Chapter 133

Inside the canyon.

“…Go after them. Drag that wench out and bring her before me.”

“I’ll kill her myself.”

Sykes, his ability nullified, stared expressionlessly at the black figure that had already vanished into the distance. He lowered his head and ordered his subordinates to pursue Sela and the others, yet his gaze remained locked onto Ye Zheng, his tone vicious and cold.

“Sela has taken such a terrifying power with her. She might cause an even greater upheaval. Your Highness, we must catch up to them as soon as possible.”

Ye Zheng’s brows drew together slightly. As she looked at Sykes, her eyes seemed filled with concern, yet there was also an indescribable hint of amusement.

Sykes caught the mockery in Ye Zheng’s gaze perfectly.

His ability hadn’t yet recovered. No matter how ruthless his words sounded now, they came across as nothing more than empty bluster, devoid of any real force.

He could just as easily wave his hand and have the useless lot behind him seize Ye Zheng. Although there was no direct evidence linking her to Sela, as the Crown Prince of the empire, he didn’t need any proof.

There was only one reason Sykes didn’t do so: suppressing Ye Zheng through sheer authority would make it seem as though he truly had no other means of dealing with her. It would be no different from openly admitting defeat!

“Saintess, since you’re so concerned, why don’t you bring your people along and join us in the pursuit?”

His golden eyes fixed directly on Ye Zheng, carrying an unmistakable authority that allowed no refusal. “You won’t decline, will you?”

Ye Zheng smiled softly. “Of course not. Our highest priority right now is to stop Sela. There’s no need for us to keep clashing like we did earlier.”

Pei Xi stood behind them, silently observing the Saintess as she spoke with the Crown Prince. All at once, he thought he glimpsed Zhao Mei’s shadow within her again. Ye Zheng’s every gesture and movement felt far too natural, as though Sela’s actions had absolutely nothing to do with her. And yet, everyone present understood deep down that Sela’s sudden appearance couldn’t possibly have been a coincidence.

When Ye Zheng had answered him with “What of it?”, seeing her unwavering expression and the white-robed knights behind her who refused to yield even a single step, Pei Xi had nearly braced himself for another clash with her.

No one had expected that, in the end, the one who would take the Fallen Ones and leave would actually be Sela!

That infamous outlaw known throughout the entire empire—Sela, the violent criminal who had slain nobles, provoked the Crown Prince, openly abducted the Saintess, and committed countless atrocities. With capital crimes already stacked upon her, she had nothing left to lose by adding yet another grave offense. Her appearance had not only taken everyone by surprise as she carried off the Fallen Ones, but she’d also borne the blame that should’ve fallen upon Ye Zheng.

Unless they could prove that Ye Zheng had been the one directing Sela, even Sykes wouldn’t be able to convict her. After all, Ye Zheng truly hadn’t done anything; she had merely voiced her opposition to their actions.

As for the killings Ye Zheng had carried out inside the base, the witnesses had likely all perished there.

Looking back carefully on Ye Zheng’s words, she hadn’t even uttered a single line explicitly stating that she intended to take the Fallen Ones away. They couldn’t catch even the slightest slip in her wording.

Pei Xi looked toward the Saintess, who still stood tall and composed. At some point, unnoticed by anyone, the rain had already stopped. Ye Zheng appeared just as soaked as the rest of them, yet she showed not the slightest hint of disarray. Instead, her pair of black eyes seemed especially bright. They shifted slightly, turning in his direction.

The instant their gazes met, Pei Xi instinctively looked away.

He suddenly realized that he’d been completely defeated, whether in strength, intellect, or something even deeper.

That hand which had once been severed by Ye Zheng, only to be healed and restored by her, unconsciously clenched at the fabric over his chest. He felt an overwhelming fatigue, yet his blood surged with a fierce fighting spirit, as if urging him onward, to keep struggling, to never give up, until he overcame one powerful opponent after another.

Ye Zheng cast a brief glance at Pei Xi, whose condition seemed somewhat off, and figured he was likely being influenced by the will of the higher-dimensional world, just as she had been only moments earlier.

Still, Pei Xi’s choices didn’t matter. In Ye Zheng’s world, he had never once been the protagonist.

Lu Qi would take Sela and the others along with her to that beautiful, boundless grassland. Ye Zheng couldn’t keep her promise to visit Lu Qi’s hometown for now, but maybe they’d fulfill it at some even better time in the future.

Ye Zheng exchanged a knowing, unspoken glance with Wende at her side, then set out together with Sykes’s troops in the direction where the dragon-boned people had vanished.

They wouldn’t find them. Sykes’s insistence on keeping her and her people close for supervision was a miscalculation. Instead, it would allow her to track the pursuit team’s movements and help conceal their trail.

✧✧✧✧✧

The dense fog that had shrouded the Western District for an entire month finally dispersed with a light rainfall, fading away beneath clear blue skies and warm sunlight.

The Hope Project base had been utterly destroyed. Nearly all the researchers had been slaughtered by the Fallen Ones that had breached the facility, leaving behind only the women from the base as survivors.

The Crown Prince’s team failed to uncover any trace of Sela or the Fallen Ones.

They had once spotted a massive black shadow stretching across the horizon, but for reasons unknown, it vanished in an instant like a fleeting mirage. Since the surrounding population had been confined within York Town, no one witnessed where it had truly gone.

Of the five hundred thousand people that Zhou Yun had confined within the town, more than a thousand had been killed or injured due to supply shortages and accidental clashes. Aside from that, no further attacks had occurred. Once the fog lifted, government personnel arrived to provide assistance and escorted everyone back home.

Before departing the Western District, Ye Zheng left behind two members of the Order of Sacred Conduct. She instructed them to secretly return to the Hope Project base and locate Abbess Annabella.

Annabella was the one most familiar with the dragon-boned people. Ye Zheng wanted her to establish contact with Lu Qi and the others, arrange a place for them to settle, and keep them hidden for a time before the empire sent additional forces into the Western District to conduct a search and to wait until her next move.

Ye Zheng had initially intended to return to the base personally, to evaluate the situation in detail and collect more information and concrete evidence regarding the Hope Project. Unfortunately, Sykes had been keeping an unusually close watch on her, and for once, he’d grown cautious enough to dispatch people ahead of time to secure the base.

Even though the base had already been reduced to ruins, the vast amount of remaining data still carried immense value in multiple respects. It represented not only the FRUIT of the Hope Project but also irrefutable and damning evidence of wrongdoing. One thing Ye Zheng found herself particularly curious about was whose head this entire incident would ultimately be laid upon.

In her heart, Ye Zheng already had an answer. Most likely, it would be Kieran, Zhou Yun, Sela, and perhaps even Yuan Xianming, the Western District’s chief administrator who’d died early on.

Although the full truth of the Hope Project hadn’t yet been laid bare before the public, the unsettlingly dense fog and the fiercely aggressive dragon-boned people had already been witnessed by the ordinary citizens of the Western District. On top of that, many individuals had personally entered the base alongside the hundreds of knights led by Sykes. There was no way everyone could be relied upon to keep silent.

Sooner or later, rumors surrounding the Hope Project and its cruel, inhumane experiments would inevitably begin to spread.

In an incident of this scale, one that had captured the attention of the entire nation, the empire would need to produce scapegoats to pacify the public and distance itself from accountability.

Both the imperial family and the church would have to sever any and all ties to this brutal project that had persisted for hundreds of years.

“Saintess, please get some rest for a while.”

The train sped onward through the darkness. Ye Zheng sat alone in a slightly swaying private compartment, quietly gazing at her own reflection in the glass window, lost in thought. Wende pushed the door open, carrying a cup of warm water. She set it gently on the table before taking a seat across from Ye Zheng.

“You still have about half an hour to get a short nap in. Once we arrive in the Upper District, you might not get another chance to rest first,” Wende said, her voice tinged with concern.

This incident had already stirred up an enormous commotion. It was highly likely that the moment they stepped off the train, the relevant personnel would be summoned straight to the conference hall to report everything directly to the emperor.

Ye Zheng picked up the cup and took a small sip. “You’re right, Wende. I’m not sure what will be waiting for me once we disembark.”

She smiled faintly. “There’s a chance someone will seize this opportunity to pin a crime on me, the thorn in their side.”

On the surface, the church and the imperial family maintained a delicate balance of power, keeping each other in check. Yet behind the scenes, they’d secretly cooperated on the Hope Project for hundreds of years. Now that it had been completely destroyed, how could they possibly not harbor resentment?

Ye Zheng knew full well that they had never liked her, this sudden God’s Chosen who’d appeared out of nowhere.

She understood with complete clarity that the little tricks she’d used in the Western District could only deceive younger men like Pei Xi and Sykes. When it came to seasoned and powerful figures, they didn’t even need evidence. All they needed was the knowledge that she was the one responsible for stirring up trouble.

“So, for these remaining thirty minutes, I’ll entrust everything to you.”

Wende’s expression immediately turned solemn. She tried to rise to her feet, but Ye Zheng reached across the table and pressed a hand down onto her shoulder, stopping her.

“They’ll most likely only take me away for questioning. The moment you step off the train, lead everyone from the knight order straight back to the Lower District.”

“If anyone comes to question you, don’t panic. Just remember, you got lost in the Western District for several days. After reuniting with me, we searched together for traces of the dragon-boned people. You’ve never seen anyone named Sela.”

“Lastly, have Cheng Cheng and Cheng Che keep track of Pope Wen Jian’s movements in the Upper District. By any means necessary, find out exactly where he’s hidden the dragon-boned people.”

Wende frowned slightly, confusion surfacing on her face. “Are you certain that Wen Jian has also hidden some in the Upper District…?”

Ye Zheng leaned back against the soft chair, the corners of her lips lifting into a confident smile as she gave a small nod.

Thinking back on it, she had first noticed the disturbance in the Western District because of Wen Jian.

At the very beginning, she had, by sheer coincidence, saved Zhuo Ya within the Black Insect Aberrant Realm and discovered the dragon bone inside her body. That discovery had set off the chain of events that followed—Wen Jian, the dragon bones, the mysterious experiments, the 【Mother of All Things】 ability, and the hidden truths of the Western District…

Ye Zheng’s exploration of the Western District allowed her to reconstruct the entire experimental sequence. After inheriting the 【Mother of All Things】, the Pope would first animate the dragon bones before transporting these living entities, housed in experimental tanks, to the Western District’s facility. The process culminated in the implantation of these dragon-bone life forms into the "Blessed Reliquaries" to gestate, aiming to eventually birth the bones as formidable human beings.

What stood out was that the experimental data indicated the test subjects weren’t limited to dragon bones alone; there were also other unknown life forms and unidentified substances involved.

From the experimental record sheets Ye Zheng had uncovered in the base, it was shown that Sykes was labeled D-3633, signifying the 3633rd test subject of the dragon bone experiments, while Pei Xi was marked as X-366. As for him, it still remained unclear what his original life source had been.

Setting aside Pei Xi’s suspicious nature for the moment, the mechanics of the experiment indicate that Pope Wen Jian’s role, facilitated by his possession of the 【Mother of All Things】, was limited to the provision of dragon-bone life forms. The subsequent phases involving the implantation of those bones into women and the rigorous screening of the Blessed Reliquaries fell entirely under the jurisdiction of the Western District base.

However, Wen Jian had secretly gone behind their backs and implanted a dragon bone into Zhuo Ya.

Recalling the faint yet unmistakable disdain and hostility that Kieran had revealed whenever he spoke of Wen Jian, it became clear that Wen Jian had never been an honest or straightforward man. All along, he had been quietly conducting his own private experiments behind the base’s back, without informing anyone.

“I understand. I’ll find them.”

Wende’s tone remained warm and steady as she spoke, carrying with it a quiet but firm sense of reliability that reassured those who heard it.

Up until now, they had been investigating Wen Jian and the hidden experiments he was involved in, yet all they had managed to uncover was his obscure and ambiguous connection with the Western District.

Now, however, it seemed that their entire line of inquiry had been slightly off from the very beginning. Their investigation had always focused on the girls who had disappeared without a trace from the Lower District, as well as their supposed connection to Wen Jian. What they had never once considered was the possibility that those missing girls might still be alive, just no longer in a human form and that this was, in fact, the simplest and most direct clue they could have followed all along.

The dragon-boned individuals possessed enormous bodies along with overwhelmingly powerful offensive capabilities. Trying to conceal such beings would be extraordinarily difficult, and the risk of exposure would be extremely high.

By now, Wende already had a clear plan forming in her mind. She lifted her gaze to meet Ye Zheng’s eyes, and in that brief moment, the two of them exchanged a knowing smile, as if they had both reached the same conclusion simultaneously.

The reasoning was simple. The church was involved in a wide range of fields, including research related to creatures from the Aberrant Realm. There was no better or more natural cover for hiding the existence of the dragon-boned individuals.

Moreover, now that the Western District base had already been destroyed, Wen Jian would most certainly be forced to take action and make his next move.

“They’re far too greedy,” Ye Zheng let out a soft sigh as she spoke. “I don’t believe for a second that they left the Fallen Ones alive out of any sense of mercy or compassion.”

Kieran had once explained to her that the reason they took care of the Fallen Ones was out of compassion. Even if those women had failed the temptation test of the demonic dragon, they would not be killed in a cruel or ruthless manner, but instead would be taken in and looked after carefully.

A faint trace of mockery flashed across Ye Zheng’s eyes at that thought. Wasn’t the real reason simply that the so-called Fallen Ones possessed extraordinarily high value? On average, each one of them had combat power comparable to that of an A-Class ability user, along with an exceptionally powerful physique. Just the dragon-boned individuals that had been raised within the base alone likely possessed combat strength that was not much inferior to that of the Royal Knights.

There was no way those men would willingly discard such valuable and powerful assets. That was the true reason why both the base and Wen Jian had chosen to keep them.

“Cheng Cheng and Cheng Che will handle the mission. Other than that, do you have any additional instructions?”

In Wende’s mind, tracking Wen Jian’s movements would not be particularly difficult. Just as the Saintess had said, entrusting this task to the Cheng sisters was undoubtedly the most suitable choice.

They were unregistered citizens who had never undergone any form of ability testing. The two sisters always acted together as a pair and claimed that their shared ability was 【Light and Shadow】.

The elder sister had the ability to manipulate light in order to create illusions, deceiving the eyes of those around her, while the younger sister could move freely through shadows, appearing and disappearing without leaving any trace behind. When they had previously tracked Sela and the others alongside the Crown Prince in the Western District, it had been Cheng Cheng who used light to conceal their movements and erase any signs of their presence.

Ye Zheng continued speaking without pause, “Also, maintain contact with Abbess Annabella and make sure that her safety is guaranteed at all times.”

Nearly everyone within the base had already died. Among the higher-ranking individuals, Annabella was the only one left alive. She was an extremely important witness, as well as someone who knew the truth behind everything that had happened. There would undoubtedly be people who would not want to see her remain safe and unharmed.

Wende nodded her head in acknowledgment, yet she continued to look at the Saintess with questioning eyes, clearly waiting for any further instructions. Ye Zheng paused for a brief moment, thinking carefully, before she spoke again, “Lastly, send people to keep a close watch on Pei Xi and his two teammates.”

Upon hearing this particular instruction, Wende could not help but feel a sense of confusion. In her opinion, although that boy had some level of reputation, he did not truly live up to it in reality and was not someone worth paying special attention to. Nevertheless, since this was a direct order from the Saintess, she would carry it out without hesitation.

Ye Zheng observed a mixture of confusion and a nearly imperceptible trace of contempt flickering across Wende’s face, she said in a calm voice, “Not just Pei Xi, but also his two teammates, Kyle and Roy.”

No matter what the situation was, they were still the protagonist’s team.

According to the original storyline, once Lu Qi transformed into a dragon-boned individual, the remaining three members of the Cloud Soarers team would inevitably take action. Even though the current situation had undergone a slight deviation and, in their perception, it had instead become Lu Qi’s disappearance, the storyline itself possessed a kind of gravitational pull. This world would naturally find ways to guide events back toward their predetermined path of development.

Pei Xi would most likely be summoned by the empire alongside her for questioning. This would also give her the opportunity to observe him directly. Ever since the moment she had encountered him while carrying Kieran’s head, she had not seen Kyle or Roy anywhere at all, which caused her a slight sense of concern.

『Ye Zheng, you really do look like a meticulous villain right now, not even letting the protagonist’s sidekicks off the hook.』

The system, which had been silently observing everything, finally spoke up, unable to resist making a teasing remark.

Hearing the system’s sudden comment, Ye Zheng lowered her head slightly and let out a soft laugh. However, that smile disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared, and her expression stiffened subtly.

Wende noticed the unusual change in the Saintess’s expression and could not help but lean forward slightly as she asked, “My lady, is there anything else that needs to be done?”

At some unknown point in time, the train’s speed had already begun to slow down, yet the motion of the carriage had become even more uneven and jarring, resembling the rapid beating of a hidden heart. Ye Zheng’s body swayed slightly as she momentarily lost her balance. She placed a hand against the table to steady herself before lifting her gaze toward Wende.

“One last thing. Tell my mother not to worry about me. I’ll come back.”

The train emerged from the darkness of the tunnel, and bright light poured in through the thick glass windows, scattering across Ye Zheng’s figure. At the same time, she heard the sound of the carriage doors being opened. She adjusted her posture slightly and stood up from her seat.

Wende also rose to her feet. Although she had just received numerous instructions, this usually composed and steady knight could not help but reveal a trace of nervousness and concern at this moment. She fixed her gaze on Ye Zheng’s back as she silently followed behind her.

At the far end of the carriage, the imposing Crown Prince, dressed in a neatly tailored red uniform, walked forward. He cast a brief glance in their direction without saying a single word, then exited through another door of the carriage.

Wende saw that outside the carriage, rows of neatly lined knights and elegantly dressed officials were already waiting. Their gazes were silent, yet filled with intensity, all directed toward the stopped train. Almost instinctively, Wende reached out and grasped Ye Zheng’s hand.

Holding onto the carriage door, Ye Zheng turned her head slightly and offered a reassuring smile. She gently withdrew her hand from Wende’s grasp.

“It’ll be fine, Wende.”

“I know there are still many people waiting for me. I’ll be back very soon.”

After adjusting her black windbreaker, Ye Zheng slipped one hand inside it. Hidden within was a set of the earliest documents of the Hope Project, originally led by the second Saintess, Marian, files that recorded the names of countless women.

Allowing Lu Qi and Sela to take those girls away and hide them was only a temporary solution. Ye Zheng had already made a promise to save them, even if that promise held meaning only for herself.

Stepping down from the train, her boots once again touched the soil of the Upper District. She raised her head and offered a restrained and polite smile to the officials who had come to receive her, yet the tone of her voice remained distinctly cold and distant.

“Let’s go.”

Her gaze briefly fell upon a pot-bellied man. Recognizing him as the Director of the Upper District Security Bureau, she quickly withdrew her gaze and walked forward, taking the lead. The middle-aged man, caught off guard by her demeanor, could only hurry after her, clearly not having expected the legendary Saintess to be so aloof and imposing.

Ye Zheng walked calmly at the very front, without the slightest trace of fear or hesitation. Even if she had killed Kieran, the Bishop of the Western District, along with multiple researchers of noble birth, and had even assisted Zhou Yun in destroying the base, she felt no guilt in her heart.

She was not a sinner of the empire. Those who sought to judge her and falsely accuse her were the true sinners.

Ye Zheng pressed one hand lightly against the documents hidden within her coat. If they hated her for destroying the empire’s carefully cultivated experiment, then she would give them something in return—a true experiment.

A genuine Hope Project, once again initiated by Ye Zheng, the thirteenth Saintess of the empire!