Destiny Cluster

"Whoa, hahaha, we're all old friends here. Why start shouting about killing each other the moment you arrive? Mr. Lan, if you want a nuclear bomb, let alone a tactical nuke—even one of the big ones—I can absolutely represent the higher-ups and personally make the decision to give you one~~"

A hearty laugh rang out, and two people emerged from the back kitchen deeper inside the shop.

The man in the lead was past middle age, brimming with vigor. His eyes were especially bright, and he wore a smile like a waiter's, making people unconsciously feel as if they were basking in a spring breeze and sense the genuine intentions behind it: respect and goodwill.

The other man's expression was tranquil and utterly unremarkable. He was the sort of ordinary young man who would vanish instantly if tossed into a crowd, leaving barely any impression behind.

"Perfect timing—the time is about right. If I can be of even a little help to you during the first Artificial Divine Realm trial, that would truly be wonderful!"

The middle-aged man walked over and made as if to pull out his radio and issue an order.

That enthusiasm for stuffing a nuclear bomb into someone's hands as a gift would have made any clueless bureaucrat present tremble with fear, seriously wondering whether the world had suddenly gone mad.

Lan Yi merely smiled.

"Ji Ning, why bother testing me? Even if you gave me one now, I couldn't bring it into the Artificial Divine Realm. I didn't bring back any Destiny Cluster related to Spatial Daoist Arts. I don't have a single Destiny Cluster on me right now. If you can't trust your own eyes, you should at least trust Zhang Shouzheng's White Speech."

Destiny Cluster

Was an organ similar to a neural plexus. It could grant humans all kinds of unbelievable abilities.

Before the War Zone descended, Destiny Clusters had already existed inside the human body. But for various reasons, they had been unable to exert their functions. Even when some lucky individuals activated the slightest bit of their Destiny Clusters through instinct, the effects were so faint that they were easily drowned out by the noise and clamor of everyday life.

The eyes Ji Ning possessed, which Lan Yi had mentioned, and Zhang Shouzheng's White Speech were both Destiny Clusters. In the future, they would also broadly be known as Daoist Arts organs.

White Speech, location: brain; function: mind-reading.

"He isn't lying."

Zhang Shouzheng stared seriously at Lan Yi. After a moment, he gave a slight nod.

Saying that Lan Yi wasn't lying referred not only to his claim that he had not a single Destiny Cluster on him, but also to the credibility of his statement just now that he had only a forty percent chance of surviving a tactical nuclear strike.

At that, Ji Ning's pupils contracted slightly. For an instant, his warm, genial smile became somewhat false, but it immediately shifted into an even more sincere and candid expression.

"Mr. Lan, look, you've misunderstood again! I do have a little curiosity of my own, hahaha, but that will absolutely not affect our consistent attitude toward an old friend. Our reputation is plain for the whole world to see. As long as you make a request, even if you ask us to pluck the stars and moon from the sky, we'll do everything we can to satisfy it!"

Compared with Lan Yi, who brought up nothing at all,

Ji Ning would much rather Lan Yi make some kind of request.

No matter how outrageous that request was, it would still be better than him saying nothing at all twenty years later and openly mobilizing to destroy the world. That attitude of refusing even to negotiate and sealing space-time before destroying the world to the bitter end was truly terrifying to reborn people like them.

They had a sixty percent chance of killing Lan Yi.

Even if it meant dropping a tactical nuclear bomb on their own heads, Ji Ning and Zhang Shouzheng still considered that price worth paying.

But...

Ji Ning sensed something amiss.

Lan Yi clearly had no trace of psychic energy on him, yet at their first meeting, he had accurately judged all their actions and detected the direction of every weapon locking onto him.

As the possible primary cause of so many psychic cultivators being reborn, no one would be willing to gamble—not even with a ninety-nine percent chance of success, let alone sixty. If they lost, the tragedy might repeat itself, or even happen ahead of schedule.

Although he was only putting on an act, there was one thing Ji Ning genuinely meant.

They were old friends.

Since they had been given another chance to start over, why did they have to fight and kill each other until one side was dead? The future world was so vast, its resources so abundant, and its powerful enemies as numerous as the stars in the sky. Wouldn't it be better to avoid so many pitfalls in advance?

As for a brain-dead fool like Gao Xing, he was one of the rarest of the rare in Xinghan.

As for foreign countries... well, there had never been any shortage of Abnormal Species over there.

"I have no request, but I do have a transaction." Lan Yi raised his head and glanced at the time again. "You've already paid, so I'll tell you the details of the transaction."

Among all those reborn people,

Lan Yi, who had been cheated on, exposed online, and falsely accused, had no shortage of people eager to curry favor with him.

Ji Ning and the others had used machine-like efficiency to bring a string of people who deserved to die ten thousand times under control. Every one of them was now worse off than dead. Lan Yi was very satisfied with the way they had handled things and with the opportunity they had deliberately left for him, so he gave them some important information ahead of time.

"It's true that everyone's rebirth is related to me."

"There are three conditions for rebirth."

"First, you must be at least Fifth Energy Level. Second, you must have at least one quantum organ on you. Third, you must have been personally killed by me."

"Why did you do this?" Seeing an opening, Ji Ning hurriedly asked through his earpiece.

"Destiny Cluster Psychosis." Lan Yi did not answer directly. Instead, he threw out a term that would only appear in the future and would become increasingly common.

Destiny Cluster Psychosis

Was the name of the illness in which psychic cultivators, after implanting too many Destiny Clusters into themselves, had their brains eroded by the Destiny Clusters and began experiencing hallucinations, ultimately becoming Destiny Cluster lunatics. After going mad, a Destiny Cluster lunatic would attack nearby living beings indiscriminately and wreak wanton destruction without regard for the consequences. A single Destiny Cluster lunatic could often inflict catastrophic losses on an entire region.

When Lan Yi had destroyed the world without a word, many people had also wondered whether his Destiny Cluster Psychosis had flared up.

Now it seemed that he had personally admitted it.

It was simply baffling.

After all, in the future, while Destiny Cluster Psychosis might not be completely curable for those psychic cultivators truly standing at the pinnacle, they absolutely had ways to reduce its risks to a negligible level.

Ji Ning and Zhang Shouzheng were digesting that absurd answer.

At the other end of their earpieces, the finest physicists, biologists, sociologists, psychologists, weapons experts, and others—more than two hundred people in total—had been urgently recruited within twenty-four hours to participate in a top-secret project. Along with several taciturn old men, they were likewise digesting this information that seemed fantastical and bizarre yet was, in fact, reality.

Their foremost task was to determine

Whether Lan Yi, the demon who had destroyed the world, still had any inclination to continue destroying it.

"When you're sick yourself, plugging your own ears and covering other people's mouths, then blindly searching for the cause of the illness in others, you'll only make yourself sicker."

Lan Yi suddenly added another sentence.

Awakened from his thoughts, Ji Ning instinctively asked,

"Mr. Lan, who are you saying is sick?"

"Everything filled with hostility nowadays—and you people." Lan Yi knew that even if they could do it all over again, the illness still had to be resolved.

Ji Ning instinctively looked toward Zhang Shouzheng.

Then Zhang Shouzheng slowly and with difficulty nodded. The result made Ji Ning shudder with dread.