Chapter 219

"The best strategy is for you to give me one [silver coin]," Sasa said with a smile.

"With the two of us together, Xue Ning and the [Giant Spirit] she controls will be like paper tigers; we can easily win."

But Qi Xing immediately shook his head: "Forget it. I will absolutely not give the [silver coin] to you."

"Then that only leaves the worst strategy."

Sasa wasn't annoyed, calmly stating her earth-shattering wisdom.

As for what this worst strategy actually is, I'll keep you in suspense for now—anyway, once Qi Xing heard her out, he couldn't take it: "Sasa, you are too wicked."

"Just tell me if my idea is useful or not."

The petite Loli Evil God puffed out her chest, looking proud.

"You're not exactly a good thing yourself. Always pulling stunts like this, one day it's going to boomerang back on you."

"Don't be superstitious. Such things as karma do not exist in the laws of the universe."

Sasa was dismissive.

Oh well.

Never learning from her mistakes, Qi Xing couldn't be bothered to lecture her. He wasn't her brother, after all.

"Is there really no way for me to use two [silver coin]s at the same time?"

"Since you refuse to give me the [silver coin] to use, there's a lack of a suitable vessel for the power."

Sasa shook her head.

"No way. You can't just feed the [silver coin] to a pig, can you?"

…Thus, about an hour later, Xue Ning, who was still stationed deep underground, finally received an urgent report from her subordinates on the surface.

A portion of the islanders on the island—not the outsiders, but the children born and raised on Labyris Island, whom she had personally raised and modulated from a young age.

Those prototypes of New Humans she had once been so proud of—the most capable of empathy, mutual understanding, and devoid of conflict, the ideal humans she had dreamed of—at this very moment, had suddenly risen in rebellion, swarming into the administrative district, and—within just a few minutes—had seized the entire central building.

How could this be possible?

For a moment, Xue Ning even doubted her own ears.

Through nearly a hundred years of selective breeding, she had enabled all the islanders to understand each other, share their thoughts, and believe in her from the bottom of their hearts—how did Master Leipu get them to rebel?

But this was the fact.

Now, the pressure was on her side.

Xue Ning did not want to leave the Giant Spirit at all.

The Giant Spirit was connected by an umbilical cord, making it inconvenient to leave the underground.

But she didn't have much choice.

Maintaining her mythical combat form, Xue Ning quickly flew out from underground, only to see the castle she was vaguely proud of now occupied by some of the out-of-control islanders.

The central administrative building of Labyris Island was originally a work of art standing like crystal, a 9-story structure made entirely of silver-white reinforced glass, looking like a precisely designed elegant castle standing in the heart of the island.

Now, however, it had spiraled out of control.

The main entrance of the entire building, and even the maintenance passages on the outer wall, were now filled with young men and women from the island, around twenty years old.

Their expressions were focused, like a well-trained army.

Written on everyone's face was determination and high fighting spirit.

What they held in their hands were merely the riot control equipment used by the island's security team.

The lethality was limited, but the stance they expressed was extremely clear, declaring their position—they were no longer Xue Ning's "children."

…This scene actually made Xue Ning feel a pang of heartache for a moment.

The island and the people she had single-handedly modulated, raised, and shaped were now turning around and baring their fangs at her.

What kind of feeling was this, exactly?

At this moment, in front of the building's main entrance, the island's original security team had arrived on the scene.

They also held riot control equipment, surrounding the central building layer by layer—but their expressions appeared exceptionally stiff and uneasy.

Dealing with troublemakers from outside the island was not unfamiliar to the islanders.

But this kind of internal conflict was a first for the people on this island.

A society where mutual touch allowed for mutual understanding, and where mutual kindness and affection were the foundation of interpersonal relationships, had never seen such a situation.

Only when Island Lord Xue Ning landed in front of them did the security team breathe a slight sigh of relief.

Even so, their expressions still carried hesitation and trepidation.

What on earth had happened?

Fortunately, Master Leipu was not the type of person to hide behind others and use the weak as human shields.

He did not treat the islanders as meat shields, nor did he treat them as sacrificial pawns.

The young people rebelling against the Island Lord crouched behind cover in the building, holding weapons with rubber bullets, their expressions tense.

As for Qi Xing, he stood openly in front of the main gate, arms crossed, shielding everyone behind him, just waiting for Xue Ning to appear.

Sasa had suggested using the islanders as cannon fodder, but Qi Xing disagreed.

This was one of those things where he and the Loli Evil God could never convince each other.

"Master Leipu."

Xue Ning walked over and asked from a distance, her voice turning cold.

"What kind of trick are you playing? How did you do this?"

"It's not my trick."

Qi Xing shook his head.

"It's the trick your White God played. She really is a devil."

What?

Xue Ning immediately had an ominous premonition.

She turned her head to look at the hundreds of islanders on the glass building who were opposing her—there were indeed some outsiders she had recruited in the last few years, but the number was only a few, absolutely a minority.

The majority—the vast majority were the New Humans she had modulated, raised, and nurtured from embryos.

And these "children" were all looking at her with a… guarded gaze.

Not just guarded, but also an emotion she had never seen on them before: fear.

Fear and vigilance.

This was an emotion only old humans had.

It was the emotion that appeared in the failed species that could not understand each other or empathize with each other's hearts.

But she had never taught them such things.

She had spent a hundred years for this, just to create New Humans who would not fear each other!

What on earth was going on?

She wanted to fly up and touch these young people herself.

As long as she touched them, as long as there was resonance, the misunderstanding could be resolved… but they clearly wouldn't let her touch them obediently now.

Xue Ning could only use language now.

"Children!"

Suppressing the unease in her chest, Xue Ning called out,

"Master Leipu! What did he do to you?"

For a moment, there was dead silence in the building.

No one answered her.

A few seconds later, the same Blonde Girl who had taken Qi Xing on a tour earlier finally leaned out from the second-floor balcony, asking with confusion and wavering:

"Count, did you… really do those things?"

Her tone was not angry, nor was it accusatory; there was only confusion.

What things?

Seeing that Xue Ning hadn't reacted yet, Qi Xing had no choice but to take out a folder and throw the photos of those deformed babies and experimental host bodies over.

In an instant, Xue Ning's face turned pale.

She finally realized.

It was the terror of a sin she had covered up for a long time, a past she dared not look back on, finally being exposed in public without warning.

"I don't know exactly how Sasa did it,"

Qi Xing explained indifferently,

"but she let the Blonde Girl experience and empathize with the memories and feelings of the test subjects who died because of your experiments in these experimental records—those children who were over-activated in their brain nerves before they were even born, forced to possess superpowers, and ultimately died in miserable states."

"Once there was the first one, she let her touch others on the island, passing the empathy and feelings on, and it quickly spread like this."

It wasn't an illusion, it wasn't brainwashing, it was empathy.

The system Xue Ning had single-handedly built was originally intended to let the islanders share happiness, understand each other, and feel others' joy.

But now, this system also allowed them to share the pain of the dead.

They felt: how their own child's skull exploded in their womb; how many children were forced to read minds until they collapsed into mental frenzy.

There was a boy who, during a telekinesis enhancement experiment, had his head swell up, his blood vessels twisting like tree roots on the surface of his skin, and finally, his whole body turned into a distorted sphere, like a fetus, and like a tumor.

There was a child who was used for a "memory synchronization" experiment at the age of five, resulting in total nervous system collapse and bleeding from the seven orifices; before dying, the child was still imitating their mother's tone, repeatedly whispering, "Am I still a good boy?"

They felt how those out-of-control test subjects begged Xue Ning—their "mother"—before their bodies exploded.

Yet, Xue Ning remained unmoved, recording the experimental data.

That was not just knowledge, not abstract "files."

It was experience, memory, painful empathy, and immersion.

They naturally didn't understand "why" Xue Ning did these things, but their bodies immediately understood and remembered the emotions, pain, and fear of those who had died.

The devil did not cast any enchantment.

She simply used the New Humans system that Xue Ning had built herself in reverse, letting them understand the "previous generation of children" she had buried with her own hands.

After understanding the existence of those "previous generation of children," these New Humans resonated with the pain of those children.

She was both a mother and an executioner.

And so—how could they not feel vigilant towards their own Island Lord?

Xue Ning looked at these islanders in a daze, unable to speak for a moment.

If it were just anger, as long as one side backed down, perhaps it could still be repaired.

But once doubt was born, no amount of verbal explanation would be of any use.

Relying solely on the identity of the "mother" of Labyris Island, she could no longer bridge this rift.

"Master Leipu, you, you bastard…"

Looking back at Qi Xing, Xue Ning's eyes were almost bleeding.

"I really want to say this isn't what I did… but that sounds too much like shirking responsibility, so forget it.

If you want to hate me, then hate me."

Qi Xing sighed,

"But this is essentially the sin of your past, now coming back to bite you.

Isn't that right?"

"But—"

Xue Ning choked, her voice hoarse,

"—this isn't all of me!

These research projects weren't even led by me!

I just participated in them, wanting to obtain the results of the Nazi human experiments to push forward my own research!"

"I didn't kill them, it was this wrong world that killed them!

I was just using these things as the cornerstone of the new world of tomorrow!

One day…"

She shook her head, shaking it desperately as if to shake off some unwilling-to-admit thought.

"I raised them, guided them, gave them the power of empathy and connection, created this beautiful paradise island—but now they only empathize with the dead, and not with me?!"

But Qi Xing laughed instead:

"Who would understand that?

They won't understand.

It was you who created New Humans with such a high moral standard."

"'Your happiness is my happiness, your pain is my pain'—such humans are too kind, it's impossible for them to understand your 'necessary evil.'

The kinder the New Humans are, the less they will understand."

"Besides, these people aren't the perfect products you imagined either—aren't you also very troubled?

You don't know how to complete the final piece of the puzzle.

Even though you've already let the Giant Spirit give birth, you still can't give birth to the perfect 'God.'

That's why you're looking outside the island to introduce new bloodlines, and that's why you want my genetic material."