Chapter 532: Life Is Short

Yu Sheng wasn’t sure who or what the doll that looked so much like Ai Lin really was. His first, most natural reaction was the Goddess of Calamity, but when the doll spoke, he truly sensed Ai Lin’s aura from her. That kind of familiarity couldn’t be mistaken.

She might still be some kind of "composite"—an incomplete personality centered on the Goddess of Calamity, lacking a full individual. Considering the complicated situation with the little doll, he decided not to dwell on that detail for now.

Realizing that this shadowy doll seemed a little dazed, Yu Sheng chose to follow her lead and ask further: "What is the Sanctuary?"

"The Sanctuary… is the Sanctuary," the doll said slowly, a stark contrast to her usual chattering, fast-talking demeanor. "They said I could build a city from the ashes, or something else. Civilization could still last for hundreds or thousands of years. They said… as long as you’re alive, there’s hope, even though the day of the end will surely come…"

Yu Sheng was momentarily bewildered: "They want the embodiment of ‘Calamity’ to take on the responsibility of sustaining civilization?"

The doll stared at him fixedly. After a long time, she slowly lowered her head and gazed motionlessly at the notebook: "Calamity is their fear, but also their understanding and comprehension of the world. They had no choice."

Yu Sheng was stunned. Then he probed further: "There’s something called the ‘Boundary Bridge’… Do you remember it?"

The doll pondered sluggishly, then after a long while, shook her head gently: "I don’t remember."

"What about the Borderland? And a golden-haired doll named ‘Ai Lin’…"

"I don’t remember that either."

"Then the ‘Black Star’…"

It seemed no matter what he asked, the doll couldn’t remember.

After trying several more questions, Yu Sheng realized that this doll, so resembling Ai Lin, only remembered an apocalypse she herself couldn’t comprehend and a mission to calculate the "startup equation" for some kind of "Sanctuary." She was trapped in an endless loop of that task, having forgotten everything else.

"Then what do you still remember?" Yu Sheng couldn’t help asking.

The shadowy doll pondered sluggishly again. Her crimson eyes flickered in the darkness, dimming and brightening. Then she moved again—the doll lowered her head and wrote two crooked characters with a pencil on the notebook.

"Yu Sheng"

"Yu-Sheng," she said slowly, and a faint smile seemed to appear on her face beneath the hazy shadow. "When Yu Sheng comes home, everything will be fine."

Yu Sheng: "…?"

He was stunned for a moment, then saw the doll suddenly remember something else and slowly continue writing in the notebook—

"Silly fox… when it’s cold, she gets all fluffy… C-clip… a cleaning robot… sunlight is warm… children are noisy… leaves are… green… a small stream flows through the valley, into the black forest… wind… can’t catch the wind, but the wind catches me."

She looked up, smiling happily. But just as Yu Sheng was momentarily distracted by that, the vivid and clear expression faded from the doll’s face. Her face was once again shrouded by a hazy shadow, leaving only a pair of crimson eyes flickering in the darkness.

"Do you want to go through?" She suddenly raised a hand, pointing at the heavy door beside her that led to the laboratory.

"…What’s on the other side of that door?" Yu Sheng felt a stir in his heart and, for some reason, asked that question.

"The road home." The doll looked into Yu Sheng’s eyes.

The aura similar to Ai Lin’s was gradually fading from her.

Yu Sheng hesitated for a moment, then turned and placed his hand on the metal door—it opened silently.

"What are you going to…"

He turned back to look at the spot where the doll had been crouching, but his words cut off abruptly.

That spot was empty. The doll had long since vanished—as if she had never existed at all.

Yu Sheng stood there stunned for two seconds, frowning deeply as he pondered many questions. Then he finally turned and walked into the hall.

It was still the familiar "Black Spot Laboratory," but it was nothing like the brightly lit room he remembered. A dimness like a black veil covered his vision. A pitch-black mass with an indeterminate shape floated in the center of the hall, swelling and squirming in midair. Countless black spider threads extended from that black mass, crisscrossing the entire hall, forming a web that covered everything.

And beneath this dimness and web were many human-shaped shadows—projections from the real world swaying blindly in this dimensional crevice, emitting all kinds of buzzing, rumbling noises. Those noises resonated with each other, as if trying to drill into one’s brain.

That was the sound of the Star Scholars thinking—knowledge that deviated from the norm roared and trembled in their thoughts, impacting the fragile boundary of reality here, trying to materialize in the observable universe.

But one shadow was special.

That shadow stood beside the black mass in the center of the hall. It looked tall and slender. It was far more solid than all the other phantoms around it, and even shone with a certain… intense presence in Yu Sheng’s spiritual intuition.

It didn’t make noise. It was purely listening and thinking, as if communicating with that black mass.

Yu Sheng saw strands of black spider threads extend from the black mass, winding specifically around that tall, slender figure. And there was a blurry, short shadow clinging to the back of that tall figure, like a backseat ghost huddled near the latter’s head, poking its head with a finger while swaying left and right, making all sorts of uncouth sounds.

Many people’s immediate family members ascended to the sky under those whispers, bursting into brilliant bloom, then scattering like fireworks.

Yu Sheng was completely dumbfounded, feeling that the sudden shift in atmosphere caught him off guard. Then, before he could react, he saw that blurry little shadow abruptly turn its head in his direction—almost instantly, the shadow solidified a bit, and then a voice rang out, happy and surprised: "Ah—Yu Sheng?!"

The next second, the little thing jumped off the tall figure’s shoulder and, using several spider threads, scurried toward Yu Sheng with hands and feet. When it was still two or three meters away, it launched itself into a short-melon flying pounce: "Yu Sheng~ You’re finally alive! You were dead for so long this time…"

Yu Sheng felt something slam solidly into his chest, then an instant of dizzying disorientation. A bone-chilling cold and a nauseating vertigo surged over him, as if he had been thrown into the maelstrom of an icy ocean for three hours and then flung into the stratosphere to free-fall. Right then, he almost wished he could die again—and this feeling wasn’t unfamiliar.

It was "Violent Awakening," Ai Lin’s unique wake-up technique.

The next moment, the dark dimension covered by spider threads silently collapsed. The vivid colors and sounds of the real world surged in like a tide. Yu Sheng’s body swayed, and the colored snowflakes in his eyes quickly turned into a clear view.

A somewhat familiar, beautiful golden-haired elf sister stood not far away, staring at him in shock—behind her were several metallic limbs, and below her skirt was a wheeled mechanical limb.

Plus a large group of technicians who were clearly startled, and elite combatants who looked like guards, standing nearby.

Yu Sheng took a moment to react and finally remembered what gave him that sense of familiarity about the golden-haired elf across from him—it was the elf oil baroness he had seen a long time ago when he tested his door-opening ability!

What was she doing here?!

Before Yu Sheng could think further, the golden-haired elf across from him had clearly recognized the intruder. Her eyes flew wide in an instant, and then she sharply sucked in a breath of cold air. She raised a finger at Yu Sheng, almost grinding her teeth as she spoke each word: "How the fuck is it you again?! How the fuck do you keep-getting-in?!"

"Ah, look at how things turned out," Yu Sheng said, still dizzy from the aftereffects of "Violent Awakening," barely able to keep his balance while waving a hand and not really thinking about what he was saying. "If I’d known it was you on the other side, I wouldn’t have gone through all that trouble…"

He hadn’t finished speaking when the surrounding security personnel swarmed in—the people in the lab didn’t remember that they had already killed this intruder once, but obviously, this mysterious individual who had suddenly appeared in the core zone was a huge threat to the lab.

Guns and cannons were instantly shoved into Yu Sheng’s face.

"Capture him alive!" the golden-haired elf quickly shouted.

An intruder who could repeatedly "break into" her hidden stronghold shouldn’t be killed haphazardly—this was definitely a rare research subject!

"You know, you really don’t understand," Yu Sheng couldn’t help chuckling when he heard that. "This time it might actually be feasible…"

But the next moment, he opened a door beside him and pulled out a spiked club that looked full of justice and reason.

"But unfortunately, I still have something to take care of and need to go back first," he grinned, striding forward. "Don’t worry, everything will be quick—we’ll meet again."

Under the astonished gazes of the security personnel and the golden-haired elf, the intruder seemed to ignore the deadly weapons threatening him. After a few bold accelerating steps, the man carrying that bizarre, vicious weapon stomped hard on the ground, leaped into the air, and charged straight toward—the Zolda Blackstone in the center of the lab.

He appeared out of nowhere, extremely fast, with immense strength—the reinforced alloy floor of the lab was even dented into a deep crater. Not human!

The soldiers made their judgment in an instant. Originally intending to capture the intruder with non-lethal means, they pulled the triggers decisively.

Yu Sheng’s thinking was simple.

He knew he couldn’t possibly charge to the side of that golden-haired elf or that "Blackstone" under such tight protection, at least not alive.

But the distance wasn’t far. He could go for it.

Besides, there was nothing to lose if he failed—death would claim its price.

The War God jumps.

The War God sleeps.

"Ai Lin…" a voice called out across distant time and space, in a spiritual connection.

"What?"

"This life… is really short."

"…Huh?! Wait, Yu Sheng, how the fuck did you die again? You just revived two minutes ago!"

"…"