“Just because your power doesn’t work on me, you’re going to kill me?” Jing Pei said.

Lou Ting stared at her for a few seconds. Then his wings lowered again, and that curious, almost innocent smile returned to his face. “Interesting. I can agree to what you want.”

Jing Pei had come prepared with an entire speech to persuade him, and now she hadn’t used a single line of it. “…What do you want me to do?”

“My god gave me the power to judge the souls of the world, and yet created someone like you—someone I cannot judge. There must be some deeper meaning in that. Perhaps it is a message from my god. I need to study you.”

As the Sky Ladder slowly descended from the resplendent cage, Jing Pei stood inside it in a daze.

Lou Ting… really was impossible to understand. He had slipped completely out of her control. He was no longer anything like the person she had written, all because he had somehow heard the voice of a “god.”

And if the “god” he meant really was her, then that change had come because of her too.

The Lou Ting in the text had always been a character steeped in divinity. He had been born only to tear his family apart, rejected by his mother, resented by his clan, feared by the whole world. Raised inside that gilded cage, it would have made perfect sense for him to possess divinity but no humanity at all.

And yet here he was, smiling, declaring with perfect confidence that he was favored by god.

“Did you really hear god’s voice?” Jing Pei couldn’t help asking.

“Of course.”

“How can you be sure it was god’s voice?”

“That is the special connection between a god and the one they favor. I have known since childhood that It was watching me, loving me. My name, my appearance, the kind of soul I possess—It drew and wrote every part of me by hand. You have probably never had the fortune to experience such a thing. That, too, is proof that I am favored.”

The angel sounded pleased with himself, and proud.

What could Jing Pei do but smile?

Still, no matter how she looked at it, this version of Lou Ting was kind of adorable. Not what she had expected, but a pleasant surprise.

Then again, maybe this was only possible because Lou Ting had been nothing more than a background character. She had already seen for herself how strong the pull of fate was around Wen Yuxian and Zhang Simiao.

Down below, the atavist families were still waiting. Some hoped Lou Ting would agree. Others hoped he would refuse. If he refused, they could kill Zhang Simiao and be done with it. Jing Pei’s threats would mean nothing then.

The elevator doors opened, and Jing Pei stepped out with a smile. “Lou Ting agreed.”

At once, some people looked relieved, while others wilted in disappointment.

Then Wen Yuxian and Zhang Simiao followed Jing Pei back into the elevator.

As it rose again and crossed into the fifty-meter range, the Scales of Judgment were triggered. Wen Yuxian and Zhang Simiao landed on one side of the balance and underwent judgment.

Judging by their expressions, being judged really was painful. But the couple was safe. Wen Yuxian had harbored a mutant, yes—but that mutant had never harmed anyone. And he had never taken a life or hurt anyone’s interests in order to feed her. None of the tragedies from the original story had happened here.

So that sacred, inviolable golden light wrapped around them without harming them in the slightest.

“See?” Lou Ting said. “This too is proof that my god favors me.”

Jing Pei had no answer to that. From one angle, he wasn’t wrong.

From that point on, Zhang Simiao would live in the sky with Lou Ting. This place could be called the safest place in the world. Anyone who approached Lou Ting would be judged to begin with, so the odds of anyone with bad intentions getting close were next to nothing. And now Lou Ting was going to add another rule to the judgment itself—anyone harboring ill intent toward Zhang Simiao.

That shut the door on almost every danger.

“I’ll come see you often. If you miss me, call me,” Wen Yuxian told her, his eyes full of reluctance, soft with feeling.

Zhang Simiao nodded. Around one of her wrists hung a red cord, and on it was Wen Yuxian’s engagement ring.

“If you’re hungry, have someone send food up. I’ll pay for your meals. Don’t just endure it in silence, all right?”

Zhang Simiao nodded again.

“If anyone tries any trick to get you to go down, call me right away. And if you can’t reach me, call Long Jin. In any case, you absolutely must not go down…”

Wen Yuxian was like a father dropping a child off at kindergarten for the first time—one reminder after another, and still not reassured.

“If you two are that reluctant to part, then stay together,” said the angel, who was currently sniffing at Jing Pei’s cheek like a dog. One Zhang Simiao was already here. One more Wen Yuxian hardly made a difference.

“Thank you, but I still have work to do,” Wen Yuxian said.

Yes. There were still things he had to do.

Before, he would have hidden away with Zhang Simiao in some forgotten corner of the world, far from other people, and grown old beside her there. But things were different now.

Thinking that, Wen Yuxian turned his head, saw what Lou Ting was doing, and had to fight down the urge to charge over and protect his student from being taken advantage of by a shameless flirt. But Lou Ting’s eyes looked so innocent that it was hard to read anything dirty into it.

Jing Pei did her best to ignore Lou Ting’s behavior. This was his condition—he wanted to study her. As for how he planned to do that, apparently he intended to start with her scent.

What kind of dog-type angel was this?

The elevator doors closed once more and began to descend.

But this time, Zhang Simiao was no longer inside.

In the silence, Wen Yuxian asked, “The experiment you said you wanted to run… did you get the result?”

Jing Pei said, “I did.”

Wen Yuxian looked at her. “Did it change?”

“It changed.”

This time, fate had truly changed.

The heart Jing Pei had kept half-suspended in her chest finally settled. Wen Yuxian and Zhang Simiao had both survived—and survived openly, in the light, without having to hide like rats in a gutter.

And as long as they were alive, the future held endless possibilities.

For example, one day Zhang Simiao might even regain her human appearance.

Jing Pei did a quick calculation in her head and figured it should be about time for Tang Woxue to make his entrance.

The supergenius who, in the original future, would develop the real Atavist Serum, create countless artificial atavists, and turn the whole world upside down—a true supervillain.

Whether Zhang Simiao could become human again would depend on him.

“Thank you. If there’s ever anything you need from me, you have to come to me,” Wen Yuxian said. His heart was overflowing with gratitude. The future that had once looked hopeless had become this—something he had never even dared dream of before. Even if he and Zhang Simiao could not stay together forever, he wanted nothing else. This was already the best ending he could have hoped for.

And all of it had come from Jing Pei, this student of his who remained utterly mysterious.

…

Now that it was certain Zhang Simiao had been sent up to the sky, the major atavist families, along with Qiu Fa and Mei Yanlan, left the Lou family with the captured traitors in tow.

There was still a mountain of work waiting for them. If Zhang Simiao’s case had not been tied to the standing of atavists as a whole, they would already have been impatient to start interrogating these traitors, demanding to know what grievance had driven them to do such a thing.

Word spread that it was over.

The man, who had been holding his breath the whole time and still nursing one last sliver of hope, slumped back into his chair. “It’s over. Years of work… gone…”

It felt as if not only both kidneys had been ripped out—someone had carved away a chunk of his lungs too. Why else was it so hard to breathe?

And to make matters worse, the phone rang just then.

The moment he saw the caller ID, his heart gave a violent jolt. He picked up with exaggerated care.

“Sir?”

“You’ve disappointed the Boss this time,” said a man’s voice on the other end.

“Sir, give us one more chance. This was an accident. That brat from the Long family—”

“In recent years, you haven’t produced any results worth mentioning either,” the voice cut in. “Your funding will be cut in half from this point on. The other half will be reassigned to the sister organization. They’ve already made new progress. If they need manpower, you’ll go help them.”

The line went dead before the man could answer.

He smashed the phone on the spot.

He could already imagine the people in the sister organization laughing at him. Their funding had been cut in half, and now they would have to take orders from the other side too.

This was all the fault of that little brat from the Long family.

Who the hell was she, some Cheng Yaojin charging out of nowhere halfway through the battle? If not for her, Zhang Simiao would already be in their hands.

He had to kill her.

Only after he killed that brat would he be able to breathe easy.

His face twisted with rage.

The doctor pushed the door open and walked in, making the man’s nerves snap taut again. But the doctor had probably already expected this outcome. He looked fairly calm, and the hissing sound that only came when his emotions were steady had returned.

“I’ve thought about it for a long time. For that young Long family heir to pull this off, hss… one condition had to be in place first. She had to be certain that we really do have people planted in every family. She even knew her own driver was one of ours.”

The man froze, then nodded. “That’s right. But how did she know? How long has she even been back? No matter how smart she is, there’s no way she could have gathered that much information so quickly. It’s practically like she’s cheating…”

“That is exactly the problem. How did she know? Logically speaking, she shouldn’t even be familiar with all the atavist families in the country yet.”

Then the man saw the doctor looking down at his phone screen.

“And then,” the doctor said, “I checked her transfer records. I found that she transferred a large amount of virtual currency to a mysterious account. It appears she has been in contact with some mysterious intelligence broker. Once I saw that, everything made sense.”

…

That same day, in Qingniao Prefecture, a first hearing began in a domestic abuse self-defense homicide case that had attracted very little public attention.

The obscure lawyer Xiang Huagong, dressed in a sharp suit and carrying a file folder, walked into the courtroom with calm confidence and a fierce spark in his eyes.