Reborn One Week Before the Apocalypse

However, Tang Mo didn’t get to dwell on her complicated feelings for long before Da Jing squeezed her out.

Yes, she was “squeezed” out.

Tang Mo felt her consciousness suddenly hit with a powerful repulsive force. Then, as Da Jing’s massive mouth opened, she was sent right back the way she came, landing in the water again.

“What was that for?”

‘We were getting along just fine a moment ago. How could it turn on a dime like that?’

“You may have lots of fun places on land, but the world in the ocean is just as good, if not better! Today, I’m going to show you a great time exploring the world beneath the sea!”

Perhaps the stories Tang Mo had just shared about the surface world were so incredible that they sparked a peculiar sense of rivalry in Da Jing.

Or maybe, through their conversation, Da Jing had already begun to see Tang Mo as a true friend—someone to go on adventures with.

The mysterious ocean was vast and boundless. There were too many places Tang Mo had never been, too many sights she had never seen.

However…

“Are you going to go with me looking like this? You’re going to attract the attention of every fish in the ocean.”

It wasn’t that Tang Mo didn’t want to go; it was just that Da Jing’s body was far, far too enormous. It was like a small mountain moving through the sea.

Everywhere it went would be a minor catastrophe. How could they have any fun?

“Hmph. Stupid!”

Da Jing had switched back to its merciless taunting mode.

Then, right before Tang Mo’s eyes, a small ball of blue light, about the same size as her own conscious form, appeared at her side.

“Let’s go!”

The blue light gradually took the form of a small whale, which began to tumble joyfully in the water.

‘So it can do that…’

Tang Mo watched the consciousness Da Jing had split off, a little stunned.

She had been able to separate a portion of her spiritual power before, but it was on a completely different level compared to this lifelike little whale Da Jing had created.

Sensing Tang Mo’s astonishment, Da Jing swelled with pride and delight. It happily took the lead, ready to show her the wonders of its world.

The ability to conjure such a small avatar was a recent development for Da Jing, so it was still thrilled by the novelty of it all.

When it came to the funnest places in the ocean, there was likely no fish that knew them better than Da Jing.

Tang Mo, for her part, was happy to have a guide, even if this particular one was a tiny bit arrogant.

While Tang Mo and Da Jing were frolicking in the ocean, the atmosphere back inside the protective barrier was not nearly as cheerful.

Thanks to a mandatory broadcast from the ID Watches, everyone now knew that Tang Mo had obtained the Space Bead.

It was impossible to hide. After all, once she fused with the Space Bead, Tang Mo’s attribute value had skyrocketed by 10,000 points.

Tang Mo was already under intense scrutiny as number one on the Huaxia leaderboard. When her attribute value shot up by ten thousand points overnight, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened.

And with that, all Five Beads were now in human hands.

Everyone knew that gathering the Five Beads would grant humanity’s greatest wish, so they were all eagerly waiting for the beads to be brought together.

However, the Sect Leader and the others kept the fact that Tang Mo was in a coma a closely guarded secret, letting no one know the truth.

This was a matter concerning all of humanity; the fewer people who knew, the better.

After all, it was hard to say what people would do when their own interests were on the line.

Many people, overcome with excitement, tried to see Tang Mo, but Sect Leader Wen Jianshu turned them all away. The official reason was that Tang Mo was in seclusion, preparing for the fusion of the Five Beads, and could not be disturbed.

Fortunately, everyone knew Tang Mo only possessed four of the beads. The last one was with Qin Ling, who had yet to emerge from the Illusion Space. No matter how anxious people were, there was nothing they could do. All they could do was wait for Qin Ling with bated breath.

Thus, the crowd of people sitting at the edge of the protective barrier, waiting for someone to drop out of the sky, grew larger each day. They all brought little stools and settled in, waiting for the moment Qin Ling would finally appear.

Everyone believed that as soon as Qin Ling appeared, the world would be saved, and the apocalypse would end.

This public excitement only increased the pressure on the Sect Leader and the others.

After all, once Qin Ling returned, if the decision was truly made to use the beads to save Momo, then the wishes of all those people—no, the wishes of nearly every survivor in the world—would be dashed.

At that moment, how could Tang Mo, Qin Ling, and all the others who had concealed the truth possibly face the public’s fury?

Would the world be able to maintain its current peace at that time?

Would the furious populace remember how Momo had saved them and manage to calm down?

To all these questions, they had no answers.

In their hearts, everyone was waiting for the same thing: Qin Ling’s return.

As for Qin Ling, he had been in the second Illusion World for an absurdly long time. The mission was not only difficult and filled with slaughter, but also incredibly time-consuming.

Qin Ling stayed in the Illusion World for a whole year.

Just like Tang Mo, as he experienced the people and events within these worlds, Qin Ling’s own state of mind was also changing rapidly.

Qin Ling discovered that a small, pink sphere had appeared in his sea of consciousness. The sphere contained energy, but he had no idea where it came from or what it was for.

If Tang Mo had been there, she would have recognized it. This little pink bead was the very same Emotional Pearl she herself had named.

As one’s experiences and understanding of the emotional world grew, this small bead would appear in the sea of consciousness of anyone who had gone through and been touched by such things.

The more genuine the heart, the more energy it held, and the larger the bead grew.

However, there was a peculiar rule: the more a person had lacked a genuine heart to begin with, the faster the bead would grow once they started to experience true emotions.

It was as if it guided people to touch a softer world, and those willing to break free from the cages around their hearts would be rewarded by the world itself.

Perhaps because Tang Mo had been reborn, her heart was exceptionally cold at the start of this new life. That was why her Emotional Pearl was larger than anyone else’s—so large that it had completely surpassed her Attribute Pearl in size.

Even more miraculously, although Tang Mo’s consciousness had currently separated from her body…

…the unconditional love her physical body received from family, friends, and even pets, combined with the vast, profound understanding her consciousness was gaining from the world, the sky, and the depths of the ocean, all caused her Emotional Pearl to continue growing nonstop.

In truth, many survivors, especially those who had been through the Illusion Worlds, had already developed these little beads in their seas of consciousness.

But because their beads were so small, and they didn’t have an Attribute Pearl in their sea of consciousness to use as a reference, most people paid them no mind.

The few who did notice simply dismissed it as something beyond their comprehension, especially since there was no record of it on their ID Watches.

Once they determined it wasn’t harmful, they stopped worrying about it.