"There's absolutely no need to ask a question like that."
Shen Yi swept Lilith with an indifferent glance and felt that question of hers was especially unnecessary.
What was there to ask?
If a life he had personally supported ended up betraying him, Shen Yi would erase it directly without the slightest hesitation. For those people on Blue Star, they had one chance at loyalty, and one chance only.
"See? Your answer is about what I imagined."
"But have you ever thought about it? If these Ability Fruits you speak of, including the abilities of the fruits you copy, aren't that simple in themselves—if Ability Fruits are fragments of the world's rules—then what kind of existence could spur these things into forming? Black Fog alone is nowhere near enough."
"What are you trying to say?" Shen Yi frowned, then looked at Lilith calmly.
Lilith had gone through all this trouble, tossing and turning before finally bringing this up during the period after the oath, when Shen Yi trusted her rather deeply. That meant the things she was saying were inherently hard to understand or believe. Otherwise, she had no need to put in so much effort laying the groundwork.
"I'm saying..."
"If this Authority on you, one I've never seen before, was deliberately cultivated by those Extraterrestrial Creatures, and you yourself were also deliberately designed by those higher existences as a... collector, could you accept that?"
Those calm words were like light in a cold night, suddenly exploding in Shen Yi's heart. He stood rooted to the spot in a daze, carefully recalling everything he had experienced before.
"Authority is condensed from rules. If those Ability Fruits accumulate to a certain degree, it is indeed possible for them to give rise to power comparable to that of someone with Authority.