Chapter 150

 After the young woman left, the man in the sharp suit strolled toward one of the display screens, clearly in high spirits.

Dense blue lines stretched forward across the screen, resembling countless parallel trains advancing in unison. A tiny point of light darted between them, looking utterly insignificant.

The man almost couldn’t hold back his laughter. The more Ye Zheng struggled, the further she’d be pushed into lower-dimensional worlds. It would’ve been the wiser choice for her to pick a peaceful world and quietly exile herself there. Why did some people always stubbornly fight for things that were never meant to belong to them?

He pulled his gaze away from the display screen, softly humming a tune as he turned and left. Having already taken care of Lin Zhixing and Ye Zheng, he could now move on to pursuing his grand ambitions without distraction.

At the same time, within the manga world.

“Saintess, why are you here?”

“Why did you betray us?”

“Why are you helping me? We’ve never had any connection…”

“You can’t be Little Zheng!”

……

“Ye Zheng, why did you kill Sykes!”

“Ah—”

With a wet, heavy sound, the black-haired, blue-eyed boy clutched his bleeding chest as he collapsed straight into the lake water. Ye Zheng lowered her head, watching as the blood slowly spread across the surface of the water. When she turned her head, Ye Di, who was guarding the nearly dying Sykes not far away, stared at her in terror, as though he were looking at a monster.

Ye Zheng frowned slightly. A white light flashed across her vision once again.

The thirteenth white light flickered past. When Ye Zheng opened her eyes, she glanced around and waited quietly for a moment. After confirming that there was no one else nearby for now, she finally relaxed a little.

At last, she could have a brief moment of peace on her own again.

Ye Zheng took out her pocket watch and checked the time. It was 3 PM.

Across these thirteen jumps, she had killed Pei Xi seven times, killed Sykes once, spoken with Wu Shu twice, and tried to leave Amber Lake three separate times.

Aside from killing Sykes, every one of those actions had triggered a jump. And across the thirteen worlds, except for the main world, Wen Xiaoxing did not exist at all.

Even though Ye Zheng already understood that resisting would only drive her into even worse situations, she still couldn’t just sit there and wait for death to come. Fortunately, after going through thirteen rounds of experimentation, she had managed to obtain several valuable clues.

In the previous world, nothing had happened when she killed Sykes. It was only after she killed Pei Xi that the world line shifted once again.

Every time she attempted to resist, 【Fate Singularity】 would keep pushing her into increasingly worse world lines. But on the other hand, Ye Zheng could make use of those world line jumps to figure out which actions were actually beneficial to her fate.

At this point, it was basically confirmed that killing Pei Xi, forming cooperation with Wu Shu, and leaving Amber Lake were the three actions that 【Fate Singularity】 recognized as effective forms of resistance.

Ye Zheng felt that she could shift her way of thinking. It was 【Fate Singularity】 that was afraid of her, which was why it kept interfering with her every move. And anything that 【Fate Singularity】 was trying to disrupt must be exactly what made it feel threatened.

This meant that in some world line, she must’ve managed to escape 【Fate Singularity】—either by killing Pei Xi, cooperating with Wu Shu, or leaving Amber Lake!

A faint glimmer of light flickered through Ye Zheng’s dark eyes, yet it quickly faded as she sank back into deep contemplation.

But then why could killing Pei Xi, cooperating with Wu Shu, or leaving Amber Lake pose a genuine threat to 【Fate Singularity】 and grant her even the slightest possibility of breaking free from these endless world lines?

After identifying the trigger for world line jumps during the third jump, Ye Zheng had deliberately staged incidents to uncover more underlying patterns.

However, she clearly remembered that the very first time she killed Pei Xi, it had been to force him to rewind time. Logically speaking, as long as Pei Xi reversed time, she should’ve been able to return to the main world.

【Fate Singularity】 could only send her across different world lines. These world lines were like carriages moving forward in parallel along a single timeline. 【Fate Singularity】 kept hurling her into another world along the current of time, yet it seemed incapable of moving against that flow.

Time was 【Fate Singularity】’s weakness. It could only jump between world lines; it couldn’t exert any control over time itself.

Ye Zheng subconsciously toyed with the thread of water in her hand, her lips pressed tightly together. Her ability had nothing to do with time. The only connection to time lay solely with Pei Xi.

During the first jump, she’d decisively killed Pei Xi of the second world. Time hadn’t rewound, and instead she’d been sent by 【Fate Singularity】 into the next world.

Wen Xiaoxing’s ability was actually superior to the protagonist Pei Xi’s? Ye Zheng couldn’t help but feel a trace of curiosity. What kind of character role did Wen Xiaoxing actually occupy? The one who created him not only despised her, but also showed neither respect nor affection for Pei Xi, the protagonist. That didn’t seem like something a manga author would normally do.

But Pei Xi’s ability could definitely exert a certain level of influence over Wen Xiaoxing’s ability. Otherwise, 【Fate Singularity】 wouldn’t have been so eager to send her away. Ye Zheng formed a faint hypothesis: once she disappeared from a world, the influence she’d left behind would also be erased by 【Fate Singularity】.

Having confirmed that time was a weakness, why would attempting to leave Amber Lake or cooperating with Wu Shu also trigger a jump?

Ye Zheng pondered this carefully. Since leaving Amber Lake posed a threat to Wen Xiaoxing’s ability, she speculated that there were two possible explanations. One was that the ability had a limited range. The other was that there existed someone or something outside Amber Lake capable of influencing Wen Xiaoxing.

For instance, his creator, Wen Jian.

If directly killing Wen Xiaoxing wasn’t feasible, then what about killing Wen Jian instead? Ye Zheng guessed that Wen Jian had used 【Mother of All Things】 to create such a monster. If she could eliminate Wen Jian and reclaim 【Mother of All Things】, thereby cutting off Wen Xiaoxing’s life supply, then his ability would naturally vanish as well.

Unfortunately, this was the least likely option to succeed. She couldn’t rely on someone in the main world suddenly assassinating Wen Jian.

The final point, and the one that puzzled her the most, was why her cooperation with Wu Shu was also regarded as a threat.

She hadn’t even asked Wu Shu for help. She had simply told Wu Shu, in every world line where they encountered each other, that she could help her win the championship, thereby fulfilling the promise she had made to Wu Shu in the main world.

Unable to draw any further conclusions for the time being, Ye Zheng raised the mirror she had been holding in her left hand. Each time she entered a new world, she would inevitably be assimilated by that world to a certain extent.

She looked at her reflection in the mirror. In this world, Ye Zheng no longer had straight hair. Instead, a mass of seaweed-like black curls cascaded down her back. She wore a white dress adorned with pearls, and even the tips of her white low heels were embellished with pearls. She felt that walking in them would be both dazzling and cumbersome, so she simply removed the shoes and stood barefoot on the ground.

It wasn’t just her appearance that had changed. Even her 【Stream】 ability seemed to be weakening, as though it were being suppressed by something.

The only consolation was that the abilities of the people in these small worlds were not as strong as those in the main world. Take the “Sykes” she had killed in the previous world as an example—she had fought the Sykes of the main world before, and there was no way that version of him could have been killed so easily, even with an ambush.

In comparison, her combat strength stood out clearly among these world lines. She had no need to worry about her own safety at all—as long as she did not encounter another “Ye Zheng.” Meeting another version of herself might trigger an irreversible accident.

Two Ye Zhengs meeting would inevitably lead to something bad. That was why the “Ye Zheng” back then had secretly hung that mirror behind the door without her noticing.

Even now, Ye Zheng still did not understand why her other self had hung the mirror there. Was it meant to remind her of Wen Xiaoxing’s ability?

She recalled that after killing Wen Xiaoxing, when she had looked down at his floating corpse in the water, a blinding white light had flashed from his body. It was most likely sunlight reflected by the mirror. The activation of 【Fate Singularity】 might also be connected to that mirror.

But regardless of how 【Fate Singularity】 was triggered, her top priority right now was to return to the main world.

Ye Zheng pressed a hand against her slightly heaving chest and closed her eyes, forcefully suppressing the unease and confusion within her. When she opened them again, the light in her black pupils was strikingly sharp.

Her other self had gone back to the past and warned her former self. This proved that returning was absolutely possible.

There was no such thing as a perfect, flawless ability. As long as she could strike its weakness with a decisive blow, even an undefeated fate would be forced to bow before her.

Pei Xi’s time regression, cooperation with Wu Shu, Wen Xiaoxing who existed only in the main world…

“Saintess, why are you here?”

A female voice suddenly rang out, laced with doubt and a trace of vigilance.

Ye Zheng didn’t even need to look up to know who it was. Standing beneath the shade of a tree, lost in her thoughts, she replied out of habit, “I got separated from my teammates. Captain Wu Shu, there’s no need to worry about me—”

She stopped mid-sentence. As if a thought had struck her, she quickly stepped closer to Wu Shu and asked, “Do you know where the Deep Blue Giant Eel is?”

Faced with such a direct question, Wu Shu showed a flicker of surprise. “Sorry, Saintess, we’re still searching for it as well… Ahem. Even if we did find it, it wouldn’t be convenient to reveal that information to an opponent, right?”

“Then let me tell you where it is.”

At first, Wu Shu found this somewhat amusing, but when she saw Ye Zheng’s serious expression, she realized the other party wasn’t joking. Her own expression gradually turned solemn.

“Ye Zheng, are you being serious…”

Ye Zheng quickly cut her off. “Find a way to follow Pei Xi or ‘Ye Zheng’. Ye Di from the Royal Team will work too. The giant eel will appear in a body of water near a forest of yellow trees.”

This was information the manga spoiler had given her.

In this world, Wu Shu wasn’t just wearing a black dress with high slits, her makeup was also much heavier. However, the determination and ruthlessness in her eyes had never changed. Her voice sharpened. “What yellow tree forest? Saintess, is this some kind of scheme from your side…”

Wu Shu’s voice grew more and more distant. A white light flashed before Ye Zheng’s eyes, and all sound completely vanished from her ears.

When she opened her eyes again, she was once more facing a lonely lake surface, sparkling under the sunlight.

Noticing that Ye Zheng seemed to have an idea, the system couldn’t help but ask.

『Ye Zheng, what exactly are you planning to do?』

“System, Wu Shu and I made a promise. I’d help her win the match, and she’d remain on standby for me at any time.”

“Once a promise is made, no matter which world we’re in, we have to fulfill it. That’s what a promise truly means.”

The system sensed an unyielding stubbornness beneath Ye Zheng’s calm expression, even a faint trace of obsession.

『Of course, a promise shouldn’t be broken lightly by either side… But I have to tell you the truth. The Wu Shu in the main world… might not remember you anymore.』

The system hesitated, but still chose to reveal this cruel truth.

Yet Ye Zheng smiled, as if she’d already expected it. A flicker of scrutiny passed through her black eyes as she asked softly, “System, you still remember our promise, right?”

If the system had a human body, its scalp would probably be tingling right about now.

“You promised me that you’d help me contact Wu Shu.”

『……Do you want to reach out to the Wu Shu of the main world to help you deal with Wen Xiaoxing? This method isn’t very feasible. Even you fell into his hands, and the Wu Shu of the main world no longer remembers your existence.』

“Even if Wu Shu doesn’t remember me, she’ll never forget her own goal.”

Ye Zheng had tested this multiple times. No matter which world’s Wu Shu it was, her obsession with victory ran incredibly deep. As long as Wu Shu still held onto that obsession, she’d never betray her.

She smiled. “I don’t need her to kill Wen Xiaoxing.” That prey was hers alone to claim.

“I need the Wu Shu from every world line to kill Pei Xi.”

【Fate Singularity】 could only extend world lines forward along the timeline; it couldn’t move backward.

But she was determined to force it to reverse.

She needed countless Wu Shus to kill countless Pei Xis at the exact same point in time, triggering countless instances of time regression.

If a single regression wasn’t enough to restrain this disobedient carriage of fate, then she would stack countless regressions on top of one another!

“System, you promised to help me contact Wu Shu, but you never said it could only be one Wu Shu.” Ye Zheng blinked lightly.

The system crashed once again. It took quite a while before it finally responded. 　 『That won’t work. The consequences of doing that are unknown. It might completely destroy Wen Xiaoxing’s ability and let you return to the main world, or you might be swept away by chaotic forces to some other unknown place…』

“It seems you can do it, System. I knew you’d be capable of it.”

Ye Zheng smiled in quiet relief. Even if she failed and was sent to some unknown place, it didn’t matter. Nothing could be worse than resigning herself to a fate of endlessly falling.