89: Chapter 89 added the power of a zero

Then Chu Yin saw it.

At the final moment of the staff's activation, a line of small text appeared on the card face that only the user could see.

[Parameter Confirmation: Causality Amplification Multiplier 100x]

[Note: The original design plan was for 10x amplification. The Card Creator wrote an extra zero when filling in the causality coefficient. It has automatically taken effect. Good luck.]

[Note 2: Due to the wish, the power of this magic has been amplified once again.]

Chu Yin's brain stalled for 0.03 seconds.

"Su Bai, you f***—"

The rest of her words were swallowed up.

The beam of light descended.

That was not a [Bombardment]. That was the blooming of the singularity in the first second of the Big Bang!

A beam of light, interwoven with crimson and pink, erupted from the tip of the staff. Its diameter instantly expanded from three hundred meters to three thousand meters. Wherever the beam passed, space itself was torn into fragments—not split, but shredded. The space fragments splattered like broken glass, revealing the pitch-black higher-dimensional void behind them.

Demon Lord Xuangu's dark purple orb of light vanished the very first millisecond it touched the pink beam.

It wasn't defeated.

It was negated; that fanatical and grand magic directly swallowed it whole, assimilating it, to the point where not a single sound could be heard!

Then came the bone armor. Then the torso. Then the core. Then the life box, hidden in another spatial dimension and claimed to be [Untouchable].

The life box didn't even last a ten-thousandth of a second before the pink beam.

Because in the face of the law of causality, the phrase [Hidden in another dimension] is inherently invalid.

Causality does not look at dimensions.

Causality only looks at whether something [Exists] or [Does Not Exist].

Shadow One and Shadow Two didn't even have time to scream. The two Rank 9 Shadow Demons, along with their thirteen pupils, curved daggers, probability-state bodies, and all the law resistance they had accumulated in the Abyss for hundreds of years—were directly erased from the causal level within the pink beam. Not killed. Deleted. Completely removed from the timeline. It was as if they had never existed.

Then the beam continued forward.

Twelve waves of demons were swallowed up. All Abyss rifts were torn open in reverse, burned through, and evaporated. The pitch-black rift spanning half the sky above the city curled, charred, and turned into nothingness from the edges, like a piece of paper being set on fire within the pink light.

The beam pierced through the clouds.

It exploded in space two thousand kilometers above the surface.

A pink mushroom cloud with a diameter of one hundred miles bloomed slowly in the cosmos.

Looking up from the ground, a second sun appeared in the sky.

A pink sun.

—

Sword Saint Lu Changsheng lay in a human-shaped crater at the bottom of the canyon.

His broken sword lay at his side.

Fragments of his silver-white armor were scattered everywhere.

He saw that beam of light shoot into the sky from the direction of the city. Piercing through the clouds. Puncturing the firmament. Exploding into a pink sun in the cosmos.

He saw Demon Lord Xuangu, who had beaten him until he had no power to fight back, look like a scrap of paper thrown into a steel furnace within the beam, not lasting even a single frame.

Then he saw the starting point of the beam.

That figure wearing a ten-layered lace puffy dress, holding a red magic staff, standing in the center of a magical girl idol BGM.

It was his apprentice.

Chu Yin.

The corners of Sword Saint Lu Changsheng's mouth twitched.

"...What the hell is that."

He looked down at the broken sword in his hand. The proof of fifty years of traversing the Abyss. A Rank 7 SSS-grade Ancient Hero Awakening Card. A 37% success rate. A final gamble with his soul.

And then his apprentice.

A Rank 1 card.

A single shot that wiped out a star.

"Ha—"

Sword Saint Lu Changsheng leaned his head back against the rubble, gazing at the pink mushroom cloud slowly dissipating in the sky.

"Hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha—"

He couldn't stop laughing. He laughed until his broken ribs ached. He laughed until tears streamed down his wrinkles. He didn't know if he was laughing at that kid Su Bai for writing an extra zero, or laughing at himself for living these fifty years in vain.

Or maybe both.

Dao Heart?

Where would a Dao Heart come from? It had long since shattered into dust along with that broken sword.

—

Three hundred miles away.

Canglan Strait.

Li Qingyue was using the universal balance to support a Shield of Truth covered in cracks. Three Rank 9 monsters bombarded her simultaneously. The old wound at the corner of her mouth split open again, and blood dripped down her chin.

Then those three monsters stopped attacking at the same time.

Not because of Li Qingyue.

It was because they sensed that fluctuation coming from the direction of the city. That fluctuation which did not belong to any known system of laws, carried a pink light, and directly smashed the fear switch at the instinctual level of the Rank 9 monsters.

Then they turned away simultaneously. Not to escape—it was instinct. Just like a rabbit hearing a tiger yawn in the grass. Their bodies moved on their own.

Then they saw that pink beam of light piercing the firmament.

Then they saw that pink mushroom cloud blooming in space.

Then they sensed it—the aura of Demon Lord Xuangu had vanished. Not weakened. Not transferred. It had been completely and utterly wiped from this world.

The three Rank 9 monsters exchanged a glance.

Then they tore open spatial rifts simultaneously.

And ran.

Li Qingyue did not pursue.

Because she was also stunned.

That porcelain doll-like face of a twelve or thirteen-year-old girl lifted up, her crimson eyes reflecting the light of that pink sun. Her lips moved, emitting a breathy sound she hadn't even realized she made.

"...Su Bai?"

Behind her, Deputy Commander Xiao Hongyan stepped out from a flame rift. The Fire Phoenix Supreme had been in seclusion for nine days; she had just finished refining the Rank 9 Kyubey Card when she sensed the spatial abnormality in the direction of the city, forcibly interrupting her seclusion to tear through space and rush over. At this moment, the magical girl card had only been refined halfway, and she was forced to exit seclusion.

Then she saw that pink sun.

Then she was silent for a full five seconds.

"F***!"

A woman, a 9th-tier Supreme. The Commander-in-Chief of the Abyss Front.

She said one word.

Li Qingyue slowly closed her eyes. Then opened them. Then her voice was very soft, so soft that only she could hear it.

"He said ten times."

"...What?"

"The amplification multiplier. The plan he showed me was ten times."

Xiao Hongyan was silent for a second. Then, for the first time, she asked a question in a tone that was not joking.

"This power... it seems like a zero was missing?"

Li Qingyue did not answer.

She opened a spatial rift. Xiao Hongyan followed. The two 9th-tier Supremes vanished simultaneously into the intersection of fire and space.

Destination: The city.

Target: That genius who wrote an extra zero.

—

The pink sun dissipated in the cosmos.

Silence returned to the sky above the city.

Chu Yin lay face down in the pile of rubble in the plaza.

The red magic staff had slipped from her hand and rolled three meters away; her clothes were tattered, and her bow was crooked, stuck to her right ear. Her twin tails were completely undone.

Mana zeroed out.

Stamina zeroed out.

She didn't even have the strength to turn over.

"Su... Su Bai..."

Her voice came out muffled from the crevices of the rubble.

Su Bai poked his head out from the edge of the plaza. His steps were light; his face was covered in dust, but he was abnormally excited.

"I'm here, I'm here—wait a second, let me check the data first—"

"Drag me back—"

"Just a second—I'm looking at the energy curve—Oh my god, your peak mana output just now was actually—"

"Su Bai!"

Chu Yin pulled her face out of the rubble. Her face was covered in dust. The tip of her nose was scraped. There was a small bruise on her forehead. Her expression was very calm.

"That one hundred times!"

"Huh?"

"You wrote it."

"..."

"You said it was ten times."

"Maybe—perhaps—a slip of the hand?"