As long as S-099 showed its head, Ren Yi would immediately trigger the raindrop, causing the monster to be completely annihilated from this world within a second, leaving not a single atom behind!
Ren Yi stood ready, feeling the rule coordinates belonging to the "Seed" getting closer and closer...
Ten meters. Five meters. Three meters.
Splosh.
A dull sound of water splashing echoed.
Ren Yi's gaze sharpened.
However, in the next second.
What first emerged from the broken surface of the Red Tide was not some black liquid, nor was it a sea of flesh.
Instead, it was a... hand?
It was the hand of a human youth, with well-defined knuckles. The fingernails were even slightly upturned from excessive exertion, and the crevices were filled with black-red blood and filth.
"Cough! Cough, cough, cough... Blegh!"
Immediately following that, a violent sound of dry heaving—so intense it seemed as though his lungs would be coughed out—suddenly exploded at the boundary between the sea of blood and the long embankment.
That blood-stained hand gripped the edge of the embankment tightly, his fingernails making a piercing scraping sound against the hard rock.
Then, the owner of that arm used the last of his strength.
With extreme difficulty, he dragged his body inch by inch out of the churning Red Tide.
His long hair clung wetly to his pale face. He was completely naked, and his skin was covered in large patches of erythema and blisters.
After many days, amidst the falling hot ash and the overwhelming crimson sea of blood, Ren Yi once again saw that somewhat malnourished wilderness youth.
Evans.
Evans. He looked like an ordinary human.
Or rather, he had always looked like an ordinary human.
Ren Yi stared at him silently, choosing not to strike immediately.
There were some things he felt he might finally have a chance to clear up.
Evans lay slumped in the scalding cracks of the stone, coughing violently for a long time.
He seemed too severely injured. His disheveled long hair hid his face, preventing him from noticing the gray-white mist that was staring intently at him from not far away.
After a long while, he slowly propped up his upper body with trembling arms and scrambled up from the ground with great effort.
As his pupils slowly focused, he finally saw the vast, rampaging red ocean before him.
The boy stared blankly at everything in sight.
His shock quickly turned into panic.
Ignoring the intense pain in his body, he scrambled to the edge of the embankment and leaned his head down desperately.
He was searching for something.
However, there was nothing. Nothing was left.
Only the boundless crimson liquid remained, making a despairing "sloshing" sound.
All life and all traces had been vaporized cleanly by the earlier temperatures of tens of millions of degrees and the current sea of blood.
His face turned from pale to a deathly gray despair. His lips trembled, but he couldn't even squeeze out a single syllable.
In the next second, as if needing to vent a chest full of pain and fury, he suddenly turned around and slammed his fist hard onto the solid granite ground before him!
Boom!
He managed to smash a significant crater into the ground.
Only when the counter-shock from this punch cleared his mind slightly did Evans seem to sense something, and he stiffly raised his head.
In the cold wind of the isolated island embankment, hot volcanic ash drifted down like snow.
In this world woven of white mist and crimson blood.
Evans finally crossed the distance of a dozen meters and locked eyes with that pale cloud of mist that was hovering in mid-air, fluctuating constantly.
"It's you..."
Evans acted as if he had caught the last straw in a storm, even scrambling to try and get closer to Ren Yi.
He reached out that blood-stained hand, his voice carrying a hint of urgency and hoarseness:
"We..."
However, his words stopped abruptly after only two syllables, as if his throat had been clamped shut by a massive hand.
Because he saw that in front of that white Anomaly.
At some unknown point, a crystal-clear, transparent raindrop had materialized out of thin air, suspended in the sky.
Ren Yi quietly watched his entire performance, his heart completely unmoved.
Don't forget, on that land ship, besides Dr. Cyril, the "Best Actress"...
This one here was also an "acting king."
Hum.
Every hair on Evans's body stood on end!
Every cell in his body was frantically screaming a piercing alarm to his brain.
He would die! He would die, die, die!
This was absolutely not some "temporary disappearance" that could be recovered via the world's rules after being blown apart by a nuke.
In the face of this insignificant, even beautiful-looking transparent raindrop...
He had no room for maneuver, no possibility of escape!
It was an erasure that spanned from rules and concepts to causality and the material plane.
Once this raindrop fell, he would cease to exist entirely.
In this world, and even in the history of all dimensions, there would be no trace of "Evans" left!
In that split second between life and death, the boy's disguise vanished in the face of an absolute annihilation crisis.
Evans didn't even have time to think. He instinctively screamed at the top of his lungs:
"Wait!"
"I know you can understand me!"
In mid-air, Ren Yi's white form did not waver.
He coldly pushed forward with his perception, and the transparent raindrop moved forward half an inch accordingly.
Evans's eyelid twitched as he continued frantically.
"We are kindred!"
The white shadow in the void moved slightly.
It seemed to shrug, or perhaps tilt its head mockingly.
It did not show any emotional fluctuation because of the word "kindred."
The rule tentacles condensed from white mist curled slightly again, carrying the lethal raindrop that was now inches away, aiming it coldly at the boy's brow.
Sensing the bone-chilling cold that reached his very soul, Evans spoke as fast as a machine gun:
"I can help you get your sphere back!"
"I know the City of the Sky Lake! On your own, there's no way you can survive breaking through it!"
Snap.
The transparent raindrop, which had already begun to refract a strange light, stopped abruptly just a few centimeters from Evans's brow.
The violent nuclear storm around them howled once more, blowing against Ren Yi's ethereal white shadow.
Ren Yi looked down from above at the boy kneeling in blood and stone chips, gasping for breath. His misty body rose and fell slightly.
Heh.
You've finally stopped acting.
S-099, Stomach of Glat.
Rate on N.U.
