Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

Geralt was alright; as a native witcher, he at least exercised some restraint in his actions. But Janran, like a true reincarnator, was utterly unrestrained—killing anyone who stood in her way, and destroying houses along with those who hid. Her psychic power was impervious to the anti-magic metals that mortals in the wizarding world relied on to restrain spellcasters, and she had even managed to revive a small portion of her psionic energy from nothing during battles and carnage, possessing some power of prediction and casting spells.

A woman who has honed her skills for over a century in the cycle of reincarnation (including time in memory worlds and various sub-planes), mastering and integrating multiple professional fields, and obtaining numerous degrees. She can also partially predict the future, cast spells without being restrained, possesses top-tier combat skills and bestial instincts in this world, and is ruthless in her actions—faced with this, the mortal forces of Novengrim can only consider themselves unlucky. In the entire city, apart from Geralt and his confidante Triss, and a certain hidden high vampire—whom Zhan Lan had already casually chopped off when he destroyed the Eternal Flame's stronghold—there is simply no one capable of standing up to Zhan Lan when she calms down.

After all, there is no special enhancement in this world. There are people who unlock their genetic locks, but they are basically blank slates and lack development. The aftereffects of unlocking are not something that can be easily overcome. Those who can overcome them and bring them under their control are all outstanding individuals of their time.

So, Zhan Lan probably didn't ask either... wait?

Luo Ye raised an eyebrow, and before she could look away, she suddenly realized something was amiss. She noticed a well-hidden power emanating from Zhan Lan. Then, she immediately thought of a character who fit her description.

[Gant Odim, the man in the mirror, an ancient demon of the wizarding world… Yes, it has always been watching Geralt, so naturally it will also turn its attention to those suddenly connected to Geralt… I remember I should have intervened with this guy before throwing Aerith over there. Hmm… Could something have gone wrong?]

Luo Ye's gaze shifted, quickly leaping along the causal lines again, and settling on a bald man drinking alone in a crossroads inn. The man's words and demeanor possessed a unique charm; he sat in the most conspicuous spot, yet no one noticed his presence. And as he leisurely swirled his glass, the images of Zhan Lan and Geralt appeared within the liquid.

He watched the two, while Luo Ye watched him. After confirming that his intervention was still effective, Luo Ye breathed a slight sigh of relief. This ancient demon, the final boss of the Hearts of Stone DLC in The Witcher 3, capable of stopping time, shattering fate, and creating alternate dimensions out of thin air, didn't seem to intend to interfere with Geralt and Janran at this moment. He remained a bystander, perhaps waiting until the main story ended and Ciri had fulfilled her destiny before taking action.

That's good. Since he didn't intend to act now, it means Luo Ye doesn't need to crush it into mirror shards with a single finger from across the endless world. The Witcher 3 is, after all, a traditional RPG. It's one thing for the hero to seek death, but since the hero didn't headlong into the Demon King's castle, the Demon King has to follow the rules and gradually feed the hero experience, starting with the minions. Only after all the henchmen, the Four Heavenly Kings, and the left and right guardians are eliminated will the Demon King himself intervene. And if the Demon King in the script dares to break the rules, then the Outer God outside the script will naturally teach it what the rules are.

So, everything is ready.

Luo Ye withdrew her gaze, pausing briefly on a few other branches to get a general idea of ​​the other members' situations before looking away—she didn't need to worry about the others, as they had all been placed in very suitable positions. Except for Zheng Zha, who was unlucky enough to be thrown into the Game of Thrones (TV) world and was quite bored, everyone else was living... 'quite fulfilling' lives.

[The script is basically accurate... but there really wasn't a script to begin with. With the blessing of the Hunting Saint Ritual, they won't actually encounter any real danger. The truly important thing... is on my side.]

Luo Ye turned her head back to the corpse of the holy beast she had killed with a single blow. She knew very well that this was the real problem she had anticipated, unlike the celestial generals who had mostly undergone primordial magic modifications. The true form hidden behind this shell was on a completely different level from those previous minions.

"But the things that need to be done still need to be done."

The next moment, everything before Luo Ye's eyes suddenly changed.

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

Image axis calibration...

Causal line compilation...

Redefining quality, re-editing energy operation methods...

Spacetime axis stability...

Luo Ye opened her eyes, and what came into view was a vast, boundless white square. A white moon hung high in the sky, and then pure white light silently poured down.

Her heart sank. It was clear that the Sacred Hunting Ritual wouldn't have created a dedicated arena to house the members of the Saint Legion imprisoned here. Nor should an uncontrolled moon have appeared within the seal binding Chang'e. Therefore, the conclusion was obvious: the one who single-handedly transformed this prison into its current state was none other than the original prisoner. And this prisoner held the power to possess some degree of autonomy even within the Sacred Hunting Ritual.

“Only by gathering the complete light of the soul and personalizing it can one master such power. One can freely travel between different worldviews without being banished from the heavens to the dust simply because a different world or a different rule is encountered,” Luo Ye murmured. Although she was mentally prepared for all of this, she still felt anxious when she actually encountered it.

Ah... I never expected this, or rather, even if I had expected it, I wouldn't have wanted to believe it.

[Among the entire Central Continent team, the first to engage in a life-or-death struggle with a fully-powered fourth-tier opponent who hadn't been significantly weakened was actually me!]

"In the past, when my colleagues talked about the Reincarnation Squad, they always described them as cunning and treacherous, with one trick after another. I used to think nothing of it, but I never expected that even Chang Sheng would fall into your trap."

A voice suddenly rang out, and Luo Ye raised an eyebrow, only to see a humanoid image suddenly appear in the void a few meters in front of him—it was a projection, an illusory pattern. Even with the support of the Hunting Saint Ritual, Luo Ye could not discern the causal threads connected to it, only confirming that its true form was bound in this space. Although it had some freedom, it was still unable to escape, just like the previous celestial generals, and could not obtain any supplies from the outside.

The shadow gradually became clearer, revealing a tall, muscular man. His gaze swept over Luo Ye, his brows showing a clear, or rather, deliberate, look of surprise.

"I am Hong, the fourteenth divine general under the command of Chang Sheng. Reincarnator, state your name."

“Luo Ye,” Luo Ye replied, “You can try to curse me with my name, but I don’t think you’ll get a satisfactory answer. You seem somewhat different from the heavenly generals I killed before, the fourteenth divine general… are you their leader?”

"I'm not like those with limited potential. I wouldn't stoop so low as to secretly kill a True Person who's a level below me. It's pointless and unnecessary," Luo Ye's interlocutor replied calmly. From the top of the phantom, Luo Ye didn't sense any aura or pressure.

However, Luo Ye knew its true purpose.

“Oh, I understand.” Luo Ye stretched out his hand and gently clenched his fist, a clear, simulated spiritual light appearing on the surface of his fist. “You’re wasting your breath talking to me here to try to find the channel through which I descended, to study the remaining traces, and to try to escape from this cage—you may continue to try, and then you will know that it is all in vain.”

Her interlocutor remained silent. After a long while, just as Luo Ye was growing weary of the countless invisible detection spells floating in space, the Fourteenth Divine General finally responded.

"I can get the same answer from you."

“If you’re not mentally challenged, I think you should be able to figure out that since I’m here, I must have a way of keeping it a secret.” Luo Ye tilted his head slightly and asked, “Are you mentally challenged?”

"Then I will have no choice but to destroy you completely."

Luo Ye casually waved her hand, dispelling the projection before her. However, in the next instant, all her senses issued the most intense warnings!

The sky has fallen!

What hung in the sky was not the moon, but a pure white giant nearly ten thousand kilometers tall. As it stretched its limbs, its divine body, that of a celestial being, fully unfolded. The white light faded, revealing a stellar armor intricately carved with power runes on every nanometer. With its limbs extended, a three-headed, eight-armed form, as described in ancient legends, covered most of the sky!

It has three heads and eight arms, each wielding a divine weapon—a sword, an axe, a banner, or a tower. Countless layers of magical barriers surround it, so that even a mortal, if able to control it, could easily kill a weak deity in an ordinary cycle of reincarnation.

This is the true fourth-tier, or rather, stronger than the ordinary wild fourth-tier, belonging to the primordial world! When the Light of the Mind is completed, its owner will gain a unique, personalized power. On this basis, relying on this personalized Light of the Mind, after developing the body that can infinitely mutate and differentiate when the genetic lock is unlocked to the fourth tier to its extreme, the body that can best exert the power of the Light of the Mind is in this form.

This is the true form of God, and also the Dharma body of the true God. And the essence of the spiritual light possessed by this fourteenth divine general is the evolution of moonlight!

The eight arms crashed down, and in an instant, an area of ​​at least ten thousand kilometers around Luo Ye was purified and decomposed by the moonlight. There were no flaws or loopholes. Luo Ye and the spacetime structure where she was located were completely purified. Her all-out punch only managed to wear down a tiny bit of the pure white moonlight that enveloped the eight divine artifacts.

She died. A person at the initial limit level would not be able to withstand even a single blow from a person at the intermediate limit level and would die immediately.

However, the next moment, the intact Luo Ye once again descended into this cage!

Even the gods were astonished by this, and when she reappeared, they were unable to immediately swat down the hand holding the divine weapon!

"You are clearly dead, completely purified, leaving not even a trace of your soul!" The divine general's voice resounded throughout heaven and earth, the vast sound waves whipping up a storm across the pure white plaza. "But why... you have no true spirit at all!?"

Six eyes, as large as inner lakes, opened wide at the same instant.

"Once a single thought arises, it cannot be destroyed by countless eons... You are a celestial demon? No, you are the inner demon of a True Person who has not yet undergone reincarnation! How could there be an inner demon like you in this multiverse!? Just how much good fortune did your true form accumulate in your past life to have an inner demon like you who doesn't even try to seize the power of the original body!?"

“It’s a pity that it is.” Luo Ye tilted his head, gazing at the True God’s image in the sky from a distance of a planet. “If you were outside the ritual, I would have no way to deal with you. However, here, you cannot replenish your power or restore your depleted Light of the Mind. Although the simulated Light of the Mind is of inferior quality, it can still partially neutralize your True God’s power, just like the real thing.”

A clear light emanated from her body once more, and then she streaked towards the bright moon in the sky like a comet!

"Only one person can kill me, and that person will appear in this place."

"Then, whether it's a hundred million times or a billion times, even if it's only a tiny bit each time, I will kill you until you are completely dead!"

The next moment, the enraged god swung his divine body down at the comet!

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

After an unknown amount of time, Luo Ye returned to the base world. The moment her body was exposed to the air, it crumbled and decayed under the chaotic moonlight, causing her to fall to the ground like a dropped glass doll, turning into dust.

Raising his hand, his fingers shifted between the states of sand and flesh hundreds of times in a single second. As he propped himself up, his bones underwent nearly a hundred transformations of destruction and reconstruction within the disintegrating spacetime.

The first step is only crawling, the second step allows the knees to touch the ground, and by the third step, the feet have regained a stable shape.

Luo Ye had lost count of how many times she had been killed by the Fourteenth Divine General—it must have been hundreds of millions of times—but that didn't matter, because she had finally succeeded in killing the Fourteenth Divine General once. And this time marked both the beginning and the end.

She raised her head, her crystalline eyes constantly crumbling and reforming. A quiet road stretched out beneath her feet, ending at the second objective on the map: a small chapel guarded by another leader.

She continued walking forward...

"I am... I will not stop."

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

That concludes Luo Ye's content for now. Next up is Alice's side OAO

Chapter Fifteen: The Puppeteer's Ethics

"We have about four days left to reach the Island of Mist."

"And everything seemed very peaceful during this time."

Alice stood on the deck of the ship, gazing at the celestial phenomena around her with her compass in hand. She had previously spent some time calculating the planet's radius, area, and orbital speed, and had redefined their latitude and longitude. When she substituted the coordinates of the Misty Island into these calculations, she obtained a precise solution.

She was alone on the ship because, before leaving the Skellige Islands, she had used local materials to create some tethered puppets that could be accepted by this world's cosmology. Then, at the seaside dock, she hypnotized several renowned captains and gleaned their nautical experience and secret nautical charts. After understanding the sea conditions in the area, she set sail alone with sufficient supplies.

That's good, after all, Alice has sailed ships before. Although the ships she's sailed in the past and the one she's piloting now aren't exactly the same type or category, as a famous movie character once said, "If you've flown a fighter jet, you can fly anything." Similarly, as long as the basic handling skills are there, overcoming minor details like the different ship types will only take a little time.

After all, Alice was ultimately just a puppeteer, and a puppeteer's forte is naturally puppetry. She could certainly use mind control to manipulate dozens or even hundreds of sailors to do her bidding. But compared to flesh-and-blood people, when carrying out tasks with choices and a low margin for error, she clearly trusted her emotionless puppets more.

That's why I'm here, that's why I am Alice.

She glanced around, stretching her gaze from the open deck all the way to the horizon. Before setting sail, she had planned her route, calculating the ocean currents and monsoons of this era and choosing the most suitable path. And just as she had predicted, when she set sail according to her plan, there were no unexpected storms at sea, nor did she encounter any sea creatures that would hinder her progress.

Everything was normal, so normal that she couldn't find a single obstruction in her view when she stood on the deck. The waves were indeed surging, but the rise and fall of the waves were almost negligible within her field of vision. Apart from the dark line drawn by the distant land behind her and a few patches of sea mist that quickly dissipated in the sunlight, she encountered nothing in her way.

The journey from the Skellige Islands to the Isle of the Mist takes seven days, and we are now exactly halfway there. There's no extreme weather or treacherous sea creatures in this ocean that could pose a threat, making the trip quite boring and unpredictable.

Ah, yes, a lack of variables. If someone could observe everything in this world from a higher perspective when Alice set sail, they would inevitably discover that once Alice enters this sea, she will encounter virtually nothing that could significantly impact future events—the spellcasters of this world are incapable of opening a portal on a ship sailing in an unknown location on the high seas without a clear location. Geralt, Triss, and the other protagonists are currently wasting time searching for Ciri's whereabouts in Novengrih and the Skellige Isles. Even if an outsider exists, they cannot use items beyond the world's established framework to track down this ship.

and so……

Alice looked up at the sky and said softly.

"You're not looking here right now, are you, Luo Ye?"

Heaven and earth are silent.

—On the vast ocean, only a cold wind blows.

As expected, Luo Ye wasn't looking here. And Alice didn't just draw such a hasty conclusion based on this one question—she did so because she had just sensed a very subtle change in the genetic lock within her body.

The gene lock activation stage saw a slight upward increase. Although it was a tiny and insignificant increase, it was merely a minor change, roughly equivalent to turning 99.99% of the first-order gene lock into 99.999% that remained at the first order. But change is still change.

Alice is very sensitive to change, so she noticed this slight shift. At the same time, she also knew that nothing had changed in the world she inhabited. Therefore, the only change must have occurred within herself, or rather, in another part of herself that she couldn't control.

—Luo Ye must have done something to allow the power wielded by the entirety of 'Alice Margotrovid' to take a small step towards a higher level, even after reaching the limits of its current stage. In the terms of earlier popular online literature, it's like going from unlocking the initial limit of the fourth stage of the gene lock to becoming what's called half a step into the fourth stage. Although such a description is quite far-fetched, change is still change.

The advancement of the Unified Body allowed Alice, the 'changed' aspect, to undergo some growth even while sealed within the Hunter Saint's Cage. And regardless of how Luo Ye achieved this level of power growth, it proves one thing at this moment—

Luo Ye is very busy, or at least very likely so. Both Alice, representing 'change,' and Luo Ye, representing 'unchanging,' are always extremely busy with their overall time management. Alice has already been quite unhappy with her nearly month-long period of 'slacking off' in the Wizarding World. She believes that if Luo Ye were in a more relaxed state, she, representing 'unchanging,' would definitely not remain stagnant, quietly observing all the events unfolding in this world.

And as it turns out, my guess was correct.

Alice looked away from the sky, flicked her fingers, and controlled her dangling puppets to move the ship onto a pre-calculated ocean current. According to her calculations, there would be no major rainfall or storms in the vicinity until at least tomorrow's sunrise. And given the technological limits allowed by this world's cosmology, it would be impossible for anyone to track the ship as it sailed into the open sea during her voyage.

She stepped off the deck and, as she had done for the previous three days, set up her usual experiments, explorations, and tool-making. By the time she finished, dusk was approaching. A dim sun was slowly sinking into the sea.

That was good; the sun had set, and it was almost time to eat and rest. Once all her business was done and the sky was filled with stars, Alice lay down on her bed as usual.

All the portholes were closed, and all the defenses were activated. Alice did the same thing three times in this period of time. Soon, when everything was ready, Alice slowly closed her eyes, just as she had done before.

Alice is a puppeteer, and puppeteers' favorite and most trusted possessions are their dolls.

Similarly, what puppeteers hate most is being manipulated as puppets—whether it's out of malice or good intentions.

Luo Ye's judgment before she averted her gaze was correct. This was the Hunter Saint's Prison, its worldview locked, and the power of all extraordinary life forms completely diminished. During the time she looked away, Alice couldn't possibly have left the sea, nor could anything strange have suddenly appeared beside her. She had made prior arrangements, ensuring that Alice's ship contained no locating coordinates or teleportation devices, and had mentally corrected all beings capable of interfering in this area at this time, preventing them from interfering.

In her plan, Alice's trial will begin when she meets Ciri on the Isle of Mist—the Wild Hunt will find the Isle of Mist at that time, and the party consisting of the Witcher and other main characters will track her to that location because of Uma. Even other parties of reincarnators may take the opportunity to interfere, and the Mirror Demon and High Vampires will also step into the vortex at the right time.

She planned it perfectly, she prepared meticulously, and it could even be said that if her target wasn't Alice, everything, even if seen through, couldn't be changed in the slightest. Because the boundary between extraordinary beings and mortals dictates everything, without any leverage, even if Chu Xuan were in Alice's position, he could only obediently follow Luo Ye's script.

Unfortunately, her target was Alice. Not the Alice from *The Wandering Earth*, who was constantly schemed against by the people she knew best and trusted most, and who even forced herself not to think in that direction when she suspected something was amiss. Instead, it was this Alice who, though reduced to a mortal, knew the enemy's identity and part of the situation, and was fully utilizing her thought processes.