Chapter 150: Divine Spawn

This opening remark was soft and gentle, clearly belonging to a female persona.

"Cinderella? Are you here to look for the prince and the glass slipper?"

Facing this uninvited guest, Adonsa's tone was unmistakably unkind, dripping with undisguised mockery.

"The glass slipper is merely a nightmare that rots away after midnight, and the prince is the evil embodiment of a savage patriarchy. What Cinderella should pursue is the freedom to shatter the birdcage."

The entity calling herself Cinderella presented a striking appearance: a beautiful woman imprisoned by a heavy straitjacket upon spiderweb-like extending chains. A thick blindfold covered the entirety of her face above her upper lip, yet her bare chin alone possessed a breathtaking beauty. Long blonde hair cascaded down, and her fair skin seemed to radiate a gentle glow. Above her head floated a halo of shifting, sharp spikes, whose brilliant radiance surrounded her, compelling mortals to instinctively kneel and worship.

In this mental realm, however, Adonsa manifested as a colossal, fangs-rimmed giant eye, surrounded by root-like flesh that formed an even larger revolving dial.

She accepted Adonsa's mockery and answered earnestly.

"Sharp rhetoric. State your business, and get lost."

Adonsa replied without the slightest politeness. This was its domain, and against a consciousness that had somehow crossed countless light-years and cosmic barriers, it had no reason to yield.

Cinderella sighed softly and said, "Adonsa, have you never wondered who you are? You believe you are wielding technology and magics, but how is it that you can divide yourself into a thousand avatars without the slightest delay? How can you transcend the limits of microscopic reactions to evolve at will? And how can you devour everything without suffering any backlash? Have you ever thought about these things?"

Adonsa replied, "There is a saying that fits this question well: 'Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.' Forcibly pondering questions that exceed the limits of knowledge only occupies the space of thought and leads one astray into ruin."

Cinderella looked somewhat surprised. "Is this your way of thinking? Treating everything as a pure tool, devoid of the slightest joy or hatred, without getting lost in a pointless self? Indeed, you are the most dangerous aberration unit."

"Aberration unit?" A sense of déjà vu welled up, yet remained obscured as if through a veil. Adonsa asked, "What is that?"

Before Cinderella, a wisp of familiar grey smoke suddenly emerged, within which a mocking eyeball spun incessantly, deriding this dull world.

Adonsa turned to investigate, only to discover that the grey smoke previously imprisoned within the Bose-Einstein condensate had been silently snatched away.

Adonsa asked expressionlessly, "Is this an aberration unit?"

Cinderella shook her head slightly, her long blonde hair swaying. "Yes, and no. You could even say that every living being, and perhaps every single piece of information in this world, has the potential to become an aberration unit. And an aberration unit does not necessarily remain an aberration unit forever."

Recalling the grey smoke that had abruptly formed in the gaps of the psychic crystals earlier without any prior contact, Adonsa murmured, "Not pollution, not assimilation, nor division... The aberration unit is not an external invader, but a mutated individual generated from within a cosmic system? In other words, the possibility of becoming an aberration unit exists within the foundational imprint of every life form, much like cancer cells."

Cinderella said, "So, do you now know why I am here?"

"Hehehe..." Adonsa sneered coldly. "Because I have grown too fast—fast enough to draw the attention of all aberration units, including the Cancer of Ten Thousand Realms itself, the prime source."

Unexpectedly, Cinderella shook her head. "The prime source? No. Right now, this Cancer of Ten Thousand Realms, which spans the multiverse and devours infinite universes and civilizations every second, might simply be a slightly stronger aberration unit itself. We call it the 'God-Spore'. And an aberration unit that devours and evolves without restraint will soon find itself growing more and more similar to the 'God-Spore', ultimately actively merging into it."

"So, its name is the God-Spore..." Adonsa recalled the flesh-and-blood planet with its gaping maw, the headless giant singing aloud, and that field of blood-red reminiscent of a prairie...

They were not true deities; some were star-faring planetary consciousnesses, some were star-herdsmen grazing constellations, and others were world-trees propping up entire planes. Yet, after evolving to their limits on their respective paths, they had all involuntarily gravitated toward the attributes of the God-Spore, actively becoming it and losing their sense of self.

Cinderella said, "The Cancer of Ten Thousand Realms—as the name implies, it is the tumor of the multiverse. It devours and multiplies madly, carpeting all of space-time with distorted, polluted flesh. It plunders the nourishment of the entire multiverse without contributing a single bit, yet it never dies, returning everything to the cycle of reincarnation. Every time it breathes, every bite it takes, pushes this universe one step closer to ultimate nothingness and silence. Therefore, you know what I want to say."

Adonsa knew what she wanted to say.

The God-Spore did not actively reach out tentacles to devour all things; rather, it quietly waited for aberration units within various universes to resonate and draw close to it, then silently watched as its own body grew a fraction larger, reaping the rewards without effort.

There was probably no method of cultivation in this world more comfortable, simple, or efficient than this.

Devouring, plundering, evolving—these were the instincts of every living creature. Life forms lacking this instinct would have long since been eliminated on the path of evolution.

The God-Spore was like an antlion lurking at the bottom of a sandbox-like multiverse, and all other existences—whether aberration units or ordinary individuals—were inevitably dragged into this endless vortex.

As an aberration unit with unimaginable evolutionary speed, Adonsa drawing the attention of the God-Spore was an absolute certainty.

Cinderella's purpose, in truth, was to force Adonsa to halt its evolution and stop growing stronger.

Appearing with such an overwhelming posture boded no good intentions either. Once negotiations broke down, resorting to force would be the only option left for both parties.

Yet Adonsa said, "I have already seen the Cancer of Ten Thousand Realms."

Cinderella said in astonishment, "What? You actually returned unscathed from the summon of the Cancer of Ten Thousand Realms?"

Adonsa laughed self-deprecatingly. "Unscathed? Perhaps. Ordinary damage and pollution are meaningless to me."

As long as a single intact cell of Adonsa remained, it could regenerate.

On the contrary, that sense of desecration and distortion was something that could plunge one into a state of intoxicating, utter madness and terror, completely beyond extrication.

Why had it been able to decisively sever its connection with the God-Spore? Adonsa was pondering this question itself.

It was because it felt that the God-Spore was not the true Cancer of Ten Thousand Realms; the true Cancer of Ten Thousand Realms should not look like that.

Cinderella fell silent. For a moment, the golden halo above her head fluctuated violently like piano keys playing at high speed, seemingly performing intense calculations or arguing with someone.

Suddenly, the halo paused. Streams of radiance converged from the chains into her body, and Cinderella delivered her final ultimatum.

"No, we cannot harbor wishful thinking. Every single entity eroded by the Cancer of Ten Thousand Realms represents the fall of a universe, and no one can bear that cost. Anti-entropy space-time aberration unit Adonsa, I place you under custody in my capacity as Cinderella, a Level 5 Arbiter of the Divine Agency. Any resistance or evasion will be regarded as hostile intent, meeting with obliterating force."

The golden halo above Cinderella's head suddenly split with a sharp ping into a smaller halo, which flickered like piano keys and gradually flew toward Adonsa, as if about to be placed upon Adonsa's brow.

An incomparable coercion erupted fully, as though the mass of an entire planet were bearing down upon Adonsa's consciousness. Its gnarled tentacles were pressed flat against the ground like dying venomous snakes.

Yet Adonsa's single eye grew increasingly ferocious and terrifying, its interlocking fangs bared between its narrowing eyelids as it let out a harsh scream.

"Let me tell you something wonderful: whoever dares to stand in my way, I'll smash their damn head in!"