Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

The latter's verification process began after she completed her manipulation of the Baron's men. There are no results yet. The former, however, was swiftly implemented after she arrived at the Baron's former library, where she found numerous discarded weapons, war tools, and the tricks of defeated wizards—things that any military noble of this era would undoubtedly possess.

By the time this lengthy preliminary description came to an end, she had already completed a large part of the experimental plan.

She made a gun.

A classic bolt-action rifle constructed from steel, wood, springs, and iron blocks. It features a complete stock, bolt, barrel with a boring bar inside, and an adjustable trigger and magazine. In addition, she handcrafted several different types of ammunition to match.

With rifles and ammunition in hand, there was only one thing left to do.

Alice glanced at the dark sky outside the window; nothing in the gloomy night seemed to interfere with her experiment. So, silently and swiftly, she loaded the ammunition, pulled back the bolt, and pointed the barrel at a spot outside the window where no living thing existed. Then, she pulled the trigger.

'Click—'

A soft sound, a wisp of smoke.

The firing pin did indeed ignite the primer, and the primer did indeed ignite the explosive charge. According to normal procedure, the explosive charge should release a massive amount of heat and gas in a flash combustion, propelling the hand-loaded cartridge out at three or four times the speed of sound, creating a small crater in the night sky with a deafening explosion.

If we follow the normal procedure...

Alice silently pulled the bolt, ejecting the spent cartridge, but what fell to the ground was a hand-loaded round that had been lodged in the magazine. The intense heat from the explosion only then dissipated from the copper casing, scorching the red carpet. Yet, this hand-loaded round did not fly forward even a centimeter.

Alice put on gloves, picked up the hand-loaded bullet, and sliced ​​it open along its central axis. What she saw was a perfectly sealed, leak-free section of the propellant cartridge. Then, with a slight smirk, she tossed the bullet into a nearby trash can.

With a 'clang,' the trash returned to where it belonged. A few minutes later, the bolt-action rifle followed suit, requiring a reload. However, it wasn't just the bolt-action rifles that were discarded; the trash can also contained flintlock muskets, pump-action rifles, classic rifles, early assault rifles, and even water-powered muskets and handguns—various firearms from the 16th to the 20th centuries. And now, they were all in the same category as trash.

Alice even made a few grenades, high-explosive grenades. She pulled the pins off them, threw them out, and waited a minute without getting any response. Then she switched to honeycomb alchemical bombs, which required a fuse and whose destructive power wasn't much greater than a punch from half her strength. Seconds later, a huge roar shattered the silent night sky above Raven's Nest.

The witch fell into deep thought.

Excellent, very good. The information Luo Ye provided this time was absolutely accurate. Gunpowder can burn, combustion releases heat and gases, the rapid expansion of gases can instantly increase the internal and external pressure of a closed structure, and a huge difference in atmospheric pressure can trigger an explosion—each of these steps, when operated separately, works perfectly fine, but combined, they only produce garbage. The alchemical bombs that already existed in this world functioned normally, while the grenades with heavier charges, enhanced lethality, and improved maneuverability failed to detonate at all.

Alice felt her view of scientific development needed a slight overhaul. In this world, while all known physical laws certainly functioned, something superseded these natural rules was interfering with everything. What was forbidden wasn't explosions, but the very concept of 'firearms.' In this medieval fantasy world, civilization was stuck within the script's predetermined framework.

At first, she thought it was some kind of trick similar to 'Sophon'. However, she soon discovered that a far more powerful force was hidden within this world. She found that she simply couldn't write the equation for mass-energy equivalence on any piece of paper in this world. Writing it on paper would smudge the ink; drawing it on wood would disrupt the grain; carving it on stone would turn the stone to dust. She couldn't even write the equation into a person's mind, because anyone who heard this knowledge, except for herself, would forget it.

Even if the sun continued to burn, the mass-energy equivalence equation would not exist in the minds of any local. And it's not just the mass-energy equivalence equation; profound economic theories, sociological ideas, even *Capital* and the *Communist Manifesto*, would all be utterly unable to survive in this world. They cannot be recorded, nor can they be understood; they have no place in this world.

Technology was inadequate, thought was inadequate, and even behavior… was not permitted. After Alice had manipulated the Baron's retinue, she attempted to organize them into groups, dividing them into various parts to form an assembly line. However, this also failed. Even under the deepest manipulation, these locals were unable to carry out the actions Alice commanded them, actions that were conceptually beyond their time.

They can charge in packs, or they can scatter to hunt animals, mine minerals, and bring back rich rewards for Alice. But they cannot work in an assembly line, not at all. This world does not allow a group of people to operate with the same standards, at the same pace, doing the same repetitive work.

Alice's experiment naturally came to an end there.

"The conclusion is now clear: mortals, or even ordinary supernatural beings, cannot compete with the beings who have unlocked the fifth-order genetic lock and become what Chang'e calls 'the ones who can do whatever they want.' Limited numbers and technology that requires the support of physical laws are useless in the face of such beings. Indeed, in this world, all attempts are wrong except to obediently follow the patterns of the Hunting Saint's Cage."

The witch, whose age was hard to pinpoint, sighed deeply.

Luo Ye was right; in this world, the strategy of scaling technology and building massive armies was simply not viable. While that was true, she still couldn't resist testing it. In this world, the few truly valuable things were genetic locks. Aside from that, there were the local power systems that clung to the power of saints like parasitic vines—Alice had struggled quite a bit to even find a ghoul on her way to Raven's Nest. But she hadn't come away empty-handed.

Over the past period, she had encountered ghouls, giant ghouls, ghouls, water ghosts, and other carrion-eating monsters. She even salvaged a night spirit from a hidden graveyard that had barely escaped a witcher's sword. She had seen them, she had dealt with them, and from them, she had extracted slivers of the world's power.

According to the history of the Wizarding World, all monsters and supernatural forces in this world originated from a phenomenon known as the Convergence of the Celestial Spheres. This phenomenon can be understood as the overlap of spacetime or as magical tides. Something that Alice tentatively named 'Primal Magic' descended upon this world and created the first monsters and spellcasters. They were powerful in the past, and they were weak in the past, but in this era, they have quietly risen again in a new tide.

Alice believes this 'primal magic' is the sage power of the original Chang'e that Luo Ye spoke of—a corrupted spiritual light. Now, only one final step remains before she can personally verify the reliability of this conclusion and incorporate it into her own temporary power system.

She waited for the footsteps that would come from outside the door. She waited for the final result of the second thing she had come to do.

Section 8. The Fountain of Holy Blood

She didn't have to wait long.

After she spent about ten more minutes conducting experiments, thoroughly verifying that in this world, there was no other way but to train the gene lock and study a magic system based on the power of saints, a quiet knock sounded at the door.

'Knock knock knock—knock knock knock—'

"Come in."

Entering through the door was the true ruler of this territory, the veteran 'Sergeant' entrusted with governance by the Bloody Baron. Alice had spent considerable effort controlling him, as he was actually a mortal who had unlocked the first stage of his genetic potential. Alice had even nearly been injured during their encounter!

In a mere Velen, a Raven's Den with only a few thousand inhabitants, there actually exists an elite individual who has unlocked the first stage of the genetic lock! Keep in mind, in other worlds, Alice often scours entire planets and can't find even one or two individuals with the potential for a genetic lock, yet here, even a minor character possesses this power!

It truly lives up to its name as the Saint-Hunting Cage, and indeed, the interior of a saint's abode. Fortunately, this guy's mastery of the gene lock seems rather low. He had to concentrate his energy to barely unlock the first stage of the gene lock in just a few seconds, and the backlash after unlocking it was extremely severe, instantly rendering him incapacitated. That's why Alice was ultimately able to remain unharmed.

The sergeant silently approached Alice with a tray. On the tray lay a crumpled old garment, stained with blood and repeatedly washed yet still bearing numerous red spots. His eyes were bloodshot, clearly his subconscious was struggling to break free from the hypnotic state of his conscious mind. But Alice's casual gesture calmed his restless heart, and she took the garment from the tray.

These are Ciri's clothes. Clearly, Ciri suffered considerable injuries while fleeing the Wild Hunt and the old witch. The hospitable Blood Baron wouldn't allow this handsome young man he'd chosen to leave in tattered, blood-stained clothes. Therefore, these clothes would be changed out. And since this is, after all, a resource-scarce fantasy medieval world, the clothes Ciri took off, stained with her blood, would likely not be destroyed or burned.

Alice came to Raven's Den because one of her targets was the garment stained with Ciri's blood. If she could obtain it here, all the better; if not, she would immediately set off for the Isle of Mist and even Kaer Morhen to intercept her. She had some important conjectures that needed to be verified.

“You may leave now,” Alice said, gesturing for the bewitched 'sergeant' to leave. Once the burly man had walked stiffly out of the room and closed the door, she immediately began analyzing Ciri's blood using the makeshift alchemical tools she had on hand.

Extraction, separation, purification—the process is simple but takes some time. Alice gazed at the container before her, carefully considering her theory.

The Witcher 3… or the Witcher series in general, has a unique world. While the main story takes place in this medieval fantasy wizarding world, which exhibits only a low level of magic, Ciri's ancient blood and its power to open the portal to other worlds have established that many distinct worlds exist beyond this one.

Ciri has traveled to many worlds; according to the original books, she has visited at least the world of King Arthur and another world that may be a cyberpunk future. However, even after visiting so many worlds filled with different levels of technology, she was still relentlessly pursued by the Wild Hunt, a legion clad in medieval armor and wielding swords and hounds.

Why didn't she just use some advanced technology in that sci-fi world to directly kill the Wild Hunt?

Alice pondered, and then drew a conclusion based on her current worldview. Perhaps in other external worlds, she wouldn't do that for different reasons. But in this external world, or even a pseudo-world, formed from the prison of the Saint Hunter, it wasn't that she didn't want to do it, but rather that she couldn't.

[Technology limitations: Perhaps when the Wild Hunt arrived in that world, the technology trees in each world were completely restricted. Just as someone who had never been infected with smallpox or similar pathogens would almost certainly die if they got smallpox, magic had never existed in that world, making it impossible to develop items to counteract magic.]

Alice believed in a theory that if two civilizations with different technological paths met unexpectedly, the one that attacked first would inevitably have a significant advantage. For example, if all of the US aircraft carriers and fleets had been destroyed in the Pearl Harbor attack, instead of retaining most of their fighting capacity as historical records suggest, then even if the US mainland could still unleash massive production capacity, losing most of its naval defenses would have delayed them for at least several years before they could regroup.

If the tech tree is limited, then Wild Hunt will always have the first move. But this also requires another condition to be met: the tech tree priority of the Wild Hunt world must be higher than that of other worlds. This allows ghosts to exist in a world where there are no ghosts, and ensures that this world without ghosts will never develop technology against ghosts.

It sounds absurd, but it's not impossible. Because all the world clusters here are built upon the sage power of the original Chang'e. And this limitation on the technology tree is either a method employed by the original Chang'e, or an arrangement made by Chu Xuan using the original Chang'e's power. Since it's a power that transcends the extraordinary and allows for unrestrained action, it can naturally accomplish the impossible.

She had evidence: the identity Luo Ye had assigned her, the one called 'Flora'. She discovered she simply couldn't utter the name 'Alice Margotrovid'. Every time she tried to say it, a sense of impending doom washed over her. Clearly, this world rejected all outsiders, and even reincarnators themselves would likely face dire consequences if their identities were exposed.

Even reincarnators have to change their appearance, but the Wild Hunt can cross worlds to hunt down Ciri.

In other words...

The worlds Ciri arrives in are very likely not part of the wizarding worldview, but rather different worlds evolved from fragments of the original Chang'e's power. Her bloodline might be merely that of a common transmigrated bloodline within a single worldview in other other worlds. But here, the blood flowing through her veins is very likely the genuine blood of a saint!

Regardless of whether Luo Ye's words were true or false, there was definitely a reason why she threw Alice into this world. Because she didn't tell Alice how to go to the other fragment of power... Perhaps she had already foreseen the special nature of the wizarding world, and that the only way to travel from one world to another was through Ciri's blood and the door that her blood could open.

“If that’s the case, I’ll have to change my plans for action in this world.” Alice pondered, watching the progress inside the alchemical vial. “Ciri’s blood will become something I must have, and I have two ways, two options, to obtain it.”

"First, I need to find a way to get along with Ciri. I need to help her and solve her problems, and then ask her to help me open the portals to various worlds. According to the setting, she should be a kind girl at heart. As long as I ask her sincerely, she will definitely help me."

"Second, use force to capture her and collect her blood through brutality or deception. If the door needs her will as a guide, use deception; if the door only needs her blood, use her as a blood vial. This is convenient and quick, but it will obviously cause disturbances from both internal and external factors."

Emotionally, Alice leans towards the first method. However, this battle to hunt the saints has become a team war, and other reincarnation teams are bound to exist, or may have already arrived. Furthermore, the fragmented will of the original Chang'e lurks in the shadows, watching intently. If Ciri were to befriend them first and establish cooperation, then using the first method would be nothing but wishful thinking.

Ciri is a good person, but not a pushover. The feelings of her companions and friends are far more important to her than generalized justice. If Alice had been a step slower, neither side would have had much of a chance.

Hopefully, things won't turn out that way.

Alice was thinking and calculating when, just then, the alchemical apparatus in her hands completed the purification process.

Ciri's clothes were stained with several kinds of blood: the blood of wolves, the blood of werewolves, and the blood of mortals like bandits—Alice easily separated them all from the extracted blood plasma. And after all the unnecessary impurities were removed, only one kind of blood remained.

There are many ways to verify it, but Alice, whose patience was dwindling, decided to take the simplest and most direct approach—she dipped a little of the purified blood plasma on her fingertip. Then, she put the fingertip and the blood on it onto her tongue.

—She sensed the tremors of the genetic lock within her body.

"So...it really is her." Alice lowered her eyes, all the plans she had made earlier being overturned in an instant. Then, a new batch of plans that had been prepared long ago took their place. Ciri's importance was elevated to an unprecedented level at this moment, and not only Ciri, but the Wild Hunt, who could also use spatial power, also obtained a large number of countermeasures from Alice.

Ciri possesses the blood of a saint—perhaps she's merely bait, perhaps she's a crucial tool used by the original Chang'e to achieve a certain goal, or perhaps she herself is a trigger bomb, waiting to gather the reincarnators together before exploding them all with a 'bang'. Perhaps… there are too many possibilities. But whatever the possibility, bringing her under our watchful eyes is a task that must be accomplished as soon as possible.

So……

The current timeframe is four days after Geralt and the Bloody Baron left Raven's Nest. Clearly, Cirina's journey from Velen to Novigrad, and from Novigrad to the Skellige Isles, must have ended. But this end is presumably based on the assumption that she didn't encounter any other Reincarnators along the way. If she did, the situation becomes extremely complicated; if not, she should be resting quietly in her house on the Isle of Mist.

Alice leaned towards the second possibility because of an important figure who could allow her to stay here peacefully and calmly. This powerful figure, who possessed a small part of Ciri's soul and the precise coordinates of the Isle of Mist, was currently under her surveillance.

'Knock knock knock—knock knock knock—' The door rang again.

"Come in."

The sergeant reappeared at the doorway. Along with his figure, an annoying buzzing sound, like that of flies, entered Alice's room.

It was a dwarf, a pink creature covered in tumors and pustules, its hands, feet, torso, and head twisted and deformed beyond recognition. It made a 'humma humma' sound. Then, under the 'sergeant's' control, it uneasily shook its uneven legs.

Uma, or rather, the elven sage Avalak. Ciri's collaborator in escaping the Wild Hunt. He suffered a terrible curse on the Skellige Isles, transforming him from a refined elven scholar into the ugliest man in the world. To break this curse, two conditions are required: First, the Trial of the Grasses at Kaer Morhen, to break the flesh and blood structure of this cursed body and allow it to regenerate. Second, a cursed box in the possession of a gang leader in Novengrim, which can contain the curse within Uma.

In her prime, Alice was certain that a single glance at the poor little creature would be enough to dispel its curse. Unfortunately, Alice lacked that power at the moment, and the magical systems of different worlds were also different. All she could do for now was follow the original story's steps to remove the curse, and then head to the Isle of Mist to rescue Ciri.

[But I can use another method... I can go to the Isle of Mist and take Ciri's body with me... to verify if her blood is still effective while she's unconscious. If it is, I can simply use her body for the journey. If not... then we'll have to figure it out later. But regardless, I need to obtain the coordinates of the Isle of Mist first.]

Her gaze toward Uma gradually turned malicious.

The latter instinctively cried out in terror, "Uma umma!"

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

I really want to take another day off... but never mind, I'll just update as usual.

I've revised the information about Pearl Harbor; I haven't looked at much material on that topic... so it might seem a bit amateurish...

Section 9: Beyond the Chessboard

While Alice was tormenting the poor cursed one in the crow's nest, and Zhan Lan was wreaking havoc in the witch hunter's fortress and getting entangled with the witch hunter again, on the outer edge of the world, in the Saint Hunter's prison that covered the entire Virgo Supercluster, Chu Xuan's will descended from the endless void.

—【Event axis deviation detected... Anchoring restarted...】

The Virgo Supercluster no longer exists. The region now encompassed by that 120 million light-year area is no longer a celestial structure supported by classical physics. There are no longer stars, nebulae, or high-energy rays—objects found in the ordinary matter universe—that can be directly observed with the naked eye. Instead, there are endless branches of events constituted by probability and possibility—the root of which is the Bloodborne Dream where Loyal resides. And from that dream as a base, extending outwards yields an infinite number of solutions.

Luo Ye did indeed deceive Alice. Although she didn't utter a single lie during their conversation, she certainly misled Alice. She made Alice believe she was the thread connecting everything, when in fact she was merely a probe used for locating clues. The power fragments escaped by the original Chang'e weren't just a paltry 'seven or eight,' but at least 'seventy or eighty trillion.' Most were bait, with very few of real value. Finding the original fragments from this near-infinite number was an impossible task, so the only way to truly capture them was to lure them into a trap.

How do you lure them into your trap? The easiest way is, of course, to throw bait.

What kind of decoy is most effective? It is, of course, purification privileges that can pose a certain threat to the original Chang'e.

Chu Xuan's will turned, and the silver giant serpent climbed upwards from the base of the Tree of Events. As it passed through the base world where Luo Ye was located, it nodded to the hardworking inner demon lady, and this simple gesture stirred up huge waves in the pure white ocean outside the dream world.

—Awakened from work, Luo Ye couldn't help but complain again. While complaining, it took her a long time to readjust the dream world of the base point within the waves of the energy sea.

Time, a very long time... Within the realm of the branching tree of phenomena and the sea of ​​energy, time actually has little meaning. But judging from Luo Ye's own sense of time, she probably added nearly ten thousand years of work to her workload... Ten thousand years, doing nothing but maintaining the stability of the base point, and unable to do anything at all. And her complaint was naturally quite justified.

However, this was only the beginning; she still had much to suffer ahead—although time, space, length, and mass were largely meaningless in this reconstructed tree-like worldview, the silver giant serpent formed from Chu Xuan's will did indeed possess a length of three million light-years and a corresponding mass at this moment. After all, he was currently a snake climbing a tree, and since the tree was one hundred and twenty million light-years in size, the snake couldn't possibly appear like an earthworm here.

— [Arrived at anchor point...Analyzing...Locating...]

Since it's a tree, it naturally has branches. If we consider the seven or eight trillion fragments that Chang'e escaped from as small worlds like leaves, then creating these branches and binding countless trillions of these small worlds together with a fixed script is the work of Chu Xuan, or rather, the legacy of the idealistic Chang'e—Luo Ye had merely randomly tossed Alice into a random world within the branches constructed by the script of 'The Witcher 3'. And clearly, her actions have already yielded results.

Of course, the workload was immense. The giant serpent's ascent from its roots to the suitable position triggered hundreds of tremors in the energy sea. Her working hours naturally increased a hundredfold. Time, though meaningless here, only applied to the probes within the small world. By the time Alice in the branch had completed the action of 'picking up the scalpel,' Luo Ye at the base point had accumulated enough work to drive even the most mentally unstable, acquired immortal beings to their deaths as a form of liberation. And this was far from over.

Time itself is meaningless, but it holds meaning for those who control the Hunter's Cage. They must remain on a fixed timeline as anchor points. This is to prevent the original Chang'e from performing a time reversal, returning directly to before the fall and escaping, or even blasting this world apart in some distant, primordial wilderness—clearly, few within the Central Continent team can accomplish this task, maintaining their individuality amidst this near-endless flow of time. Chu Xuan is one, Luo Ye is one, and Xi Lin might also count, but because of Chang'e's idealistic nature, she has a more suitable role. That's why Luo Ye is here, and that's why the collaboration between Luo Ye and Chu Xuan is feasible.

She got what she wanted, and Luo Ye's willingness to do this was her own choice. Perhaps she herself hoped for an end in endless toil. But unfortunately, like Alice, she possessed the rank of Demon King and did not have the right to die from overwork—and she would not allow herself to perish before her mission was completed.