by Alice. Finally, the task of creating a clone body capable of perfectly housing the soul will be entrusted to Miss Sirin's power of death.

Zheng was responsible for providing the computing power and energy supply batteries. After all, this clumsy guy was only fit for simple tasks like eating apples; putting a bitten apple back together was far too difficult for him. Besides him, the other reincarnators also had their own tasks.

"Chu Xuan wanted to suppress his inner demons before unlocking the fourth-tier gene lock, but without achieving transcendence, the Dao cannot be established. Without his own Dao, the inner demons naturally cannot appear. He's probably planning to preemptively address any potential mental vulnerabilities and suppress the possibility of the inner demons before they are born." A voice came from behind Alice. Without a doubt, the only person appearing here at this time was Patchouli. Alice didn't bother to turn around, simply staring at Earth and asking the question in return.

"But at least that's somewhat feasible, unlike Patchi, whose own path is still unclear. And are you just going to leave the swarm of nanobots alone? Aren't you afraid they'll get out of control?"

"The little devil is keeping an eye on things for me; there shouldn't be any problems anytime soon," Patchouli's voice came from behind. "And you, Alice, turning the moon directly into a ring with billions of gravity control units is no easy task. Shanghai and Penglai can't take on this responsibility for you."

“That’s why I’m standing here now.” Alice’s gaze shifted slightly downwards, sweeping over the vast array of magical runes and intricate machinery erected on the lunar remnant beneath her feet. Covering the entire Earth with a gravitational field was certainly no easy feat for her. But controlling a machine that released a massive gravitational field, and manipulating it with the assistance of numerous supercomputers… the difficulty decreased to an acceptable level. After all, drilling wood and striking a match might lead to the same result, but the difficulty of execution was worlds apart.

She turned slightly to face Patchouli, who stood quietly behind her. The distant sunlight bathed Patchouli's face, highlighting her fair and beautiful features. She forcibly suppressed the urge to reach out and touch that delicate face, instead raising an eyebrow slightly and asking, "What, giving up on getting the little devil to my side? That's not like you, Patchouli. I remember you should be more persistent."

“We’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other in the future, there’s no rush.” Patchouli gazed at her quietly, then took Alice’s hand and placed it on her face. “It took you several years to accept me, so it’s normal for things to take a little longer if the circumstances are different.”

Alice shook her head slightly, not intending to continue the conversation. Since Patchouli had already conceded, there was no need for her to press the issue further. Besides, such pointed pressure was utterly meaningless. She blinked, and as she felt the soft touch on her fingertips, she subtly changed the subject.

"How likely do you think it is that Chu Xuan can mend his mental flaws and suppress his inner demons ahead of time?"

“I don’t know, but if it were him, the success rate would probably be very high,” Patchouli replied. “But the success rate isn’t absolute. He’s still just a mortal, at least for now. His abilities have limits, his calculations have limits, and the possibility of errors isn’t zero. Besides, even if… he only suppressed it, he didn’t completely eliminate the inner demon.”

“Really? He can fail too… For him, the inner demon must be the most difficult puzzle to solve.” Alice nodded slightly in agreement.

Even according to Saito Hajime's records, Chu Xuan only broke through his inner demons at the very last moment of the final battle. Furthermore, his clone never even reached the Fourth Middle School. Although the seemingly unbeatable Investiture of the Gods and numerous auxiliary items allowed him to easily unleash combat power far exceeding that of ordinary fourth-tier middle school students, threatening even high-level fourth-tier students and quasi-saints… it was simply impossible. For someone like him, devoid of heart, inner demons were far too difficult to deal with.

Her figure shifted, and her gaze seemed to momentarily traverse the vast expanse of space, directly focusing on a certain point in East Asia. No, perhaps it shouldn't be said "seemed." With her eyesight and control, as long as there weren't too many particles and distorted light in the atmosphere, observing Earth directly from the Moon wouldn't be difficult. If she wanted, she could even stand on the lunar ring and read paper books in a surface library. But right now, she simply wanted to observe a few people.

She didn't plan to look for Chu Xuan because she knew what he was planning to do, and she also knew that she was unlikely to be able to see him from the surface right now—he was probably in the Tower of Babel world using all sorts of high-tech machinery to interfere in the political situation in East Asia, making that Far Eastern country standing above Asia develop in the direction he envisioned.

Alice knew why. Because developing and expanding that nation was very likely one of Chu Xuan's psychological vulnerabilities—he had done such things in the prediction records. Whether it was tricking Zheng Zha into transmitting data back to the real world during the Alien era, or using magic cannons to flatten the United States and Japan after the exploration of the Saint's Ruins and leaving behind crystal pillars to pass on technology, it was all for this purpose. Because he was a cyborg developed by the East Asian authorities of his real world, and as a colonel at the Dragon Shadow Base, he was given the mission of leading his motherland to prosperity from birth.

Is Chu Xuan a patriot? Perhaps yes, perhaps no, perhaps he simply doesn't have a concept of nation or ethnicity. But this assigned mission still has some influence on him—so when Zheng Zha 'casually' assigned him to the unfortunate world of Resident Evil, a world whose structure is basically the same as his own, he immediately devised a plan. This world is destined to face a catastrophic crisis, and then he will lead a nation almost identical to his homeland to achieve world dominance.

And everything unfolded exactly as he had predicted. Or rather, he was secretly orchestrating all these changes—now, North America was practically gone, and Western Europe had been turned into a ghost town by Zhao Zhuikong. Japan, already plagued by misfortune, had been reduced to anarchy by Xiao Honglu and Zhang Jie. East Asia, while not much better, had seen virtually no deaths, and the nanite swarm's authority had allowed that nation to achieve considerable development before Patchouli reclaimed it. And now, it had become the only nation qualified to lead the future direction of this world.

The nanite swarm brought enough material, and with the wide-area mental intervention of Xiao Honglu and Zhang Jie, who had been temporarily recalled by Chu Xuan, it wasn't difficult to reorganize the collapsing society in the shortest possible time—he restored East Asia to its pre-incident national operational capacity in just one day. Now, guided by the reincarnators, they have taken over disaster relief and reconstruction projects across the globe.

This nation is destined to once again become the dominant empire on the planet, even if Earth is repaired, the soul-summoning ritual is completed, and all the unfortunate souls who died are resurrected. And once the reincarnators have all departed, it will become the only power capable of dealing with the powerful monsters born from the 'Magic Revival' experiment. And if, despite such a favorable start, East Asia still cannot retain its position as the world's hegemon… then that's none of the reincarnators' concern.

After all, the Reincarnators have always been quite willful. As long as their goals are achieved, nothing else matters to them. Whether East Asia wants to become the world's hegemon or not, it has to become the world's hegemon, and Chu Xuan will likely gain something after this experiment.

Alice's gaze swept across the ground. The figures of Zhang Jie, Xiao Honglu, Cheng Xiao, Luo Gandao, and others active around the world appeared in her scans. Zhan Lan's experiment seemed largely unaffected; perhaps Chu Xuan intended for a revitalized South America to become East Asia's new "enemy state." Zero Point remained unseen, perhaps on the other side of the world. Zhang Heng and Ming Yanwei seemed somewhat lost and confused… Zheng Zha had abandoned the erroneous path, and the phenomenon of Dao erosion was gradually diminishing in them.

They may gain something, or they may get stuck in a rut. But in any case, some degree of change is inevitable. And as long as there is change, there is hope for progress.

Her gaze continued to wander… Ah, there it was, the Overlord active on Russian soil—she didn't quite understand what the Overlord intended to do in that land. Because during his time in the Resident Evil world, the Overlord had dabbled as a mercenary, a vigilante, a street musician, and even impersonated a doctor in a makeshift hospital—heaven knows how he managed to wear a white coat with that imposing physique without looking out of place. Was it because he genuinely saved a lot of people?

The Overlord had done many things during this period, and there was basically no causal relationship between them. Alice guessed that this was the path he had chosen for his own advancement. However, she couldn't figure out the specifics of the plan for the time being... because she hadn't spent much time thinking about it.

Or rather, there isn't much time to think about it.

Just as she was pondering this question, Patchouli, who had been silent all along, suddenly hugged her gently from behind, embracing her tenderly yet firmly.

“Patch?” Alice asked softly.

"Alice." Patchouli's voice was soft and gentle, like a fluffy cotton ball. "Don't do this kind of thing again."

Alice remained silent; she knew what Patchouli meant. Zheng Zha's willingness to pay the price of a Rebirth Cross meant she had already used a resurrection item. Meanwhile, the other part of her body on the lunar battlefield, caught in the stalemate, was also reaching a critical point. Although Patchouli knew her plan from the beginning, watching the only person she cared about die before her eyes… even according to plan, even if this had happened more than once before, was not a pleasant experience.

Patchouli's decision to concede was probably partly due to this reason.

Faced with this situation, all Alice could do was remain silent. In that silence, she turned over and embraced Patchouli tightly with a movement even more resolute than Patchouli's.

“There won’t be a next time, Patchouli,” Alice said softly.

“If there’s a next time…” Patchouli’s voice came out weakly through her nose. “…I’ll die right here.”

“There won’t be a next time,” Alice repeated.

The shadows of the two figures gradually lengthened on the lunar ring, eventually merging together. Then, as a sound and light suppression spell was cast, complete silence finally descended upon the lunar ring.

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

I've given up on Fiora... FGO... I'm planning to quit for now. Maybe later I'll start a new game where Fiora is the main character or heroine and pretend I pulled her _(:з」∠)_

Ninth Stop - Parade Star

Section 1: On the Road After the Meeting

Minutes after the Supreme God, as was customary, conveyed information about the next world to the Reincarnators three days before the teleportation began, the joint meeting proceeded as usual in the Supreme God Plaza of the Central Continent Team.

The team leader spoke first.

"The Wandering Earth—that's the name of our next world." Zheng Zha took out a document consisting of only a few pages from his pocket, then held it in the air, forming a cluster of information-rich molecules with his finger. "I don't know if the main god malfunctioned, causing it to arrange such a world. But this time it's really different from before. The world we're going to isn't a movie, but a novel. A domestic science fiction novel written in the last two thousand years, only a few years ago, with a total of only 23,000 words."

"The content... I think everyone can read it at a glance, and even if you pay a little attention, it probably won't take more than a minute. This time, the reincarnation world isn't a team battle, so we don't need to consider external variables. But... I really can't think of anything worth doing in a world with such low technical levels and no enemies."

He rubbed his head, looking confused.

"Everyone, please share your thoughts. This world may seem ordinary, but there might be hidden traps. One person's plan is limited, but many people's plans are more comprehensive. Ultimately, we need to devise a strategy and discuss some solutions before we set off. Perhaps this will be a complex world like Starship Troopers, hiding even greater secrets?"

“That’s certainly a possibility.” He had barely finished speaking when Xiao Honglu picked up the thread. “But the chances of a treasure like the Tower of Babel fragments appearing are probably quite low. After all, the main god never repeats the same tricks. I suspect there’s some powerful cosmic force hiding behind this world, and our arrival might very well be after the text of this novel has ended…”

He stretched out his hand and drew several symbols. Some short documents that he had temporarily exchanged from the main god a few seconds earlier were projected in the form of physical light onto the center of the circular table under the main god's square. Below these projections was a star map of the solar system—a star map of the solar system with Earth between Jupiter and Saturn.

"This novel is quite short. Although it has a grand scope, telling the story of the first five hundred years of a massive plan that lasts for two thousand five hundred years, it is still very short. The author's decision to end the story a few years, or a decade or so, after leaving Jupiter's gravitational pull is a smart move, because there's really not much to write about after that—the sun has exploded, and the remaining people can only try to carry out the original migration plan while still on Earth. And this is exactly the best time for us to take over. After all, the technological level of this world is really not that advanced."

He paused, glancing around as if wanting to hear some opinions.

Then Alice gave him her opinion.

"Indeed, the mortals in the world of The Wandering Earth use heavy element fusion technology to power the Earth. When passing through the asteroid belt, they mentioned that their ultimate weapon is an antimatter bomb. This shows that they have not yet mastered annihilation technology, and their utilization of antimatter is still at the level of using the Large Hadron Collider to blast out antiparticle clusters and then confining them in a strong magnetic field to wait for the right moment. That's why they can only make the Earth wander instead of stopping the helium flash of the sun. In other words, their technology is no longer of any reference value to us."

“BINGO, that’s it.” Xiao Honglu nodded, giving Alice a grateful smile in return for her cooperation. “From the many missions we’ve seen so far, it’s clear that the Main God always has a purpose. It won’t place the reincarnators in a world that offers neither any benefit nor any challenge. And a simple world like Wandering Earth would be completely meaningless to us, who already have six fourth-tier powerhouses.”

"In that worldview, the greatest disaster would be nothing more than the sun exploding. But I think Alice's Star Extraction Tower could easily solve that problem. And judging from our 'vacation' experience in the Resident Evil world, accelerating Earth back to Saturn wouldn't be that difficult. The internal rebellion, Jupiter's gravitational interference, and asteroid belt impact that we would have to deal with in the meantime would be things we could easily handle."

"So, we'll most likely be thrown into a timeline after the text's storyline has ended. And in that world, we'll probably encounter enemies from outer space."

"For example?" Zheng Zha gestured questioningly. He was genuinely surprised, completely unexpected that Xiao Honglu had grown to this level after the sociology experiment—although he was still somewhat uneasy because of Xiao Honglu's previous lapses in judgment. But at least for now, he felt that Xiao Honglu's words made a lot of sense—didn't Chu Xuan and Margot Lloyd object? Especially Chu Xuan, who wasn't one to care much about his teammates' feelings; if Xiao Honglu had made a mistake, he would have interrupted him from the start.

"What kind of enemies do you think we will encounter, Xiao Honglu?"

“These are it.” Xiao Honglu snapped his fingers, and then a portion of the documents floating on the star chart were highlighted in red and bold. “I just looked up other works by the author of The Wandering Earth and did some analysis and summarization—the author of this article is a very talented writer, and most of his works have certain similarities—we can completely regard his works as many parallel worlds under the same worldview. And in his works, many worlds have powerful alien forces, and those alien forces may become our enemies.”

"Of course, for literary reasons, some of these aliens are quite ridiculous, and are simply props or background stages used to complement the protagonist's performance. Apart from those miscellaneous enemies that are unlikely to have been sent by the main god, I think the aliens most likely to become our enemies should come from the world of 'The Three-Body Problem'."

He shrugged.

"After all, the Trisolaran home star system was the migration destination chosen by Earthlings to escape the exploding sun. And in the original story, the Trisolarans also planned to move to Earth because they couldn't stand the interference of the Three Star System. The collision of these two migration trends is too dramatic. At least from a causal point of view, they are most likely to be linked together. And I have roughly examined the Trisolarans' technological level as described in the original story... slightly higher than the civilization of The Wandering Earth, and with considerable development potential. At least they have completely mastered annihilation technology. With their enormous size, they may also be qualified to compete with us."

“But the Trisolarans are nothing more than ants in the Trisolaran world,” Alice added. “Their most advanced weapon is a mass weapon like the ‘droplet.’ Their technological limit is a warp drive. If they were at their peak from the start, they might still have a chance, but if not… perhaps we will have to face an even more powerful enemy.”

“The Singer civilization’s ‘light particles’ and ‘two-dimensional foils,’ and some subsequent dimensional interference that weren’t written down?” Xiao Honglu raised an eyebrow. “I think that might not be a big problem. After all, the original work says that miniature universes can break dimensional interference, and we seem to have one of those things on hand.”

“The Tower of Babel world can indeed be considered a means of dealing with dimensional interference,” Chu Xuan replied. “But I can’t guarantee it will definitely work, and if your speculations are all true, then the Supreme God won’t arrange an enemy that we can easily deal with—the next battle isn’t a team battle, it’s not the final battle, and the Supreme God is unlikely to restrict the items we have. But it might increase our burden. For example, assigning a mission to ensure the integrity of Earth during the Singer civilization’s attack. And I can’t possibly cram the entire Earth into the Tower of Babel fragments.”

“That makes things a bit tricky.” Alice reached out and pulled a piece of ordinary white paper from the void, flattening it little by little. “I can make a simple two-dimensional foil by hand. But in most worlds I know, such a thing doesn’t expand outwards indefinitely after being released. The so-called dimensional collapse phenomenon will only be quickly restored by the world’s self-correcting force…”

She crumpled the white paper in her hand into a small ball, then the ball turned into a tiny dot, and finally collapsed completely into a miniature black hole and disappeared quickly.

"Perhaps that world is special, or perhaps the civilizations in that world have all developed methods to prevent the world from self-correcting. But in any case, if we were to wage a war on a dimensional level in that world, we would immediately be in an extremely disadvantageous situation. At most, I can only use two-dimensional foils to counter two-dimensional foils. It would be difficult to protect anyone else outside of that, let alone protect the Earth."

“Perhaps I can…” Zheng Zha said weakly. “If I could unlock the light of the soul…”

“No, you can’t,” Alice replied without turning her head. “While the Light of the Mind can indeed be immune to direct interference from spacetime and has great resistance to changes in causal lines, it can also resist dimensional reduction. But our quantity is insufficient, and our quality is also lacking. After all, neither you nor I have truly obtained the Light of the Mind; we haven’t even reached the middle stage of the fourth rank yet.”

So Zheng Zha shut up.

Then Xiao Honglu continued.

"Ahem, so this is the question we need to think about." Xiao Honglu coughed lightly as he answered. "Now it's basically certain that as long as the original plot isn't drastically altered, the main storyline of The Wandering Earth will still exist. In that case, the level of technology on Earth won't be very high, and their biggest enemy will be a self-destructing sun. Therefore, there will inevitably be external forces interfering as our adversaries, and these adversaries are most likely to come from the Three-Body Problem series... that is, the worldviews of the two stories will be merged."

"Therefore, the time when we arrive is most likely the period between Jupiter and Saturn after the novel ends. Or, if it's a bit more difficult, it could be the period before the novel begins, when Earth is still installing its engines. In either case, we are most likely dealing with an alien civilization that uses the Trisolarans as a starting point."

"So what we need to do is to unify the entire Earth civilization as soon as we arrive, take control of their administrative institutions, and immediately prepare for war. With Alice and Patchouli's infrastructure capabilities, I believe it will only take a few days at most to build Earth into an arms factory or a planetary fortress. And at that time, no matter what strange tasks the main god assigns us, they will basically all revolve around Earth itself. But having made many preparations in advance, we should be able to deal with the vast majority of problems."

He finished speaking in one breath, then nodded to the others, picked up a glass of water from the table, and drank it down to indicate that his analysis was over.

He might be waiting for his teammates' applause and recognition.

however……

“There’s another possibility,” Zhang Jie suddenly said. “Given the operating mechanism of the Main God, its arrangements for the Reincarnation Team always operate within a cycle of [Team Battle World], [Low-Difficulty Score Farming World], [High-Difficulty Trial World], and [Moderate Transition World]. Although we initiated two team battles consecutively due to the accelerated reincarnation, it doesn’t mean the Main God will delete any links in the cycle. After all, even though our team won both team battles decisively, it doesn’t prove that our team doesn’t need rest time.”

"Therefore, this 'Wandering Earth' world might just be a simple world for restoring points and recuperating. We won't encounter any particularly powerful enemies in this world unless we intentionally dig into it... After all, even Earthlings can detect a solar explosion, so there's no reason why aliens wouldn't be able to. Especially the Trisolarans, a mere 4.2 light-years is not far on an astronomical scale. They have no reason to waste time on a sun that is destined to explode—and the Supreme God arranged such a world for us just to give us a rest."

After Zhang Jie finished speaking, he shut his mouth.

Then the entire meeting room fell into a terrible silence.

A faint smile crept across Xilin's lips, which she quickly concealed. Amidst this awkward atmosphere, Zheng Zha forcefully banged on the table in front of him.

“The scenario Zhang Jie described isn’t impossible. But we’d better prepare for the worst-case scenario when we make our pre-war arrangements. In short, let Margot Lloyd and Norrell handle the infrastructure arrangements. Chu Xuan, if you don’t mind, you can take over the task of adjusting domestic affairs. And the rest of us should also prepare ourselves—you’ve been conducting sociological experiments for so long, you should at least have some management skills by now.”

That concludes the meeting. Meeting adjourned!