Chapter 450: Chapter 450: World Collision

It was a gloomy morning, but to call it overcast would have been inaccurate; the sky was simply dimmed as if dusk had prematurely descended upon what should have been a sunlit 7:30 AM, with the faint, yellow sunlight diffusing aimlessly across the cloudless clear sky before lethargically crashing down to the ground, presenting us with a dawn that seemed on the cusp of nightfall.

The first to notice this unusual situation was Anwina who never slept. For the Ghost Maid with a ghost-like physique, the greatest joy was to prepare a sumptuous breakfast in the kitchen, clinking and clanking about before everyone in the house woke up. As dim twilight light, that only belongs to dusk, suddenly spilled into the kitchen, and the air also filled with the unsettling “thin spiritual energy,” the Little Ghost was busy practicing her special skills as a Top Maid. Recalling the recent discussions her masters had been having about “world anomalies,” Anwina hurriedly rushed into her master’s room and called me, who was still in a drowsy state, to wake up.

“I’m very sorry, master, but you said that if anything unusual happened at home, I must inform you right away…”

Waking up her master from sleep prematurely, to Anwina, seemed an unquestionable dereliction of duty. The little ghost, who always prided herself on being the perfect maid, now wore an expression of restraint and nervousness as if she had committed an unforgivable sin.

“Ah, indeed, this is an unusual situation…”

I patted Anwina’s little head to comfort her and then peeked out the window.

“But it’s not happening just inside the house… Meow, this anomaly seems to envelop the entire city.”

It was undeniably dusk, yet the sunlight was truly coming from the east, the rising sun in a cloudless clear sky, the clear time of 7:30 on the clock, and–

The remnants of the sunset that filled the sky.

Apart from the abnormal sky, I couldn’t spot anything else. Within the range of my spiritual power perception, energy flow was still orderly and gentle; perhaps to analyze the current situation we’d just have to wait for other professionals to take action.

“Speaking of which, Anwina, you said you were training in maid-specific skills, what are they?”

Although Sandora and the others were also awakened, girls always take some time to get out of bed. Apart from Pandora, who has no self-awareness of being a loli, even Lian Shandora took a little time to do her makeup. In the few minutes before they arrived in the living room, I tried to divert Anwina’s attention: the little maid was still immersed in the deep guilt of having awakened her master from a sweet dream.

“Ah, master, are you asking about this?” My topic was effective, as Anwina’s face immediately appeared proud and smiling, and then she reached out to pick up an apple from the table beside her, “This is the ultimate skill a true top maid should master!”

I immediately complied with the expectant look in the Little Ghost’s eyes and observed her actions with curiosity.

Anwina took a deep breath, then opened her eyes wide and stared–

A faint halo of light emerged from the air, from which I could sense a holy power, which was Anwina’s strangest ability as a ghost: Undead Holy Light.

Under the careful control of a certain ghost, these tranquil halos gradually gathered in front of Anwina’s beautiful, misty brown eyes, beginning to compress into two small points of light. At that moment, my expression had gradually shifted from initial curiosity to incessant perplexity.

As expected, a second later, the two Holy Light cores compressed to the extreme suddenly burst forth, turning into two bright pale golden beams, and with a “zzt” sound, cut the apple in Anwina’s hand into two halves.

“Master! This is a skill that a perfect maid must command! Anwina can now emit X-rays from her eyes!”

Damn it, you!

I almost spat out a mouthful of old blood. What on Earth has this guy been studying usually, with all that chaotic stuff? And, as for that “Top Maid Code” that who-knows-who instilled into her, with eyes emitting “beep beep” rays… Ugh, it seems there really is such a thing… And she’s actually taking it seriously and diligently practicing it? All the maid enthusiasts around the world would weep!

“Master, did I do something wrong? But Bubbles, the mistress, told me this is a skill a qualified maid must master.”

Seeing the changes in my expression, the Ghost Maid who had initially wanted to make me smile immediately adopted a nervous and pitiful look, and cautiously spoke.

“No, it’s not you that’s wrong, it’s the world.”

I was internally crying a river as I grabbed that ghost’s icy hand and looked up at the sky speechlessly.

I just hoped that tomorrow morning, she wouldn’t drag me to watch her practice using ribbon as tentacles for attacks… That poor little ghost’s brain has been thoroughly corrupted by Bubbles.

“Ah ha, what a surprising gain. That said, even if your passions are so inflamed that you want to do this and that with your personal maid, you should at least find a place with no one around, right? To force yourself on a fragile and helpless maid in the living room is something that gets you chewed by a Cannibal Flower for three days and nights–by the name of the Lady Goddess!”

“If you don’t speak, no one will think you’re a mute!” I let go of Anwina, grabbed that overly-talkative Fake Lolita Priestess, and casually tossed her into a small basket by the sofa that was labeled “Lilina’s Exclusive Recycling Bin.” Sigh–peace at last in this world.

When I think about it, preparing that basket was one of the wisest decisions I’ve ever made.

“It’s really an unexpected development… Just a little contamination of information from another world shouldn’t trigger such a massive anomaly.”

Sandora, our Queen, had appeared in the living room at some point. She glanced at Lilina, who was dancing her hands and feet trying to get out of the basket but was having trouble because she was stuffed in head-first. Ignoring the treasure trove of hilarity, the Queen focused her attention on the unusual sky outside, curious but not the slightest bit worried.

“Brother, brother, I’ve already released the detectors~~”

Visca’s voice followed right behind me, and as we passed by the sofa, the Cat-eyed Loli caught sight of the Lady Priestess almost climbing out of the basket. After considering for three seconds under Lilina’s hopeful gaze, Visca resolutely bent down–and poked at the delicate waist of the God.

With a panic-stricken yelp, Lilina disappeared into the mouth of the basket again.

Visca, you’re so wicked! But–good job!

“Ah, brother, brother, the detector has reached its designated location!” Visca, feeling no guilt whatsoever, bounced in front of me and then suddenly said in a cheerful, rising inflection, “Let me see, the Constant Star’s movements are normal, the outer atmospheric solar radiation is normal, and the situation in other regions of Earth seems fine too… It looks like only the atmosphere above this city has this kind of situation. Above us, the normal sunshine is replaced by the light of dusk as soon as it enters the atmosphere, but the constant starlight that was there before is gone.”

“Replaced… and not just faded…”

I mulled over this particular term that Visca used. The difference in those two words overturned my initial guess about a high-altitude atmospheric lens being the issue.

The anomaly had spread throughout the entire city, yet no one noticed.

I took advantage of Bubbles and her clones being preoccupied with data analysis and stepped out onto the street with Qianqian. It was already past eight in the morning, and there were quite a few pedestrians on the road. In the dusky light, the streets were anomalously crowded… No, that’s wrong. That should be normal, right? It’s the twilight surroundings that are abnormal.

But under the oddly terrifying daylight, the pedestrians seemed completely unaware, continuing their daily routines. Their expressions weren’t the stiff and wooden ones I’d anticipated but lively and animated. Clearly, they were lucid; they just couldn’t perceive the environmental mutations around them.

I casually pulled aside an uncle I often saw in the area, struck up a conversation about the weather, and nonchalantly directed his attention skyward. But as expected, this average Uncle A didn’t think there was anything wrong with the sky. It wasn’t that he hadn’t noticed the anomaly; he simply thought a sunset glow in the morning was quite normal!

“I’m afraid the worldview of the entire city’s population has been distorted.”

After parting ways with Nameless Uncle A, I said to Qianqian with a worried tone.

The next moment, a mysterious fluctuation suddenly swept everything around me. The pedestrians on the road, the floating fuzz, and even a piece of paper spinning down from the sky nearby–all abruptly hung suspended midair–time had frozen.

“Qianqian? What’s going on?”

I asked curiously, turning my head. She had already switched to her cool mode and didn’t answer my question but slightly lifted her head to signal something.

Following her gaze, I saw the sky had bizarrely turned… zebra-striped!? The normal clear blue morning sky and the dusky twilight glow were starkly divided like zebra crossings, painting countless parallel stripes across the altered heavens. I had never seen such a surreal scene before. It was almost postmodern–wait, was Picasso postmodern?

“The abnormal information is no longer just a projection; it’s gradually becoming a tangible part of this world,” Qianqian analyzed calmly, “Now they’re merging their timelines with the real world, and hence are affected by my abilities. But since the erosion isn’t complete, there’s still some disjunction with our world. This disconnection is what’s caused the current appearance of the sky… If the sky becomes an indistinguishable Chaos, then the erosion might permanently replace the reality of this world.”

Her calm and objective analysis left me dumbfounded, and my weird stares even made the frosty Qianqian feel a bit awkward. A flicker of embarrassment crossed her icy face, then she scratched her cheek, “Ah Jun, is there something on my face?”

Even such a Qianqian still cared deeply about her lover’s gaze.

“No,” I shrugged, “I just find I’m more used to you when you’re carefree and heartless… Hey! You don’t bite when you switch personalities, right?”

“I’ve switched back!” Qianqian flashed a cute pair of Little Tiger Teeth at me menacingly, then bowed her head to continue biting.

“I was wrong! I really was–ouch! I’m actually bleeding, you scamp!”

As Qianqian’s ability ended, the flow of time resumed. The pedestrians continued with their normal lives under the altered sky, and I hurried back after receiving a Spiritual Connection from Sandora.

“What happened?”

When I returned to the living room, I was surprised to find Lin Xue there as well. Clearly, she had just rushed over, and though I was tempted to speculate whether this lass had come for a free breakfast again, the grave expression on her face let me know that Prophet Lin was seriously concerned this time.

“You’ve seen the anomalies outside, haven’t you?”

As expected, Lin Xue started with just that.

“A very bad future,” Lin Xue exclaimed as she threw herself onto the sofa, her face full of gloomy expression, “If we don’t solve the problem quickly, I’m afraid this city will be completely twisted by some power. It will disappear from the Main Material Plane, and before my eyes, the prospects for Earth are equally bleak. It’s an incredibly hard-to-understand disaster. This planet seems to have been directly transformed into a state of ‘destruction,’ and what you all see now, the twilight sky, is just the beginning of the distortion. The anomalies that have appeared all around the globe are not even a prelude.”

“What the hell happened?” I asked eagerly, but the girl with the power of foresight didn’t answer my question. Instead, she pointed at Bubbles standing beside her: “I only saw a bit of the future’s guidance. Bubbles has analyzed the source of this crisis.”

“A World Fragment,” Bubbles said with a rare serious face, “It’s preliminarily determined to be from a world that is already destroyed. For some reason, it was not disintegrated by the Void but turned into fragments of various sizes. The largest of these, about half a month ago, made contact with this world. The similarity between the two worlds’ information models caused what should have been a fleeting intersection to evolve into a disastrous collision. Now, that fragment from another plane has already struck the law system of our world and has begun to merge continuously with the World Law. The anomalies that have emerged around the world are the result of this integration, which has grown strong enough to affect reality. This city… might be at the very first point of contact or that fragment may have a high ‘compatibility’ with this city. In any case, this is where the distortion is most severe, and the order of the real world may be replaced by chaotic remnants at any moment.”

Such bizarre circumstances were unheard of, so it took me a while to get the gist of things like World Fragments and law contamination, which Bubbles explained as simply as possible. Yet, rather than the unimaginable world collision, my mind raced to another issue:

“What about Dingdang? As the manager of the world, she couldn’t have possibly failed to notice the abnormalities in her domain, could she?”

“That’s the problem. The Lady Goddess noticed something was off half a month ago, but the anomaly was misleadingly directed–the Lady Goddess followed the information guided by the World Tree to troubleshoot the fault but found it to be a false alarm. As a result, the World Fragment collision was covered up by that false alarm, and we only realized all this when it started to erode our world after its dormant phase.”

“Uh… Miss Lilina?” I looked incredulously at the Fake Lolita who not long ago was struggling in a basket. The person before me dressed in a gold-edged, green-patterned, gorgeous festive robe, holding a heavy lawbook in one hand and the World Tree branch scepter in the other, crowned with a jade garland, and so on, emanating a holy aura… Was she really the notoriously sly and venomous-tongued Lilina with a hidden masochistic trait?

“I have a feeling that just now, some disrespectful thoughts flitted through your mind that could pollute the world,” the Lady Priestess looked up at me with a pure 45deg angle gaze, and then decisively headbutted my chin, “After all, it’s better to hit now and talk… Ouch!”

Darn, as the world’s strongest man, my chin’s strength is such that I could use it to crack nuts… Uh, where did this oddly self-deprecating internal monologue come from?

“You mean, this could be a deliberate attack by someone?” Big Sister’s face was extra serious as she held back Lilina, who was flailing about trying to desperately find her boss.

At that moment, I knew that the long vacation I’d been savoring for half a month was indeed over.

“The Fragment’s collision and fusion with our world showed a high degree of intelligence. Coupled with the previous misleading of the Lady Goddess, someone must be manipulating things behind the scenes,” Lilina spoke seriously, holding the lawbook and waving the World Tree branch, “We need to enter that World Fragment! First, we must figure out how to separate it! In the name of the Life Goddess!”

I swear, it must be the first time that a Fake Lolita is seriously invoking Dingdang’s name–just think of the number of unscrupulous things she’s done previously in Little Dong’s name!

“Where’s Dingdang?” I looked around curiously. As the person ultimately responsible for this incident, she couldn’t possibly not be involved, could she?

“The Lady Goddess is in the World Tree Temple. She is preparing a special passage for us to enter the World Fragment. Although the phase device made by Xyrin Technology could also send us there by phase shifting, the invading Fragment has already merged with reality. Standard phase shifting might harm the real world, so using the World Tree Temple for intervention would be safer,” Lilina said seriously, and at that moment I finally confirmed that even the usually frivolous Fake Lolita had some integrity as the Chief Priestess.

“In short, we need to carefully and cautiously separate that World Fragment from the real world,” Lilina grandly waved the World Tree branch scepter, her spirit soaring, “And then we loot money, loot food, loot territory! A destroyed world has no human rights!!”

… I take back what I said.

(Today is Mother’s Day, thus far) (To be continued, for the continuation of the story, please visit www.wuxiaworld.site, more chapters available, support the author, support genuine reading!)