The gift-giving toys' eager offering

"When I pretended to attack you, the toys in the building knew my strength, and the second time they broke the rules for you, they..."

The Mirror Woman looked around. The toys were still gathering on this floor. There were too many of them, densely packed, filling the entire floor. They rushed up the floor, only to find that there was no murderous intent, and stood there bewildered.

The Mirror Woman watched all this and slowly said, "They fought their way here for you."

She said, "In the past three hundred years, I've fought with the toys in this building countless times, but they've never shown any hostility towards me before. This is the first time."

Because of Ye Jiang.

She looked at Ye Jiang: "After hearing all this, do you now think my judgment that I wanted to give you the energy lens through the toy was wrong?"

Ye Jiang remained silent, only slightly tightening her grip on the lens in her hand.

"I'm looking for the mall's exit. I've been waiting for over twenty years, waiting for someone," the Mirror Woman said to Ye Jiang. "I'm waiting for you."

She said, "If anyone could find a way out of this cage-like shopping mall, I think that person would be you, because you are so special."

As soon as she finished speaking, Ye Jiang's eyes, which had been as still as a dead pool, finally began to sway.

She did not deny it.

It cannot be denied.

Even someone as oblivious as her could no longer ignore the sight of the toy soaring to the 99th floor.

She didn't know if she could find the mall exit, but she knew the toys inside would treat her very differently.

She is special.

Why?

Because of her...

Suddenly, her vision snapped away, and her consciousness sank into her memories. In those memories, she was in a room filled with clouds, her features indistinct. The clouds, like cotton candy, formed a soft chair, and she sat in it, sinking deep into it. She raised one hand, and a small ball the size of an apricot floated above her palm. The ball was pitch black, but upon closer inspection, it was made of countless strands of energy, each one spinning at high speed.

The energy ball slowly rose into the sky, then shattered with a crash, releasing countless sticky "raindrops" that fell to the ground and transformed into wind-up toys. These toys sank into the clouds and scattered throughout the shopping mall below, slowly and mechanically moving about.

In her memory, she didn't look at this scene; instead, she looked out the window.

"The toys have all fallen to the bottom, you should go down too."

"You're too weak. Go and become stronger."

"Those toys run fast, try chasing them, consider it training."

"There's something inside the toy. It's a gift from me; you'll have to find out how to open it yourself."

"Don't always follow me, go play."

Ye Jiang saw herself speak, her voice even more hollow and ethereal than before, so much so that she hadn't realized it was her own voice.

Memory is like a film playing. At this point, the camera pans slightly and freezes on what's behind her. And there she sees: a dark, ethereal, irregular Coal Ball in the clouds, like a tiny black hole in a snow-white world that could devour everything.

She was speaking to that Coal Ball, a weak monster.

The Coal Ball was devouring clouds. It greedily gnawed at a cloud, trying to swell to its maximum size, covering the cloud and attempting to swallow it whole. It was too small, and the cloud was too big; it couldn't swallow it all. Even so, it didn't let go of the cloud.

He paused slightly upon hearing these words, hesitated for a long time before stepping back from the cloud, his ball-like body sprouting many tentacles.

He scrutinized Ye Jiang, who had spoken those words, his gaze cold, sinister, and greedy.

Ye Jiang never turned around, ignoring his gaze; she simply looked out the window.

The clouds opened a hole beneath the Coal Ball, scrutinizing Ye Jiang. Caught off guard, the Coal Ball fell with a thud, and the clouds slowly closed.

Ye Jiang sat there for a long time, then looked down at her knees, where a booklet lay—a dirty, old booklet with illustrations of various wind-up toys.

With her memories shut down, Ye Jiang's consciousness returned to reality.

She calmed herself down, then raised her hand, revealing a small ball made of black energy threads wrapped around her palm. She had a feeling that this energy ball would allow her to create anything.

She thought she knew what her special ability was: creation.

The toys in the building treated her very differently; she was special because she created the wind-up toys in the building, replicas of the toys in the picture book. She was the maker of the wind-up toy she was looking for.

She tightened her grip, and the energy ball disappeared from her hand.

She looked at the young man.

"Rong Yin, that monster you know, can you still contact him?"

Rong Yin looked back at her. "What?"

"I want to get some information from him," Ye Jiang said. "I suspect he ran into me after he entered the mall."

The little monster encountered her, and she then gave him an extraordinary adventure.

She was quite curious about why she had done that.

She wanted to know, but Rong Yin replied, "I can't contact him for now. I'll look for him for you after we get out."

Ye Jiang lowered her eyes; it seemed she still needed to find a way out.

Chapter 126 A Gift of Toys: An Eager Offering.

Yu Hai left the Toy Graveyard empty-handed. He had searched the entire graveyard, but only the remains of the members of the Ability Control Bureau he had encountered at the beginning were worth remembering.

He was somewhat disappointed; he had thought he would gain more from such a special place as a cemetery.

Where does the Origin Energy that permeates shopping malls actually come from?

Is it from the shopping mall itself?

The toys in the mall have somehow developed consciousness. Could this be due to the Origin Energy there?

Can Origin Energy... create life?

Yu Hai was startled by his own thoughts. Just then, the elevator took him to the highest floor he could reach, the sixth floor. The elevator doors opened, and the outside lights illuminated the complex emotions on his face. He quickly composed himself and stepped out of the elevator.

With one leg still raised high, he realized something was wrong. It was too noisy, the loudest the mall had ever been. And the source of the noise was extreme, coming from both above and below—one end from high above and the other from the very bottom of the mall.

Before his feet could even touch the ground, Yu Hai looked down in confusion, and what he saw stunned him.

He saw a sea of people; the first floor of the mall had inexplicably become a vast ocean of people, packed tightly together, as if men, women, and children from the entire mall had gathered on the first floor.

Yu Hai looked ahead in disbelief. The new world on the sixth floor opened up before him. Before going up, he had fantasized that the sixth floor might give him some information as a reward for his long search. Now, however, he had a premonition that he would be disappointed. He felt a vast emptiness and silence. He didn't see a single person, nor a single toy.

He wasn't sure about the situation on the other floors, but it seemed like everyone on the 6th floor had indeed gone to the 1st floor.

What about toys?

Where did the toys from the 6th floor go?

Yu Hai suddenly looked up at the source of the noise, 99 stories high. He saw the toys crowding the 99th-floor sky, filling the corridor and the edges of the building. He couldn't see into the deeper parts of the building, but he thought they were probably also crowded with toys.

Oh, all the toys went to the 99th floor.

"..."

What's going on?!

What exactly happened during his absence?!

Suppressed sobs came from the first floor. Yu Hai looked over. In his hasty glance just now, he only saw the dense crowd. Now he noticed something else: the people gathered on the first floor were all in poor spirits, looking completely lost and dejected.

How could this be? Before he entered the toy mission space, everyone's spirits were high thanks to the good news brought by the Healer. They were no longer listless and their enthusiasm for climbing the stairs was at an all-time high.

Something happened.

Yu Hai made a quick decision; he went back into the elevator and pressed the button to go to the first floor.

He's going to see what happened.

bite.

The elevator arrived at its destination, Yu Hai went down to the first floor. As soon as he stepped out of the elevator, he realized that everyone in the building had indeed come to the first floor, or at least most of them. He could see heads everywhere, more than 10,000 people, filling the first floor to capacity. The mall was originally very large, but with so many people, it seemed small and cramped.

The people gathered on the first floor looked like trapped beasts, their nerves on edge like startled birds. Even the familiar sound of the elevator opening startled the people nearby. Only when they saw that it was a human stepping out of the elevator did their hearts return to their chests.

Yu Hai saw this scene, his eyes flashed, and seeing that the man standing by the elevator seemed to be in relatively good spirits, he asked him what had happened.

Yu Hai thought he was lucky to have encountered a resilient person among a group of dejected people. But the moment he spoke, the person he had identified as the resilient individual suddenly broke down, grabbing his head and screaming, "You ask me what happened? Don't you know? It's all fake! It's all fake! The mission rules are fake! The floor barriers are fake! If all of this is fake, then how can the exit on the 99th floor, which exists based on all of this, still be real? No! We've been fooled! We can't go home!"

Yu Hai's expression turned serious. "What did you say?"

The captain of the Bureau of the Ability Control Bureau's search team had just missed the toy-related rule-breaking and cannibalism incident on the fifth floor, and now that he was hearing all this, he was a little anxious.

Are you sure? Are you sure about what you're saying?

He took two anxious steps forward, trying to hear more, but the superhuman was already in a state of collapse and couldn't hear him at all. He was only crying and shouting to vent his emotions, "I can't go home, I can't go home. It's only a matter of time before the toys target and devour me. There's no hope left, boohoo, I can't go home..."

The screams of despair triggered a domino effect, and cries echoed throughout the hall.

Yu Hai was in a hurry. He grabbed a few people to ask them what was going on, but no one responded to him. Just then, someone pushed through the crowd and came up to him.

The man was calm and composed, clearly different from everyone else present. Yu Hai paused for a moment upon suddenly seeing such a person.