52: Chapter 51: The Chicken Feet Are Showing?
Aside from the initial expenditure of Yang Hang's mental energy, this step was later set to a self-looping invitation mode by Yang Hang, who mobilized the Power of Causality.
The first batch: three hundred million.
The flow of the Power of Causality has completed.
Then invite the second batch of nine hundred million.
Then, follow the same steps to invite the final billion-plus survivors from other civilizations.
After setting all this up, he finally had the courage to check the barrage of messages his sister had sent him; he had received messages from his sister, Yang Yue, while he was constructing this patch for the visitor system.
It wasn't in the family group chat; it was a private message.
"Brother."
A single word.
Yang Hang was reflexively alert. There were only two situations in which his sister would send "Brother"—either she was acting spoiled to ask for money, or she was preparing to cause trouble.
"Hmm?"
"Have you checked the Fate Platform? That post by President Lu Xingye."
"I saw it. What's wrong?"
"That group photo."
Yang Hang's fingers hovered above the input box, motionless.
Yang Yue didn't wait for his reply and directly sent an image.
It wasn't a screenshot of the post, but an enlarged crop of the group photo in the post—only the body of the man in the Ultraman mask was cropped. White T-shirt, black casual pants, hands in pockets, a slightly sideways standing posture.
Then Yang Yue sent a second image.
A photo Yang Hang had posted to his Moments three months ago. The same white T-shirt, the same black casual pants, the same hand-in-pocket posture.
The two images were placed side by side.
"Brother, look at this figure."
Yang Hang's brows twitched.
"What figure? So many people wear white T-shirts and stand with their hands in their pockets; if you compare it that way, the whole street is full of Fate Masters."
"I asked Mom and Dad."
Yang Hang's typing hand paused.
"Mom said, 'It really looks like your brother.' Dad didn't say anything, but he didn't deny it either."
Yang Hang blinked slightly, his tone unchanged, relaxed and indifferent: "You know what Dad's personality is like, and as for Mom, she might have just seen it wrong. Why are you still suspecting that your brother is that top-ranked Yang Hang? Do I have such great ability?"
Yang Yue didn't take the bait.
After a few seconds of silence, another image popped up.
Yang Hang hadn't seen this one before.
It was a side-angle shot from the group photo in President Lu Xingye's post. At the moment the man in the Ultraman mask tilted his head, his collar pulled down an inch, revealing a small patch of skin on the right side of his neck.
There was a black mole on the skin.
Yang Yue's voice message popped up right after, six seconds long.
He tapped it.
"Brother, you also have a mole on the right side of your neck."
Her voice wasn't her usual playful tone; it was light, very serious, and carried a cautious tentativeness.
Yang Hang's consciousness returned to reality, and he hit the golf ball in front of him with one stroke.
Then he sighed and touched his own neck.
The mole was still there. His Stellar Body had modified his muscle density, bone hardness, and skin texture, but it hadn't removed an Innate pigmented mole.
He quickly reviewed the scene in his mind. The Ultraman mask covered his entire face and most of his neck, but the collar had indeed loosened the moment he turned his head. President Lu Xingye's angle happened to capture that part of his neck.
A mistake.
Yang Hang's fingers paused on the screen for two seconds. Then he did one thing—the Power of Causality surged out silently, following the thread of Karma to probe the surface of his sister's consciousness. It was only an extremely slight touch, not reading specific thoughts, but only perceiving the spectrum of her emotions.
The surface of Yang Yue's consciousness at this moment presented a very complex color—seventy percent curiosity, twenty percent hesitation, and ten percent certainty that she herself didn't quite dare to confirm.
She was truly suspecting it.
It wasn't the "joking" sarcasm from before; it was an instinctive intuition based on eighteen years of living together.
Yang Hang was considering whether to just confess directly.
He was a person who never dawdled in doing things. If his sister confirmed it, then she confirmed it; anyway, exposing this identity to his family wouldn't pose any substantial risk.
He really wasn't some villain, after all.
But just a second before he organized his wording.
Yang Yue's message arrived first.
"However..."
"It probably isn't you, Brother."
Yang Hang's fingers stopped.
Yang Yue's text popped out one after another, very quickly, as if she were convincing herself.
"Thinking about it, I also feel it's unlikely."
"That is the Fate Master who controls the Cause and Effect Fate Platform for 1.4 billion people."
"First on the Merit Ranking, over thirteen billion."
"One person is worth twelve national camps."
"He can lift someone else's boat into the sky with a wave of his hand, split the sea, and control treasure chests to open Gold-tier items."
"He is simply my super-super-super idol."
"And what about my brother?"
"My brother was still dodging the property management last month because they were hounding him for fees."
"My brother chose the wrong classroom for his university course and sat in a class for a different major for a whole semester without realizing it."
"My brother can burn a hole through the pot when cooking."
"This kind of person is the Lord of the Fate Altar?"
"Impossible."
She sent three words at the end.
"I'm overthinking it."
Then she added a doge emoji.
Yang Hang looked at the screen and let out a breath.
He wasn't so relaxed as to think everything was fine. The seed of his sister's suspicion had already been planted; she was just suppressing it with her reason and common sense for the time being. The contrast between this identity and his ordinary persona of the past twenty-four years was too great, so great that her brain refused to accept the answer given by her intuition.
This was, on the contrary, the best protection.
Because the closer a guess is to the truth, the easier it is for people to deny it themselves—it's too outrageous, so it's impossible.
Yang Hang replied: "Do you want to hear what you're saying? If your brother were the Fate Master, you should be living in a Gold-tier warship right now, but you're living in a Silver-tier Houseboat—do you think I would wrong you if I had that ability?"
Yang Yue replied instantly: "That's true! If you were the Fate Master, you definitely would have opened something higher than Gold-tier for me on the first day!"
"Get lost. Is there such a treasure chest? Even if there were, it would be mine; if you used it, what would I use?"
"Huh? So you admit you're the Fate Master?"
"I admit you have a brain problem."
"Hehehe."
Yang Yue sent a string of laughing emojis, then showed a screenshot of herself with over nine thousand Merit points, ranked over five thousandth on the personal leaderboard.
Yang Hang felt slightly guilty and sent a photoshopped screenshot of the personal leaderboard, showing over ten thousand Merit points, ranked over four thousandth.
Logically, Yang Yue would definitely go verify it, but Yang Hang had obviously influenced her.
This caused Yang Yue to directly ignore the matter.
The topic slid back to the track of daily bickering.
Yang Hang didn't reply further, exited the chat with his sister, switched to the family group chat, and simply asked about his parents' health and supplies. Yang Jianguo replied "Good," and Mother sent a photo of fish soup she had just stewed with a portable stove, with the caption "Your dad says it's delicious."
Yang Hang replied "Save a bowl for me," and then closed the group chat.
His parents and younger sister had long since gathered together; as for his bowl of soup, it would naturally be delivered to his hands through the Karmic Trading Realm.
Compared to the various luxury meals in his Gold-tier super Houseboat, his mother's cooking was more capable of bringing peace to his soul.
Now was not the time for him to let his guard down and reunite happily with his family. Exposing his identity might not have any impact on him now, but who knew what the future held?
Yang Hang leaped to the center of his luxury Houseboat.
After thinking for a moment, he had originally planned to unlock a skill today that would allow him to multitask.
But Yang Yue's latest feigned probing made him feel that he might need a treasure that could create a fake account on the leaderboard.
This treasure wasn't to guard against his family, but to prepare for the great Fusion that the Yanhuang Camp might face in the future.
He currently didn't intend to appear as the Lord of the Fate Altar, considering his strength too weak; perhaps it was enough to roam the Magic Sea.
But it was still that cliché topic; he had always maintained extreme vigilance against the so-called competition of universal dimensional civilizations.
What if he encountered some unreasonable civilization?
Cultivation?
Xuanhuan?
Ultra-high-tier technological civilization?
Eerie civilization?
Fantasy deity civilization?