Ren Yi returned to the room on the floating island where they had fought.
The place had completely fallen into ruin.
Everything in the room—including the corpses of the Lord of the City and Dr. Cyril, the shattered operating table and glass tank, the Sword-man, and the remains of Pops—had been swallowed by God's Corpse when it went on a rampage.
Only that corpse remained lying in the center of the ruins, solitary and looking like an abandoned mannequin.
Moreover, its anomalous properties seemed to have completely vanished.
Ren Yi tried a few times.
He threw objects toward the throat of God's Corpse, but nothing happened.
No swallowing occurred, and no annihilation took place.
The black hole that had once devoured everything seemed to have swallowed something it shouldn't have; it had now closed up and remained motionless.
This Anomaly had finally turned completely into a genuine corpse.
Aside from being extremely hard, there was nothing unusual about it.
Even if Ren Yi wanted to find a way to fish someone out of the stomach of God's Corpse, he had no idea how to go about it.
He could only be certain of one thing.
Evans was still alive. The Seed left on him had not dissipated, standing like a lighthouse in the hazy mist.
The problem was, Ren Yi did not have a ship that could carry him toward that lighthouse.
Just as he was pondering his next move, a notification surfaced in his mind.
【Charging. Current energy: 10%】
【Minimum energy threshold required for teleportation reached.】
Ever since the Base Station returned to Ren Yi's hands, he had resumed charging it.
After about three days, the energy required by the Base Station had finally reached the minimum threshold.
Ren Yi glanced at the mission progress on his Assessment panel.
【This Assessment includes three missions. An average progress of 60% is a pass, 80% is good, and 90% or above is excellent.】
【Mission 1: World Exploration. Current progress: 82.9%】
【Mission 2: Obtain items containing world rules. Current progress: 100.0%】
【Mission 3: Confirm the death of the Fugitive. If alive, show the person; if dead, show the corpse. Current progress: 50.0%.】
Mission 2 was fully completed, which was to be expected.
Initially, Ren Yi and Evans had already split their spoils twice—once on the land ship and once in the Deep Abyss—gaining massive wealth.
Coupled with the current situation, where he was the only living 'person' left in the entire world, Anomalies could be picked up as easily as roadside weeds.
As for Mission 1, it had also reached a 'good' level.
The remaining progress was likely due to a few remote corners of this world that Ren Yi hadn't visited yet, and he had no intention of continuing to explore them.
And then, there was Mission 3.
My dear Watson, have you spotted the crucial detail?
The mission to confirm the Fugitive's death—dead or alive—had actually stalled halfway through the progress bar!
This was highly unusual.
Because Ren Yi had always believed this was a simple yes-or-no mission, where the progress should either be 0% or 100%.
If he had to explain the current situation, it could probably only be because the 'person' or 'corpse' Ren Yi had seen was incomplete.
After all, a headless corpse and a brain couldn't be pieced together to form a complete person.
Of the 50% progress already achieved, S-001 and S-003 seemed to have contributed half each.
But regardless, adding the three missions together, he had already far exceeded the passing mark.
With a little more effort, he might even be able to push it to the 'good' tier.
In other words... he could leave.
Ren Yi closed the panel and stood still in place.
He could go. The Base Station had enough energy, and his missions had passed.
Logically speaking, he had already met the Assessment requirements and could leave this world at any time.
However, he was truly unwilling to leave things like this.
Because of this lingering regret, he still had one more thing to do.
Now that the Base Station was charged, he had no more worries.
There were some things he hadn't dared to try before, but now he could go and verify them.
Ren Yi cast one last look at God's Corpse.
The grayish-white body lay quietly in the ruins, like a forgotten tombstone.
He didn't try to take it with him; it was too massive and inconvenient to carry.
Besides, if his guess was correct, this God's Corpse would soon cease to exist.
Then, Ren Yi retraced the path he and Evans had taken when they broke in, walking back in the direction they had come from.
He passed through corridors, ruins, and metal doors sliced open by sword qi.
Finally, he stopped inside a room where the door had been broken in two.
Before him stood a simple elevator door.
B-119, the Anomaly elevator, also known as "Even Split."
Ignoring its harmless yet somewhat distasteful negative effects, its function was highly practical.
B-119 possessed eight cabins, acting like eight Anywhere Doors scattered across the world.
Through any one of them, one could instantaneously teleport between the eight cabins worldwide.
Ren Yi had noticed this Anomaly due to some very subtle associations.
The most important of these was the cooperation between Dr. Cyril and Pops of the Cosmos Bag.
Dr. Cyril had said, "He showed me the truth of the world," rather than "He told me the truth of the world."
For a scientist like Cyril, who was cold to her very bones, she could never be convinced by mere words.
Pops must have shown her some kind of irrefutable evidence.
So, an artifact spirit of the old world and a scientist of the new world...
How exactly did they connect right under the nose of the Lord of the City? And how did they "see" that truth?
With both parties involved having vanished into air, Ren Yi could only search for clues from minor traces.
So far, the only intersection he could find between the two seemed to be this elevator that could break the rules of space.
Ren Yi dissolved into a white mist and drifted into the cabin. The elevator doors slowly closed with an ear-grating screech of friction.
The electronic screen above the elevator doors displayed a large number "1," with a row of rust-stained steel buttons to its right.
Ren Yi extended a tentacle and pressed "2."
The doors opened, revealing a forest shrouded in darkness outside.
Countless extremely thick, bizarre plants that were smooth without a single branch stood densely packed, resembling rows of massive black fences.
This was the cage of the world, the endless, dead, silent Black Forest.
Ren Yi went out to investigate and found traces of some giant arthropod's movement on the ground.
But clearly, this creature had also inevitably vanished in this failed reset.
There was nothing worthy of attention here.
Ren Yi had no interest in trying to break through the Black Forest, so he continued on his journey.
He returned to the elevator. The doors closed again, and he pressed "3."
Accompanied by the dull rumble of cracking rock, the elevator doors barely pried open a crack.
A large amount of hard, red rock crust and debris collapsed into the cabin with a clatter.
Before Ren Yi's eyes, the entire elevator doorway was blocked solid by some kind of hard, red rock.
After the elevator doors opened, a portion of the unstable rock crust collapsed.
This cabin seemed to have been buried alive.
Ren Yi drifted out of the elevator, taking some effort to break through the rock crust blockade and reach the surface.
Then, he recognized this place.
The traces of the nuclear explosion had not yet faded. Smoke and dust swirled in the sky, a burnt smell hung in the air, and the world was immersed in gloom.
In front of Ren Yi was a solidified, dried-up tidal flat.
Countless dead, weathered pieces of Meat-food densely blanketed the cracked earth.
This was the end of the Red Tide, where the surging waves reached their final destination.
Unsurprisingly, this cabin was the one originally installed on the land ship.
However, after the land ship fell apart, it had been washed all the way here along with the aftereffects of the Red Tide.
Rate on N.U.
