Inside the Central Command Building, absolute silence reigned. This battle had seen twists and turns, ray after ray of hope, only to end in such a crushing finale that every heart inside almost ceased to beat.
“Your Excellency!” The Secretary General hastily supported the President.
The President gripped her secretary’s hand tightly, taking nearly a full minute to regain her composure before lifting her head again. Her expression appeared calm on the surface, but the bulging veins on her forehead, the bloodshot eyes, and the white-knuckled grip on her secretary’s hand betrayed the violent storm raging inside her.
“Sound the Level Two citywide alert. Have the citizens in the south evacuate toward the north, just in case.”
“Understood!”
They had lost their strongest fighters. Whether Mei Yanlan and the others could take down this terrifying beast—powered by the strength of its fallen kin—was anyone’s guess. If they failed, the battle would only spread. They had to act fast and get the civilians out of danger.
The moment the order from the highest authority came down, every department below sprang into motion. Tonight was destined to be a sleepless night for Yunjin Prefecture.
Even the Nevergone District—normally quiet, destitute, and lacking any nightlife—was awakened from its slumber.
Chu Xusheng had turned the entire Nevergone District upside down, yet he could not find Min Jing or Min Yue anywhere. Upon reviewing the surveillance footage, he saw Min Jing, Min Yue, and their armed guards walking away from the district administration building when they suddenly vanished into thin air.
“I should have arrived sooner!” Chu Xusheng was consumed by frustration. Just a little step late! Just a fraction of a second!
He still didn’t know what an ordinary girl like Min Yue could possibly accomplish, but his trust in Jing Pei was absolute. Whatever Jing Pei did, he believed there was a profound reason behind it. Since she called Min Yue her secret weapon, then Min Yue was guaranteed to be a game-changing secret weapon.
Now that this secret weapon was missing, wasn’t it equivalent to a nation losing its nuclear deterrent?
“No. I won’t allow anyone to steal what belongs to the Family Head!” Chu Xusheng raised his head, his face darkening with a chilling intent. In his dreamy, beautiful eyes, a dark, dangerous edge surfaced—a look that never appeared in front of Jing Pei. He turned to his subordinates behind him. “They must still be within the Nevergone District. Dig three feet deep if you must, but find them!”
These were Atavist security guards hired by the Long family in the past few months after passing tough background checks—they weren’t household retainers. Everyone knew that becoming a Long family retainer was nearly impossible. So far, the only retainer publicly known was Chu Xusheng himself.
This security team fell directly under Chu Xusheng’s command.
“Yes, sir!” The men scattered immediately.
Why go to such lengths to intercept an unknown, ordinary girl? Her only claim to fame was her friendship with the head of the Long family.
Jiang Qing felt really confused. He knew almost everything about the Organization, but this one move slipped past him—because even the Moderator who gave the order didn’t understand it. A sudden flash of intuition had put that name in the Moderator’s mind. As he said himself, it felt like a command straight from God.
Not only did the Moderator obey this mysterious epiphany, but he also dispatched “Mirror God,” the captain of one of the Organization’s Squads of Ten Evils, strictly instructing her not to kill the girl.
Using Mirror God for this task was indeed the most foolproof choice. To hide someone completely, concealing them inside another world was as secure as it gets.
Min Yue had already returned home with her mother, Min Jing. It was a three-story villa guarded by heavy security, making them feel like high-ranking VIPs.
In truth, they were, though Min Yue hadn’t fully adjusted to it yet and felt a bit awkward.
Lying in her bedroom, she tossed and turned while hugging a plush bear, unable to fall asleep. She checked her phone—no text messages, no missed calls.
Pouting slightly, she mumbled under her breath, “She promised she had plenty of free time lately and would call me every day to tutor me in math…”
“Wait, could something have happened?” Min Yue pondered for a moment and decided to dial Jing Pei’s number.
“Sorry, the number you are calling cannot be reached at the moment. Please try again later…”
Unreachable? Did that mean there was no signal on the other end?
Her mother always told her not to be too clingy with friends because it could cause unnecessary pressure. Min Yue put her phone down and tried to sleep, holding her teddy bear tight.
She failed to notice a woman’s reflection in the floor-length mirror at the foot of her bed.
The woman wore a crimson cheongsam with a jade hairpin tucked into her hair, staring at Min Yue with a cold, expressionless gaze.
This was “Mirror God,” the sole female captain among the Organization’s Squads of Ten Evils. Under specific environmental conditions, her lethality was considered absolute.
For instance, on a soaked, rainy night like this. Her ability allowed her to travel through the mirror world; she was the absolute ruler inside mirrors. When the outer world was drenched in rain, creating a giant reflective surface, every cast shadow and reflection became her prey, and everything reflected was mirrored into her domain.
Just like the reflection of the Nevergone District in this mirror world.
The mirror world reflected the real world in reverse. Those pulled into it would also be inverted, making it extremely difficult to notice anything amiss. Even if someone realized where they were, escaping was nearly impossible.
Min Yue and her group had been dragged into this mirror realm without noticing a thing. Because her closest family was right beside her, she felt no anomaly, nor could she reach anyone in the outside world.
“No matter how I look at her, she seems entirely ordinary,” Mirror God observed Min Yue for a while. She couldn’t understand why this girl warranted a personal abduction without being allowed to die. “What would happen if I killed her?”
As she spoke, she dissolved from the floor-length mirror and reappeared in the vanity mirror beside Min Yue’s bed. A woman’s hand with blood-red painted nails reached out from the mirror, curiously stretching toward Min Yue’s slender neck.
Yet just as her hand was about to touch Min Yue, it suddenly froze.
A sudden chill ran down Mirror God’s spine. It felt as though some terrifying entity was glaring at her from the shadows, conveying an undeniable threat. It was baffling—this was her domain, where she reigned supreme, yet she couldn’t detect any enemy presence.
Slowly, she pulled her hand back.
Whatever, Mirror God thought, glancing at Min Yue whose breathing had stabilized into deep slumber. The task was trivial enough; she might as well treat it as a vacation.
Mei Yanlan pulled Jing Pei back to a safe zone. Seeing Jing Pei standing frozen, she assumed the young woman was in shock. “This isn’t your fault! Get a grip! I don’t have time to comfort you right now, pull yourself together!”
With those words, Mei Yanlan charged back into the battlefield to fight alongside her comrades.
But this time, maybe because their morale dropped after Qiu Fa’s death or they were just exhausted, the new combined monster was much bigger, stronger, and fully healthy. They were clearly getting overwhelmed.
Before long, Squad Member Number 10 was bitten in half and swallowed.
Squad Member Number 9 was impaled by the beast’s tail and died instantly.
Squad Member Number 7 sacrificed himself to save Number 8.
Grief-stricken, Number 8 followed closely behind in death.
At last, the government’s heavy firepower assembled. Protocol dictated that Atavist fighters should evacuate to avoid collateral damage, but this monster possessed high intelligence. The moment the warriors attempted to retreat, it would sense the shift, vanish into invisibility, and move at super speed, making targeting impossible.
“Evacuate, all of you,” Mei Yanlan commanded her remaining teammates despite her severe injuries. She intended to stay behind alone to pin the monster down.
“Captain, let me do it! Didn’t you just give birth to triplets?”
“Cut the crap! You’ve only got one breath left—you’ll die before the missiles even land! If that happens, I’ll still have to step up anyway. Stop wasting time and get out of here!”
After driving away all her teammates, Mei Yanlan remained on the field alone. She was likely the only Atavist hybrid in the world, possessing a far more resilient vitality than purebreds. Yet even a vitality as formidable as hers stood a mere one percent chance of surviving an all-out bombardment from dense clusters of heavy Atavist missiles flying in from all directions.
“Xiao Jin, please take good care of those three little rascals for me in the future.” Countless streaks of fire cut through the gloomy sky, converging on a single target. At the center of it all, sensing her imminent demise, Mei Yanlan turned her gaze toward the edge of the battlefield where Jing Pei stood.
Jing Pei closed her eyes, her fingernails digging deep into her palms.
When she wrote this novel, she had freely poured out the coldness, malice, and cruelty she suppressed in real life, venting all her past trauma into her writing. That was her utopia—a way to stop herself from turning into a real monster deserving of hell.
Yet now that she was inside this world, watching these living beings bleed and die before her eyes, she finally understood the feelings of her readers.
[How can someone so beautiful be so cold-hearted?!]
[Doesn’t your heart hurt at all?!]
[You weapon of mass destruction, I’m reporting you!]
[Here you go again! Do you want a total Bad Ending for everyone?!]
[Please, I’m begging you! Give these characters a way out! Stop the tragedy, I don’t want to cry anymore!]
Though she had abandoned the novel before writing the ending, sharp-eyed readers had posted endless analysis threads. They deduced that starting from Qiu Fa’s death, she had already set the stage for the Organization’s victory and the world’s apocalypse.
They were right. That’s why changing these fates was so painfully hard. She was just facing the consequences of what she had done.
Now, only Min Yue could turn this around.
Min Yue was missing, but she was guaranteed to be safe. Until the plot reached its conclusion, Min Yue was the safest person in existence because she was the protagonist—and the rebellious story force feared her death more than anyone.
So Min Yue was merely trapped somewhere. The plot would hold her for at least forty-eight hours after Qiu Fa’s death—long enough to ensure that even if Min Yue died and rewound time, she wouldn’t be able to reach a moment prior to Qiu Fa’s demise to alter the outcome.
But what can you possibly do now?
A smug, mocking voice seemed to whisper in Jing Pei’s ear.
Jing Pei stared at the colossal explosion ahead. Heavy heatwaves wrapped in humid air slammed into her face, whipping her drenched long hair into the wind.
After a long moment, the dust settled.
“What can I do? Haven’t I already done it?” Jing Pei suddenly let out a strange, quiet laugh.
That triumphant, invisible face suddenly froze.
Min Yue sat up abruptly in bed, her expression shifting rapidly.
Even though the weather was terrible and multiple accidents had knocked out signals in various districts, making it normal for phone calls to fail…
“I keep my word. Only death can turn me into a dishonest person.”
“I promised to accompany Xusheng back to his hometown today. That was a prior promise, so I’m sorry, Xiao Yue.”
“Didn’t I promise to bring you this dessert yesterday? Here you go.”
“Once a promise is made, it must be kept.”
Countless statements Jing Pei had made about keeping her word flooded Min Yue’s mind. Those words acted like psychological anchors, deeply carved into her brain.
“I’m pretty free these days, so I can video call you every day to teach you math,” Jing Pei had told her that day.
Jing Pei was a person of absolute integrity. No matter how trivial the promise was—even if it was a promise to bring a stray cat a tin of food the next day—she would fulfill it come rain or shine. As long as she gave her word, she would deliver, never breaking a promise without cause.
Yet today, she broke her promise…
“I keep my word. Only death can turn me into a dishonest person.”
So… something happened. Something terrible had definitely occurred! Min Yue’s heart began to race wildly. In a place she couldn’t see, a disaster had struck!
Memories of the Spacetime Worm incident flashed through her mind—memories of Jing Pei dying before her eyes again and again. Her face turned deathly pale, her lips trembling uncontrollably.
She grabbed her phone and dialed Jing Pei’s number once more.
“Sorry, the number you are calling cannot be reached at the moment—”
She called Chu Xusheng.
“Sorry, the number you are calling cannot be reached at the moment—”
Inside the mirror, Mirror God watched Min Yue through the glass, wondering what she was doing. Suddenly, the young girl leapt out of bed, dashed downstairs, burst into the kitchen, and grabbed a sharp knife—
[Stop her!] In that split second, Mirror God seemed to hear a panicked command echo in her mind.
It was too late.
Without a shred of hesitation—CLANG!—the knife fell to the floor. Crimson blood erupted from Min Yue’s slender neck.
Time began to flow backward.
