Chapter 121 - 113: Inheritance of the Source

After Yin Zhen told Zoe everything, Zoe frowned and remained silent for a long time.

Yin Zhen wasn’t in a hurry. She patted the back of Zoe’s hand, letting her take her time to think, and went to the kitchen to cook dinner for the two of them.

When the instant noodles were cooked and served on the table, Zoe walked over and asked, "Is there really no other way? Must Chi Hai and Ancient Abyss invade each other? Ancient Abyss is great. I don’t want to see the humans of Ancient Abyss turn into the Blood Clan’s Blood Beasts, but..."

Zoe lowered her head, feeling somewhat ashamed.

"But there are also very good people among the Blood Clan of Chi Hai, such as Ian, Jenny, and our friends from the Rebel Army. They have always been protecting the surviving humans in Chi Hai, as well as the Blood Clan members who don’t want to feed on the blood of Clones. If there could be a better place for them to survive, where they don’t have to be hunted by the Guard Team, I..."

Zoe couldn’t bring herself to say the rest; it would make her feel shameless.

"May, why can’t the two worlds coexist peacefully? Why does it have to be me who becomes the main Character of Chi Hai? There are so many people more powerful than me, so why me? Why must someone from either Ancient Abyss or Chi Hai be sacrificed? Why..."

"Stop! Zoe, stop. Don’t think about these unsolvable questions; they will only make you more anxious. Besides, didn’t I tell you? We still have a way. As long as we destroy Chi Hai and prove that the Blood Plague can be eradicated, then once both worlds are free of the Blood Clan and entirely human, peaceful coexistence might not be impossible."

Zoe walked to the table, on the verge of tears from anxiety. "But what if we can’t? What if the Blood Clan can’t turn back into humans? When the doors between the worlds open, Ancient Abyss will become Chi Hai’s hunting ground. The vendor selling candied haws, the woman selling stinky tofu, the kids at the amusement park who played with me—they will all be bitten! Just like that... that..."

Zoe burst into tears. Yin Zhen walked up and rubbed her back, saying as gently as she could, "How come you’ve already defected? You’re the main Character of Chi Hai, so why are you always worrying about the people of Ancient Abyss?"

"Because I really, really like it here! I love these people. Today, when the woman selling stinky tofu heard I’d never had it before, she even gave me an extra piece. I like them. I don’t want to become your enemy, and I absolutely don’t want anyone to hurt you. What should I do? What on earth should I do?"

Zoe threw her arms around Yin Zhen and wailed.

Yin Zhen’s eyes dimmed slightly, but she still comforted her softly, "Didn’t you say that an unyielding will is the source of life? What about now? Are you going to surrender to fate? No matter what, we still have a chance. I will be with you; we’ll destroy Chi Hai first."

With her chin resting on Yin Zhen’s shoulder, Zoe’s tears continued to fall. Usually optimistic, she didn’t cheer up just because of Yin Zhen’s words.

Zoe held Yin Zhen and sniffled, slowly reining in her tears. Then she let go of Yin Zhen and said earnestly, "May, I want to teach you what Source taught me."

Yin Zhen was a bit surprised, but seeing Zoe’s red-rimmed eyes and earnest expression, she nodded.

"Let’s eat first. You need a full stomach to have the energy to learn."

"Okay!"

Ye Se pressed down heavily.

Lucy sat in the living room, surrounded by various parts she had dismantled. After taking apart the robot vacuum, she completely dismantled the smartphone and smartwatch Yin Zhen had bought for her. She didn’t take apart the laptop because she needed it to look up information.

Ying squatted next to her and watched for a while. Completely unable to understand what Lucy was busy with, it scratched its head and gave up. It picked up the new game cartridge Yin Zhen had just bought for it today, popped it into the console, and started playing.

In the bedroom, only a bedside lamp was on. Zoe and Yin Zhen sat face to face on the bed as Zoe spoke softly.

"Time can crush many things, but it cannot crush the soul. No matter how long emotions like love, hate, unwillingness, and longing are buried, they are still burning hot when dug up. This is the root of Inheritance. The more marks time wears into the soul, the deeper the Strength the soul can hold.

"The Strength of Chi Hai plunders outward, stealing others’ lives to strengthen itself. Chalk’s Inheritance digs inward, unearthing all the accumulated emotions deep within the soul and turning them into Strength. When we encountered Chalk beneath the drilling platform, you should have felt it too. Its spiritual power was wrapped in countless images and voices—those were the cries left by different souls at the end of time. It’s just that our spiritual power is still too weak to withstand that Strength.

"To awaken it, you must first find your Origin, which is the past. Everything from your past has left a mark on your soul. The first step of Inheritance is to touch those marks, find the deepest ones, and then repeatedly deepen them, making them the source of your Strength."

Zoe closed her eyes and began to demonstrate.

Her Origin was ’love’. Not romantic love in a narrow sense, but every ounce of goodwill she had received since birth.

It was the urgency when Ian shoved the researcher’s uniform into her hands and lowered his voice, saying, "You must escape immediately."

It was the mercy when she first met Yin Zhen, when Yin Zhen finally lowered her gun and said, "Just go."

It was the hand Jenny extended when she found her in the wilderness, saying, "Look at this homeless little poor thing."

And now, it also included candied haws, grilled gluten skewers, stinky tofu, ice cream...

Zoe’s aura quietly shifted.

A pale Golden shimmer of water surfaced on her skin like a warm current clinging to her body. She opened her eyes and uncurled her palm. A puddle of water condensed out of thin air, with extremely faint Golden patterns floating on its surface.

"Look, this is my Origin. But it isn’t real water; it is the manifestation of my soul’s Strength, capable of directly striking other souls. This is the second-tier ability of Inheritance, called At this moment. This is the ability I used to break through Lilith’s shield, though it’s still too weak."

She reached out and gently grasped Yin Zhen’s wrist. "Try the first tier first. Hold my hand and don’t resist me. I will guide you."

Warmth spread from Zoe’s palm. Yin Zhen closed her eyes and couldn’t help but recall her childhood.

Her father crouching down to tie her school neckerchief, leaving one end long and the other short, only to be scolded by her mother before clumsily tying it into a dead knot.

The scratchy neck of the sweater her mother had knitted. She curled up on the sofa watching cartoons, constantly scratching her neck while her father stir-fried their favorite dishes in the kitchen.

Their family of three going to the park to pedal a duck boat. She pedaled with all her might while her father and mother secretly cuddled behind her, offering no help at all.

However, her memories of love were far too few.

After her father passed away, her mother left home before dawn every day to buy groceries for her stall. Yin Zhen learned to make her own breakfast and go to school by herself.

The only time she saw her mother every day was after school in the evenings. She would go to the night market, find her mother’s food cart, help tally the bills, and greet customers. When there were no customers, she would hunch over a folding table, hurrying to finish her homework. After closing the stall, they would push the cart home together as she talked about her day at school.

But she couldn’t mention that her classmates mocked her mother for running a street stall, nor could she say that she had gotten into another fight. She could only say that everything was fine.

The marks left on her soul weren’t love; they were bitterness, poverty, and the suffocating strain of a child forced to grow up too soon.

Zoe opened her eyes and looked at Yin Zhen in confusion. "Why isn’t it working?"

Yin Zhen gently exhaled. "You are too naive."

She was so naive that she treated even the most insignificant, trivial kindness as a grand, profound love.

Zoe didn’t understand what this had to do with her being naive.

"I’ll do it myself." Yin Zhen equipped her Character Card.

Zoe was able to learn Inheritance because she was created from Source’s genes, and the same applied to S717. The root of all this was Chalk, and Chalk had once bestowed a portion of its Strength upon S717.

Though she wasn’t sure if this would work, it never hurt to try.

Yin Zhen took a deep breath and closed her eyes again.

As long as she could gain the Strength to move upward, it didn’t matter if she had to repeatedly tear open her scars and endure constant agony!

This time, Yin Zhen recalled with a clear goal in mind. Not love, but hate, pain, and fury. These were her most abundant emotions, the deepest marks carved into her soul.

The classmates who mocked her, the bullies who harassed her mother, the crashing sound of the car accident, Sheng Yehan’s taunting smirk in the defendant’s seat, the approaching and departing footsteps outside the hospital room, the helplessness of becoming disabled, the despair when the fat man choked her...

Fury and hatred surged from deep within her marrow, stacking layer upon layer. Her emotional field expanded—shapeless and colorless—but Zoe felt it. It was as if a hand had suddenly seized the air, making it impossible for her to breathe.

Curious, Zoe reached out and gently gripped Yin Zhen’s wrist.

Tears instantly welled up in Zoe’s eyes, and her heart clenched. She couldn’t see Yin Zhen’s memories, but she ’saw’ it... an abyss.

Darkness flooded in from all directions, like countless rotting hands reaching out from beneath the earth, threatening to swallow everything.

It was the abyss that Yin Zhen had always endured alone, the one she had never opened up to anyone.

No! This wasn’t right!

Without hesitation, Zoe pushed out ripples of her own pale Golden water shimmer, circle after circle.

In this dark sea of consciousness, Zoe’s light was very weak. She parted layer after layer of black fog, walking step by step into the deepest part of the abyss.

The darkness scraped against her light; with every scrape, it grew a fraction dimmer. With every scrape, her soul grew a fraction colder.

But she continued to walk forward with unwavering resolve, until, at the very bottom of the abyss, she saw a tiny Yin Zhen sitting in the dark, her face buried in her knees as she wept silently.

Zoe recognized this young Yin Zhen. From this point onward in her photo album, she had never smiled in pictures again, and their family of three had been reduced to two.

The surrounding black fog writhed menacingly, threatening to tear the young Yin Zhen to shreds. Her originally vivid colors were fading into a dreary ash-gray.

"Get away!"

Zoe rushed over and shielded the young Yin Zhen in her arms.

The black fog pressed down, attempting to uproot her light entirely. Zoe’s shoulders trembled, but she squeezed her eyes shut and hugged tighter, using every last ounce of her light to envelop this tiny soul.

Right at that moment, the mark was violently carved.

It was deeper than Zoe’s, as if a rift valley had been cleaved into the deepest depths of the soul. It was pure black.

However, at the very bottom of the rift, at the end of the abyss, an extremely thin Golden thread lay crushed beneath the heaviest darkness. It was so faint that it was almost imperceptible, but it was there.