Demon King: Hero, don’t run away!

“There’s no problem.

There definitely won’t be any problem.

No matter what the final outcome is, we’ll stand by your side.”

Bai Jin leaned against Yang Yu’s chest, pouring Magic Power into the Array and activating the Magic.

In an instant, dazzling Magic blossomed in midair, like surging waves crashing across the sky.

The Heavenly Fragments in the sky, those shards that could not be easily perceived, slowly rotated and shifted with the tide of Magic Fluctuation, slotting back into the places where they belonged.

The stars twinkled, linking into a vast sheet, blue light illuminating the entire firmament.

Countless tiny blue bolts of lightning ran along the gigantic Barrier that covered the whole world, connecting it to the nineteen locations from before.

Sol Rott gently beat his wings, hovering beneath the brightest point of light.

Yang Yu slowly raised his head; a gigantic black box hung at the very center of the radiance.

That was the “Treasure Box” that contained the device.

In the unknown depths underground, the All-knowing Queen of the Nine-Life Cat Demon Kingdom slowly turned into pure white data and vanished, then recondensed before Yang Yu and the others:

“You really made it here.

Earlier than I expected.

Do you still remember what I told you before?

If you want us Nine-Life Cat Demons to do something, then complete your own choice.

Whether it is battle or compromise.

What future this world will head toward—

the right to decide lies in your hands.”

The All-knowing Queen stretched out her right hand and danced it through the air; Magic Power surged in her palm, wrapping vast data and condensing into a key white as snow.

With a gentle toss forward, the All-knowing Queen sent the key into Yang Yu’s hand.

The song once said: “Led by the Fairy who records the world, enter another unknown world, and there you may find the key to open the Treasure Box.”

Perhaps it was because they had already gone to the Nine-Life Cat Demon Kingdom once before; perhaps the Queen of the Nine-Life Cat Demons, after such a long age, had grown somewhat impatient—Yang Yu no longer needed to go to the Nine-Life Cat Demon Kingdom again.

Clenching the key tightly in his palm, Yang Yu felt it all very unreal.

It was clearly the first time he had ever held this key, and yet he knew precisely how it was meant to be used.

“All-knowing Queen, there’s one thing you said that’s not quite right.

The right to decide the future lies in all of our hands!”

A smile rose on Yang Yu’s face.

The All-knowing Queen smiled without replying, once more turning into white data and returning to the Nine-Life Cat Demon Kingdom, silently watching Yang Yu, waiting for him to make his choice.

Seeing the All-knowing Queen off, Yang Yu rose from behind Bai Jin and aimed the white key in his hand at the black box floating in the air.

Not far away, Tico and Li Yan had long since taken out their Memory Crystals, recording this moment in history.

In that instant, blue light flared from Yang Yu’s body, drawn by the key and flying toward the black box.

Carefully approaching the black box whose length, width, and height were each a perfect one meter, Yang Yu pressed the key against the face of the black box that pointed toward the sky.

He didn’t need much force; with just a light glide, the white key could draw streak after streak of white lines across the surface of the black box.

Pulling the white key, Yang Yu painted upon the black box, until every last trace of Magic Power that constituted the white key had adhered to the black box without a single drop left behind.

Finding the very first starting point, finding the final ending point, Yang Yu pressed both hands down on those two places at once.

Layer after layer of black slowly peeled away from the black box, shattering in the sky into pure Magic Fragments.

The black box grew smaller and smaller, until at last it became a perfect black sphere ten centimeters in diameter, like a clump of chaotic cosmos.

The black sphere slowly faded, its center emitting light, faintly illuminating that patch of chaotic universe.

That point of light at the center kept trembling, spreading outward a peculiar Magic Fluctuation.

In an instant, it was as if Yang Yu and the others had leapt across billions of years of time, seeing that common ancestor named Luca use the organic matter around it to complete the very first self-replication.

That point of light at the center grew a single bristle, and in that first act of self-replication, the common ancestor Luca made a mistake.

This seemingly insignificant little mistake birthed countless possibilities, laying out step by step this flourishing world of life.

On the tiny bristle grew more, even finer branches.

Some of those fine branches seemed never to have truly separated, entangling with one another like the parallel roots of a banyan tree, finally merging together to form a distinct and sturdier new branch.

Among Luca’s descendants, there was not only scheming and the strong preying on the weak, but also mutual aid and becoming one.

Lineages that were thought to have gone their separate ways reunited because of certain things, finding more efficient modes of survival and overcoming crises.

Thus, the eukaryotes were born.

This branch of lineage rapidly proliferated and grew strong in the cruel struggle for survival, breaking through their shackles again and again.

From one to two, from two to a cluster, from unremarkable meat on the sea floor to wriggling worms of the deep, and from those wriggling worms of the deep, they grew eyes, grew notochords, grew fins, roaming freely through the ocean.

Some among them crawled onto land. In that grand contest of simultaneous landings, they prevailed with the bearing of the Chosen One.

Within the black sphere, white threads split at a speed visible to the naked eye, multiplying rapidly.

Billions of years of time flashed like a snap of the fingers before Yang Yu and the others; the world they saw grew more and more complex and diverse.

As the threads were about to reach the edge of the black sphere, a tailless ancient ape leapt down from a tree, straightened its spine, and walked toward that unknown future, becoming Human.

The scene froze there.

Yang Yu straightened with reverence, cradling the transformed black sphere in his arms as though he were embracing the entire world.

Slowly descending from midair, Yang Yu landed steadily on Sol Rott’s back:

“It’s time to wake the sleeping Sea Mother and bring this to an end.”

Sol Rott beat his wings and flew toward the center of the desolate oceanic desert—the Nemo Point.

The Blue Desert lived up to its name: a desert within the sea, where there were no Sea Currents, no marine snow to nourish life on the seabed, almost no Magic Power, and the numbers of all kinds of creatures had plummeted exponentially.

Aside from Sea-dwelling Species on pilgrimage and a few death-defying adventurers, almost no one would ever go there.

Such a silent and barren place was precisely where the Sea Mother slept.

Under cloudless, boundless blue skies, the icy seawater lay flat as a mirror, reflecting the azure heavens above.

Yang Yu and the others did not know when they had stopped seeing even a single bird’s silhouette; wherever their eyes reached, all was dead stillness.

Raising the device from his chest, Yang Yu carefully touched the sphere in his hand, pressing one tiny point after another, inputting the execution commands.

The black sphere in Yang Yu’s hand buzzed and hummed, slipping free of Yang Yu’s Control and flying up into the sky before plunging into the sea.

The mighty wave of fluctuation seemed completely unaffected by any Sea Current, easily piercing through thousands of meters of ocean depth.