ABST Chapter 44

The news about Tiangu recruiting ability users had been making waves three years ago.

 

Many free ability users abandoned their hometowns, desperate to squeeze their way in.

 

Tiangu Ability User Base.

 

Sunlight outside the window fell on the bright office desk, with several blooming sunflowers arranged in a porcelain vase.

 

A man biting a tobacco pipe flipped through the documents in his hand. “Tsk, only recruited three? Didn’t even meet the original target of four?”

 

The recruitment officer looked troubled. “There’s nothing we can do, Mr. Chi Yu. The recruitment criteria you set were too high—age requirements, potential requirements, and rarity of abilities… Ability users are already scarce. Finding this many is already exceptional.”

 

Chi Yu rubbed his face. “Fine. The elite team focuses on quality, not quantity. Let’s leave it at that.”

 

He stroked his chin. “Yuan Guang has had no activity since they changed bosses five years ago. They haven’t caused destruction like before. What do you think they’re doing? Secretly plotting to destroy the world?”

 

The officer muttered, “How would I know?”

 

Yuan Guang had always allied with exotic beasts, releasing them to destroy cities—they were Tiangu’s mortal enemies. But in the past five years, for some unknown reason, not only did they quietly change bosses, they’ve gone completely silent.

 

Chi Yu joked, “Exotic beasts are rampant. Tiangu has been busiest these past few years, and Yuan Guang chooses this time to stay quiet. If I didn’t know it was impossible, I’d really think someone was helping us.”

 

He sighed deeply, stretched, and stood up. Holding the files of the three youths about to join the elite team, he muttered inexplicably as he reached the door: “Three people…”

 

“Feels like something’s missing.”

 

The sunflowers on the office desk faced the sun, crystalline water droplets on them shimmering with warm light.

 

***

 

Northern Yu Domain

 

Exotic beasts ran rampant, while ability users were extremely scarce.

 

Most ability users were concentrated in Tiangu and Yuan Guang. Free ability users remained neutral, occasionally helping out, occasionally accepting assassination missions from Yuan Guang to kill Tiangu’s high-ranking members.

 

Tiangu was located at the domain’s center, convenient for dispatching ability users when exotic beasts attacked. Yuan Guang was positioned at the southern edge before Starry Sea Forest.

 

The two faced each other from afar, notorious enemies.

 

…

 

Starry Sea Forest

 

Yuan Guang Organization

 

An elderly man with a stern face and silver hair, dressed in butler’s attire, gently pushed open the leader’s room.

 

The room was completely dark.

 

On the large bed sat a youth who appeared eighteen or nineteen years old.

 

The youth had heterochromatic eyes, one blue and one red—beautiful odd-colored eyes. His ash-gray long hair draped over the bed, making his complexion appear exceptionally pale.

 

He currently sat cross-legged with a mirror floating before him.

 

The mirror projected three people—two boys and a girl around fifteen or sixteen years old. Having just met, their youthful faces held anticipation and excitement for the future as they walked together toward Tiangu’s training base.

 

The image in the mirror was blurry, yet the youth watched intently with a smile on his lips.

 

The old man glanced at the untouched breakfast on the table, snorted coldly in his heart, walked over leisurely, and confiscated the mirror the youth was staring at.

 

“Leader, stop watching.”

 

“Uncle Xiao Fu…” Shi Deng looked up helplessly. “I just started watching.”

 

The old man remained unmoved. “You’re lying. Your breakfast is untouched. Also, how many times have I told you? You should call me Uncle Old Fu now.”

 

He clapped his hands. Someone outside bowed and pushed in a cart with freshly prepared lunch.

 

Uncle Fu said, “I’ll watch you eat. You can watch after you finish.”

 

Shi Deng sighed helplessly. He turned his head to the left and muttered, “See, Uncle Xiao Fu is being mean again.”

 

Then he looked to the right and said, “Did he used to be this mean before? I can’t remember.”

 

The youth’s left and right sides were completely empty.

 

In the dim room, this appeared somewhat unsettling.

 

The person who brought the meal broke into a cold sweat, feeling chills down their spine.

 

They had long known the leader wasn’t quite normal, but seeing it firsthand was another matter entirely. Next time, this meal delivery task should be left to someone else…

 

The person delivering the meal was dismissed.

 

Uncle Fu’s expression remained unchanged; if anything, it became more amiable. He nodded toward both sides of Shi Deng and smiled. “Are they here too?”

 

Shi Deng: “Mm.”

 

This time he properly finished his meal. Uncle Fu then took out a bottle of medicine. “This one.”

 

After watching Shi Deng obediently take it, Uncle Fu returned the mirror to him. “Leader, what do you plan to do this time?”

 

Shi Deng ran his fingers along the mirror’s edge, silent for a long while.

 

He walked barefoot to the window and pulled back a corner of the bed curtain. Piercing sunlight outside streamed in through the gap, and he instinctively shrank back from it. “This time…”

 

“The last time. I don’t want to avoid them anymore.”

 

The youth finally pulled the curtain shut, gazing toward a pot of dead sunflowers in the corner. He extended his pale, slender fingers and gently pointed at it from a distance.

 

“Time.”

 

The sunflower seemed to be granted new life, reverse-growing in an instant, rapidly returning to its most brilliant bloom.

 

…

 

[Time Paradox Sunflower Arc! Baldy says this arc is definitely different. Shi Deng is so pitiful—can he get his wish and change everyone’s ending?]

 

[Baldy also says the ending will definitely satisfy us QAQ. If he hurts our Shi baby again, I’ll fight him to the death!]

 

[Damn, at first I thought this was just a shonen manga. Who knew that after the Yuan Marrow incident, it turned into a knife manga, stabbing one person repeatedly. Baldy, you old fox, waaah…]

 

[Sunflower Arc (screaming) Sunflowers forever face the sun—that’s a beautiful meaning, right? Everyone will be okay qwq]

 

[Shi baby made a different choice this time! He didn’t choose to silently give everything alone in the background. Quick, let Sister Le and Sarcastic Brother and the other two properly teach him a lesson!]

 

[Haven’t Shi-ge and Xiao Deng appeared yet? Shi baby is talking to them, right?]

 

[Hhhh soon, right? Uncle Fu has aged a lot again. Shi baby’s hair has completely turned white this time. Hey, what medicine did Uncle Fu give him? There wasn’t this detail in previous arcs, right?]

 

[What letters are written on that pill bottle? It’s blurred out. Is this a new setting Baldy added?]

 

[Newcomer here, a bit lost. Does this heterochromatic beauty have a mental illness? Why is he talking to the air?]

 

[Shi baby is miserable enough—how could he have mental illness! That’s… forget it, too complicated to explain.]

 

[Suggest starting from the beginning of Time Paradox with the Youth Arc, then Reversal Arc, Abyss Arc… Super sweet, sweet to death hahahaha]

 

**

 

Consciousness Sea

 

Gong Du looked at the forum comments the small light orb had transmitted to him, then flipped through his script. “The last time. I can wrap things up now. I’ve found a way.”

 

The small light orb looked at the ending of his script. “Hiss… Will this work?”

 

Gong Du sighed. “There’s no other way. But only like this can I change the protagonist group’s inevitable death ending in this manga world…”

 

This was the second world he’d taken on.

 

Completely different from the first world.

 

Very special—a small world derived from a manga in the big world.

 

Large and small worlds were connected. If something went wrong with the small world, it would cause problems in the big world too. Like a pregnant mother—if something happened to the fetus, the mother would also be affected.

 

Ordinary manga had no chance of becoming a small world. The problem lay with the big world’s world consciousness—

 

It was a writing brush.

 

The manga was drawn by it, and it had even given itself a pen name: Baldy.

 

But it had drawn a beginning, then discovered it couldn’t separate this vaguely forming manga world. In short, it had a difficult birth.

 

Gong Du said casually, “This is the first time I’ve seen such a troublemaking world consciousness.” Why not just behave? Why draw manga?

 

The small light orb nodded deeply. “Agreed.”

 

Gong Du: “What a hassle… Forget it. All for the makeup exam.”

 

His current goal was to separate the manga world from the original world.

 

This was very difficult. The small light orb hadn’t anticipated this situation beforehand. When submitted to the makeup exam headquarters, headquarters had no solution either, so they could only have Gong Du try to resolve it.

 

Gong Du wasn’t an omnipotent god. He’d revised the script countless times and tried twelve times total. This was the thirteenth.

 

Each attempt reset the manga world’s timeline. Of course, “Shi Deng,” the role Gong Du played in the manga world, also paid a price each time.

 

The first time, he tried to become the protagonist group’s companion. But at the time point of the Yuan Marrow incident, the protagonist group was annihilated, leaving only him.

 

The second time, he reset the world line for the first time and became a villain opposing the protagonists, betraying his side at the crucial moment. But the protagonist group still died.

 

The third time, he cheated his way into Tiangu, became colleagues with Coach Chi, and became the protagonist group’s instructor, teaching them how to respond to danger together. But he still couldn’t change things.

 

The fourth time… until the twelfth time, he never succeeded, watching helplessly as the protagonist group died before his eyes.

 

The manga world “Time Paradox” could reset its timeline because it wasn’t yet a complete world.

 

The fate line of death seemed impossible to reverse.

 

And in the already-formed big world, the timeline couldn’t be reset. In the manga readers’ eyes, Time Paradox was just a manga.

 

As Gong Du reset repeatedly, the world consciousness, to make the manga story coherent, wretchedly named the first story—when Gong Du was the protagonist group’s companion—the “Youth Arc.”

 

Later, as resets increased, the manga successively produced the “Reversal Arc,” “Abyss Arc,” and now this “Sunflower Arc.”

 

An opening full of hot-blooded youth gradually twisted into a knife manga, stabbing the big world’s readers until they died and came back to life.

 

The small light orb worried. “The world consciousness… oh, Baldy, told me that if you reset again, it’s going to get bombs mailed to it by readers.”

 

Baldy also conveniently sent them a link to the big world’s manga reader forum. Every time a new chapter updated, countless resentments would appear inside.

 

Baldy begged Gong Du to find a solution quickly, but didn’t dare rush him too much. After all, this was a mess it had created itself. If Gong Du left, where would it find another deity to help?

 

As early as the previous twelve failed resets, the small light orb had already urged him to go to another world.

 

Gong Du: “Tell it to relax. This time should be fine.”

 

This time, he not only reasonably inserted the disease randomly assigned to him in this world into the plot, but could also utilize the previous twelve resets. When the manga world separated from the original world, he would obtain the luck value he wanted.

 

…

 

Only Shi Deng remained alone in the room. He spoke two sentences to the air, then looked at the mirror.

 

He said softly, “Long time no see.”

 

My old friends.

 

**

 

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