Chapter 74.1: Blue Star’s Fate
Although Cheng Qisheng now had a 1,100-square-meter cultivation zone and technically no longer needed to buy vegetables, she still cautiously maintained roughly the same online grocery-shopping routine as before.
After advancing to Transcendent Tier 2, she had also carefully selected a highly reputable traditional Chinese medicine clinic. There, she underwent acupuncture to “treat” the “muscle stiffness” she claimed to have. After several sessions, she was “pleasantly surprised” to find that her condition had “improved.”
On Blue Star, traditional Chinese medicine had always carried an air of mystery.
Search almost any related keyword online, and you’d find countless stories such as “Man Recovers from Cancer After Taking Herbal Medicine” or “Terminal Illness Cured with Traditional Chinese Medicine.”
Truth and fiction were hopelessly mixed together in those reports. Other than the people directly involved, probably no one could tell which stories were genuine.
After all, even cancer can sometimes go into spontaneous remission.
The odds are extremely low, and the reasons aren’t fully understood, but there are undeniably documented cases of cancers disappearing on their own.
If even cancer can heal spontaneously, then who can say with absolute certainty that traditional Chinese medicine can’t cure it?
There had never been a documented case of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) going into spontaneous remission.
Strictly speaking, the nerve damage caused by ALS is completely irreversible. It was like a book slowly being burned to ashes—with current medical technology, there was simply no way to reconstruct those ashes back into a complete book.
But that didn’t matter.
Cheng Qisheng didn’t need people to believe her ALS had been cured.
She only needed them to believe she had been misdiagnosed.
When she had first fallen ill, she had obsessively researched everything there was to know about ALS. All that information was still firmly stored in her mind.
In its early stages, ALS was actually fairly prone to false-positive diagnoses. There was still no universally accepted diagnostic standard for the disease, and quite a few other conditions presented with similar symptoms.
Late-stage ALS, on the other hand, was almost impossible to misdiagnose.
But ever since Cheng Qisheng had obtained Dark Star, she had placed all her hopes in it and never once returned to the hospital for a follow-up examination.
That gave her plenty of room to maneuver.
She could simply claim that the original ALS diagnosis had been mistaken. Her symptoms could just as easily have been caused by cervical spondylosis, myasthenia gravis, or CIDP—all illnesses whose early symptoms closely resemble those of ALS.
In short, what the actual illness had been wasn’t important.
What mattered was that she had gone to the traditional Chinese medicine clinic seeking treatment for “muscle stiffness,” and the practitioners had treated exactly that complaint. As a result, she had genuinely begun to “recover.”
What a perfect case of a misdiagnosis.
—Even if, admittedly, it felt a bit like playing an elaborate game of chess against thin air.
After all, Cheng Qisheng had been nothing more than an ordinary person on Blue Star.
As long as she didn’t suddenly lose her mind one day, run into the streets, and start shouting, “I’m a Transcendent! Watch me punch a skyscraper to pieces!” no one on Blue Star was likely to pay her any special attention.
Even so, she carefully maintained her cover.
The lesson she had learned from caring for Dark Star over the course of hundreds of billions of years was simple:
Never gamble on “what if.”
Because anything could happen.
Just look at what had happened.
She used to think it was impossible for a rogue black hole to appear beside Dark Star.
And yet, it had.
In short, until Cheng Qisheng possessed enough power to effortlessly overwhelm every armed force on Blue Star, she had no intention of exposing anything unusual about herself.
—In fact, even if she one day acquired the strength to crush all of Blue Star with ease, she still wouldn’t want to reveal herself.
After witnessing the destruction of seven civilizations, anyone’s heart would become as still as water.
Aside from the butterfly chrysalises she had purchased early on, Cheng Qisheng had been extremely careful with everything she bought online afterward.
She certainly didn’t want anyone piecing together her shopping history and realizing she had assembled an entire ecosystem.
Someone who stayed home all day, lived in a fifty-square-meter apartment, yet kept buying enough supplies to completely fill that apartment…
That was practically the same as exposing herself.
Many of the plants and animals now living in her cultivation zone and artificial lake had actually been “picked up” during her walks.
After all, she was a Tier 3 Transcendent.
Although the limitations of her mortal body syndrome made her slower than an ordinary person, if she truly wanted to conceal her presence, avoid surveillance cameras, and quietly “pick up” a few things, it was an effortless task.
Take, for example, the two waterbirds that had comfortably settled into the trees beside the artificial lake.
As for how they got there—
Eight words summed it up:
Sharp eyes, swift hands—bagged in one smooth move.
A Tier 3 Transcendent, blessed with extraordinary hearing and razor-sharp perception, using those abilities to ambush a pair of little birds…
Even Cheng Qisheng found it amusing.
—The little wooden boat floating on the artificial lake had also been built by her own hands.
The lumber had come from the cultivation zone.
While the woodworking tools had to be purchased online, it wasn’t all that unusual for someone who spent most of their time at home to suddenly develop an interest in woodworking.
To make sure her cover story held up under scrutiny, she had even ordered beginner woodworking lumber online and searched for things like:
“Where should beginners start with woodworking?”
“Is it easy to build your own table?”
“Can beginners make a chair?”
“How do I know if I have talent for woodworking?”
…along with a whole series of similar search queries.
Before all that, Cheng Qisheng had even carefully chosen the timing.
Two days in advance, she searched online for things like “Skills you can use to make money from home” and “What freelance jobs can you teach yourself?” She kept browsing until she came across “Learn woodworking on your own,” and only then did she stop.
It perfectly established the image of someone who, unable to work outside because of illness, earned money by taking online freelance jobs while actively looking for new ways to support herself. Eventually, she had decided to learn woodworking and planned to make wooden crafts as a side business.
Not once did she search Blue Star’s internet for instructions on how to build the little boat.
Instead, she simply had the Blue Sea government prepare “a beginner’s guide to building a small boat so detailed that even a complete novice could follow every single step without making a mistake.”
Being a Creator God certainly had its perks.
The people of Blue Sea never questioned why their great Creator wanted something.
Old Eighth’s only thought was that whatever their divine Creator desired, they should provide—and provide the very best.
The boat-building guide Old Eighth presented was so unbelievably detailed that even a child could follow it and reproduce the boat exactly.
She had to admit, woodworking was surprisingly addictive.
Especially beside the tranquil lake, where time no longer seemed to matter. She could run a power saw as much as she pleased without worrying about disturbing the neighbors or wasting too much lumber.
After all, the cultivation zone had no shortage of trees.
At worst, the next time Safe City expanded, she would simply enlarge the cultivation zone as well.
Cheng Qisheng was incredibly strong. Although her movements were slow, she possessed boundless stamina and an exceptional ability to learn. She never found the work tiring.
After finishing the little boat, she even found herself considering whether to build a small wooden cabin by the lakeside. Every now and then, she could spend a night there—it would feel just like going camping.
To the people of Blue Sea, Cheng Qisheng was the great Creator God.
To the other City Lords, she was an exceptionally formidable Tier 3 City Lord.
But on Blue Star, Cheng Qisheng was nothing more than an ordinary person recovering from an illness, making a living by taking freelance work online, living in her own apartment, occasionally exchanging phone calls with relatives, and, as her condition gradually improved, slowly reconnecting with former classmates and old online friends.
And now—
Because vegetable prices had gone up by thirty percent…
She had suddenly realized that her own homeworld might also be standing on the brink of destruction.
Cheng Qisheng: “…”
She desperately wanted to reassure herself.
No. It can’t be.
Yes, rising food prices are one possible sign of an approaching apocalypse… but that doesn’t mean every increase in food prices signals the end of the world.
But for the great Creator God who had nurtured civilization after civilization, only to watch every single one perish until only Old Eighth—her one well-behaved child—remained alive…
It was very difficult to think optimistically.
Cheng Qisheng’s mind raced.
Well… this does explain something.
It answered the question of why Aether had been able to choose her as a City Lord.
After bringing Safe City to two different worlds, she had realized that its core operating mechanism clearly followed some kind of resonance-based rule.
It would only travel to worlds whose “frequency” matched its own—in other words, worlds that had already entered the Extinction Phase of their apocalypse.
If that was the case, then it made perfect sense that it could only bind itself to an intelligent lifeform whose own world was already on the path to destruction.
Realizing her own homeworld had been caught in the same fate left Cheng Qisheng’s head buzzing.
Using the excuse,
“I’ve never heard of these three phases before. Could you explain them to me in more detail?”
she obtained a much more comprehensive explanation of the three stages of planetary destruction from Moonspirit.
Moonspirit was more than happy to do Blue Sea this favor.
She had her subordinates quickly compile all the records documenting her homeworld’s descent into ruin and sent the entire archive over.
Moonspirit Safe City: [This contains everything my homeworld experienced, including written records and video footage. It should give you a more intuitive understanding of the three phases of planetary destruction. I hope it helps.
I’m leaving now.
If fate allows, we’ll meet again someday.]
Cheng Qisheng accepted the files.
She had expected Moonspirit to elaborate through private messages at most.
Instead, Moonspirit had simply handed over a complete record of her world’s destruction from beginning to end.
She was remarkably generous.
Wanting to return the goodwill, Cheng Qisheng made a small promise.
Blue Sea Safe City: [Thank you. If fate brings us together again someday and you ever need help, just call for me.]
With that promise in hand, Moonspirit finally relaxed.
Having witnessed Blue Sea spare Jin Yu solely because of Coriander’s connection to him, she understood better than anyone just how much weight Blue Sea’s promises carried.
When Moonspirit departed Dazzling Star ahead of schedule, she no longer felt nearly as despondent.
Blue Sea really is an extraordinary City Lord.
I hope that one day, I can become someone like her—always so powerful, always so composed.
—
Meanwhile, the “powerful and composed” Cheng Qisheng was frantically combing through the files.
Please don’t let it be true…
She had already experimented with the world beyond the Door and knew that it was unaffected by the outside environment. Even if Blue Star really did descend into apocalypse, then in theory, as long as she retreated into the world beyond the Door, she would remain perfectly safe.
But spending the occasional night camping in the mountains or by the lake was one thing.
Living there permanently…
Other than Old Eighth, probably no one would enjoy that.
She still wanted to stay comfortably in her homeworld, living a life where she could drink milk tea, eat hot pot, and, whenever inspiration struck in the middle of the night, tap a few buttons on her phone and have takeout delivered to her door within half an hour.
This was where her powerful spiritual sense proved its worth.
While using her spiritual sense to sift through Moonspirit’s materials, Cheng Qisheng simultaneously searched the internet on Blue Star with her computer, looking into the reasons behind the rising vegetable prices.
She quickly discovered that she was far from the only person who had noticed.
After all, most people were ordinary citizens. If vegetable prices rose by thirty percent, then a family’s daily food expenses would also increase by thirty percent.
Who could afford to ignore that?
Cheng Qisheng first looked through the news reports.
The official explanation was that this year’s prolonged rainfall in southern regions had caused crops to become waterlogged, leading to widespread root rot and greatly increased losses.
In the north, temperatures had suddenly dropped. Naturally grown crops had been hit the hardest, and even greenhouse produce had suffered. Reduced sunlight and strong winds had lowered yields by around twenty percent.
There were also several contributing factors layered on top of that:
Heavy rains had increased outbreaks of crop diseases and pests, urban expansion had reduced the amount of farmland, and wholesalers at produce markets had spotted a business opportunity and joined forces to raise prices.
—The news anchor sternly condemned a handful of merchants for hoarding produce and driving up prices, stating that the relevant authorities had already documented and verified those illegal practices.
At the same time, viewers were assured that as temperatures rose, summer field-grown vegetables would soon enter peak harvest season, and market supplies would gradually return to normal.
Cheng Qisheng then browsed through online discussions.
People certainly complained, but they weren’t especially distressed.
A thirty percent increase in vegetable prices did mean higher living expenses, but in this day and age, no one was actually going to starve because of it.
Urban office workers might not earn enough for extravagant spending, but buying staple foods, vegetables, and meat was still well within their means.
As for rural households, although their cash income was generally lower, they owned homes and farmland. At the very least, they could feed themselves.
Netizens grumbled that “Vegetables are getting expensive again,” and “Are these vegetables made of gold?” Then they cursed the profiteering merchants who had driven up prices…
…and went right back to their daily lives.
Everyone believed this was simply the result of several unfortunate factors overlapping. Given a little more time, prices would naturally come back down.
—
At first, Moonspirit’s civilization had believed the same thing.
[Archive Record: Only later did we realize that the warning signs had been there all along.
There’s nothing unusual about a single country experiencing a few minor natural disasters that don’t significantly affect the overall situation.
But what if every country starts experiencing small-scale natural disasters more frequently than before?
Their effects are subtle. They may not even kill anyone directly.
Perhaps it’s a torrential rainstorm.
Or a night of severe frost.
A drought.
A volcanic eruption.
These seemingly insignificant disasters quietly erode our homeland day after day, month after month. Before anyone realizes what’s happening, they have already become the key that unlocks the curtain on the apocalypse.]
Cheng Qisheng couldn’t help thinking that whoever had written the summary of Moonspirit’s civilization’s downfall had a real talent for telling ghost stories.
Even so, the message it conveyed was unmistakably clear.
During the Dormant Phase of an apocalypse, people all over the world would gradually find life becoming more difficult than before.
Gathering information on living conditions in every country wasn’t exactly easy.
But for Cheng Qisheng, it was surprisingly simple.
She opened her social media feed and started scrolling through what her former classmates had been posting.
As mentioned before, she had always been an outstanding student. From childhood onward, she attended top schools and earned scholarship after scholarship.
Naturally, her classmates weren’t ordinary people either.
Back then, Cheng Qisheng had a very clear life plan.
Graduate.
Become an exceptionally hardworking corporate employee and earn a high salary.
Accumulate enough capital and experience to start her own business.
Then build that company into a major success, buy a villa, drive luxury cars, and reach the pinnacle of life.
Someone planning to become an entrepreneur would never neglect building a network in advance.
Whether she ended up needing those connections or not, having them was always better than not.
Cheng Qisheng had never had particularly close friends.
Before being diagnosed with a terminal illness, she had always felt there simply wasn’t enough time. Every available moment had to be spent getting ahead, seizing opportunities, and pushing herself further.
Investing the time required to cultivate deep personal relationships had seemed… inefficient.
Even so, she had always gotten along well with her classmates.
She was the type of person who was easy to talk to. They could strike up a conversation anytime, yet even if years passed without speaking, neither side would bother deleting the other from their contact list.
Back in elementary school, before children even had mobile phones, Cheng Qisheng had already been copying down her classmates’ contact information by hand before graduation.
Once she finally got her own phone, she added them one by one.
From elementary school to university, she had kept adding people every step of the way.
Her contact list and social media network were about as complete as anyone could hope for.
Most of her classmates had remained in China.
But the rest were scattered all over the world—studying abroad, immigrating, working overseas, traveling…
Just a few days ago, Cheng Qisheng had even seen a post from one of her middle school classmates announcing that they had opened a convenience store in the Cook Islands.
Not everyone enjoyed sharing their daily lives online, of course.
Even so, thanks to her extensive network of contacts, Cheng Qisheng managed to piece together thirty-three relevant accounts.
One of her high school classmates, who was studying in Country A, complained that an outbreak of avian influenza had sent meat prices soaring. Even eggs had become ridiculously expensive.
An elementary school classmate who had settled down in Country B and recently become a father grumbled that premium infant formula now cost three times what it had the previous year.
A middle school classmate traveling through Country C complained that the place was nothing like the beautiful photos online. The grasslands were barren and ugly, sandstorms were everywhere, and local residents were shamelessly overcharging tourists to make money.
Although it sounded like an ordinary travel complaint, Cheng Qisheng could easily reconstruct the reality behind it:
The grasslands in Country C were undergoing desertification, local incomes had plummeted, and residents had begun exploiting tourists to survive.
Another university classmate uploaded a video of a wildfire in Country D, complaining that in just three months since moving there, they had already witnessed four separate wildfires. Many people had watched their homes burn down over and over again.
“This is absolutely insane.”
Another middle school classmate was still in China, but the company she worked for specialized in imported seafood.
The business had established overseas aquaculture bases in two different countries.
Unfortunately, both countries were struck by typhoons.
The company suffered devastating losses, its cash flow nearly collapsed, and this classmate—who worked in operations—ended up being laid off.
“I’ve definitely learned my lesson,” she said.
“Next time I’m applying for jobs, I’m only targeting large companies with production spread across multiple regions worldwide. At least then there’s some risk diversification. A single typhoon won’t throw the whole company into chaos.”
She had been feeling miserable and desperately wanted someone to vent to.
When Cheng Qisheng reached out to ask what had happened, she immediately poured everything out, like beans spilling from a bamboo tube.
Ironically, the post she had actually shared on her timeline had simply read:
[Officially joining the ranks of the laid-off. 😭 Thanks to my parents for cheering me up. Time to recharge and start over! 💪]
She hadn’t expected Cheng Qisheng to message her first.
Back in school, Cheng Qisheng had been the quintessential “other people’s child”—the teacher’s favorite. She had an exceptionally gentle personality, and whenever someone asked her a question, she would patiently explain it without the slightest impatience. She excelled in academics, character, athletics, arts, and practical skills alike. Anyone could tell she had a bright future ahead of her.
And that’s exactly how things had turned out.
Cheng Qisheng was admitted to a prestigious high school and later to the best university in the country.
Although she moved away from her hometown and therefore never attended class reunions, people still saw her pop up in the class group chats from time to time.
Whenever someone asked for advice, she would offer insights far more mature than those of most people their age.
Anyone who had once been Cheng Qisheng’s classmate inevitably viewed her through a slightly flattering lens.
It was only after graduating from university and entering the workforce over the past two years that she no longer had time to chat in the group as actively as she had during her school days.
So seeing a private message from her came as quite a surprise.
The moment they started chatting privately, the classmate dropped the composed attitude she’d shown in her social media post and launched into an endless stream of complaints.
The gist of it was:
[The company was terrible.]
[The warning signs had been there all along.]
[They laid off all the people who actually did the work and kept a bunch of useless employees with connections.]
[One coworker tried to sabotage me so she wouldn’t be fired… and in the end, both of us got laid off anyway.]
[The only consolation is that that idiot of a manager got fired too.]
Having learned everything she wanted to know, Cheng Qisheng gently comforted her classmate.
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thanks for the chapter!!!