The broken bricks of the church ruins still shimmered with lingering golden light, and Long Wu's dragon breath crackled on his armor, but Lin Yi's entire attention was focused on that "citizen".
He could clearly hear his heart pounding in his chest—not because of danger, but because something hotter was churning within him.
"Boss?" Long Wu gripped the hilt of the knife with his dragon claws, the scales rubbing together and making a soft rustling sound.
He took half a step forward, and the wind stirred up by his sword lifted the hem of "Citizen's" plaid shirt, revealing a section of mechanical skeleton with a ghostly blue hue.
That glimpse of blue caused Lin Yi's pupils to contract sharply.
"Chu Yao, forcefully decipher his biometrics!" His voice was tense, and the seven spacetime keys condensed into a star ring in his palm, but he didn't rush to make a move—his intuition told him that this was not an enemy.
"Intrusion in progress... Data layer has encryption protocol!" Chu Yao's electronic voice suddenly trembled, "Consciousness fluctuation detected, matching degree 97.3%!"
The target...the target is Su Qing!
The last word struck Lin Yitian's head like a heavy hammer.
He staggered half a step, and the steps formed by the laws of spacetime beneath his feet nearly collapsed.
The "citizen" suddenly stopped raising his hand, and his originally scarlet pupils rippled, like ink drops falling into clear water.
As that ordinary face began to twist and reform, Lin Yi heard a broken "Qingqing" escape from his throat.
It's Su Qing.
Her face was translucent, and the ends of her hair were still tinged with the silvery light of the turbulent data flow. The small mole at the corner of her eye was so clear that it reminded Lin Yi of the way she squatted downstairs in the dormitory last winter to bring him hot milk tea.
"Don't come any closer." The instant Su Qing spoke, the inky liquid in the shadow suddenly boiled, and her right leg began to dissipate. "This is the Mother Nest's faith node. I... I locked it for three minutes using residual data."
Lin Yi's time-space key suddenly sank completely into his skin. He rushed forward in three strides, but was repelled by a data barrier just as he touched Su Qing's fingertips. "How did you get here?"
"Didn't they say that data bodies can't withstand three space jumps?" His voice was hoarse, and he swallowed the rest of the sentence, "I've been looking for you for three months."
Su Qing smiled, but her eyes were filled with the frosty light of data collapse: "Last time in the Mirror Space, when you used the spacetime rift to help me block the annihilation wave... I secretly buried a fragment of consciousness in your badge." Her left hand pressed against Lin Yi's chest, where the Spacetime Overlord badge was emitting a warm light. "The goal of the Mother Nest is not destruction... but the reshaping of the belief system."
They want to transform everyone's beliefs into nourishment for higher-dimensional beings.
"What?!" Long Wu's sword clattered to the ground. His massive dragon body slumped down, its scales trembling. "What about those shadowy monsters from before..."
"It's a test." Su Qing's left shoulder began to dissipate. "Testing the intensity of the faith fluctuations generated by humans under extreme fear."
When the owl said "beginning," it meant they had found a more efficient way to collect the materials.
"Chu Yao!" Lin Yi suddenly turned his head, "Draw Whitebeard's memory bank!"
He's talked about things related to 'faith reconstruction' before!
"Retrieving... Match successful!" A drunken image of the old man popped up on Chu Yao's screen, his white beard holding a gourd and slurring, "Little Yi, faith is more dangerous than a nuclear bomb—it can create gods, but it can also breed monsters that eat them."
Lin Yi's back was covered in cold sweat.
He finally understood why, in the past three months, the faith-related skills of job changers around the world had suddenly increased collectively, and why the Mother Nest deliberately left survivors during each attack.
"The time has come." Su Qing's voice began to weaken, and her right hand suddenly pressed against Lin Yi's brow. "Remember... faith returns to its source."
Whitebeard's...relics...
"Wait!" Lin Yi grabbed her wrist, which was about to disappear, but only touched a cold stream of data. "I haven't said... I haven't said I'd take you to see the cherry blossoms!"
As the last bit of light entered his badge, the sound of fabric rubbing together suddenly echoed from the church ruins.
"What a touching reunion."
Aizen stood by the broken wall, his moon-white robe spotless, holding a scroll of silk gleaming with golden light in his hand.
The air behind him still rippled with spatial folds, clearly indicating that some kind of high-level teleportation technique had been used.
Long Wu's dragon claws pressed back onto the hilt of his sword, but he paused when he met the smile in Aizen's eyes—this was a man whose depths were unfathomable even by mythical laws.
"The Faith Return Technique." Aizen shook the silk scroll, golden light illuminating the fine lines at the corners of his eyes. "It can triple the efficiency of a job changer's Faith Resonance, but it requires a 'Heroic Spirit Weapon' as a medium." His gaze swept over the badge on Lin Yi's chest. "That old man Whitebeard's relic, it should still be slumbering in some spatial rift."
"How did you know?" Lin Yi clenched the badge on his chest, where Su Qing's warmth still lingered.
Aizen smiled without answering. He turned and walked towards the street corner, the hem of his white coat sweeping across the inky liquid on the ground. The darkness seemed to recede as if encountering a natural enemy: "You'll understand when you find the Heroic Spirit's Vessel."
Before he finished speaking, his figure had already blended into the sunlight, leaving only the silk scroll floating in the air—the two characters "Return to Origin" on the cover were exactly the same as the handwriting in the notes in the white-bearded memory bank.
Long Wu bent down to pick up the horizontal knife, and Lin Yi's taut jawline was reflected on the blade.
He was about to speak when he saw his boss suddenly raise his hand to his temple, a complex light flashing in his glassy eyes.
It's a sign of memories surging.
On the night of his death, the old man gripped his wrist, his cloudy eyes suddenly clearing like stars: "Xiao Yi, if one day you see faith surging like a tide... remember to go to the deepest part of the spacetime rift and find that gourd engraved with 'Question Your Heart'."
At the time, Lin Yi thought it was drunken talk, but now, thinking back, every word weighed heavily.
He looked down at his palm; the seven time-space keys were emitting a scorching light, as if urging something.
On the distant horizon, a dark cloud was slowly gathering—a presence more dangerous than the Shadow Legion, drawn by the scent of faith, approaching this place.
As the wind swirled through the ruins of the church, carrying broken bricks that brushed against Lin Yi's hair, he stared at the time-space key that was burning hot in his palm.
The old man's dying words echoed in his mind—"Go to the deepest part of the spacetime rift and find the gourd inscribed with 'Question Your Heart'." But then he suddenly remembered another thing the old man had said when he was drunk: "What truly awakens faith is never the statues on the throne, but the souls that never had the chance to say 'I refuse to accept this'."
"Chu Yao," Lin Yi's Adam's apple bobbed, his voice sharp and piercing, "Did the Whitebeard's memory bank mention the 'Soul Resonance Bell'?"
"Searching... Matching entries found!" The electronic voice suddenly rose in pitch. "Twenty years ago, during the Battle of Polaris, Whitebeard used a bronze bell to awaken the lingering souls of three thousand fallen soldiers. His notes described it as 'a container capable of holding the voices of countless resentful cries.'"
Suddenly, Long Wu's dragon scales glowed with a bluish light. He bent down and picked up half a rusty sword at his feet: "Boss, the silk scroll Aizen left behind before he left has scorch marks on the edges, which matches the characteristics of the spacetime turbulence in the Polaris battlefield."
Lin Yi's pupils suddenly contracted to thin slits.
He finally figured out all the loose ends—Su Qing said the Mother Nest wanted to rebuild the belief system, Aizen used the "Heroic Spirit Vessel" as a medium, Whitebeard's "Heart-Questioning" gourd was not the point at all, the real key was that bronze bell that could awaken the will of the defeated!
"Let's go." He grabbed Long Wu's wrist, and seven spacetime keys coalesced into a dark blue teleportation portal beneath their feet. "Chu Yao, locate the coordinates of the North Star Battlefield Ruins."
The moment the portal opened, the stench of decay and blood rust assaulted us.
This place was once the first battlefield between humans and extradimensional beings; now only charred ruins and energy cannons half-buried in the ground remain.
Dragon Five's claws pressed against a crumbling wall covered in runes. Where the scales grazed, rust crumbled away, revealing a line of dark red inscriptions: "We fight until our last heartbeat."
"Down below." Lin Yi knelt on one knee, his palm pressed against the ground.
The laws of spacetime spread like a spider web, and he could clearly sense a warm presence three meters below him—not metal, but...breathing?
Long Wu drew his dragon blade from his waist. The blade flashed across the ground, and amidst the flying pebbles, half a bronze bell was unearthed from the soil.
The bell was covered with fine cracks, but the moment it touched Lin Yi's skin, it burst out with a dazzling golden light.
"It's it." Lin Yi's voice trembled.
He saw the white-bearded phantom appear at the bell's mouth, and the old man, holding a gourd of wine, smiled at him: "Little Yi, this bell doesn't hold copper, it holds those unfinished 'I can still fight' statements."
Long Wu's dragon eyes widened suddenly. He took a half step back, staring at the starlight seeping from the cracks on the surface of the bronze bell: "Boss, these particles of light... are they Heroic Spirits?"
"It is a fragment of faith." Lin Yi raised the bell to his lips and tapped it lightly with his fingertip.
The clear, melodious sound of bells echoed through the ruins.
When the first ray of light burst forth from the bell, Lin Yi's eardrums vibrated painfully.
The first was a soldier in tattered armor, gripping a broken sword and roaring at the sky; the second ray of light, shrouded in blood mist, was a female mage, her staff shattered into three pieces, yet still chanting the final incantation; the third, the tenth, the hundredth... countless translucent figures surged in from all directions, their faces gradually becoming clear—there were villagers from the newbie village torn apart by the shadows, there were job-changers who died in the Mother Nest siege, and even the last wisp of light before Su Qing vanished.
"So...you were all here." Lin Yi's eyes welled up with tears.
He could hear their inner voices, surging into his consciousness like a tide: "I want to protect my family. I haven't even seen my child born yet. I want the mother nest to pay for her blood debt."
The power of faith is like a volcanic eruption.
Lin Yi's azure pupils surged with the Milky Way, and he saw the entire world unfold before his eyes—the shadowy legion of the Mother Nest was not the end; the collected fragments of faith were flowing along some unseen thread, merging into that pitch-black entity in the clouds.
Within that dark core, a vague shadow was taking shape, its outline remarkably resembling the "Will of Creation" described in mythological texts.
"I see." Lin Yi's voice was deep and thunderous. "The Mother Nest is not an intruder at all; it is a... container."
Some seek to use fragments of human faith to reconstruct the will of creation and replace the weavers of fate.
Long Wu's dragon tail slammed heavily onto the ground, causing the ruins to tremble: "That thing in that black cloud, is that the new...god?"
"More dangerous than a god." Lin Yi gripped the bronze bell tightly, his faith surging within him. "It must become the rule itself."
Before he could finish speaking, a chilly wind blew from behind.
Lin Yi turned around abruptly and saw Aizen standing on top of the broken wall.
His pale white robe fluttered in the wind, a dark gold rune lay in his palm, and as his lips moved, a few obscure ancient words drifted out: "Use the soul as the guide, use faith as the medium, open..."
"Aizen!" Lin Yi's time-space key instantly condensed, but the moment it touched the other's figure, it only grabbed a handful of scattered light dust.
Long Wu's dragon claws pressed against the hilt of his sword, a low rumble emanating from his throat: "What... incantation did he just recite?"
Lin Yi did not answer.
He stared in the direction where Aizen had disappeared, his azure pupils surging with an unprecedented coldness—this man, who had been aloof from the beginning, had finally revealed his true colors.
At this moment, the power of faith surging within him was clearly conveying a warning: Aizen's incantation and the "Will of Creation" that was taking shape were inextricably linked.
The dark clouds on the horizon drew closer.
The bronze bell was burning hot in Lin Yi's palm, and the shouts of the heroic spirits suddenly became urgent, as if urging something.
He looked up at the dark clouds, a cold smile slowly curving his lips—
Whoever wants to be the master of the new world should first ask these unyielding faiths if they agree.
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