The energy wail triggered by the psychic force surged straight toward Jiang Yue.
Here it comes again!
Why is it always her?
Are these psychic energies broken or what?!
Her psychic body had already exploded while attacking Lei Xi, no one could withstand such a powerful energy wail for her. Judging by today, she was bound to meet her death here. Living in this world, debts are bound to be paid sooner or later!
The late emperor’s grand enterprise collapsed midway1literally means “the late emperor’s enterprise was unfinished when he passed away.” This is a classical allusion often used in Chinese writing to evoke a sense of unfinished business or tragedy., and Jiang Yue, fleeing halfway, met her end in a massive pit.
Jiang Yue closed her eyes and raised her arms to shield her face, this was her final struggle.
The all-encompassing energy wail surged forward, bringing with it an instantaneous, overwhelming pressure.
Words could not describe the terror of the energy wail. To be inside it was to feel as if you were wrapped in an impossibly sticky glue, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable even to struggle. This mass of glue would press against your brain like a giant hand, crushing it until your mind burst like an insect under a human shoe, splattering in an instant.
The brain domain is even more elusive than air.
It has no form, no color, no taste; imperceptible, untouchable.
But this time, Jiang Yue could clearly feel its presence.
It did not exist within the human brain itself, but within human thought and consciousness. As long as a person’s mind could connect to it, a mysterious bridge would be formed.
Now, the energy wail was trying to crush that bridge.
Jiang Yue could not put this strange feeling into words. Her brain felt unbearably swollen, like during exam week when her mind had overworked, and an enormous, complex body of knowledge was forcibly crammed into her head overnight.
Her vision began to blur. She dropped to her knees, bracing herself against the tsunami-like energy wail.
The energy wail, carrying the force of a thousand thunderclaps, began to pull her consciousness out of her body. The world darkened, and everything fell silent.
Thick, viscous darkness spread before her eyes like ink, and Jiang Yue sank into a pitch-black, lifeless world.
The concept of time vanished in this dark world.
Jiang Yue’s consciousness drifted aimlessly through it, her thoughts stagnating along with time itself.
Until concentric, transparent ripples stirred in the darkness. From the ancient past came the piercing cry of an eagle that seemed to halt the clouds, followed by layers of thunder crashing like rolling stones down a mountain, echoing through a thousand valleys.
Wings that could blot out the sky and sun descended from the ripples, and a single transparent feather slowly drifted down from the air.
…
Jiang Yue woke up.
As before, she had lost consciousness in the energy wail. But now, upon waking, everything was calm, as if nothing had happened.
Zhang San lay face down behind her. Jiang Yue got up from the ground and checked on him.
Zhang San was doing fine; his breathing was steady. It seemed that the energy wail hadn’t even reached him before being blocked by some mysterious force.
Jiang Yue rubbed her throbbing head. How strange, had her psychic body really exploded during the attack on Lei Xi?
Why could she suddenly sense her connection to her psychic form again?
Jiang Yue closed her eyes and, for the first time in days, tried to summon her long-lost golden eagle.
Under her tense gaze, rings of transparent ripples spread through the air.
A taloned claw emerged from within the ripples.
Jiang Yue almost wept with joy—
It was her golden eagle!
Her psychic body hadn’t been destroyed in that explosion after all.
It had really come back!
Jiang Yue watched the eagle’s claw with a mix of anxiety and anticipation, waiting for her golden eagle to fly through the ripples. She wanted to hug it, kiss it, hold it every night as she slept!
The days without her eagle had been unbearably lonely.
But the claw lingered in midair for a moment before suddenly retracting back into the ripples.
Once again, Jiang Yue’s heart sank.
Could it be that her golden eagle had suffered aftereffects from the explosion, leaving it severely weakened and unable to fully materialize?
Jiang Yue’s long-dry eyes were slightly red, and just as the tears she had been holding back were about to fall, the ring of ripples suddenly slid down from the air, all the way to the ground.
An eagle’s claw emerged from the ripples, cautiously testing the surface with a careful step.
Then, a sphere slowly and unsteadily emerged from the ripples.
“Sphere” might not be the most accurate word, but Jiang Yue truly couldn’t find a better way to describe it.
Because what emerged from the ripples really was a sphere, rounder than any circle Jiang Yue’s high school math teacher had ever drawn on the blackboard, as if drawn with perfect precision using a compass. The only difference was that it had a bird’s head on top and two bird claws at the bottom.
This one-and-a-half-meter-tall sphere took two steps and then stopped. It lifted its bird head, looking at Jiang Yue with a dependent expression, its eyes silently saying, “Hold me!”
Jiang Yue almost fainted.
She tremulously reached out and touched the golden eagle’s belly. Even that gentle nudge sent her staggering backward, a whirlwind of sorrow and joy crashing through her all at once.
She stroked the golden eagle’s head, her voice a mix of sorrow and relief: “It’s okay… you’re back, that’s what matters… you’re back.”
The golden eagle’s eyes were gentle, and it nibbled Jiang Yue’s ear with its beak. A bittersweet ache rose in her heart. She tilted her head back, let out a long sigh, and held back the tears welling in her eyes.
Since the golden eagle was still struggling to move, Jiang Yue summoned it back to her side.
She looked up at the fissure and pulled a handful of threads, twisting them into a single glowing rope to provide light. She lifted Zhang San from the ground and tied him to herself using the glowing rope she had made from the threads.
With everything ready, Jiang Yue began to climb. Thanks to the presence of the eyeball, she felt like a low-budget version of Spider-Man. The red threads it released pierced the rock, and Jiang Yue grabbed them, using them to pull herself upward.
The higher she climbed, the lower the concentration of the blastozyme element became. About seven hours later, Zhang San, who had been unconscious, finally stirred and rested his head on Jiang Yue’s shoulder.
Jiang Yue didn’t let him go, which filled Zhang San with deep gratitude.
His voice barely a whisper, he asked, “How long have we been climbing?”
Jiang Yue licked her chapped lips and said hoarsely, “About seven hours.”
She took a deep breath and set Zhang San down from her back. The two of them sat on the slope to rest for a while.
“I’m so hungry,” Zhang San said.
“Who isn’t?” Jiang Yue replied.
Zhang San licked his pale lips and rasped, “I want water…”
Jiang Yue: “Who doesn’t want water?”
She closed her eyes and lay against the rock face to rest, reaching out to touch the hump on her chest.
Four words came to mind—flat as a board.
The hump’s energy had been completely drained. Once she escaped, she would need a good meal to replenish it. She wondered if the trash planet had any local delicacies.
After resting for half an hour, the two continued climbing. After two days and two nights, Jiang Yue finally saw a glimmer of light through the fissure above. At the same time, a foul stench wafted down, and veins bulged on Jiang Yue’s forehead as she muttered a curse under her breath.
Zhang San really knew how to pick a spot, the exit above turned out to be a garbage dump!
Instantly revitalized, Zhang San’s eyes sparkled: “Victory is right in front of us! Once we get out, we’ll be free.”
“You really know how to pick a place… a garbage dump of all things!”
Zhang San beamed, gesturing animatedly: “Ah, you just don’t get it! A garbage dump is full of all sorts of things, we can scavenge and live off it for a while.”
Jiang Yue squinted.
Suddenly, Zhang San felt a chill of killing intent. He stiffly turned his neck to look at Jiang Yue, and the bald female alpha was staring at him with a sinister glare.
Zhang San blinked nervously as Jiang Yue ground out two words through her teeth: “Ten million?”
Zhang San’s Adam’s apple bobbed, his eyes darting: “Y-Yes… yes, it’s all in the underground bank on Aquarius Star.”
Jiang Yue let out a cold laugh: “Bullshit! You’d even try to fool me, damn it!”
“N-No, no, listen! I really have money, I really do!”
Jiang Yue rolled her eyes at him. “Forget it. I’m in a good mood right now, so I’m not going to argue. Enough chatter, let’s climb out.”
Zhang San quickly nodded, and the two of them climbed with all their strength. The stench from the garbage dump grew stronger and stronger, forcing Jiang Yue to hold her breath and rely on the red threads released by the eyeball to draw in oxygen.
Rumble… rumble…
It seemed a garbage truck was approaching. The two of them stopped climbing and crouched in the fissure, watching cautiously.
Suddenly, without warning, a pile of trash tumbled down from the exit above. The two fugitives, pressed against the rock wall, were instantly buried under an endless cascade of garbage.
…
A mound of trash suddenly bulged upward. From the towering pile, a bald head emerged, topped with a green melon rind. Its eyes rolled back like dead fish, revealing the whites.
Expressionless, it removed the melon rind from its head and shook its long legs, flicking off bits of trash clinging to its pants.
A breeze swept across the garbage dump, and the pile bulged again. Another buzz-cut head crawled out.
Zhang San’s head was capped with a clump of gray-green, foul-smelling sludge. Two flies were drawn to it, buzzing incessantly around his head.
Jiang Yue very much wanted to shark someone right now.
Hold it.
Hold it.
Gotta hold it.
She kicked the trash bag in front of her with one foot, rolled her eyes, crossed her arms, and strode forward. Zhang San stumbled along behind her.
Jiang Yue snapped, “Why are you following me?”
Zhang San made a sour, miserable face. “To get by together, of course.”
Jiang Yue snorted coldly: “Who wants to get by with you? You should take a look at yourself in the mirror first.”
Zhang San tried to sweet-talk her: “I can paint, I can sing, I cook pretty well, and I know chemistry.”
“Painting? Useless. Singing? Useless. Cooking? Useless if the food isn’t good. And what does knowing chemistry have to do with me? Totally useless.”
Zhang San protested: “The first few may be useless, but chemistry? That’s definitely useful!”
He rubbed his two fingers together in front of Jiang Yue, a crooked smile on his face, strangely mischievous and bold: “I can refine extremely high-purity drugs. The trash planet’s drugs are mostly low-grade; if we team up, it’s a goldmine. Forget ten million; once the business scales up, a hundred million wouldn’t even be a question…”
Before he could finish, the female Alpha walking ahead suddenly spun around. Zhang San’s heart leapt, he thought she might have softened toward him. Instead, she grabbed him by the neck with one hand and lifted him off the ground.
Zhang San’s legs kicked frantically, his face turning red as he pounded on Jiang Yue’s wrist.
“C-c-cough… I-I w-was… j-j-joking… l-l-l-let me go…”
Jiang Yue released her grip, and Zhang San fell onto the trash, clutching his neck and gasping for air.
Out of breath, he said, “I didn’t expect… cough, cough… that you’d actually have a sense of justice.”
He looked up at her. “This isn’t Beta Planet. At a time like this, you’re still clinging to your so-called principles. The Garbage Planet is a paradise for drugs, countless people survive off this stuff. Here, what you insist on… it’s meaningless.”
“Whether it’s meaningful isn’t for you to decide. If I think it’s meaningful, then it is.”
Zhang San knelt on the ground, watching the female Alpha’s back as she turned and walked away. Lead-gray clouds drifted across the sky above the Garbage Planet, and a shaft of golden sunlight broke through the cloud cover.
Squinting, Zhang San fixated on her silhouette, slowly receding into the golden light, until she became a tiny gray dot and vanished into the brilliance.
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Sam Williams On TYMIMA Chapter 152