Welt Pushed Up His Glasses. This Was No Simple Matter

Welt's fingers froze halfway to his glasses.

Through the edge of the lens, his fingertips felt the chill of something mechanical.

The VIP Lounge was eerily quiet.

The virtual logs in the holographic fireplace glowed orange-red.

The flickering flames cast the others' shadows in shifting light.

The screams and explosions beyond the corridor seemed cut off by an invisible wall.

Su Chen straightened his back.

He sat on the edge of the black leather sofa.

The hem of his black-and-gold robe spilled across the velvet carpet.

The narrow heels of his high-heeled boots dug deep into the soft pile.

Aching pulsed through his feet, wave after wave.

But he could only grit his teeth and keep his breathing as steady as possible.

He held on to that air of looking down on all creation.

Welt's throat went dry.

It felt as though he had swallowed a handful of coarse sandpaper.

The Herrscher of Reason's core burned faintly deep in his chest, trembling with something almost instinctive.

"Imaginary."

The word left her mouth like a sledgehammer, shattering everything he thought he knew.

In Welt's homeland, the universe was, at its heart, a magnificent tree.

The Imaginary Tree.

Countless parallel worlds and civilizations rose and fell like leaves growing and withering on its branches.

The Sea of Quanta surged beneath the tree, devouring everything that fell from it.

This was a dimension even the highest-ranked Herrschers could not easily touch—the ultimate truth of the multiverse.

And the woman before him claimed the organization behind her was called the Imaginary Divine Court.

A divine court.

A court of gods that stood above the Imaginary, ruling and judging all things?

Welt's chest rose sharply.

Severing branches of Paths.

Erasing galaxies.

Containing rules.

Those few claims sent a tidal wave through Welt's mind.

At first, he had thought she was exaggerating.

But within the limits of what he knew, what if those so-called "branches of Paths" were the boughs of the Imaginary Tree itself?

What if she spoke of pruning parallel universes as casually as plucking off an unsightly leaf?

Welt gripped his cane.

Its metal tip pressed a visible dent into the hardwood floor beneath the carpet.

Cold, clammy sweat coated his palm.

It made the wooden handle almost slip from his grasp.

He had traveled through many galaxies and witnessed the grand deeds of the Aeons.

Destruction, Preservation, Erudition.

But most Aeons were bound by the rules of the Paths they followed.

This Imaginary Divine Court was different.

They did not even regard rules as worthy of notice.

They trampled the universe's underlying logic beneath their feet and treated the lofty Aeons as subjects to be "observed" and "contained."

Welt swallowed.

He studied the woman on the sofa again, holding her white porcelain teacup.

She was definitely no Emanator of an Aeon.

An Emanator merely borrowed an Aeon's power. She was the source of power itself.

She had shaped a Falling Star meteorite with her bare hands and solidified pure elemental energy into a spatial cage.

She had exerted enough pressure to leave a weapon of war like the Doomsday Beast too frightened to resist.

None of it belonged to any energy system known in this universe.

[Ding!]

[Detected Welt Yang's speculation. Shock Points +3,500!]

[Detected the reshaping of Welt Yang's worldview. Shock Points +4,000!]

[System notice: This individual remains in a state of mental shock. Shock Points will continue to overflow.]

Rows of translucent blue pop-ups flashed wildly across Su Chen's vision.

The text was bright enough to sting his eyes.

Su Chen held his cold expression firmly in place.

The corner of his mouth nearly twitched.

Good grief.

How many cross-dimensional sci-fi epics had that bespectacled uncle just played out in his head?

He'd spun a couple of mystical-sounding lies, and the numbers were rising faster than a bank robbery could pay out.

Welt slowly lowered his hand from his glasses.

The black frames hid the storm of fear in his eyes.

He turned his head slightly toward Himeko, who stood beside the coffee table.

They had worked together for a long time. Often, they needed no words.

Welt fixed his gaze on Himeko.

His eyes were heavy as cast iron.

He shook his head with the barest movement.

Then he shifted his cane half an inch in front of himself, placing it squarely between Himeko and the sofa.

It was the Astral Express's highest-level red-alert signal.

It meant: abandon all attempts to test her defenses, give up any bargaining chips, and do not provoke her under any circumstances.

Himeko's hand stopped abruptly on the Copper Kettle.

The lingering warmth of its handle reached through her leather glove but could not warm her cold fingertips.

Her knuckles had gone pale from the force of her grip.

Himeko understood Welt's warning.

For the steady Welt, who always kept a last resort in reserve, to be this wary—

Himeko's breath caught for an instant.

She lowered her head, quickly pulling her gaze from the Female Lord's beautiful, forbidding face.

She did not dare look again.

She gently set the Copper Kettle back on the coffee table.

Even with a cork trivet beneath it, she deliberately slowed her hand as it made contact.

It made no sound at all.

She feared the slightest noise might be taken as a provocation.

Watching their reactions, Su Chen finally felt the weight lift from his chest.

He'd fooled them.

And judging by how terrified they looked, they saw him as a living nightmare who might blow up the universe at any moment.

But he now faced one enormous practical problem.

The muscles along the outside of his thighs had started aching on their own, trembling in waves.

These stiletto-heeled boots were downright inhumane.

In his previous life, Su Chen had hardly even worn dress shoes. How was he supposed to endure this?

His toes were crammed into hard, metal-trimmed tips, and his arches ached as if they had cramped.

He wanted to shift into a more comfortable position.

He wanted to stretch out his legs—or simply collapse against the soft leather sofa and rub his ankles.

But he could not.

How could an aloof god fidget and relax in front of everyone?

If the Female Lord's persona fell apart, the thousands of Shock Points he had earned would probably vanish on the spot.

Su Chen could only endure it.

He quietly drew on a trace of Geo within him.

Hidden beneath his robe, pale golden light wound around his calves.

Like an invisible cast, it forcibly held his stiff, trembling muscles in place.

All the while, he had to maintain an icy expression that suggested everything was beneath his notice.

The air in the VIP Lounge felt stifling.

Himeko stood beside the coffee table like a red-haired wax figure.

Welt leaned on his cane like a steel wire pulled so taut it might snap at any moment.

Both kept their heads lowered, hardly daring to breathe deeply.

They were waiting.

Waiting for the Fourth Seat's next instruction.

The deathly silence made Su Chen uncomfortable all over.

The room was so quiet he could hear his own heartbeat quickening as he fought the pain.

He searched for an excuse.

He had to get up and walk a little, or simply order them to leave.

Click.

A sudden sharp sound broke the nerve-racking silence.

Click. Click.

It was the sound of hard high heels striking the corridor's metal-grate floor.

It came from beyond the VIP Lounge's sealed door.

The pace was unhurried.

It was accompanied by the scrape of some metal object turning over and over in someone's hand.

Against the faint background alarms in the outer reaches of the space station, the footsteps sounded especially jarring.

Welt whipped his head toward the door.

His cane lifted half an inch off the floor.

Himeko's back stiffened at once, and her free hand instinctively reached for the portable cutting gun at her lower back.

Someone was approaching.

And anyone strolling along while the Antimatter Legion ran rampant was no panicked staff member.

The footsteps stopped outside the door.

A chill from the corridor seemed to seep through the gap beneath it.

Then—

A woman's teasing laugh came through the heavy metal door.

Her voice was languid and husky enough to send a shiver down the spine.

It was like a feather slowly brushing the edge of a glass.

Its mockery was undisguised.

"Oh my. Looks like there's a guest here more dangerous than the Stellaron."