Chapter 114 - 107: Return

Lilith was terrifyingly powerful. Pushed to her absolute limits, Yin Zhen was completely unable to contend with her.

Zoe hadn’t undergone enough trials. Before completing all the storylines of Chi Hai, she had already arrived before the final boss. Even though Zoe had absorbed the Source’s Strength and memories, she had yet to fully digest and convert them into her own Strength.

Lucy and Ian weren’t making any progress either. The program seemed to be locked down by a mysterious Strength, making it impossible to advance even a single step.

At this moment, Ian thought of an alternative. He looked at Lucy’s projection and asked, "Can you hack into the Federation’s near-earth orbit satellite? The one equipped with the ’God’s Staff’."

The words "God’s Staff" caused Lilith’s blood-red pupils to tremble slightly, but Zoe’s ice spear struck once again, interrupting her thoughts.

Lucy’s projection flickered in shock. She glanced at the completely stalled progress bar on the adjacent monitor. With her computing power, calculating the difference in success rates between the two options was incredibly easy.

In less than ten seconds, Lucy nodded. "I can hack it, but I can’t do it remotely. I must upload my core code directly to the space-based satellite’s server. This requires me to abandon my current body and become a stream of pure data. Once I do this, my core code will perish alongside the God’s Staff. The entire Saint Group headquarters, along with the surrounding area, will be razed to the ground. No one will survive."

"No!"

"You can’t!"

Yin Zhen and Zoe’s voices exploded simultaneously. Neither of them could accept this plan.

In truth, Ian felt the same way. He had suggested it primarily to act as a deterrent against Lilith. Unfortunately, the negative debuff of Zoe’s protagonist’s aura meant that she was bound to suffer a severe setback before final victory arrived.

Ultimately, the situation tilted in Lilith’s favor first. A HISS of venting gas emerged from the other two coffins, and their lids slowly opened amidst a burst of cold mist.

The concentration of spiritual power in the entire laboratory suddenly spiked, becoming heavier, denser, and more oppressive than ever before.

"Damn woman, are you actually still alive?" A gravelly male voice echoed from one of the coffins, followed closely by another—softer, yet far more dangerous.

"Lilith, you’ve grown weak."

Suddenly, an invisible hand grabbed Zoe by the throat and hoisted her into the air. She struggled desperately as water currents swirled madly around her, but this Strength was even greater than Lilith’s. She couldn’t break free.

[00:00:30]

Yin Zhen glanced at the return countdown. It was already too late this time.

Yin Zhen stared fixedly at Zoe struggling in mid-air for a few seconds. Then, she suddenly teleported toward the central console.

Seeing Yin Zhen, Lucy immediately opened the panel beneath the console and reached out a hand. As their hands clasped, Yin Zhen stored Lucy into her game inventory and asked Ian a question.

"Who is Yi Guanfu?"

Ian murmured in shock, "My grandfather..."

Yin Zhen’s expression shifted slightly. "Wait for our return!"

[00:00:00]

[Countdown ended. Time in this world is frozen.]

[Welcome back.]

...

The chirping of cicadas rose and fell in the summer night. Inside the dilapidated old house, Yin Zhen’s phone vibrated madly on the coffee table, its screen flashing with cold light.

Exactly 7:00 PM. A clock-in reminder.

Yin Zhen leaned back into the sofa, unmoving. The frantic beating of her human heart served as a reminder that she had made it back alive from that Hell.

Ying handed her a glass of water with its pitch-black hands. Yin Zhen tried to take it, only to find her right arm still aching to the bone. She couldn’t lift it at all.

She was currently in the equipped state of her Character Card. Yin Zhen used her left hand to lift her right arm; her physical body’s right arm appeared fine, but it simply wouldn’t move, as if it had suffered necrosis.

Yin Zhen unequipped the Character Card, and the searing pain vanished instantly. Her fingers twitched, slowly returning to normal. She took the glass of water Ying offered and drained it in one gulp.

Placing the glass on the coffee table, her right fingers still spasmed and twitched occasionally. It took a long time for the adrenaline brought back from the battlefield to slowly recede.

The phone was still vibrating. The notification chimes for forum direct messages rang out incessantly, as if she had kicked a hornet’s nest. Yin Zhen disabled the forum notifications directly. She didn’t want to look at a single one.

The Extraordinary Ability section on her Character Card had turned gray. All her Extraordinary Abilities had entered cooldown along with the Blood Source Resonance, and the Extraordinary Ability blood silk had completely disappeared.

Yin Zhen stared at the cooldown timer for a moment. Sure enough, it was locked. The Explanation for this was that the cooldown time was calculated based on Chi Hai’s time. Therefore, during these seven days in Ancient Abyss, she would be unable to use any Extraordinary Abilities. Upon returning to Chi Hai next time, she would still need to wait another three days before she could use them again.

By a stroke of Luck, she still had Ying.

Taking a deep breath, Yin Zhen picked up her phone and gripped it tightly. She didn’t clock in. Instead, she just stared at the pitch-black screen, looking at the reflection of her own face. She stared at it like that for nearly five minutes, every second fraught with tension and anxiety.

Then, the screen lit up. An unknown number was calling.

Yin Zhen answered it instantly and pressed the phone to her ear. "Hello?"

A sound of breathing came through the receiver, light and shallow. There was a RUSTLE in the background; it might have been the wind, or it might have been the hand holding the phone trembling, causing the device to brush against the caller’s ear.

"May?" The voice finally spoke. It carried a sense of distortion and uncertainty, brought about by crossing the immense distance between two worlds. "Is that you?"

Yin Zhen closed her eyes and leaned heavily against the back of the sofa, finally letting out the breath she had been holding since the moment she returned.

"It’s me," Yin Zhen’s voice was steady. "Hold onto the thing in your hand and stay right where you are. I’ll come find you very soon."

After hanging up, Yin Zhen immediately released Lucy from her game inventory. Before the black-haired little girl could even get a clear look at her surroundings, a phone was shoved into her hands.

Lucy: ?

"This is Ancient Abyss. Help me trace the location of that last call. It’s Zoe; I must find her immediately."

Lucy blinked, then lowered her head, cupping the phone in both hands as she began hacking and searching.

As Yin Zhen watched Lucy operate, images from the final moments before her return flashed uncontrollably through her mind.

When the countdown only had ten seconds left, she had used her Mind Beacon to connect with Zoe, giving Zoe her phone number in Ancient Abyss and telling her to find a rectangular object to dial that number. Then, while teleporting to retrieve Lucy, she had used her consciousness to write a line of text on that Cross-border Invitation Letter.

S704.

It was the most foolproof method, and the one that saved the most characters. That was because it was the serial number branded onto Zoe on the production line. It belonged solely to her—the only code among countless experimental subjects that pointed exclusively to her. Using this Item cost 500 characters, and she had accumulated exactly 600 characters this time.

At the time, she didn’t know if it would work, but she had to do it. She couldn’t leave Zoe behind in Chi Hai.

That white creature had once followed her into the space between the two worlds, causing her to be delayed for a full five seconds when returning to Ancient Abyss. Five seconds was enough to die seven or eight times over on the battlefield.

If that white creature could do it, then Lilith and the others, who possessed the Strength of Chi Hai, might be able to do it too. If they were able to manipulate time, Zoe would be dead for sure. After all, the current Zoe wasn’t the fully matured Zoe from the end of Chi Hai’s story. Whether her protagonist’s aura would work at a time like this was also an unknown.

Nan Jiamu had said that if Zoe died at the hands of Lilith and the others, the story of Chi Hai would still continue, and the invasion would be inevitable. Therefore, taking Zoe’s soul away was the only method she could think of at the time.

"Location acquired," Lucy’s voice interrupted Yin Zhen’s memories. "The Signal’s source is not far from you."

Lucy looked through the living room window toward the building opposite Yin Zhen’s house.

Yin Zhen stood up. "Lucy, stay here and keep watch. Ying, come with me to pick up Zoe."