My brother is so cunning

Chapter 1183 The Struggle for Destiny
Just then, the frontline communicator rang repeatedly, and the staff officer's voice, filled with suppressed panic, was no longer as urgent as before:

"Heavenly Venerable! The Immortal Slaughtering Sword Formation is still advancing in the heart of the Southern Continent, a thousand miles away from Freedom City! But it is like a moving calamity. Wherever the Chaos Domain passes, it has successively destroyed three cities of the Alliance of All Beings—Xihe City has completely collapsed underground, Weishui City is shrouded in evil energy, and the people in the city are having difficulty breathing. Even the protective formation of Qinghe Town has been shattered by the dissipated sword energy. Disaster warnings are coming from all over the Southern Continent!"

Wen Rui suddenly looked up at the battlefield monitoring screen—on the screen, the Chaos Realm was no longer a threat approaching Free City, but a black nightmare hanging over the Southern Continent.

It spread slowly to the southeast at a speed visible to the naked eye, like rice paper soaked in ink, and wherever it passed, once prosperous cities were instantly reduced to ruins.

The "Disaster Warning Bar" on the right side of the screen was filled with red dots, stretching from the western part of Jambudvipa to the central part. Each red dot represented a town that had been affected by the disaster, and the Chaos Realm's advance path was slowly moving southeastward towards Free City. Although it was still a thousand miles away from Free City, the world-destroying power had already shrouded the entire city in a suffocating fear.

"Can't wait any longer."

Wen Rui took a deep breath, suppressing his agitation, and ordered in a deep voice into the communicator: "Activate the Level 1 evacuation plan for Free City! Notify the transportation department to open all air routes and main ground roads, and mobilize all hoverbuses and maglev trains; have the space battleship fleet disengage from combat formation and dock at the East City Airport, with each warship freeing up at least 80% of its space for transporting civilians; in addition, contact the security outposts around the Southern Continent and coordinate with them to receive the disaster victims, and dispatch a rescue fleet to Weishui and Qinghe cities to transfer as many survivors as possible!"

The moment the command was given, Liberty City sprang into action, like a precision machine that had been put into operation.

In the air, thousands of hoverbuses, like schools of silver fish, took off in an orderly fashion along pre-set routes, heading towards the safe zone outside the city; on the ground, maglev trains shuttled through the city at top speed, each carriage packed with people carrying simple luggage, yet there was no chaos; at the eastern airport, three spaceships, comparable in size to small mountains, opened their hatches, with robotic arms and conveyor belts operating efficiently, prioritizing the elderly, women, and children as they boarded the ships, while soldiers and volunteers maintained order on the sidelines.

Meanwhile, three rescue fleets departed from the harbor outside Freedom City, speeding towards Weishui City and Qinghe Town. Inside the fleets' medical bays, nanobots and emergency equipment were already prepared, and the soldiers were eager to rescue as many civilians as possible from the malevolent energy and ruins.

Before the soldiers even arrived, the nanounits that Wen Rui had previously dispersed into the air were activated and gathered together.

Simple exoskeleton powered armor was formed on the bodies of the uninjured disaster victims. With the armor, even women, children and the elderly could walk swiftly and even leap more than ten meters away in a single bound, as if they had learned light-body skills.

With the boost of their mobility, the disaster victims immediately fled the perilous place shrouded in the out-of-control chaotic sword energy.

The remaining nanounits coalesced into skeletal engineering robots and search and rescue robot dogs, which immediately began digging through the rubble to find the victims buried beneath.

Once rescued, the nanounits will enter the body through the wounds and construct a miniature surgical robot inside the body to immediately begin nanoscale emergency surgery.

"Your Majesty, the evacuation efficiency has far exceeded expectations!"

Half an hour later, the staff officer reported: "Currently, 300,000 people have boarded the spaceship, and the hoverbuses can transport 5,000 people every five minutes. It is expected that the evacuation of all residents of Freedom City can be completed within two hours. The rescue fleet has arrived at the outskirts of Qinghe Town and is breaking through the blockade of the evil energy. It is expected that it can enter the city to carry out rescue operations within one hour!"

Wen Rui watched the orderly flow of people on the monitoring screen, as well as the images transmitted back by the rescue fleet. This was the power of technology.

Two hundred years ago, faced with natural and man-made disasters of this scale, people could only close their eyes and wait for death.

Just like the flood at Chentang Pass, the Dragon King's anger alone left the entire city's inhabitants with nowhere to go but heaven and earth. If Nezha hadn't committed suicide to appease the Dragon King, innocent mortals would have been buried with him for the trouble he caused. But now, thanks to hovercraft and spaceships, the evacuation can be largely completed in just a few hours.

On the screen, the people of Free City were worried but not desperate. Many waved at the camera and shouted, "Believe in Wenrui Tianzun!" The people of Qinghe Town were so excited when they saw the rescue fleet that they burst into tears. These images were being transmitted throughout the Three Realms through the nano clouds, becoming the best testament to his "protection of all living beings."

Only Wen Rui himself knew the turmoil churning within him at that moment.

He's not some "savior," just a miserable host being manipulated by the system.

With his abilities, if he wanted to escape, he could simply activate the jump engine and leave the Primordial Three Realms, flying light-years away. No matter how strong the Primordial Heavenly Venerable's Immortal Slaughtering Sword Formation was, its slow speed was a fatal flaw, and it would ultimately be unable to defeat him.

But he couldn't escape.

He looked at the karmic debt value jumping on the "Causality" computer screen—as the city of Southern Jambudvipa was destroyed, the value was climbing at an even faster rate, having already exceeded 350,000, but the Heavenly Dao vortex in the sky was still only flashing with lightning, without sending down tribulation lightning.

His insistence on evacuation and sending out rescue teams was essentially a struggle with the Primordial Celestial Venerable for the "favor" of the Heavenly Dao, which is often referred to in metaphysics as "luck," "fate," or "destiny."

Yuanshi Tianzun is a native sage with his own Heavenly Dao buff, while this "visitor from outside the realm" can only accumulate fortune by "protecting all living beings" so that Heavenly Dao will think he is more worthy of support than Yuanshi, and that supporting him will be more beneficial to the world.

If we desert now, all our previous pretense will be for naught.

When the "hero's" persona collapses and the public's trust turns into resentment, the Chan Sect can seize the opportunity to frame and slander him, saying that he "failed to save lives and deserted his post." In that case, the war of public opinion will be a complete defeat, and the heavenly order and fortune will inevitably turn back to the Chan Sect.

Without the blessing of fortune, he would not only be unable to use the power of the Heavenly Dao to restrain Yuanshi, but it would also become difficult for him to gain a foothold in this world. He could escape for a while, but not forever. A visitor from outside the realm who had lost the approval of the Heavenly Dao would be found by Yuanshi Tianzun sooner or later, and then he would truly perish.

"Your Excellency, a report from the evacuation point in the west of the city indicates that some elderly people are unwilling to leave, saying they want to coexist with the city," the staff officer's voice pulled Wen Rui back to reality.

Wen Rui rubbed his temples, suppressing the distracting thoughts in his mind, and said into the communicator: "Send volunteers to patiently persuade them, tell them that only by living can they rebuild their homes."

"Yes, sir!" the staff officer replied and left.

Wen Rui walked to the floor-to-ceiling window of the command tower, looking at the hoverbuses rising into the air outside and the chaotic field slowly advancing thousands of miles away on the monitoring screen. He could clearly feel that as the rescue and evacuation progressed, the "connection of destiny" between his body and this world was becoming increasingly tight. However, this "tightness" was like an invisible rope, binding him firmly in this game of destiny.

(End of this chapter)