Chapter 451: Nuwa, Nuwa! The Truth of Cosmic Alien Civilizations—The Enemy Is...

“…” Chu Bamboo abruptly realized that Nuwa seemed to be having problems now, too. And Nuwa also possessed emotions…

“What you call ‘madness’ is simply human emotion resisting under the stress of contamination—or rather, the erosion of Extraordinary Power! You can think of it as what your era calls a ‘fever’!”

Nuwa said leisurely, “You can’t say a fever is a normal state… but it is, in fact, the human body disinfecting itself! It’s trying to protect you.”

Chu Bamboo’s expression darkened. He recalled Li Kang, who had lost control to the contamination, and in that moment, he suddenly felt the urge to laugh. “So in the end, the fever gets so bad it burns the host to death, is that it?”

What a hell of a joke…

“So… this is the real reason why Z completely eradicated all Extraordinary Power in the Virtual World… So that’s how it is! That’s really how it is!”

“The root of the calamity! This is the true root of it all…”

Chu Bamboo’s first reaction was to completely eradicate all Extraordinary Power, but then a sense of powerlessness washed over him. Because it was simply impossible…

The root of the problem in the real world was the contamination that erupted on Mars…

If the contamination *is* Extraordinary Power!

Then, in essence, that contamination outbreak on Mars was probably equivalent to a ‘great tide of Spiritual Qi Revival’ from one of those Spiritual Qi Revival novels!

‘How could anyone stop that?!’

“So… the so-called Ten Thousand Races don’t actually have emotions?” Chu Bamboo took a deep breath. “Then why would they form alliances? Why would they…”

“You’ve got one thing wrong!” Nuwa’s expression turned odd. “Who told you the Ten Thousand Races were on the side of the ‘contamination’?”

Chu Bamboo: “???”

“The Ten Thousand Races are new species born after humans and other species on Earth… had their lives erased by the contamination!”

“They have emotions, too! It’s just that they’re hostile to humanity… That’s a separate issue.”

Chu Bamboo: “…”

‘So, the Ten Thousand Races can also be driven mad by the contamination?’

Chu Bamboo mulled it over for a long while. ‘Alright, I guess that makes sense.’

The contamination was an all-out assault. It didn’t matter if you were of the Ten Thousand Races or human. As long as you came into contact with Extraordinary Power, as long as you had emotions, it would slaughter indiscriminately!

It’s like a cold. It doesn’t matter if you’re from North America or East Asia; if you catch it, you’re going to get a fever…

But the reason the Ten Thousand Races and humanity were enemies was because they were fighting over living space. It had absolutely nothing to do with the contamination!

“So,” Chu Bamboo asked cautiously, “why does Mars have Extraordinary Power… or contamination? Is this power inexhaustible?”

“If the seawater outside a fish tank seeps in… the goldfish can’t survive!” Nuwa offered an analogy. “Freshwater and saltwater are, after all, different.”

“?!”

‘So the salt in the seawater from that analogy… is actually the contamination! Or, some essential aspect of Extraordinary Power…’

‘So Mars really is the fissure!’

‘So it’s not actually that Mars has the contamination… but that the outside world—or more accurately, the Outer Cosmos—has it, and it’s seeping through via Mars…’

‘Wait! If that’s the case…’

Chu Bamboo suddenly stared up at the sky. Even though he could only see the metal ceiling, in that instant, a chill ran down his spine. It was as if he could see the endless, profound, and ice-cold Cosmos.

The entire Cosmos was filled with the power of contamination…

Earth was a sanctuary!

In other words, the Cosmos was teeming with emotionless races… Alien civilizations! They were constantly cultivating, constantly growing stronger!

Mars was a fissure… Mars had contamination! Mars possessed a powerful source of Extraordinary Energy… so, countless Transcendents ultimately chose to go to Mars!

Even if they didn’t want to go seal the breach on Mars, they still had to go there if they wanted to become stronger!

“…I understand!” Chu Bamboo’s voice was devoid of any emotion. In that moment, his mind raced with a wild idea. “So the Angel Civilization is actually… the followers of the first God, who chose to completely submit to the contamination and erase all their emotions?”

“…Oh, that’s not it! They’re just actual Aliens.”

“?”

“I mean, a group of Aliens!”

“??? Can you be a little more specific?”

“…Is that not specific enough?” Nuwa seemed baffled. “The Angel Civilization is a group of Aliens… Isn’t that perfectly clear?!”

Chu Bamboo was silent for a moment. “You’re starting to sound a bit confused… Is that because of the contamination?”

“…Perhaps!” Nuwa paused, rubbing the space between her eyebrows. After a moment of silence, she said abruptly, “Earth should be **! That group screened from Mars **, they may have already been through one Purification. The true ** substance in the Cosmos might be even more terrible…”

“I suspect Earth has some kind of… quality that the Cosmos desperately craves! For example, God’s All-Powerful nature… Or for another example, you… You should be able to understand your **! This kind of **, even among ** is… ***… I think ***, ****…”

“You…” Chu Bamboo’s brows furrowed tightly. ‘What is she saying?’ He felt a ringing in his ears and rubbed his temples. He suddenly realized something was wrong, and his expression turned grim. “Wait a second… Why are you telling me all this now, with no reservations at all? I…”

Chu Bamboo instinctively looked down at himself, but even though his ears were ringing, his body didn’t feel any different.

‘?’ ‘So I’m fine… right?’

‘No, that’s not right!’

Chu Bamboo abruptly stopped his questioning. With almost no hesitation, he activated the Thousand Shadows and Ten Thousand Transformations Divine Techniques. The shadow cast by every blood vessel in his body began to expand… He used this method to make his own body explode…

“…”

In that instant, Chu Bamboo saw Nuwa’s gaze.

In her one eye that was still normal, a flicker of relief appeared…

But the other eye, the pitch-black one, was cold and devoid of any emotional fluctuation. No anger… no disappointment…

However, she made no move, neither to stop Chu Bamboo’s death nor to do anything else. She just gazed at Chu Bamboo quietly…

The next moment, time began to reverse!

…

「In the Seventeenth Nuwa Base.」

“FUCK! AAARGH…”

The moment Chu Bamboo opened his eyes, he was writhing on the ground, his face contorted in agony. Black scales were growing all over his body, and dull gray fur sprouted from the gaps between them as his muscles swelled and twisted.

“…Seal… Seal it!”

However, Chu Bamboo only managed to seal a portion of it. Then, his vision went black… and he reset again!

And so, Chu Bamboo silently continued to seal…

The Fifth reset!

Finally, Chu Bamboo lay on the bed, gasping for air, his face etched with deep exhaustion. “…I got screwed!”

And by Nuwa, no less! ‘No…’

‘…Information is poison! When I asked Nuwa No. 17, she was so hesitant… unwilling to speak. The moment the other Nuwa laid it all out for me, I should have realized it.’

‘…My curiosity is just too strong! I was just about to go in…’

‘But Nuwa must be on the verge between normal and abnormal right now! In other words, she seems crazy, but her mind is still more or less functional… she just can’t completely control herself!’

Chu Bamboo took several deep breaths. After a moment of thought, he realized something.

‘Wait… I sealed some of my memories before, but for some of them, even after sealing them… I didn’t actually feel any better… Does that mean those memories are actually harmless?’

Chu Bamboo thought for a moment and began to gradually unseal them.

The memories he could unseal… included, but weren’t limited to…

Huh?!

As Chu Bamboo continued to unseal his memories, he was astonished to discover that the most dangerous part was actually that last string of words from Nuwa… the part that had directly triggered the ringing in his ears, the part he hadn’t really heard…

‘The stuff before that—about the contamination being essentially Extraordinary Power! That’s actually fine…’

“Holy…”

For a moment, Chu Bamboo wanted to laugh. But he couldn’t.

‘…So, Earth has things that Aliens are desperate to get their hands on… and it looks like my power is one of them? So the Aliens actually know about my power… No, maybe not! But they have suspicions…’

Chu Bamboo mused, ‘If they really knew about the resets and dream travel, the Aliens’ strategy against me would be completely different from what it is now.’

‘Maybe the Alien civilizations knew about the All-Powerful nature of God… so they suspect that I also possess some kind of power beyond imagination! But they don’t know the specifics of that power…’

‘I see. After I communicated with my home base… the information was transmitted to the heavens! The Aliens finally understood, and that’s why they went completely insane…’

Chu Bamboo felt a profound dread in his heart, finally understanding why he had entered the doomsday timeline.

‘…Nuwa said the Angel Civilization is a group of Aliens!’

Chu Bamboo analyzed it again. ‘A group… a group… hmm?’

Chu Bamboo suddenly recalled a previous suspicion of his. “Does this confirm it…?”

It was just as he’d thought before: the entity in contact with the Golden Dawn was very likely not a single civilization… but several civilizations that had all acquired the means to contact them!

Their methods for dealing with the Golden Dawn also differed…

Some might have simply issued orders, others transferred technology, and still others…

‘…So that’s why the Golden Dawn’s policies are so fractured!’

Chu Bamboo was momentarily speechless. Then… he fell silent.

‘So, what should I do next?’

Chu Bamboo felt a profound exhaustion. The further one walked the path of the Extraordinary, the heavier the contamination became… The biggest problem was emotion!

In other words, by erasing one’s emotions, one could grow strong without any flaws… Chu Bamboo suddenly thought of the Supreme Forgetting Emotions from ancient Cultivation, and the concept of severing all mortal ties…

‘The ancestors already went through all this… They even searched for countless solutions!’

Chu Bamboo gave a bitter smile. He couldn’t just erase his emotions, could he? But besides that… looking at the history books—no, just seeing that the real world no longer had anything Extraordinary—one could tell that the ancestors’ final choice was to cut off all paths to the Extraordinary.

It had to be said! Putting aside things like technology… purely in terms of devising solutions… modern people couldn’t necessarily surpass the ancients! The ancestors’ solution was still effective.

Unfortunately, another great tide from Mars was about to arrive. There was no solution!

“Then I… Hmm?”

“Wait a minute!” Chu Bamboo’s expression suddenly turned peculiar.

‘Right now, it seems… for both Gods, the contamination is, on some level, an unsolvable problem…’

But Chu Bamboo realized he had a solution.

‘The reset!’

Yes. In that instant, Chu Bamboo’s eyes began to shine. His despair was swept away, and his fighting spirit surged once more…

The reset could erase the contamination.

‘Although I don’t know exactly *how* this solution works… as long as I keep getting stronger, if I can gain complete control over this power! Then…’

Chu Bamboo broke into a smile.