Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

Luo Ye nodded noncommittally.

“You can try, I’m waiting,” she said defiantly, before the entire palace solidified into a distorted, alien shape in the fading sunlight. Luo Ye then lightly tapped his forehead; having erased Nyarlathotep’s timeline, he himself became the replacement, taking over its historical threads.

One statement about it was true: 'Luo Ye' was indeed destined to suffer the pain of blasphemy. And in Luo Ye's vision, she clearly saw Alice and Patchouli die seven times and lose their hearts three times in the next ten days, before finally stepping into this palace to seek advancement in information magic.

Naturally, all they could gain here was the bone-corroding curse that had haunted them for hundreds of years. And this curse had now been reshaped in Luo Ye's hands—and after that, the curse would be bestowed upon Alice and Patchouli, while in the time to come, the 'Luo Ye of this point in time' sleeping deep within Alice's soul would bear most of the burden.

This is inevitable; it represents the optimal state presented by the corrected source world line.

Ten days passed in the blink of an eye. Soon, Luo Ye, having donned a new disguise, cast a curse upon the witches at the end of the script, while also being banished himself. He was exiled from this world.

Everything was working as she had hoped and planned.

And when she was 'naturally' banished from the world, all the mediums and hidden forces related to Nyarlathotep in the entire 'Outer World of Gensokyo' universe were completely erased or removed, and arrived at the outer world with her.

She stood above the seas, gazing at the churning gray tides before her.

then--

“This is Gaia’s universe,” she said calmly. “Even the player holding the chess pieces must act in accordance with Gaia’s rules on this final battlefield.”

"And you are nothing more than a pawn in a game of chess." She looked at the gray tide that seemed about to engulf her at any moment, the gray tide of the outer universe of Gensokyo behind her, which solidified in the seas.

"Do you dare come over?" she asked coldly, her tone more of a statement than a question.

And so the gray tide receded.

As the gray tide receded, a huge, blurry face emerged from the seas.

"This is not the end." — A whisper came from the face, and with its declaration, a considerable number of the many reincarnation universes gathered from the final battle were stained with gray dust — "You shall face the chaos, you shall know what suffering is."

“I’ll wait,” Luo Ye replied.

She saw the enormous face vanish without a trace, and she herself fell back into the void on the surface of the universe.

This was her victory, but she only won by leveraging Gaia's authoritarian order in the universe. Gaia would not allow anything outside the Light of the Mind and the Information System to remain on this final battlefield, and she merely made herself Gaia's agent, expelling the many traces and backup plans left by the Outer Gods' pawns in this universe.

She couldn't defeat Nyarlathotep—of course she couldn't. Nyarlathotep was, after all, a super-being of True Saint caliber. Although it was merely a pawn of Azathoth, and Azathoth was merely a pawn of an unnamed outer god, power is power, and rank is rank. At most, Luo Ye could only ensure that the timeline covered by Alice's source world remained stable, preventing it from being distorted and manipulated by Nyarlathotep's methods.

This is the limit.

But if we want to go further—

—She sensed that the timeline was shifting at an ancient juncture, and that the erosion phenomena from outer realms were beginning to grow in a regular way during the time when Earth was still in its primordial state.

She will have to deal with this matter in the coming days, and this time it will be a truly tough battle.

But before that—

She traveled back to the 20K era, gazing upon Easter Island, now a ruin reduced to rubble due to timeline manipulation—a fact unnoticed by anyone in this universe except herself. The only Guardian who might have noticed was subjected to her 'special attention'.

Everything was quiet.

In the quiet, her gaze fell upon a small white flower swaying at her feet.

She remembered this flower, the deadly meme that Alice had personally dropped during the relocation of Gensokyo—the world-ending flower from the composite worldview of the riders on NieR: Dragon's back.

☆ Preparations before the end of the war: Unfolding the paper

Meme.

Long, long ago, Alice considered memes as a potential avenue for research in the path of power. Because they were powerful and unpredictable enough to be used as a trump card in many situations—she had conducted extensive research in this area. However, this research ultimately ended inconclusively.

why?

It's very simple. Because the essence of memes is error, a natural phenomenon that arises after Gaia's loss of position, when the combined Heavenly Dao and script memes of Gu Jun are insufficient to govern the operation of the entire multiverse—the closer the universe, or rather the multiverse itself, is to its end, the more such strange things that disregard common sense and natural laws will appear. And once the future of Gaia's inevitable awakening is anchored, the path of exploring memes becomes a dead end.

Alice was too young to realize what was happening.

However, even if she couldn't foresee this future, the future seemed to anticipate her and adapt accordingly—her attention was quickly diverted to other new topics and discoveries. She continued to achieve new research breakthroughs in other areas of power. Gradually, the project called "memes" was forgotten by her, and after she grew to a sufficiently high level of life, the discovery of the phenomenon of "script memes" made her wary of "memes," thus directing her surplus research resources to other areas.

She avoided memes because she was change, development, and her ideas clashed with the very nature of memes.

And it is precisely for this reason that when Luo Ye, who is unchanging, the end, and twilight, arrives here, this lethal meme, which once had a karmic connection with the Central Continent Team but is now gradually fading amidst the current flourishing of all things, appears at her feet. Although it has no self or instinct, it objectively seeks Luo Ye's protection under the natural workings of nature.

“I remember you, I remember you, this extinct little flower,” Luo Ye said softly, bending down to fiddle with the white petals of the flowers at her feet. The petals obediently responded to her, allowing her to read every conceptual shift within this memetic shell.

And Luo Ye quickly obtained all the contents of this meme—

“Cycle.” Luo Ye said softly, “Your essence is the cycle of time, the product of the fragmented laws that the past creates the future and the future determines the past. The universe covered by you will be constructed as a Möbius strip in its past and future. No matter how it develops or struggles, it can only cycle endlessly within its predetermined fate.”

She said, and the flowers swayed, responding and agreeing with her statement.

So Luo Ye continued to observe, moving from the main structure to the details, from the concepts to the records. She saw civilizations in two different worlds bound by this cyclical meme. It blurred the time difference between the former and the latter, causing both worlds to simultaneously create apocalyptic elements and send them to the past time periods in which they created their own apocalypses, and then link the causality, making the apocalyptic elements sent to the other world and the apocalypse they themselves faced the same thing.

Two worlds, thus embarking on a dead end of a cycle.

However, this was unimportant, at least not to Luo Ye—countless civilizations rise and fall every moment in the multiverse. And Miss Luo wasn't like Aichidra, who couldn't bear tragedy, so she naturally didn't need to concern herself with such trivial matters—what truly interested her was a record hidden within this meme. And within that record, one individual particularly caught her attention.

She saw the previous, or rather, the only, host of this world-destroying flower.

A woman stripped of everything by the world, left with nothing. As she was being executed as a criminal, she was chosen by the blooming flower of doom. She became the harbinger of the apocalypse, resurrected from the brink of death and unable to die again. As long as she lives, the apocalyptic elements brought by the flower of doom will cleanse the entire universe.

She should have sought revenge, for she had lost everything. However, upon learning her true purpose, instead of taking back everything the world had robbed her of, she sought to end her life immediately—her motives were complex, perhaps a sense of unbearable burden of the world's destruction, or perhaps a simple act of pity. Regardless, she ultimately achieved her goal, burying the flower and herself together, thus single-handedly postponing the inevitable apocalypse for a very, very long time.

Of course, this doesn't really mean anything.

Because a meme is a meme, an established cycle cannot be broken so easily.

Even so, she single-handedly delayed the arrival of the apocalypse, becoming the only successful rebel in the complex world of the NieR-Dragon Riders, which is an undeniable fact—and this quality she possessed attracted particular attention from Luo Ye.

"They don't care about any person or thing, but they care about the continuation of civilization itself."

Even if the entire world is hostile towards me, even if all I see is hatred and malice, I will never waver in my will and pursuit. I am determined to bring about my own utter death so that the world can continue to function under the threat of apocalypse—

"—You are very suitable, for this universe, for this civilization, for this mortal world that is about to be covered by war. You are very suitable."

“Then—” Her fingers moved down, touching the calyx of the flower. In her eyes, she saw a white-haired, red-eyed woman sleeping in the ancient void—“Will you come with me?”

She saw the sleeping woman's eyelids flutter, and then, silently, the flower detached from its calyx and landed lightly in Luo Ye's hand.

She gazed at the flower, and the flower dissolved, shaped, and quickly formed the image of a newborn white-haired, red-eyed baby girl. The baby girl's appearance then changed under her gaze, skipping the annoying steps of nursing and babbling, and directly transforming into a sleeping white-haired girl.

All past events have been severed. What appears here is a new being with almost no connection to her predecessor, except that her essence remains unchanged. If she were to be given a name, then the designation Zero, representing the 'birth of all things,' would be very fitting.

Coincidentally, her predecessor, after being resurrected by the flower, also happened to be named 'Zero'. And the meaning of that 'Zero' was that of having nothing.

“You will not be left with nothing in this world.” Luo Ye tapped the girl’s head, watching the eyeballs of this life, which was constantly adapting to this new universe, move around under her eyelids. Her gaze then passed over her, over the many variables of this era, and grafted a line of fate that would not appear for four thousand years and would have a profound impact on the future onto this place. And a new name appeared in her mind.

“Marcardo… this isn’t a name a girl should have. Even though this destiny now belongs to you…”

From now on, your name will be [Manco Endo].

She said it, she made that decision. And then, with her permission, the wheels of history turned forward.

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

Time flies, and soon a thousand years had passed. In these hundred years, which were of no value to the transcendent species, besides engaging in a war of words with Naya, who had set up the scheme in the ancient times, causing many ancient ruins with billions of years of 'history' to appear in this multiverse, Luo Ye did most of her time educating this newborn girl, 'Mankoendo', who inherited the essence of her previous life but retained no memories of it.

Luo Ye was certainly not a good teacher, but she could be one if she wanted to. Under her tutelage, this girl, born immortal, naturally grew at a rate far exceeding the imagination of many intellectual beings—she didn't teach Mancoendo how to be a person, nor did she instill any special thoughts or philosophies in this little girl who initially only clung to her leg and called her "Mommy." She simply presented the girl with a vast catalog of knowledge, allowing her to choose, and then crammed it into her mouth.

Clearly, this was not going to be a fun childhood. But the chosen one didn't need such a superfluous thing as childhood to waste time—under Luo Ye's tutelage, she learned very quickly. Even without cheating by using memory transfer, she absorbed all the knowledge from the year 1 AD to 21,000 AD in the three years after her birth, and in the following 330 years, she learned how to apply this knowledge in practice.

At the age of 333, she became the most learned mortal sage in the universe—the guardians created by the governors might be slightly stronger, but not by much. After all, their focuses were completely different. Over the next 666 years, Luo Ye not only taught her how to fight, but also arranged for her to experience managing planetary-level forces and participating in the operations of various forces within an administrative region covering an entire star system.

She learns very quickly, and I'm not just saying that; she really does learn very quickly.

From the very beginning, when a systemic error brought trade on an entire planet to a standstill, almost prompting her to call for support from Luo Ye but ultimately holding back and working tirelessly to get everything back on track—to the point where she was able to keep hundreds of habitable planets of varying sizes operating smoothly across several star systems without any unrest or civil unrest even under high-intensity resource output—her mistakes were few and far between.

She became the most intelligent manager and operator in this universe, aside from those with cheat-like abilities like Luo Ye. During her years of 'going out to practice,' she even fought against the guardians of the human world who sensed something amiss and came to investigate. The final result was that the guardians could only gain an absolute advantage in pure force and leadership, while they suffered heavy defeats in all other areas of competition.

It was an interesting development, and these two powerful life forms gradually got to know each other.

While the Milky Way remained prosperous for twenty-one thousand years, expanding towards other galaxies, the battle between Luo Ye and Naya in the ancient era also intensified—

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

“I have named you Ancient Saints. You are the guardians of all sentient life. And you are born to fight against the gods who are born from the depths of the stars. For they call themselves Star Gods, but in essence they are the manifestation of the will of the gods from beyond this universe.”

Three billion years ago, when Earth was still a barren wasteland, Luo Ye stood in the void and issued commands to space. The free particles, light, and radiation waves in space converged under her will, forming a giant biological community that resembled ancient angels—they spontaneously developed language and etiquette at the moment of their birth, and then they knelt respectfully before Luo Ye.

"Our Creator, Your will will surely be manifested." — A wave of will, mixed yet unified within the biological community, appeared in Luo Ye's perception. They made this promise, and Luo Ye immediately vanished. The Ancient Saint's legion system immediately began to operate, multiplying and expanding to every corner of the physical universe in an extremely short time, and then a large-scale purge of the Star Gods was launched and put into action.

The war, the outbreak of which was not a fierce clash, but only a cold inundation and torrent. At this juncture, the Star Gods could not even analyze the form of their opponent's existence, and the battle was already drawing to a close.

However, they failed because, just as the last Star God was about to be killed, the past timeline was immediately corrected. The macrocosmic environment was altered to the point that the Ancient Ones' infinite proliferation system could no longer function—their members collapsed in an instant from filling the entire universe to a size that could be contained within a single planet. The dead Star Gods then reappeared due to the shift in the worldline and launched an attack simultaneously on the drastically reduced Ancient One population.

Their origins have changed; the previous ones have been completely forgotten, and the new ones make the Star Gods appear as an amorphous cloud of energy that feeds on active energy for growth. They are born from stars and feed by absorbing the heat from the star's core, and they also use this method to fight.

They are the adversaries of all intelligent life, for they are Nyarlathotep's decisive step. By erasing and redefining the living environment of life in the past, everything in the 'present' will naturally turn into 'chaos,' and everything will fall into Nyarlathotep's control.

It's an interesting approach, but not very useful.

Because what it can do, Luo Ye can also do. When it modified the fundamental laws of the universe four billion years ago, three billion years earlier, Luo Ye could also lock up all the material order in the universe five billion years earlier, making it impossible to change.

Thus, the war between the Star Gods and the Ancient Saints of the past three billion years changed once again. Due to the alteration of the rules, over 99% of the Star Gods who attacked the Ancient Mother's Nest were directly eliminated. The wiped-out Ancient Saints were then restored and possessed the power to dominate half a galaxy—the battlefield that once covered the entire universe was now confined to this mere Milky Way. With the order and rules stabilized, both sides were finally able to honestly fight by advancing their technology rather than relying on external advantages to determine the final outcome.

They fought and slaughtered each other. And in the midst of the war, the demands of the two players were fulfilled.

They caused galaxies to flicker and fade, and spacetime to tremble layer by layer. They became barriers that had existed for three billion years. They used the flames of war spreading from the Milky Way to extragalactic galaxies to block the gaze of the future god from looking back into the past—and soon powerful beings of godlike stature emerged from among them. Yet, at the moment of their birth, they were also bound by this era, becoming barriers that separated the past from the future and merging into it.

The timeline of the universe is divided into three billion years before the 'modern era'.

The past of the three billion-year era cannot directly affect the future of the three billion-year era. And true gods born in the future who have not yet achieved transcendence cannot interfere with the past beyond this barrier.

This war was thus called the War of Heaven, and this battle atop the bulwark would never end until the struggle of the distant past was resolved. Nyarlathotep might see this as advantageous, as it could unleash more and more power as the universe evolved, until it became an overwhelming force. Loye, however, had her own calculations, for she needed a sufficiently stable platform. And because she was waiting—

—Waiting for new participants to join in.

As Luo Ye traveled back in time, extinguishing the Dao erosion phenomena that Nyarlathotep had infiltrated the universe one by one, and battling the Nyarlathotep avatars that occupied various ancient points in time to prevent her from reaching the primordial time of all things, she sensed the shifts in the flow of time beyond the barrier of three billion years at the point two hundred years after the Big Bang.

An alien universe is merging with this one. A new race, a new power, and new reincarnators are attempting to participate in the pre-war planning. This points to an obvious fact—

—The time for cramming before the exam is over.

Section 1: Northern Flame Continent

The first universe to begin merging was the one that the Northern Flame Continent team had previously experienced. This was a reincarnation team with a very low profile, and they basically never appeared in any situation other than information exchange during reincarnation team battles.

Naturally, even at the moment the final battle began, they were unable to grow under the God's intensive training. When their universe merged with the 'Outside Gensokyo' universe, Luo Ye, who had prepared the trigger switch in advance, easily saw through the arrangements in these universes and the general strength of the Northern Flame Continent Team.

Clearly, it's not a cause for concern.

Thus, one of Luo Ye's avatars descended during the battle, easily passing through the dual barriers of the outer membrane of the universe and the main god space to arrive at this newly arrived cosmic community. After a short rest, it began to examine all the clues it needed from top to bottom.

"There are a total of twenty-seven universes... This Northern Flame Continent team was wiped out once... almost twice in the story world. So the number of reincarnation worlds involved is more than expected..."

She watched, reconstructing the records of this reincarnation team. The first world she arrived at was a zombie-themed world called 'Dawn of the Dead'—the main god liked to arrange such low-difficulty worlds for newcomers to the reincarnation world. Her gaze swept across, located, and found the records of eight new reincarnation members within.