After leaving the world of all NPCs

"I am Belfast, the second ship of the Edinburgh class. I have been entrusted with the position of Head Maid of the Royal Family."

"Although I have experienced the baptism of war and witnessed the end of venerable opponents like Scharnhorst, as a maid, it is my duty and responsibility, not worth mentioning."

She raised her eyelids, and her icy blue eyes looked directly at Ye Zuochen, with a businesslike scrutiny, but also with a hint of pro-professional exploration.

"Are you my new commander?"

Ye Zuochen nodded slightly and simply gave his name.

The sunlight fell on his face, and his handsome appearance seemed to be coated with a layer of soft light, which made people feel close to him.

A flash of realization crossed Belfast's mind... No wonder such proud ships as Victory and the Duke of York accepted him so quickly.

"Her Majesty the Queen has made arrangements," Belfast straightened up, regaining her upright posture, her hands folded naturally in front of her. "The Maids will be sending members to stay with you permanently in the future. This will serve as both an assessment of you and a bridge of communication between you and the royal family."

After listening to this, Ye Zuochen did not respond to the arrangements. Instead, he took a small step forward and stretched out his hand, palm facing up, towards Belfast.

"hand."

A very slight trace of surprise flashed across Belfast's ice-blue eyes, but obeying orders was a maid's instinct.

"Your first order is quite unexpected."

The right hand wearing a white glove was gently raised, palm facing down, hovering above Ye Zuochen's palm, the posture still perfect and decent.

Ye Zuochen didn't explain, but stretched out his other hand and took out a ring from his pocket with his fingertips.

The ring is simple and elegant in style, with the band gleaming with soft silver light and a small but dazzling diamond in the center.

The movement was slow, with an almost solemn sense of ritual. He gently pinched Belfast's white-gloved fingertips, and then very slowly put the ring on the slender ring finger of her right hand.

The cool ring pressed against her skin through the thin fabric of the glove.

Belfast's gaze fell on the abrupt ornament on her ring finger, a symbol of marriage, and her ice-blue eyes were filled with pure confusion.

She raised her eyes and looked at Ye Zuochen in confusion.

Ye Zuochen met her gaze with an expression that was calm and even seemed as if it was a matter of course.

"When you were still conscious and just an NPC, I put on a wedding dress for you."

"At that time I said I wanted to marry you..."

"Now, let's just consider it as fulfilling a small wish of my past self."

He shrugged as if it was an insignificant joke.

"Oh." Belfast responded softly. There was no disgust or resistance in his tone, only deep curiosity: "So, in the past... what were you doing?"

This was not a maid's responsibility, it was purely out of personal curiosity.

Ye Zuochen seemed happy to share.

He leaned casually against a low cabinet nearby and began to talk about some "silly things" in the past.

Those attempts and experiences that may seem meaningless or even ridiculous to others.

His tone was relaxed, a little self-deprecating, but his eyes were clear.

Belfast listened quietly, his posture still straight, like the most perfect sculpture.

But the frozen lines on that face that always maintained a serious expression melted quietly and inadvertently.

A genuine, warm smile, like a stream breaking through the ice in early spring, gently spread across the corners of her rosy lips.

The smile was faint, but it lit up her ice-blue eyes.

"...Now that I think about it, I really shouldn't have left my little world." Ye Zuochen suddenly changed the subject, a hint of regret in his tone, "Although those girls in there are soulless, that's just the way it is."

"Their bodies are real! The heartbeat, the feel of their skin, the temperature, the movement of their joints... everything is exactly the same!"

"Tell me, what on earth was wrong with me that I had to run away?"

He looked at Belfast with genuine confusion, like a child complaining about losing a favorite toy.

Belfast's gaze subconsciously fell back on the cold ring on his ring finger.

The flickering light seemed to carry some strange temperature.

She quickly looked away and looked at Ye Zuochen's face again. Something seemed to have settled in the depths of her ice-blue eyes.

In a calm yet pointed tone, she kissed his red lips and said, "Commander, you...are actually someone who is very afraid of being alone, right?"

The relief on Ye Zuochen's face froze in an instant.

As if a hidden pain point had been touched, his brows were slightly furrowed, revealing an extremely embarrassed expression, even with a bit of childish awkwardness.

"You're saying that, it's like you're saying I'm a little brat who can't live without people."

Belfast didn't refute, but just laughed softly.

The laughter was very light, like a feather brushing past.

Her sharp eyes slid from Ye Zuochen's slight embarrassment to the exquisite tea set placed on the low cabinet behind him, and then back to his face.

"Well then," the perfectly graceful head maid took a small step forward, "Excuse me, Commander, would you like me to prepare afternoon tea for you?"

Ye Zuochen nodded vigorously.

"Yes! I really want to try the black tea brewed by Befa."

"Yes, as ordered."

Belfast saluted perfectly again and turned towards the tea cabinet.

----

PS: Thank you for your subscription, reward, and monthly ticket. I will add one chapter today and another one later.

099 The Empire of Dawn and the Flame Star Dynasty

World No. 2612 (Bloodthrow).

Dead silence.

It's not the dead silence of no sound, but the dead silence of everything holding its breath, waiting for the end.

The air solidified into lead blocks, pressing on people's chests and making them feel stuffy.

The steel city floating on the vast ocean, the central island of the Akatsuki Empire, is like the abandoned skeleton of a giant beast, quietly rotting on the dark sea.

The horizon is no longer a gentle arc, but is swallowed up by a dark curtain wall that continues to advance and connects the sky and the sea.

It was not dark clouds, but the embodiment of pure nothingness, the annihilation of space itself. Thick columns of smoke rose up, blocking out the sky and the sun, silently but unstoppably crushing everything in its path as it rolled towards the center of the island.

"This future...was abandoned."

Xiao Mengcong stood on the edge of the tallest building on the island, her green hair blown back by the wind mixed with ash, and the hem of her white coat rustled.

The violet eyes reflected the devastated scene in the distance. There was no fear in them, only a calmness that came from seeing the truth.

Beside her, Xiao Lingcai was like a rapier drawn from its sheath, with black hair and blue eyes, her figure straight and flexible.

"Logic?" Xiao Mengcong asked, her voice as clear as the sea breeze. "The chain of cause and effect that mortals see is 'cause' first, 'effect' later, like a straight railroad track. But higher up..."

"There are those who can swim against the current, and their 'choices' are the key to determining which track will extend."

"At this moment, a certain existence made a new choice in the past, and so our trajectory..."

Xiao Lingcai raised her hand and pointed at the wall of smoke that was destroyed. "You mean, our script is being erased. The script of the 'Akatsuki Empire' is crumbling into confetti."

Xiao Mengcong nodded slightly, her green hair brushing against her calm face: "You see the essence."

"For some beings, the temporal order of the universe is like the words written on a script, which can be erased and rewritten."

“But that’s not the reality, is it?”

“Where there is rewriting, there must be a ‘corrective force’ intervening, like an invisible eraser erasing the wrong handwriting.”

"That's right." Xiao Lingcai's eyes were sharp as a knife. "If history is truly a script that can be arbitrarily rewritten, why isn't it chaos? There must be a force maintaining the coherence of 'reality'. Where does this force come from? Why does it work?"

"Because," Xiao Mengcong's voice was as calm as if she were stating a formula, "in this vast universe, the activities of most life forms and the changes in most matter are essentially no different from the drifting of a speck of dust or the extinction of a star."

"They have no 'meaning', just random flashes of light against a void, destined to fade into silence."

She paused, her purple eyes turned to Xiao Lingcai, with a hint of compassion, "The 'correction power' only needs to focus on 'meaningful existence'."

“When their trajectory is disturbed, the eraser falls.”

"We... and the world we exist in, in 'their' eyes, may be just part of that empty background. Until this moment of disintegration, it has only been given the final meaning of 'annihilation' by touching a certain 'meaningful' node."

"Ridiculous!" Xiao Lingcai's voice suddenly rose, filled with suppressed anger, instantly shattering the heavy silence. "What about salvation? Xiao Mengcong! Tell me, how can we save our world? Tell me, as the 'Electronic Pope', as the core technology supporting the entire Akatsuki Empire, your answer is not this empty despair!"

Xiao Mengcong shook her head. "It's meaningless. Even for us, it's only because we were connected to some 'meaningful life' without knowing it that we didn't disappear."

Her answer was a crisp slap in the face.

Snapped!

The sound was unusually loud in the dead air.

Xiao Mengcong's face was hit and tilted to one side, and clear finger marks quickly appeared on her fair cheek.

She remained in that position, her green hair falling, partially obscuring her expression.

A few strands of hair clung to her slightly parted lips.

Time seemed to freeze for a few seconds.

"Cough..." Xiao Mengcong let out an almost inaudible cough and slowly turned her head.

The cold shell of rationality in the purple pupils shattered, revealing a trace of embarrassment and confusion from having his train of thought interrupted.

She raised her fingers and gently stroked her burning cheek, her fingertips trembling slightly.

The blow was very heavy, carrying all of Xiao Lingcai's anger and unwillingness.

Xiao Mengcong's voice lowered, a hint of hoarseness and self-mockery in it, "You're right... I lost my composure. As a technical advisor, I failed in my duty."

She didn't look at Xiao Lingcai's blue eyes that were burning with questioning, but turned around, her white coat drawing a somewhat weak arc in the wind.

"follow me."

An icy alloy tunnel extended beneath my feet, and the emergency lights cast a pale green halo.

At the end of the passage, the heavy gate slid open silently.

A huge space that is difficult to describe in words appears before your eyes.

A sphere composed of countless complex geometric structures is suspended in the center.

——Magic machine "Blue Sky Sphere".

Like an enormous heart, its shell is made of a metal skeleton entangled with glowing wires, and its core is flowing with unpredictable blue light.

Countless tiny runes flickered on the surface of the sphere, like breathing.

The entire space was filled with the hum of high-energy magic and the smell of cold metal.

Xiao Mengcong walked to the console and quickly swiped her fingers across the floating light screen.

"This is the key, the 'Celestial Sphere'. It can anchor your 'existence', creating a reverse channel in the turbulent flow of time and space, sending you... back to the 'node' before your choice was changed."

"Price?" Xiao Lingcai walked to her side, her blue eyes fixed on the rotating metal sphere, without any retreat.

"The collapse of spacetime has begun. Conventional energy can't propel it through this current turbulence." Xiao Mengcong's gaze shifted from the screen to Xiao Lingcai, her eyes complex. "We can only burn our 'inherent accumulated time.'"

"Inherent accumulation time?"

"It's the 'history' of our own existence." Xiao Mengcong's voice was soft, but every word carried weight. "It ignites all our past experiences, memories, emotions, and cognitions—everything that makes up 'Xiao Lingcai' and 'Xiao Mengcong' as individuals."

"Like kindling firewood, it transforms into pure energy that propels the 'Sky Sphere' through the adverse current."

"When the drive is complete, our experiences as 'individuals' will be reduced to ashes."

"You will no longer remember why you came."

"I will also forget why I sent you away."

"We...are left with only 'existence' itself, back to square one, as if we had never experienced it before."

Deathly silence fell once again, with only the faint sound of the liquid blue light flowing in the core of the "Celestial Sphere".

Xiao Lingcai looked at the huge mechanical sphere, then looked out the floor-to-ceiling window in the distance, at the wall of destruction that was roaring and pressing down, covering most of the sky.

The fire in his blue eyes died, leaving only a determination as clear as ice.