Bringing this metal ring, which contains the Heart of the World, back to Angel City is indeed a rather tricky task. The power of a "curse" has never been something easy to deal with. Using the professional terminology studied by Taville, Big Sister’s curse is a kind of "probability singularity." The "probability singularity" has the ability to continuously collapse the occurrence probability of any "describable fact" in the direction desired by the curse initiator. In other words, as long as this matter exists, even if its probability of occurrence is infinitely close to zero, it will inevitably become reality under the effect of the curse. As everyone knows, the Void is infinitely vast, so within the scope of the Void, the probability of occurrence of anything describable is inevitably greater than zero. Therefore, the curse power of Big Sister actually has unimaginable potential. After all, all things in the world cannot escape the word "unexpected", and anything you think is impeccable is only temporarily without a discovered method of destruction...

Okay, I’m saying all this just to explain how the chances are so small that, without provoking anyone, I suddenly got hit in the waist by a dimensional disturbance, then got thrown into a space storm and spun dry for fifteen minutes like a washing machine, only to finally appear in the mouth of an erupting volcano, and how all these near-zero probability events happened to line up and affect me in such a supposedly justified manner...

After Orelia put that Heart of the World into her personal space, I thought everything was going smoothly, so I casually patted her wings in appreciation. The next moment, everything went black; the world spun around, and the situation changed so quickly that I couldn’t react at all—well, I didn’t react at all. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself plunging headfirst into an active volcano, with an entire squad of Griffin Knights staring at me in shock from the air—they were, as I later learned, a scientific expedition researching local volcanic activity. I vividly remember the expedition leader’s words: I’ve seen people commit suicide, but never with such technical skill...

From them, I learned that after opening my eyes, I had already appeared at the southernmost tip of the continent, a straight line distance from the Northern Ice Plain... anyhow, it was quite far, and I didn’t have a map.

And based on the inspection of space I did after regaining my senses, before that, I had already been tossed around several space fragments for fifteen minutes. Apparently, the curse power finally realized that no matter how much it torments, it couldn’t kill a Void Creature (well, actually, the curse power likely just ran out), and I was very "lucky" to escape from such a terrible place, with the last bit of bad luck being that the landing point was slightly off—off... anyhow, it was quite far, as I said, I didn’t have a map.

When I reunited with Lin Xue and the others, it had actually been almost half an hour since I patted Orelia’s wing.

"Uh, Wood, are you okay?"

As soon as I teleported back to the Icefield, a shiny forehead approached me. I quickly took half a step back, and the forehead turned back into the beautiful face of Miss, unusually with a concerned look, and her words were quite heartwarming: "Next time, be more careful. Look at your face, all smoked like Obama, and why do you smell like sulfur?"

...Compared to this freezing weather of minus one hundred degrees here, that sentence was indeed quite heartwarming.

"What just happened?" I shook my head, quite satisfied with my physique: after suffering a true Big Sister’s curse attack, the only aftereffect was a bit of dizziness; isn’t this something worth being proud of?

"Data recorded that half an hour ago, a Void tide occurred at the edge of the universe. Through a quantum effect-like way, this tide caused dimensional crossovers near your location and opened an unstable space gate, then you were teleported to the edge of the world and quickly passed through all the known space fragments in this universe..." Orelia explained to me honestly, finally adding, "You wouldn’t want to know how many decimal places there are in the probability of these events happening..."

"If that string of numbers were typed out in size four font, it could circle the Earth once." Lin Xue sprinkled some Sichuan peppercorn on my wounds.

I jumped back, putting a safe distance between myself and Orelia: "Okay, from now on, I have to keep my distance from you until you take that thing back for Sister to deal with."

Orelia nonchalantly flapped her wings, opening a teleportation gate to Angel City. Before stepping into the gate, I turned my head to Audemus: "Retrieve your body and recover to mission-executable condition as quickly as possible; the Empire needs you."

"Yes, Your Majesty!" Crystal Human Audemus saluted with a crisp Empire military salute, simultaneously knocking a big hole in his chest.

Me: "...Take it easy, you’re fragile now... Hey, wait! Where are those two half-dragon girls?"

It was only then that I remembered that since the Storm Giant appeared, I hadn’t seen Shajina and Sona, or perhaps, because of the Heart of the World issue, everyone subconsciously forgot about the two low-existence half-dragon girls. When I reminded them, Lin Xue slapped her forehead and, pulling Qianqian along, returned to the Gudel Ice House. After a moment, each one carried one of the half-dragon girls, sound asleep, out. I was surprised: "What’s going on here?"

Lin Xue slapped the head of Shajina, who was wobbling on her shoulder: "They’re hibernating..."

After returning to Angel City, Orelia promptly handed over the dark metal ring to Big Sister. During their handover, everyone stood at least fifty meters away to watch. Even the bravest Xiao Xue and Lilina, who would poke at anything fallen from the sky a couple of times, hid behind me with a fearful look. After all, they had heard that even I, a Void Creature incredibly resistant to exceptional damage, had been tossed at the world’s edge for over ten minutes. They didn’t want their small frames to endure that.

I didn’t understand how Big Sister did it; she seemed to just touch the ring a couple of times, then gestured "OK" to us, and Yelsen got kicked over by his sister to do a test, confirming that the curse had been lifted.

"Sis, to be honest, I think you’re more amazing than I am." I looked at the black ring, unchanged from before, and sincerely admired Big Sister’s ability, beyond the understanding of information theory and anything else. Big Sister’s face bore a slightly pleased expression: "I don’t know if it’s an illusion, but I feel like I might have gotten a little stronger..."

Sandora’s eyes lit up: "Could it be that by coming into contact with things you left behind, you can absorb the power of the Fifteenth Day Zone’s former emperors?"

Big Sister shook her head with a smile: "It’s not that simple. It’s just that after coming into contact with the energy I left behind, I seem to have a deeper understanding of my abilities... After all, my past self, whether in battle experience or mindset, is far beyond what I am today."

Lin Xue immediately showed a deflated expression: "That’s it then, I’m dead with not even dust left, and as a Prophet, it seems impossible to leave behind a power inheritance..." 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Bubbles’ comment was more blunt: "Some are just on their second life tour, only reincarnating the character, while some can carry over skill points from the first round. That’s why Grandma Chen Qian is the real boss..."

This unexpected discovery of the Heart of the World is clearly significant, and it requires the most proper protection, but the security level of this world can’t be guaranteed. This tiny universe, only a light-year in diameter, is located in the most desolate border region of the Void. The conceptual disconnection back then left it far from any area covered by the Void’s powers, and the Empire’s fleet can’t provide effective support here. So ultimately, the most urgent matter is still to return and re-establish the connection between the two parts of the Mother Star. Only by bringing this place into the Imperial Capital can we breathe a sigh of relief. Orelia almost took no rest, as she handed over the black ring to Big Sister, then immediately returned to her post, while the black ring was temporarily placed in my Personal Space.

I was a bit nervous when I took that thing in...

Shajina and Sona had previously hibernated for a while (it’s the first time I’ve seen hibernation being used this way), so they missed out on the famous Storm Giant, which left them a bit disappointed. But soon, they had their own matters to attend to. The awakening of Audemus signifies that more and more Imperial Commanders will separate from the world’s bottom layer data (before this, the Ancient Spirits around the world had already responded to our command, but at that time the corresponding Imperial Officers hadn’t fully awakened, at most being in a weakened state like Audemus). The world’s changes will become increasingly apparent, and the Ancient Spirits across the lands will become extremely active. The magic power reaction globally will reach an unprecedentedly abundant state not seen in tens of thousands of years, and because of the unsealing and detachment from their current spaces, the surplus energy left by the Empire facilities will flow into the Mother Continent through the Lost World’s one-way channel. This won’t directly cause a disaster, but it will lead the Mortal Race on the Mother Continent to suddenly find their mastery of magic doubling in strength—this is very dangerous, and the upcoming task of the Dragon God Sect and the Crow God Sect is to run around the world calming the spellcasters who become agitated because of this. Therefore, Shajina and the others, together with Lilina and Vanilla, hurried back to the Holy Capital that afternoon to manage the affairs across the Mother Continent.

As for the Dragon God and the Crow God themselves, since everyone generally thought that their most adept skills aside from being cute were eating, they stayed with us in Angel City.

Meanwhile, here with us, another set of increasingly strong signal responses from the Empire information network has been detected. This is the mysterious system Mother Star facilities previously shut down, waking from hibernation and automatically mounting themselves onto the default channels they can detect. Due to remaining conceptual disjunction, the Empire’s information network is still split into two parts: one coming from the New Empire, and the other existing in this world. Although the latter can’t compare to the former in scale, its importance is unquestionable. We need to ensure the entire resurrection process proceeds smoothly and perfectly, which starts by guaranteeing all facility communications are unobstructed. The mysterious side facilities utilize magic power and complex rune equipment to generate, exchange, and mutate data. Although the media is different, in principle and algorithm, it is much the same as the technology side equipment—the Old Empire was the first to unify technology and mysterious techniques in the field of information, achieving perfect compatibility between the two. So, after confirming that most of the Mother Star facilities in this world have been mounted onto the core network and with Orelia’s assistance, Bubbles used a conversion device to load herself into the Forgotten Garden’s control system to help handle the increasing mass of information and prepare for the synchronization of the two parts of the Mother Star soon. This immediately eased Orelia’s pressure—because of long-term hibernation and the lethal blow this universe suffered, the Mother Star information network in this world was already extremely weak, to the point where at many critical nodes it could only be maintained by Virtual Connections, and Bubbles’ addition as a high-performance host proved to be a timely remedy.

Hmm, it also solved my issue: that poison-laden shut-in finally found something to do and doesn’t have to continue plaguing her own children.

Audemus reported to Angel City on the morning of the second day. He spent nearly a day completely separating himself from that complex sealing system, and now he was no longer that temporary body that seemed to shed crumbs as he walked — although I personally still found that look quite creative. Audemus himself looked exactly like we had seen in the projections earlier, a robust and stern Imperial Soldier, with eyes burning with arcane cores as his most distinctive feature — at Little Crow’s strong request, he awkwardly demonstrated how to shoot focusable arcane rays from his eyes, though it was pointless, as Little Crow still had astigmatism...

Audemus’s awakening did not mean that the Storm Giants and those Gudel Elemental People on the Northern Ice Plain would disappear. The latter now serve as extensions of Audemus outside himself, which might be considered an unexpected gain for us: although we lost the vast majority of our Mysterious Side troops, these commanders, during their slumber that lasted tens of thousands of years, had subconsciously (Audemus had done so knowingly) created a large number of secondary splitting bodies. These split lifeforms are diverse, with elemental beings, doppelganger projections, and even various natural phenomena and conceptual, abstract entities. They are vast, mysterious, and powerful, almost to the point of being considered an army. Sandora is considering whether to organize these split lifeforms created by Mysterious Side officers into a separate unit. She is planning to test the true combat power of these elemental beings as soon as the affairs of this world are settled.

After undergoing further checks by Orelia to confirm that he hadn’t lost any components of his body, Audemus set off for the Sky Tower to activate the defense control center there.

Since the defense system was designed by Audemus himself, everything proceeded very smoothly, and soon he sent back the good news of the system’s successful activation. By the afternoon of the second day, a massive rift appeared in the sky hundreds of kilometers east of Angel City. Through the rift, the colossal Sky Tower descended vertically into this world and successfully smashed an airborne Dragon Mountain — fortunately, this Dragon Mountain was usually only used for storing food and such, and the dragons stationed there managed to fly out in time, avoiding any casualties from this unexpected incident. This made us realize the necessity of performing precise localization when teleporting Empire facilities, as the recorded relative positions and combinations of these facilities are based on the surface structure of the old Fifteenth Day Zone’s Mother Star. Letting them automatically arrange and combine according to default settings would optimistically crush Char’s house three to six times...

Currently, there are four people who are the busiest. First is Orelia, who is responsible for recording the awakening status of all facilities, monitoring the integration progress of conceptual divisions, and logging and analyzing the status of the Imperial Commanders that have already awakened. Many Imperial Officers have shown some bodily anomalies upon awakening, as this world had suffered a doomsday-level impact. The Xyrin Apostles, having integrated themselves into the world’s fundamental data, were inevitably affected as well. However, because of their integration into the world’s fundamental data, they were able to achieve maximum self-preservation. As long as the fundamental rules of this universe have not collapsed entirely, they can fully recover. Orelia has activated an emergency repair center in both Angel City and the Forgotten Garden. Once the newly awoken commanders report in, they’ll immediately be put there to rest, regardless of their strong requests to carry out missions immediately — Orelia would knock them out without a word and toss them in, which surprised me, considering I had never seen such a strong-willed side of this usually good-tempered Angel Kite.

The second busiest is Alaya, the Angel Sister, who until not long ago was the most leisure High-level Apostle of the New Empire — as there was almost nothing on the Technology Side where she could assist, except during battles where she could assist in combat, or occasionally help train the Ravens. Her primary activity was napping in my Spirit Sea. However, now she has found her place. She follows her former Deputy Officer Orelia around, busy with data collection, devising repair plans, and along the way relearning knowledge she originally created herself. It’s evident that the Dull Cat Angel is very happy.

The remaining two busiest people are Sandora and... me...

Originally, I didn’t think there would be anything for me to do. The terms like Mother Star restructuring, resolving conceptual division, re-coding facilities, all sounded so advanced. Which of these could I possibly involve myself with? Yet Sandora unyieldingly dragged me along, reviewing the influx of various document reports, plans, and so on. Then I realized such a grand undertaking involved multifaceted and complex issues, far beyond simply merging two worlds. As a ruler who needs to take full responsibility, you have to consider all related follow-up impacts: once the two worlds are merged, how do you establish future order? How should the structures from both sides be reorganized? The Imperial Army currently has six main corps and several reserve corps; shouldn’t there be additions of Magic Power units? If a light-year patch gets arrogantly added to Shadow Space, shouldn’t the rules of the Space-time Hub be reset?

These are not decisions that can be made by lower-level departments; they involve matters of the highest decision-making power of the Empire, naturally leaving only me and Sandora to approve these. Fortunately, after the past few years of practice, I am not as completely clueless about these kinds of tasks that don’t require professional skills as I once was. With Sandora’s assistance in analyzing situations and my own fairly complete planning in mind, I can handle this work.

In the blink of an eye, the day for the final resolution of the conceptual division arrived. (To be continued. If you like this work, please visit Qidian (qidian.com) and vote for recommendations and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation.)