"Ah—!" A splitting headache jolted Susan Morrow awake. Normally, she needed two sources of psychic energy to dig up and fuse those memories from the void, but now one of them had just vanished—snapped, gone. Instantly, it felt like her brain was being ripped in half.
"Aunt Susan, are you okay? What's wrong?" Jonathan Black's anxious voice cut in, trembling weirdly. "You alright, Aunt Susan?"
"Shirley...? Wait, what was I just remembering? There was something... but now it's totally gone..." Susan Morrow felt a wave of confusion wash over her. She turned her head blankly—and there was Jonathan Black, collapsed on the floor, limbs twisted, his skin shriveling up and aging freakishly fast, his life force leaking away by the second.
"Shirley!" Susan Morrow cried out in terror. "Is the genetic collapse starting?! No, no, I need to remember faster—damn it, why does it feel like half my psychic power just got cut off? No way, I can't give up—ugh, ugh, aaaargh!!"
Her world of memories kept flickering in and out, showing up for a second and vanishing the next.
[Man, I'm jealous. She's got a super sweet husband, and her life is just... perfect.]
[I want that kind of happiness too.]
[Huh? There's a frequency calling out to me through hyperspace. Who could it be?]
[Is that Adam? He can already use hyperspace like this?]
[Don't feel like dealing with him right now...]
[But... ]
[He used to be so gentle.]
[He used to be so thoughtful, too.]
[He used to be... yeah, he’s the one who changed me, taught me how to actually live like a real person.]
[So, I should go see him.]
[We’re friends.]
[When he's down, I cheer him up. When he's tired, I help him out. When he's lost, I talk him through it. When he goes off the rails, I give him a reality check—sometimes with a slap if needed.]
[That’s what friends do.]
[I'm going to stop him.]
[That’s my way of being a friend…]
Earth, New York, Manhattan—an intense beam of light pierced through thick clouds, shooting straight up into the sky like a sword that could cut through heaven and earth. Even from a distance, Qi Meng could see it, feel its brilliance, its grandeur, and its overwhelming power.
The light blazed for a full ten seconds before it finally shrank and disappeared.
But even after the light faded, a terrifying sense of presence lingered—if anything, it suddenly woke up and started expanding. Something huge was moving in the clouds, a flash of light, then a burst of smoke.
That burst of smoke shot out from Manhattan at supersonic speed, tearing through buildings—each shattered piece of concrete just adding to the cloud of dust.
Finally—boom! The cloud of dust crashed down, smashing a giant hole in the museum's dome.
Qi Meng didn’t want to get involved. She spread her wings to fly away, but then her eye caught something inside the museum—and she stopped dead in her tracks.
The force of the impact left a crater like a meteor strike. Wind and rain poured in through the hole, water flooding the pit. At the bottom, a woman in full armor sat slumped, totally defeated. The wind and rain beat down on her, but she didn’t react. Her platinum hair, usually flying wild, now clung to her in a mess. Her head, always held high, hung low and powerless.
Drip.
Drip.
Blood—crystal-clear, almost precious—dripped from the woman's fingertips. One drop after another, like beads on a string, never-ending. The red spread through the dirty water in the pit, rippling out in bloody waves, shocking to see.
"Surviving a blow like that—you should be proud." A voice echoed from above. "I’m curious how many more you can take."
Crunch—the armored woman at the bottom of the pit moved.
Slowly, she lifted her blood-soaked hand—not to make a fist, but to shakily press her fingers to her forehead.
Blood streaked down from her forehead, a savage mark. The thousand-petal crown barely appeared—once dazzling, now dim and battered, ready to snuff out at any second. But she grabbed it and, through a psychic link, hurled it straight into Susan Morrow’s mind!
"Jonathan... on the brink of death... How could I just collapse here..." Sizzling, the blazing sun pattern flared up, and Yang Qi snapped her head up. She hadn’t gone full Blazing Gold Demon mode, but her eyes were pure gold now.
A phantom holy fire replaced her own psychic power, keeping her body moving as she struggled to stand. With nothing left but her core willpower, she channeled all her psychic strength to her mother: "Forget about Aunt Joan baptizing me, forget about her saving me from disaster—even without all that, today, I’ll burn up every last bit of holy fire, shatter my armor, bleed myself dry if I have to, just to save my cousin—!"
Thunder rolled, one storm after another, as the clouds overhead churned and twisted.
Inside the clouds, a gigantic face appeared—made entirely of vapor. Its eyes were two rings of six-colored light, outlining the pupils. In the center of its forehead sat a massive crystal, swirling with infinite power. Just like that, 'God' awakened his devil fruit and became a towering cloud giant.
"The last, tragic wail of the dying." From the clouds, a colossal vapor hand descended—like Buddha’s palm smashing down: "Die."
Boom! The ground shook, the museum—huge as it was—instantly became history, flattened by that one massive strike.
Qi Meng’s eye twitched at the sight, but she gritted her teeth and flew off toward the horizon anyway.
"I have to patch the sky... I have to patch the sky... I’m carrying the weight of the world, there’s no turning back!" Qi Meng screamed inside, charging forward with everything she had.
Meanwhile, in the world of memories, everything kept evolving.
Yang Qi had thrown in all her psychic power, carrying the whole burden by herself.
In a flash, the scene changed—flowers, moonlight, Adam Zade had set up a magical little rendezvous.
Two glasses of red wine, set out in front of them.
Susan Morrow sat stone-faced, refusing to touch her wine, ready to give the guy across from her a piece of her mind. But to her surprise, he spoke first: "Sophia... I... I’m here today to admit I was wrong."
"Hmm?" Susan Morrow didn’t budge, snorting through her nose, cool as ever: "Go on."
"Heh, thanks for even giving me a shot—thanks for listening." Adam Zade wasn’t anxious, wasn’t fierce, wasn’t obsessive; today he looked like his old princely self. "After you left, honestly, I did a lot of thinking, a lot of remembering. Turns out, our last fight? That was our first real argument. And suddenly I wondered, how did it get to this point? When did everything change?"
"Hmm..." Susan Morrow’s gaze softened a bit: "I’d like to know the answer to that too."
"After digging through my memories, I realized—it all started with that shooting. That’s when everything changed." Adam’s eyes were deep, full of real guilt. "Sophia, really, ever since the shooting, everything changed. You changed, I changed."