Chapter 122: Everything Will Go Well
“How about this—let’s have a tournament! Whoever proves to have the stronger superpower wins a spot as a temporary worker for God’s Supermarket!” Zhang Yimiao shouted excitedly, having finally caught her breath after climbing that brutal rope ladder.
Song Yuqing mulled it over, her brow furrowing. It actually wasn’t a bad idea.
Liu Xiaona shot a glance at Song Yuqing, silently seeking her approval. Seeing the manager give a slight, supportive nod, Liu Xiaona grinned broadly.
Perfect!
“That’s the plan! Everyone head outside the supermarket, and we’ll duel! I’ll be the referee!” Liu Xiaona bellowed. “And let’s make one thing clear: we stop when I say it’s enough! No permanent injuries!”
“Deal!” The crowd roared, rushing back downstairs in a frenzy. Some were eager to compete, while the rest just wanted to watch the chaos unfold.
A few survivors leaned out the windows to holler down at the beach, calling back the people who were still relaxing in the surf. The moment word spread that God’s Supermarket was hiring temporary staff through a combat tournament, everyone abandoned the ocean, filing back up to the second-floor café and out to the front courtyard.
Outside the supermarket, the survivors quickly formed massive, concentric circles, leaving a wide, open clearing in the center. Liu Xiaona stepped confidently into the middle of the ring, crossing her arms and assuming a flawless referee’s stance.
She began calling out names, starting with the people she remembered raising their hands first. The rules were simple: each match had a strict five-minute time limit. The winner of the duel would secure a slot on the preliminary roster, while the loser would drop down to the next bracket to face the next challenger.
The very first pairing brought Zhang Hua and Zhang Yimiao into the ring. Zhang Hua was visibly trembling. He was merely a low-level water esper and had never considered himself particularly capable. He had only mustered the courage to try out on a total whim, never expecting to be picked for the opening match. To make matters worse, he had drawn Zhang Yimiao—a notoriously fierce, hot-tempered fire mutant.
“Let’s get this over with!” Zhang Yimiao yelled, wasting no time. She immediately unleashed a roaring ring of fire, sending it hurtling toward Zhang Hua.
Zhang Hua scrambled frantically to dodge, but the blazing hoop pursued him relentlessly. Completely panicking, he began running in frantic circles around the ring, his mind going entirely blank as he forgot to even activate his own abilities. He technically knew that water countered fire, but his confidence had evaporated. He didn’t dare stop moving; he was terrified that the moment he paused to gather his energy, the flames would swallow him, ending the match instantly.
“If you don’t fight back, you’re going to run out of time!” Shen She shouted down from his perch up in the Chinese tallow tree. Since both he and Zhang Hua originated from Base 27, he naturally harbored a bit of bias toward the man.
Song Yuqing, Gaha, and Little Meat Bun stood near the edge of the crowd for a few minutes, quietly observing the opening duel before slipping away. She calculated that at this rate, given how many matches it would take to whittle down hundreds of eager contestants, she would easily have enough time to travel to an alternate reality, purchase the real estate provisions, and return before the final twenty slots were locked. It was a funny dynamic; twenty humble clerk positions at God’s Supermarket were currently generating a spectacular tournament fueled by hundreds of combatants.
Song Yuqing had wanted to stay and watch a bit longer, but Master Fu began aggressively nagging her to hurry up and secure the supplies. She still couldn’t decipher whether Master Fu and Teacher Fu were fundamentally the same consciousness. Teacher Fu had explicitly claimed he was the architect who created Master Fu. If that was the case, was everything Master Fu spouted merely data he had been programmed to repeat?
She attempted to probe Master Fu regarding his relationship with the professor, but the system merely babbled incoherently, smoothly deflecting every inquiry until it became impossible to extract a single concrete detail.
So Master Fu really is just a terminal interface manipulated by Teacher Fu, Song Yuqing thought with a wave of quiet regret.
“Everything will be fine.”
As their mental conversation drew to a close, Master Fu repeated the phrase in a flat, looping cadence, sounding exactly like a faulty tape recorder.
I hope so. Maybe. Of course it will.
Song Yuqing forced herself to inject more and more absolute certainty into her mental responses, matching his cadence. Only after receiving her fierce, definitive validation did Master Fu finally fall silent.
Following her operational timeline, Song Yuqing guided Gaha and Little Meat Bun into the spatial corridor, preparing to breach a parallel dimension they had never explored before.
As they stepped into the narrow hallway, a completely unfamiliar, ordinary iron door materialized along the wall.
Song Yuqing vividly recalled Master Fu’s foundational instructions regarding the spatial architecture: the environments behind the gates were dictated strictly by her active thoughts, current emotional baseline, and subconscious needs.
Before reaching for the handle, she spent a solid ten minutes focusing her mind, sorting through the chaotic mess of anxiety and revelations cluttering her brain. She even sat down at the tea table with Gaha and Little Meat Bun to brew a quick pot of tea. Once she felt she had achieved peak mental clarity, she turned and unlatched the heavy iron gate.
They stepped through, only to be hit by a world shrouded in an absolute, suffocating darkness.
The dimension appeared vast, stark, and completely hollow, with barely a single structural silhouette visible across the empty horizon. The local iteration of God’s Supermarket was immediately recognizable, its massive neon signage blazing with spectacular, brilliant colors against the ink-black night sky.
What truly captured Song Yuqing’s breath, however, was the celestial ceiling of this dark world. Hanging across the black void were sweeping, vibrant curtains of pale green aurora borealis. But these weren’t standard cosmic lights; looking closer, she realized the shimmering green ribbons were laced with countless flickering rectangular frames. It looked as though thousands of live feeds from surveillance cameras were bursting through fractures in the aurora, projecting real-time imagery down onto the planet.
She caught glimpses of raucous parties inside packed nightclubs, families locked in screaming matches as they smashed household items, and even grim, filthy public restrooms—though the vast majority of the screens merely displayed mundane, ordinary daily lives.
Song Yuqing, Gaha, and Little Meat Bun stood side-by-side, their jaws slacked in unison as they traded a wide-eyed look. Stepping completely out of the spatial threshold, they immersed themselves in this magical world of perpetual night, charting a course toward the distant supermarket. Though the glowing neon sign looked remarkably close, the optical reality of the flat landscape meant the store sat a significant distance away from their current coordinates.
Well, we might as well enjoy the scenery while we hike, she thought.
Strangely, the paved streets were completely vacant. The empty thoroughfares felt like a mirror image of the projection screens rippling across the sky—a series of silent, ghostly illusions.
Had she not suddenly spotted a projection of their own three silhouettes rippling across the green aurora above, Song Yuqing would have assumed the cosmic feeds were merely loops of events that had occurred in the distant past.
Desperate to gather some local context, she attempted to flag down the occasional pedestrian they encountered. But the few passersby they crossed simply trudged forward with their heads lowered. Though their pace wasn’t particularly fast, it was mathematically calculated to keep them just out of reach the exact second she voiced a greeting.
It was entirely calculated.
These citizens were ignoring them on purpose. They were deliberately refusing to register their physical presence, actively blocking out the sound of their voices.
Eventually, Little Meat Bun grew thoroughly impatient. He lunged in front of a passing pedestrian, baring his teeth and aggressively waving his thick claws in a wild display to command attention. Yet, even his weaponized panda antics failed to elicit a single flinch or sideways glance from the local.
An unsettling, creepy vibe settled deep in Song Yuqing’s stomach. She had encountered similar cold, mechanical behaviors from civilian crowds in dystopian movies and horror novels. Usually, when a population behaved this way, it meant a terrifying threat was actively hunting their sector, forcing everyone to maintain a state of absolute, hyper-vigilant isolation just to survive.
Yet, the citizens of this world didn’t display a single trace of fear or caution on their faces; their expressions were completely vacant, defined by pure, unadulterated indifference. When Song Yuqing’s group stood directly in their trajectory, the pedestrians didn’t panic or scramble; they simply executed a smooth, natural micro-swerve to avoid a physical collision before continuing on their way.
Fine. Let them play their games, she resolved.
Song Yuqing, Gaha, and Little Meat Bun locked their focus forward, determined to march straight to the supermarket terminal. If answers existed in this quiet reality, they would undoubtedly be housed inside the store.
“Gaha…” the gargoyle grunted softly, her shoulders slumping. Because she naturally harbored a deep-seated aversion to human interaction, being so thoroughly and coldly ignored by the locals left her feeling strangely dejected.
“Don’t let it get to you, Gaha,” Song Yuqing murmured, gently patting her arm. “Everything will go well.”
But as she stared up at the thousands of glowing surveillance feeds cutting through the green sky, she had to admit she didn’t entirely believe her own words.
