The Judge from the Judgment Hall had already rushed over after receiving the news.
Before the judgment platform, Qi Sigui’s hands were twisted behind his back, and he knelt on the ground in disgrace, his long bangs hanging low, with bruises at the corners of his mouth and eyes.
His adjutant and the captain of his personal guard fared no better.
The moment they truly saw Yin Que, shock, doubt, confusion, interest, and curiosity all flashed through the Judge’s eyes, but in the end, all these emotions settled into perfect calm.
“Former Commander, it’s been a long time.”
It truly had been a long time.
By all rights, once the Judge and his subordinates arrived, they should have gotten to the point.
Unfortunately, Yin Que, who never missed a beat in dealing with others, merely inclined his head slightly and said, “Excuse me, I must step away for a moment.”
Under the confused and questioning gazes of the others, Yin Que quickly pulled Ning Li aside to a quiet spot.
He pressed both hands to her shoulders.
“Ning Li, what’s wrong?”
Ning Li blinked.
“What’s wrong with me?”
“From the moment we entered the Judgment Hall, you’ve been acting off.”
“Ah.”
Ning Li was surprised herself.
“Have I?”
Yin Que sighed and pulled her into a tight embrace.
She didn’t realize that as soon as she entered the Judgment Hall, her whole body had tensed, as if entering a stress response.
But why?
She was just a student from a backwater Guide Academy, living a simple life—so why did she feel such resistance to the Judgment Hall?
Even her reaction didn’t feel like someone’s first time here.
Yin Que had seen similar reactions on many people before.
Without exception, all of those people had been put on Trial.
He pressed his face against Ning Li’s.
“Is there anything you want to tell me? Anything at all.”
Ning Li evaded the question.
“Yin Que, you seem to really like hugging me.”
She wanted to tease Yin Que a little—why was he always hugging and kissing her?
But she knew very well that actually, he wasn’t being flippant or casual.
Except during times of heat, there was only one explanation.
This was his way of expressing love.
Ning Li thought she had long forgotten the experience of being put on Trial.
After all, in the end, she’d successfully defected, and those who had judged her had all perished at her hand.
It was a chapter she’d tried to forget, but ultimately failed.
Judging by the outcome, she wasn’t the loser.
Maybe she had been miserable and pitiful once, maybe she had been down and out, but the process didn’t matter.
Why forget it?
Only by remembering can you avoid making the same mistake again.
By comparison, the false memories implanted by the Retrograde Prism were hardly worth mentioning.
It was nothing more than being stabbed in the back by irrelevant people—so what?
Trust?
Why did she need such a thing?
As much as she hated to admit it, her previous self had still influenced her a little.
“Yin Que.”
She heard her own calm voice.
“It’s said that if you gather all five God-given Relics, you can end the Age of Chaos forever and make the Aberrant Ones vanish completely.”
Yin Que looked down at her in surprise.
This was news even to him.
“I once gathered four.”
Just as she saw in those visions: four God-given Relics, each glowing with a different light, circling around her.
Among them were the Samsara Sphere and the Retrograde Prism.
Yin Que could tell from her eyes that she wasn’t joking.
He said seriously, “My girlfriend is amazing.”
Ning Li didn’t smile.
“Only one more, and it would have been over.”
She looked up at Yin Que with a teasing glint, eager to see his expression at this moment.
Was it surprise?
Or longing?
But, regretfully, she’d never been able to see surprise or anything like expectation in his eyes.
Instead, she saw something sorrowful.
“Why aren’t you even a little happy?”
Success was just within reach.
Maybe the final God-given Relic would appear any moment.
She’d completed 80%.
Only 20% remained.
“Aren’t you looking forward to it?”
Ning Li truly wanted his answer.
“But you don’t want it to end.”
Suddenly hit by Yin Que’s insight, Ning Li’s face fell.
When had she slipped up?
Did she show something?
She’d only said a few sentences.
“What are you talking about? I don’t understand.”
Yin Que’s fingers gently stroked her brow and eyes.
“Your eyes told me. You don’t want it to end. You only want destruction.”
Ning Li shoved Yin Que away, flustered, with the illusion that he’d seen straight through her.
They’d only known each other for half a year, and yet he’d so easily uncovered her true thoughts.
She really didn’t want it to end.
Otherwise, she wouldn’t have chosen to destroy the Retrograde Prism.
Two hundred years in the future, the world was a wasteland: no order, only chaos, war breaking out everywhere.
The population had shrunk to a tenth of what it was now.
Aberrant Ones didn’t dare provoke her, she had complete freedom, even the lair of the Aberrant King was hers to come and go at will.
There was nowhere in the world she couldn’t go.
Why end it?
Too bad, before the Retrograde Prism was successfully activated, she hadn’t known it would rewind time two hundred years.
If she had, she’d never have chosen to destroy it.
She had four God-given Relics, yet she destroyed the Retrograde Prism, and by accident, ended up back in 1357.
“We should part ways here.”
From now on, we each go our own road.
We were never the same kind of people—why force ourselves to travel together?
She turned to leave, but had only taken a few steps before Yin Que gripped her wrist tightly, his palm pressing so hard it left faint marks.
“Ning Li—if there’s a problem, we can solve it. Don’t say such things about parting.”
“What if it can’t be solved?”
“There is nothing between you and me that can’t be solved.”
That made Ning Li want to laugh.
He didn’t even know what kind of person she really was, or what her so-called “problem” was, yet he said there was nothing they couldn’t solve?
Where did that confidence come from?
She tried to shake him off, but failed.
“Yin Que, don’t be so self-righteous.”
“You’re not thinking straight right now. Let’s talk later.”
Ning Li was at the end of her patience.
What did he know?
He knew nothing!
“Yin Que, I never wanted to collect all five God-given Relics, you understand? Because I don’t want to! I refuse!”
She and he were fundamentally different kinds of people.
He loved this world, but she felt only hatred toward it.
Yin Que’s voice was calm.
“The world doesn’t need you to save it.”
Ning Li snorted.
“But it needs you to save it, is that it?”
“It doesn’t need me, either.”
He’d never thought he could change the world on his own.
To think so would be far too arrogant.
Maybe because Yin Que’s emotions were so stable, Ning Li gradually calmed down too.
She said coldly, “Maybe there will never be a day when all five God-given Relics are collected.”
Even God-given Relics can’t be used infinitely.
Maybe the Samsara Sphere could be used twice, three times, or even hundreds of times.
But a relic like the Retrograde Prism—perhaps in its entire existence, it could only be used once.
She hadn’t managed to destroy the Retrograde Prism, but she’d used up its one chance to rewind time.
Right before it activated, she saw the prism-shaped relic in her hand gradually lose its luster.
The light around it faded, like flames going out.
In other words, the chance to end the Aberrant Ones had slipped through her fingers, by her own will.
“So be it.”
Even if the world collapsed now, it didn’t matter—nothing mattered anymore, because Yin Que didn’t care, either.
Ning Li looked at Yin Que in disbelief.
“Is that really how you feel?”
She had deliberately destroyed the chance to end the Aberrant Ones.
Countless people would continue to suffer in misery because of her actions.
No one knew what would happen two hundred years from now.
In Ning Li’s eyes, most likely the Sentinel World would simply vanish, just as Atlantis had in the past.
Yin Que replied firmly, “Yes.”
“That doesn’t sound like you,” Ning Li said, echoing the words of Qi Sigui.
Yin Que sighed and cupped her face, leaning in until they were close enough to see themselves in each other’s eyes.
“God-given Relics…”
“Ning Li.”
The one I choose is you.
Only you.
God-given Relics await the one who is destined for them.
Maybe it was fate that one of the five would become permanently inactive.
“Perhaps this is just a false legend. Whether it ends or not doesn’t matter. Superheroes only exist in films and stories—even for me, I’ve never thought I could overturn the world single-handedly.”
This was never a world for just one person.
Never magnify the impact of any one individual.
And never underestimate the power of someone seemingly insignificant.
Yin Que wrapped his left arm around Ning Li and rested his right hand gently atop her head, his chin lightly placed at the side of her face.
The two held each other quietly for a while.
Ning Li’s violent mood gradually faded away.
It was a novel feeling for her.
Because two hundred years in the future, her rage almost never faded.
But after that surge passed, she now felt peaceful, even in the mood to talk about something else.
“You’re really different from how I imagined you.”
Yin Que stroked her hair.
“How am I different?”
Ning Li hadn’t known much about Sentinel history before, but now that she had regained some of her memories, that was no longer the case.
Of all the Commanders in Sentinel history, Yin Que was not her favorite.
She most admired the Commander from 1347.
That was a woman of decisive action.
Her spiritual body was the Primordial Dragon, enormous in size and dazzling gold.
When the Primordial Dragon soared through the sky, it could fill the entire heavens.
Even on a moonless night, the dragon’s golden glow could light up the whole world.
She truly liked that Commander’s spiritual body.
Compared to that decisive style, Yin Que’s was far too gentle.
Besides her, she also admired the 1340th Commander.
That Commander had taken office very young, about the same age as Yin Que had, with a spiritual body of the Void Octopus, also colossal, sleek black, countless tentacles stretching and quivering in the void, each sucker the size of half a basketball court.
Many feared the Void Octopus, but she thought it was cool.
Unfortunately, the 1340th Commander had died young, and she’d never had the chance to see the Void Octopus.
Both the 1340th and 1347th Commanders came after Yin Que, who was the 1336th.
There were many records of him in the history books.
But after reading them, she’d always just turned the page, uninterested.
Both the 1340th and 1347th Commanders were famously decisive and even ruthless.
And Yin Que?
The words most often used for him were kindness, compassion, gentleness, and tolerance.
If it had been the 1340th or 1347th Commander facing that crisis back then, neither would have sacrificed their own life just to save hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Because alive, they could accomplish even more.
To her, Yin Que wasn’t all that charismatic.
He just wasn’t very “cool.”
She probably preferred those with sharper, more distinctive styles.
But after actually spending time together, she realized how lifeless the words on a page were.
How could a few thousand words sum up a person?
Especially when the writer’s bias might color the record.
Yin Que wasn’t some stiff paragraph in a book.
He was a living, breathing man.
All those adjectives were true, but on paper they made him seem so dull, while in reality, he was not like that at all.
Was it his looks?
His eyes?
His voice?
Or perhaps it was his temperament, his innate charisma?
He truly was tolerant.
If it had been the 1340th or 1347th Commander before her now, they’d probably already be fighting.
She rambled on to him about the Primordial Dragon and the Void Octopus.
Only six people had ever possessed the Primordial Dragon, and the Void Octopus was also a once-in-a-century phenomenon.
As soon as she finished, a gorgeous petal brushed against Ning Li’s brow, cool and soothing.
Yin Que’s voice sounded beside her ear.
“The true body of the Cosmic Rose is also very large. I’ll show you next time.”
Ning Li complained, “Why next time?”
Yin Que fell silent.
Countless people had witnessed the Cosmic Rose in full bloom.
But in Yin Que’s eyes, his spiritual body had not yet reached its limit.
The Cosmic Rose could blossom even grander.
He only wanted her to see a Cosmic Rose more magnificent than ever before.