Chapter 114

When Lu Qi opened her eyes again, the first thing she saw was an oppressive gray ceiling. Muffled voices of conversation reached her ears. She tried to move her limbs but found she couldn’t gather any strength at all.

"Hey, are we really going to do this? Using a woman of unknown origin for the test. Whether she becomes a Blessed Reliquary or a Fallen One, we won’t be able to explain it to the higher-ups..."

The short man asked uneasily. This girl had suddenly appeared at the foot of the rear mountain. When they first received the notice, they had thought she was an escapee from the base. After checking the records, they realized the base had no record of her at all.

According to the regulations, every woman who dedicated herself to the Hope Project had to be fully informed and willing. Violating this rule meant the responsible personnel would be executed by the director.

It didn’t matter about the others, but if that strict old abbess found out, they’d definitely be held accountable!

The tall man scoffed. "If she turns into a Fallen One, who would know whether she was willing? If she becomes a Blessed Reliquary, we’ll be heroes."

The short man still hesitated. Recently, the pressure from above had been intense. The nursery possessed suitable dragon bone life forms, yet their side still couldn’t produce a fitting Blessed Reliquary.

Every Blessed Reliquary was extremely precious. After implanting dragon bone fragments, fewer than one out of ten women could retain their sanity. Among those implanted with project life forms, the chance of successfully giving birth was only one in a thousand!

Moreover, whether successful or not, women who became Blessed Reliquaries and received life implants generally didn’t live longer than ten months.

That was why Blessed Reliquaries were so rare and valuable.

"The group next door was just working and ended up creating another Fallen One. If we can produce a Blessed Reliquary now, the team leader position might even be within reach for us."

The short man turned to look at the orange-haired girl lying quietly not far away. His hesitation disappeared.

"Fine, let’s finish this quickly. Even if another Fallen One is born, as long as we put a restraint device on it, it can still help the base deal with those monsters outside."

Seeing his partner finally make up his mind, the tall man showed a relaxed smile. He put on a pair of white gloves.

He needed to use this unlucky girl to cover up the mess. A few days earlier, his experimental subject had clashed with him during their interactions, and he had accidentally killed her. That was a serious crime in the base.

Fortunately, the base had been in chaos these past few days. As long as he used this girl as a substitute, quietly altered the records, and bribed a few people, the matter would pass unnoticed.

The girl lying on the black metal table kept her eyes tightly closed, her body completely motionless. But anyone looking closely would notice that her eyelashes were trembling faintly with tension.

Lu Qi was desperately trying to keep her breathing steady, pretending she still hadn’t woken up.

What on earth had happened? Who were those two men?

She struggled to recall. In the Eastern District, she had heard that an unknown disaster had struck the Western District and that the entire area had been sealed off. Without telling the rest of the Cloud Soarers team, she had secretly returned to the Western District.

All the roads into the Western District were blocked by the authorities. Lu Qi had spent several days taking detours before finally entering. The Western District was vast, and with the thick fog surrounding it, even she didn’t know exactly where she had ended up.

Ah, right. She had inexplicably been shot!

Lu Qi’s thigh twitched. The untreated wound had already begun to fester, and her brows furrowed in pain.

Before entering the Western District, she had prepared herself to face bizarre and terrifying monsters, and even death itself. But she had never imagined that once inside, every attack would come from humans.

Back then, she had suddenly been shot in the thigh. Thinking it was some long-range monster, she had simply played dead on the ground to lure it closer and kill it. Instead, two people had approached.

That had been the first time she had ever used her ability to attack humans. She hadn’t even dared check whether they were dead or alive. Dragging her injured leg behind her, she had run to the other side of the mountain.

And now, it seemed she have to do it a second time.

Lu Qi desperately tried to summon her ability. Her face grew paler, and her eyelashes trembled even more noticeably.

Strange! Why couldn’t she gather any power at all? Unable to stop herself, Lu Qi twisted her body slightly. The ice-cold bed beneath her felt like a bottomless pit that was swallowing all of her strength.

“You awake?”

“Better if you are. To withstand the erosion of the dragon’s power, you need strong willpower. Being in a daze makes it easy to turn into a Fallen One.”

Lu Qi’s eyes snapped open. Two disgusting adult male faces hovered right above her, smiling as they examined her.

She glared at them in fury. Under their condescending gazes, the girl suddenly summoned all her strength and lunged upward, like a fish flipping off a chopping board to slap someone.

But the next instant, a mist of water sprayed down from above the black metal table. Lu Qi’s barely supported body slumped backward limply.

“I told you to get ready! We almost got killed by her!”

The tall man patted his chest in lingering fear and scolded his partner.

“I followed the dosage strictly! Who knew she’d be this tough!”

The short man protested indignantly. Accidents happened in the lab all the time. Otherwise, what were the emergency devices for? How could this be his fault?

“Fine, you’re new here, so you don’t understand how dangerous this place is. Just last week, a researcher in the next group got swallowed whole by a Fallen One on the spot. Being cautious is for your own good.”

“Hand me the scalpel. I’ll handle the implantation this time. You watch and learn.”

The tall man pressed one hand on Lu Qi’s arm, seemingly searching for the right spot to cut, while extending the other toward the short man for the tool.

Soon he felt the cold, sharp touch in his palm. The scalpel rested there. Its chilling edge sent a shiver through him.

The tall man turned irritably. “Are you useless? Can’t even hand over a knife—”

He spun around only to see the short man standing a short distance away, eyes wide with terror, hands clamped over his mouth.

“Is this not right? Maybe it should be handed to you like this?”

The girl’s wrist flicked deftly. The small knife that had lain flat in the man’s palm suddenly flipped up and slashed toward the web between his thumb and forefinger!

Ye Zheng leaned her body slightly back. Not a single drop of the man’s spurting blood touched her pristine white clothes.

“Aaahhh—”

The delayed scream of pain echoed through the entire empty laboratory, though it wouldn’t draw anyone’s attention from outside. They were used to hearing inhuman shrieks coming from here.

Lu Qi, witnessing it all up close, stared blankly. She shrank her legs back. The man’s blood had splashed onto her calf warm and sticky.

“Zha—Ye Zheng!”

Lu Qi barely had the strength to speak, yet she still called out the name excitedly.

Ye Zheng turned her gaze to the girl struggling to move on the operating table. She helped her sit up and asked gently, “Are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere?”

A cool stream of water softly brushed across Lu Qi’s face. Her mind felt foggy, as if she were dreaming. She stared dazedly at Ye Zheng who had appeared out of nowhere. “Right thigh… left arm.”

Lu Qi had always thought that if she got trapped in the Western District, the first ones to come rescue her would be Pei Xi and the others. Even though a gentle, unfamiliar face sometimes flashed through her mind, she hadn’t dared to hope for it.

Ye Zheng lowered her eyes and patted Lu Qi’s head soothingly. For the first time in a while, she began her healing work.

“You… who the hell are you!”

The man who had lost his hand was in too much pain to get up from the floor. He looked toward the stunned short man and blinked hard, signaling him to press the alarm bell behind them.

“Don’t move. Since you’re already here, why not finish the experiment?”

Ye Zheng didn’t even lift her eyelids. She focused intently with 【Stream】, carefully examining Lu Qi’s body to confirm that these people hadn’t injected anything strange into her.

“I’ll give you a way out. Continue the experiment. I’m very curious about your process.”

“If you satisfy my curiosity, I won’t kill you myself.”

Ye Zheng helped the now-healed Lu Qi to her feet. She glanced at the small side table next to the operating platform. On a tray lay a fragment of bone, resting quietly.

The short man looked helplessly between his companion and the suddenly ruthless young figure who had appeared. He turned and started walking outward.

Ye Zheng supported Lu Qi as they left the spacious gray room. She pressed a red button on the wall. A thick glass door slowly descended, sealing the gray room off. The two men in white coats were now trapped inside like penned livestock.

“You. Implant the dragon bone into his body.”

The short man met the girl’s eyes through the heavy glass door and shivered. A chill ran down the side of his neck. When he looked down, a bloodstained small knife was somehow hovering against his throat!

Looking closely, he saw a slender stream of water wrapped around the handle. The thin flow snaked all the way outside the glass door.

The short man had no choice. Trembling, he picked up the knife and the dragon bone under his companion’s curses.

A few minutes later, the screams finally stopped. Ye Zheng stood quietly outside the glass door, covering Lu Qi’s eyes. A look of sudden realization crossed her face.

From what she knew of men, as long as the reward was great enough, even with only a one-in-ten chance of survival, they would rush to implant the dragon bone into themselves, fighting for the possibility of becoming powerful.

They would never give such a “good opportunity” to a woman.

So dragon bones couldn’t be directly fused into a man’s body… unless it was like Sykes, born from a woman’s womb already bearing dragon bone?

“Ye… Saint… Ye Zheng! Let me see!”

Lu Qi pulled Ye Zheng’s hand away. The moment the man’s body exploded, Ye Zheng had covered her eyes. Something horrifying must have happened, but she still wanted to see clearly what it was.

Behind the glass door, only one man remained standing. He was covered head to toe in blood and shredded flesh, looking like a blood-soaked figure. His original appearance was unrecognizable.

Lu Qi felt sick and lowered her gaze. When she looked down, her eyes met a bloodied eyeball that had rolled right up to the glass door. It stared back unwillingly. She couldn’t help but retch.

A gentle pressure touched her back. Ye Zheng lightly patted her.

Lu Qi felt drained—not just from the drugs those two had injected, but also from the shock of the scene before her.

Until now, she had only fought monsters from the aberrant realms. She had occasionally seen humans die gruesomely because of monsters, but this person hadn’t died gruesomely because of a monster. It was because of her and Ye Zheng… even though he had intended to harm her first.

A sixteen-year-old girl who had always lived surrounded by dreams and hope suddenly lost the ability to process what was in front of her.

Ye Zheng wasn’t surprised by Lu Qi’s reaction. On the contrary, this was the normal response.

No matter the reason, whether the person dying was good or evil, it was hard for anyone to feel completely at ease when witnessing the hell they had personally created especially a normal, just person.

Ye Zheng’s eyelashes trembled. In that moment, she wondered whether she was truly a just and kind person, or merely a fanatic who chased justice as an ultimate goal.

Perhaps she wasn’t so different from Kieran after all. The only distinction was the ideal world they pursued.

“Ye Zheng, Ye Zheng, I’m fine. Don’t be angry, okay?”

“Thank you… I never thought it would be you…”

Her collar was gently tugged. Ye Zheng looked down in slight confusion and met Lu Qi’s weak yet bright eyes. She clearly saw her own reflection there.

So she had been angry just now?

Not numb, but angry.

Lu Qi looked up and blinked at Ye Zheng, flashing a grin. She was comforting her.

Although she had been a little frightened earlier, after seeing Ye Zheng’s tense profile and the downturned corners of her mouth, Lu Qi had instinctively reached out to console her.

Lu Qi had never seen Zhao Mei or Ye Zheng like this before. The face that was always smiling now carried no warmth at all. Her black eyes were especially sharp with anger. Even just standing quietly beside her, it felt as though boundless waves were surging, stirring an odd sense of palpitation.

This place was so terrifying. It must have been very hard for Ye Zheng to come here and find her.

The girl forced her drug-weakened arm to rise. Ye Zheng thought Lu Qi was uncomfortable somewhere, so she stopped dwelling on chaotic thoughts. She lowered her head, bringing her cheek close to Lu Qi in a listening posture.

The next moment, Ye Zheng’s eyes widened in surprise. A hint of confusion appeared in her black eyes. The tightly pressed corners of her mouth were suddenly lifted upward, even puffing out her cheeks slightly.

“Next time, I won’t let you make that kind of expression because of me again.”

Lu Qi looked at her earnestly. Her usually lively, almost naive face showed a rare seriousness for the first time.

Her fingertips, pleased with the texture, mischievously poked Ye Zheng’s cheek again.

She stole a quick glance at the bloody scene behind the glass door. This time she didn’t feel as nauseated.

It was all the fault of these disgusting people for angering the gentle, understanding Saintess into this state! They deserved it!

Ye Zheng paused. The tightly pressed corners of her mouth suddenly relaxed, like melting ice and snow. She let Lu Qi continue her small actions and hesitated, about to say something, when a sudden shout interrupted them.

“You… you said if I finished the experiment, you wouldn’t kill me! Let me out!”

The man, now so covered in flesh and blood that his face was unrecognizable, pounded desperately on the glass door and shouted loudly.

Ye Zheng straightened up. One hand reached toward the wall on her right.

“Don’t worry. I keep my word as long as the experiment is completed.”

Her slender fingers moved under the short man’s expectant gaze, hovering over the red button. She tapped it lightly, then suddenly slid downward to the black button below.

“No no no not that one! The red one, the red one!”

“But I’m really curious. What does the black button do? It’s part of the experiment too, right?”

Ye Zheng tilted her head. She genuinely didn’t know. So she satisfied her curiosity and pressed it.

The gray room behind the thick glass door slowly began to rise. The solitary man was trapped inside. He looked up, watching the ceiling gradually leak white light. There was no excitement at seeing daylight. Instead, it was as if he had seen a monster. He scrambled in terror to the farthest corner of the room.

Ye Zheng narrowed her eyes slightly. So that was how it worked. After implanting the dragon bone fragments, these men locked the women inside the rooms and observed their condition. Once they lost control and turned into Fallen Ones, the men would press the black button, sending both the room and the woman who had transformed into a monster up above.

If she remembered correctly, the area above was the rear garden, a special place used to confine Fallen Ones. Not long ago, she had dealt with a supervisor named Jones there.

Ye Zheng let out a soft laugh. Two or three hours earlier, when she had gone to the rear garden, she hadn't encountered a single dragon-bodied person. According to Annabella, they had all been released by Zhou Yun through some method.

As long as no new experiments had been carried out during those two or three hours to produce additional Fallen Ones, this man would at most encounter the supervisor’s corpse.

“Lu Qi, let’s go. I’ll take you somewhere safe first.”

Although Lu Qi could now walk with some difficulty after receiving Ye Zheng’s healing, her body still needed proper rest.

『Consumed 150 action points. You have altered Lu Qi’s key plotline.』

The system’s voice suddenly rang out.

Ye Zheng’s eyes curved into a smile.

After the brief moment of happiness passed, she suddenly recalled hints from the manga spoilers along with the system’s vague suggestions. Ye Zheng guessed that in the original storyline, Pei Xi and the others had failed to rescue Lu Qi successfully. After all, they still hadn't appeared even now. As a result, Lu Qi might have turned into something similar to a Fallen One.

The reason she said “similar” was because in the spoiler scene from the manga, Lu Qi hadn't appeared heavily mutated. In addition, the system had mentioned that Lu Qi would only be “offline” for a period of time.

So did that mean Fallen Ones could potentially be cured?

Ye Zheng’s eyes lit up. She needed to get closer to them and observe them personally.

For now, the priority was to settle Lu Qi somewhere safe. She decided to return to the room Annabella had prepared for her.

✧✧✧✧✧

【Project Hope, Year 78 of Divine Descent.】

Pei Xi’s pupils shrank to pinpoints. He stared in shock at the file Kieran handed him. The cover appeared to be made from the hide of some powerful aberrant beast. Even after so many years it remained smooth and pristine, yet the overwhelming weight it carried made people instinctively hold their breath.

“This project started over four hundred years ago?”

Sykes frowned.

Kieran gently opened to the first page of the file.

“The initiator of the Hope Project was the second-generation Saintess. She volunteered to become the first test subject and paved the way for the project’s earliest steps.”

“After her, many nuns who held noble ideals joined willingly. They all signed this document together.”

On the first page were dozens of signatures belonging to different women.

In the upper corner, someone had drawn a lifelike daisy, the flower symbolizing hope and peace.

Under the focused gazes of the two young men, Kieran continued turning the pages one after another. Their expressions gradually changed.

Every page was filled with densely written names.

“Every woman who devoted herself signed her name here. Their names were eternally commemorated alongside the second-generation Saintess and their predecessors.”

When Kieran turned to an unknown page, he paused and pointed to two names. Sykes’s face immediately darkened. Pei Xi shook his head in a daze and took two steps back. One of the names belonged to the late Empress, and the other was…

“Why… why? What exactly makes this experiment necessary!”

Pei Xi’s eyes were bloodshot as he questioned Kieran. After entering this base, every place had felt strangely familiar, leaving him trembling. Now he had finally learned the name of his birth mother.

Mu You.

Seeing that Pei Xi had become so agitated that he might tear the file apart, Kieran took it back and flipped directly to the final page.

【Our predecessors wove benevolent lies for an inevitably doomed future, but we will twist those lies into a beautiful reality.】

【If there is no god, we will create one. If there is no hope, we will create hope.】

【The Mother of All Things passed down through generations, the Hope Project handed onward like a torch, and the unextinguished spirit of exploration. This is the greatest gift we leave to those who come after us.

—Saintess Marian】

Pei Xi covered half his face, tormented by whether all of this was truly worth it for the sake of so-called hope.

“An inevitably doomed future?”

Sykes, who lacked much sentimentality, stared sharply at the final page and spoke. His golden eyes darkened slightly.

“I know you will think this project is unworthy. The prophecy states that a super aberrant realm will descend along with the successor of the God of Hope who will save the world. It seems that we shouldn't need to go to such lengths to create a god.”

“But the prophecy is false.”

The moment Kieran spoke those words, the study fell into deathly silence. Both young men looked at him in shock at the same time.

“Without the Hope Project, neither of you would have been born. There would be no successor to the God of Hope.”

“So do you still think we are merely a group of deranged villains?”

The prophecy of a savior that had supported the entire empire through countless disasters was fake. Only the first half was real, the part that spoke of the empire’s destruction.

The cruel truth struck them head-on. Pei Xi and Sykes stood on opposite sides of the room, remaining silent for a long time.

A sudden knock on the door broke the stillness. Kieran walked over and opened the study door.

“My lord, the person has been captured. Should we place her in the confinement cell for questioning?”

Pei Xi and Sykes both looked toward the doorway. The two men, who possessed completely different temperaments, froze in disbelief before striding out together.

Kieran stood with his hands behind his back. His gaze carried both pity and disappointment as he looked down at the girl whose hands were bound by a restraint device.

“It was Zhou Yun who sent you in here, wasn't it?”

“Perhaps before you killed four people in the base, you didn't know that Zhou Yun had kidnapped a total of five hundred thousand people and demanded that I kill all of you?”

Ye Zheng lifted her head. A trace of surprise flashed across her face upon hearing Zhou Yun’s actions, but she still shook her head honestly.

“I truly didn't know.”

Kieran smiled warmly, his expression full of forgiveness.

“She deceived you. I don't blame you.”

“Even if I had known, I would still have done it.”

“Because this is your inevitable end.”

Ye Zheng interrupted the man mercilessly. Her hands were bound by black circular restraints, yet they rested calmly in front of her. She tilted her head slightly upward and wore her usual gentle smile. Her elegant and composed posture looked exactly the same as when she presided over prayers in the church. There was no trace of panic or disorder.

“Escort the Saintess to the confinement cell!”

The smile finally disappeared from Kieran’s face.

✧✧✧✧✧

Outside the manga world.

After another exhausting week of waiting, Ye Zheng’s long-awaited update finally arrived. What greeted the readers, however, was another storm filled with blood and chaos.

Tang Mingxi had been busy and hadn't checked the new chapter or the discussions right away. Instead, she first received a message from Li Yixin.

【Have you read the update? The forums are exploding over Ye Zheng again!】

【What what? Did the old uncle force another ugly sister-in-law pairing on Ye Zheng?】

【No. To put it bluntly… Ye Zheng has gone full murder mode…】

【Literally.】

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Authors Note  

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Zheng says: This is just the beginning.