Chapter 297: [Unswerving Devotion] Worlds Collide
The original hairline crack was gradually widening, revealing a pitch-black gap.
Much like an eye opening wide.
In that single instant, Bai Cha experienced a monumental, overwhelming pressure.
Her entire mind buzzed violently, her vision turning pitch-black, whereupon she collapsed onto the floor, losing all consciousness.
Before passing out, she caught Xu Taotao’s startled cry.
Bai Cha was dragged into a dream.
It was still that pitch-black world, with her standing in the snow.
This time, she wasn’t in her childhood form.
Yet that sense of unease and terror remained crystal clear all the same.
Eyes surrounded her, observing her from every side.
Extremely uneasy, Bai Cha looked all around, yet caught zero trace of any human figure.
Standing on the spot, she didn’t dare budge an inch.
Until she caught sight of a white butterfly.
That butterfly flew out from inside her own body, fluttering forward with delicate grace—the sole speck of light amidst the darkness.
Instinctively, Bai Cha followed the butterfly, walking through the snow.
Yet the butterfly flew extraordinarily fast.
Bai Cha was already sprinting.
Something in the air was steadily closing in on her; the suffocating aura made breathing difficult for her, causing her legs to stagger and send her tumbling into the snow.
Fortunately, the snow on the ground lay thick, so the fall brought no pain.
Scrambling up from the ground, Bai Cha raised her head to look in the butterfly’s direction.
Ahead, a human silhouette had materialized at some unknown moment—a view of someone’s back.
The butterfly alighted squarely on that person’s shoulder.
Staring fixedly at that silhouette, Bai Cha slowly straightened her frame.
“Father?”
That silhouette from behind was so extraordinarily familiar.
Bai Cha’s memories of her father hadn’t faded too severely, far from the point of forgetting him.
The butterfly took flight once more.
The figure turned his head back slowly as well.
That face was indeed her father’s face.
However, he possessed only a single eye.
Where the other eye should have been lay merely a pitch-black eye socket, fresh blood streaming down from it.
Bai Cha’s pupils trembled subtly, taking a step forward instinctively.
Yet that silhouette dissolved into the darkness in an instant.
Right on its heels, something in the darkness set about devouring its way toward her, and across the originally pitch-black space, one eye after another steadily opened.
Or rather, eyeballs.
They twitched and rotated subtly, emitting squelching, squishy noises, until finally, tens of thousands of eyes locked their gazes onto Bai Cha.
Bai Cha felt her head throb with pain so intense it nearly exploded; her eyes experienced a piercing sting as well, bleeding continuously, and even with her eyes shut tight, it felt as though her entire pupils and mind were on the brink of bursting.
It was a form of pressure exerting itself from the inside out.
As if someone were pumping air into her body, forcing her eyeballs to squeeze outward bit by bit, making her eyelids nearly impossible to close.
Just as Bai Cha attempted to reach out her hands to press her eyeballs back inside, a hand extended from behind her back, gently covering her eyes.
An ice-cold breath smoothed away that explosive agony.
A sigh echoed by her ear.
That sigh was so frigid it possessed zero warmth, though using such a description for a sigh sounded rather strange.
Yet it was indeed ice-cold—a feeling akin to a frigid wind passing through in the dead of winter.
Bai Cha’s pain and terror were both soothed away.
And then, she woke up.
The moment she opened her eyes, she caught sight of a colossal eyeball directly overhead.
It was looking down upon this city.
Along with Biyi birds soaring and fluttering across the sky.
And the entire city seemed to have undergone a transformation as well.
“You’re finally awake! Are you alright?” Seeing her wake up, Xu Taotao let out a breath of relief.
When she saw Bai Cha faint earlier, she had been truly scared out of her wits.
From Bai Cha’s initial appearance all the way until before she fainted, Bai Cha had basically acted as her guide, leading her along.
Thus, after Bai Cha fainted, the very first emotion that surged in Xu Taotao’s heart was panic and unease.
She worried that something had happened to Bai Cha, and she worried that without Bai Cha, she would be completely incapable of doing anything on her own.
Particularly given that after Bai Cha fell unconscious, the entire world was undergoing changes.
The full moon in the sky had steadily opened its eye—it had been an eyeball to begin with all along.
Right on its heels, another Love City materialized at the horizon.
That city looked as if transported from another world, crashing violently into this world in a devastating, unstoppable posture.
The moment structures collided with structures, mutual collapse commenced.
Wailing mournfully, the Biyi birds merged with the Biyi birds from the other city, successfully taking flight into the air.
And right at this moment, Xu Taotao sensed a special power—a power sharing the exact same origin as the Dodder Vine power inside her own body.
Thereupon, she summoned that power.
Dodder Vines grew around the buildings toward them; exercising caution, Xu Taotao refrained from summoning the entirety of the power.
Because she remained fearful, after all.
Not until those Dodder Vines grew over and were utilized by Xu Taotao to encircle the two of them did she manage to feel a touch of ease.
At this moment, the entire instance resembled the end of the world.
Bai Cha’s brows were tightly knitted. Was there any connection between that eyeball overhead and her father losing an eye in the dreamscape?
She sensed the power of the Dodder Vines as well, yet her Inventory remained impossible to open, and the System Mall was still disabled.
Judging by the scene before her, the two worlds had likely merged together—it might be related to the Dodder Vines absorbing the female ghost’s power, though she held zero knowledge of how the female ghost was faring now.
And those players as well.
Just as Bai Cha decided to stand up to take a look, the Biyi birds circling and soaring overhead suddenly set about swooping down to attack.
Yet simultaneously, in the southwest direction, tens of thousands of light swords abruptly shot up from the ground, piercing straight into the clouds.
That scene was grand and imposing.
Biyi birds were impaled one after another, emitting even more tragic wails before crashing to the ground, transforming into red feathers.
Xu Taotao watched this scene in utter awe.
Bai Cha realized this ought to be the work of other players.
Setting aside the connections in her dreamscape for the time being, she raised her hand to summon the Dodder Vines, and right on the heels of the steadily fading light swords, she soared straight into the sky.
Tens of thousands of thin, yellow vines flew up, resembling a yellow waterfall flowing in reverse against the current, pointing straight at the eyeball.
The eyeball in the sky shuddered, vanishing from midair abruptly.
The merger of the two worlds had reached their side as well; taking Xu Taotao by the hand, Bai Cha leaped onto the vines, preventing them from being collaterally injured by collapsing buildings.
“Over here!” Someone shouted not far off.
Bai Cha looked over—it was He Li.
These several players were still alive, though their injuries appeared far from light.
Bai Cha leaped over, bringing Xu Taotao along.
“Whoa, you didn’t die! We all thought you were dead!” He Li blurted out in the first second, then froze upon realizing there was another Bai Cha beside her. “Are you… using a clone technique?”
Bai Cha was naturally too lazy to explain to them.
“Tell me what’s going on on your side.”
“Why shouldn’t you speak first?” Zhang Wanxi said instinctively, staring at Bai Cha and Xu Taotao with extreme vigilance.
Ignoring her attitude, Bai Cha said briskly, “I entered this world and discovered the timeline here was pushed back a bit. I was originally exploring, but the world underwent changes—a red moon appeared in the sky, Biyi birds roamed the ground, and every living creature was attacking us. Afterward, your world appeared as well.”
“So, I wish to know what transpired on your end?”
She hadn’t uttered a single lie, in truth, yet it sounded as though all these changes held very little to do with her.
Although to begin with, it indeed didn’t necessarily hold a massive connection to her alone; progress had to occur on both ends simultaneously regardless.
