The Night Hunt Begins, A Terrifying Presence

Oh.

The mention of a "no-female-lead novel" immediately jogged Su Muwan's memory.

She blinked her eyes: "So your script arriving means our world is about to be flooded with Malignancies?"

Malignancies—those seemed to be the malicious byproducts spawned after the Heavenly Dao went mad.

"Not sure. Maybe."

Qin Luo clicked his tongue.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that this world’s difficulty level had been skyrocketing nonstop.

The Chosen Ones hadn’t all been contained yet.

The various factions of the Profound Heaven Realm hadn’t been fully assimilated.

The Ancient Desolation Realm had only just appeared.

And now, Malignancies were emerging too...

Especially those last words from Long Aotian...

There’s something else in the sky?

Qin Luo’s gaze darkened in contemplation.

Seeing his silence, Su Muwan waved it off nonchalantly: "Oh, come on, Qin Luo, why overthink it?"

"Isn’t it normal for there to be other beings in the sky?"

"I mean, you’re a transmigrator, I’m a regressor."

"Then there’s the whole mess of Chosen Ones from fused worlds."

"This world was already a chaotic mess to begin with."

As she spoke, she huffed indignantly: "That’s why there are so many lunatics in this world!"

"In my past life, I was the most normal person! And yet, I was driven to my breaking point by all these psychopaths!"

"Do you get it, Qin Luo? It’s like I was always right, but when too many people are wrong, I ended up looking like the odd one out."

Because...

Those Chosen Ones were just plain insane!

Always picking fights for no reason!

Never mind that I’m carrying multiple villain auras—can’t those lunatics take any responsibility for their actions?

Huh.

You know what?

After Su Muwan’s explanation, Qin Luo stopped dwelling on it.

Fair point.

The world was already this chaotic.

So what if there were other entities in the sky? That was practically expected at this point.

Looking at her puffed-up cheeks, he couldn’t help but tease: "Well, Young Miss, now that you mention it, I can’t help wondering—what if the beings up there see us as livestock?"

"You know, like the whole 'ascension is a scam' theory."

"What if we’re..."

Qin Luo raised his head, staring at the ceiling as if his gaze could pierce through to the heavens.

"...being kept here like cattle, just waiting to be devoured?"

Su Muwan: ?

She gulped and waved her hands frantically: "Hey hey hey hey... can we, like, think positive for once?"

"At worst, the beings up there are just Malignancies."

"There’s no way something strong enough to farm us like livestock exists, right?"

"Though..."

She snorted lightly. "If there’s a higher realm, I’ll just surpass it!"

"And when that happens, I’ll definitely protect you."

Qin Luo chuckled, retracting his gaze to look at her: "Then I’ll be counting on you, Young Miss."

"Hmph!"

......

......

That night.

The darkness was ink-thick.

After coaxing the young miss into a peaceful slumber,

Qin Luo stepped into the courtyard, letting the cool night breeze wash over him.

Leaning back on a recliner, he gazed up at the moon.

Why wasn’t he nestled in the warm, fragrant embrace of the young miss instead...

Qin Luo, currently freezing in the night air, really wanted to ask himself that.

But...

He took a deep breath, his expression tinged with resignation.

Thanks to Long Aotian’s warning about Malignancies, he’d finally realized something.

The "scripts" Doctor Ya mentioned—the ones assigned to everyone—

were inevitable.

For example, Su Muwan’s script was [Strong Female Lead Novel], set in a modern backdrop.

So after her rebirth, she was destined to rise to the top, crushing everyone who’d wronged her in her past life.

But now, with the Heavenly Dao collapsing and worlds merging,

the people she was supposed to trample had been replaced by a horde of Chosen Ones.

Her script had forcibly reset her past life’s tragic end, rebirthing her into this timeline.

Normally, she’d have obliterated all her past enemies after her rebirth.

But due to the world fusion and her strong female lead narrative,

the villain auras from other worlds had converged on her, turning her into this world’s ultimate antagonist.

Yet there was a catch.

The other Chosen Ones’ scripts demanded they slay the final boss.

Su Muwan’s script demanded she crush the Chosen Ones and ascend to supremacy.

Didn’t that create a fatal contradiction?

And this contradiction...

Qin Luo pondered—could it be him?

According to Doctor Ya, he was the "cleaner" chosen by the Heavenly Dao’s will.

His role was to resolve such conflicts and steer the world’s script back on track.

Did that mean...

Su Muwan’s luck alone wasn’t enough to overpower so many Chosen Ones?

Only with his involvement could the script proceed as intended?

Though the script was blatantly biased.

Because right now, the narrative wasn’t about the Chosen Ones defeating the villain—

it was about the villain annihilating the Chosen Ones to claim the throne.

But another issue remained.

Qin Luo’s original script was a no-female-lead story where he eradicated all Malignancies invading his world.

So after all these twists,

Malignancies had still appeared in this world—and exterminating them was his script.

Doctor Ya had warned that altering one’s script led to unforeseen consequences.

What those consequences were, Qin Luo didn’t know.

But if his no-female-lead script clashed with Su Muwan’s strong female lead script...

Wouldn’t that inevitably trigger something disastrous?

...Right?

Qin Luo fell silent.

He couldn’t calculate the outcome—mostly because he couldn’t see his own fate.

Su Muwan’s, however, was clear.

Her death line had transformed into a lifeline. At least she’d survive in the end.

But then... who would die in her place?

...Me?

At that thought, Qin Luo’s lips curled into a serene smile.

Well, if that’s how it is, I swear—even if I become a ghost,

I’ll flog the idiot who wrote this garbage script until they’re convulsing on the ground.

Just then—

[Master, the deployment across thirty cities around Jiangcheng is complete.]

[At your command, the Pollen of Slumber will spread through every city, lulling all inhabitants into sleep.]

[Additionally... I’ve identified these individuals who match the criteria of Chosen Ones...]

[Per your instructions, they either have no family, were once scorned in engagements, rose suddenly from mediocrity, or stumbled upon heaven-defying opportunities.]

[One among them stands out—he’s also... the "Successor of the Soul-Devouring Demonic Art."]

Qing'er’s voice echoed in his mind.

Qin Luo smirked, slowly rising from the recliner.

Haa—

He exhaled a frosty breath, his right hand conjuring a [Weeping Specter] mask.

"Then..."

"Let’s begin."

The materials for shadow creatures...

They’d start with these Chosen Ones.

Time to pick up the pace.

Otherwise... Qin Luo truly felt the difficulty of this world would escalate to a terrifying level.

Especially since his mind kept replaying...

What Ouyang Xuan had once said about the reason the leader of the Martial Arts Alliance had gathered these system holders.

In truth, there was only one reason.

And that was...

To resist the horrifying entities that might appear in the future!

........

........

Meanwhile.

In the vast expanse of high-dimensional space.

The starry river lay crumpled like candy wrappers torn by a child’s hands, with planetary debris floating between pale, skeletal fingers.

A colossus of bones sat upon a bronze throne, its spine spanning twelve collapsed star systems, rotting sinews draping like curtains as they rippled emerald in the vacuum.

Crack—

Gnarled fingers brushed against the bronze collar around its neck, and thirty thousand light-years away, a supernova erupted with a scream of infantile radiation.

The collar’s surface writhed with squirming inscriptions.

Every fissure oozed with pitch-black resentment.

[Abnormality detected in Test Site No. 10086.]

A chorus of overlapping electronic voices echoed within its skull, its decayed eye sockets reflecting a blue planet.

When it pierced through the dimensions and saw the dissipating remnants of the Heart-Devouring Ghost Child over Jiangcheng, the dark matter clouds of the entire Milky Way suddenly seethed.

"Another of Heaven’s Path’s janitors..."

The skeletal claw clenched violently, crushing the Andromeda Galaxy into a pulsing mass of bloody flesh within its grasp.

Its fury manifested as black lightning, shattering an ice giant adrift in the Kuiper Belt.

Three fully matured Heart-Devouring Ghost Children, mid-feast upon stars, froze abruptly, their compound eyes reflecting their master’s wrath.

[Deploy the Glutton Series.]

The bronze shackles around its knuckles glowed ominously as twelve pustules, each larger than Jupiter, coalesced in its palm.

Every pustule’s surface rippled with human faces—those of the "janitors of Heaven’s Path" devoured over the past million years.

Their skin had been flayed and repurposed as incubators for these embryos.

Hum—

A nail crusted with stellar fragments flicked lightly, and the pustules transformed into emerald meteors, piercing through dimensional membranes.

The burning embryos streaked unerringly toward the so-called "Chosen Ones" across countless worlds.

And one of them was headed straight for that blue planet.

"Janitor..."

It toyed with the planet like a marble between its fingers, plasma flowing like molten gold through the gaps in its bones.

"This time, I’ve prepared some... interesting toys for you."

"Let me see... in this little testing ground of mine... just what kind of amusement you, the one who destroyed my child..."

"Can offer me."