149: The President is coming! My little pet, you broke my toy!

Space was burning.

That wasn't a metaphor.

The latter half of Jay's pure white flagship, the “Elegy,” was being consumed by an incomprehensible dark golden flame.

It didn't burn matter.

It “erased” existence itself.

The alarm system had long been silenced by the erosion of the laws, only emitting a grating metallic shriek as the ship's structure conceptually disintegrated.

“Separate! Emergency separation immediately! Throw away that back half for me!”

Jay's voice was hoarse like a broken bellows, and his handsome face, always adorned with an elegant mask, was now twisted with extreme fear.

His prideful composure was crushed to dust before the falling meteors of divine punishment.

“Vice President! If we do that, we'll lose all our backup power reactors! We'll become a target!”

“Do you want to be burned to ashes by that damned thing?! Execute the order!”

Jay kicked his adjutant away, then lunged at the control panel himself, his eyes bloodshot, frantically slapping the emergency separation button.

Boom—crack!!!

Accompanied by a dull roar, the “Elegy” was violently torn in two.

The burning, inextinguishable rear half of the ship, like a piece of discarded garbage, along with the last consciousness of hundreds of crew members inside, silently turned into a handful of ominous cosmic dust.

The broken front half of the ship, like a swan with a broken wing, drifted helplessly in space.

Jay's fear, however, grew even more intense.

Phantom Squad was completely wiped out.

Thegarrison fleet was decimated, with less than one in ten remaining.

The Purgatory Furnace was completely erased from the planet.

Any one of these was enough for the President to throw him into a reactor, melting even his soul into fuel.

“It's over…”

He slumped to the ground, his body cold.

Just then.

An indescribable, strange pressure descended without warning.

It was an absolute “field,” as if the rules of the entire universe were submitting to a single will.

The cold pressure instantly enveloped the damaged flagship.

Even the burning flames of fire god's laws, in front of this higher power, quietly extinguished, like subjects seeing their monarch.

Jay's body froze.

He felt as if his soul had been squeezed out of his body by an invisible hand, exposed naked to the scrutiny of a god.

A communication request, without going through any conventional channels, rang directly in his mind.

Jay scrambled to his knees, his body trembling like a sieve.

A lazy and indifferent voice, as if across an endless sea of stars, echoed leisurely in the depths of his consciousness.

“Jay, my little pet.”

“You've made a mess of my toy.”

It was the President!

“President! I… I… your subordinate is incompetent! It's the enemy! They also possess the power of laws!” Jay stammered incoherently, his mind almost disintegrating in extreme fear.

“Oh?”

The President's voice seemed to carry a hint of imperceptible interest.

“Flames that can ignite my furnace are indeed somewhat interesting.”

He paused, and that brief silence, for Jay, was longer than a hundred million years of torture.

“However, foolishness is, after all, your sin.”

“I admit it! President! Please give me another chance! I'm willing to do anything!” Jay pressed his forehead firmly against the cold deck, pleading with all his might.

“A chance?”

The President's voice took on a hint of playfulness, as if appreciating the most amusing struggle of an ant.

“Alright, I do enjoy a good story of learning from mistakes and striving for courage.”

“Go to ‘Avalon’.”

“The ‘End’ is waiting for you.”

“Go back, find them, and then bring that ship, along with everything alive inside, back to me.”

“I want to personally make their bones, one by one, into decorations for my throne.”

The President's voice became soft, yet it carried a chill that froze Jay's soul.

“Remember, this is your only chance.”

The communication abruptly ended.

The terrifying pressure, like the descent of a god, also vanished.

Inside the Bridge, there was dead silence.

Jay slowly raised his head, the fear on his pale face having receded.

In its place was a neurotic frenzy, a mix of relief after disaster, endless malice, and fanatical faith.

“The End…”

He murmured, as if reciting the name of some forbidden deity.

He laughed, a hideous, distorted laugh, tears and drool streaming from the corners of his mouth, like a madman.

“Natural Selection… Lin Mo… and those two women…”

“Wait for me…”

“Wait for me!!!”

…Meanwhile, inside the Bridge of the Natural Selection.

On the main screen, the pure white flagship, broken in two, was dragging its damaged body, forcibly initiating a space jump, and disappearing clumsily into the distant sea of stars.

Gu Nianqiu hugged her carrot pillow and asked softly, “Brother Mo, the bad guy who threatened my sister and me ran away.”

“He won't get away.”

Lin Mo looked at the remaining space jump data on the screen, his gaze calm and unruffled.

In his conscious perspective.

A wisp of dark golden flame, thinner than a hair, silently branded itself deep into the opponent's soul at the last moment of the flagship's jump.

That wasn't an attack.

That was an eternal, unremovable coordinate.

No matter which corner of the universe he ran to.

Lin Mo would be able to find him.

“And…”

His gaze fell back to the huge, still radiating terrifyingly, vitrified pit below, and a faint, imperceptible curve appeared at the corner of his mouth.

There was no warmth in that curve.

“He'll be back.”

“Bringing the wrath of his so-called ‘god’ and even stronger power…”

Lin Mo's voice paused, then he calmly delivered the final judgment for this farce.

“…Back to die.”