Chapter 366: Escape
The mountaintop platform fell into a brief, deathly silence.
Everly hid inside the mirror world, her eyes seemingly glued in place as she stared blankly at the sky through the mirror. Even though there was nothing left above her, she remained frozen for a long time, unable to come back to her senses.
Her face was deathly pale, and her heart pounded as though it were about to burst out of her chest. Waves of chill ran from the soles of her feet all the way to the crown of her head.
It was a spaceship… With a shape like that, it was obviously an alien spacecraft. So the price of immortality was actually being abducted by aliens?!
After the initial shock came a deep wave of lingering fear.
It had been so close—really, just a little more…
If Grant hadn’t tried to seize her body, Everly would never have thought of exchanging bodies with Bloody Mary. And if she hadn’t exchanged bodies, then the person who had been abducted by that alien spacecraft just now would have been the real Everly.
So the words in Bloody Mary’s prophecy—“that enormous and terrifying…”—hadn’t been referring to Grant Megan at all.
They had been referring to an extraterrestrial civilization!
Only now did Everly truly understand the meaning behind the prophecy.
Everly had no idea why the aliens wanted to abduct anyone who had used the Fountain of Youth.
Perhaps they wanted to take these “perfect humans” to another planet, much like how people in Chinese xianxia novels ascend to the Heavenly Realm after achieving immortality.
Perhaps there was some disagreement within their civilization. Aurelbis had violated the rules by leaving the Fountain of Youth on Earth, so the alien civilization had established monitoring devices on the planet. The moment they detected someone using the Fountain of Youth, an alarm would be triggered, and a spaceship would descend to capture them.
Or perhaps all of this was an elaborate lie. The so-called immortality was actually the premise of an entertainment program for aliens, with Aurelbis as the show’s producer and the other aliens as an audience waiting to be entertained. Grant, Everly, and the others were simply performers who had no idea they were even part of a show…
There were simply too many possibilities for Everly to list them all.
The one thing she was certain of was that she absolutely did not want to be taken to an alien planet.
Regardless of whether their intentions were benevolent or malicious, who would want to leave their home alone, go to a completely unknown world, and be separated from their family and friends forever?
In that sense, Everly was undoubtedly lucky. Through a twist of fate, she had somehow managed to make Bloody Mary bear the fate of being abducted in her place.
But that raised another problem: with Bloody Mary gone, how was she supposed to leave the mirror world?
As far as Everly knew, there was only one way for someone trapped inside the mirror world by Bloody Mary to get out: Bloody Mary herself had to switch them back out. A mirror was required for the exchange, and the spaceship had descended so suddenly that Bloody Mary had left her hand mirror lying on the ground instead of taking it with her.
Of course, if there happened to be a mirror aboard the alien spacecraft, Bloody Mary could perform another exchange there and send Everly out.
But Everly thought it would be best if that didn’t happen. She really didn’t want to get on that spaceship…
As she was lost in thought, Everly suddenly noticed that the sensation beneath her feet had changed.
The mirror world was filled with mirrors. Earlier, Everly had been standing on a large mirror lying flat on the ground. But now, the once-hard reflective surface had somehow become soft, like swamp mud, enveloping Everly from above and slowly sinking beneath her.
Everly instinctively lifted her foot and jumped onto another mirror nearby. Unexpectedly, that mirror was in the same condition. The instant her foot landed on it, its surface dissolved into soft, muddy sludge. Everly felt her body sink, and more than half of her nearly toppled to the side.
Once she regained her balance, Everly looked around and discovered that it wasn’t just the two mirrors beside her. Every mirror that made up this world was melting like plastic exposed to fire, turning into black slurry that slowly oozed down from its frames.
“This world is collapsing… Something must have happened to that witch!”
In the consciousness world, Rolinta’s remaining consciousness said this.
After driving Grant away, all the residual consciousnesses of the dead infants and the other deceased, including Rolinta, remained inside Everly.
If an ordinary person had so many mental entities crammed into their mind, they would have been suffering from splitting headaches and unbearable agony long ago. But Everly’s body had just been transformed by the Fountain of Youth. Even Grant at the height of his power could be accommodated with ease, let alone these lingering fragments that had split off from Grant’s consciousness.
Most of those residual consciousnesses had already lost the ability to think. Aside from reacting whenever their enemy, Grant, was involved, they simply drifted through Everly’s consciousness world like jellyfish and caused no trouble the rest of the time.
Rolinta was the only consciousness that had retained a clear mind and sense of self.
Despite her bloated and terrifying appearance, she was, at heart, an exceptionally upright and kind person. While Everly had been observing the outside world, it was Rolinta who had patiently extended her umbilical-cord-like tentacles again and again, gathering up and keeping watch over the dead infants and lingering fragments as though she were a mother hen caring for her chicks. Without her, Everly’s consciousness world would have remained chaotic for quite some time.
And now, when something abnormal happened to the mirror world, Rolinta was once again the first to identify the cause.
Everly was shocked when she heard this.
Something had happened to Bloody Mary?!
It had been only a few minutes since the witch had been captured. As far as Everly knew, Bloody Mary’s abilities might not have been overwhelmingly powerful, but she certainly had a strong capacity for self-preservation. How could something have happened to her so quickly…?
Could Everly’s guess have been right after all? Was the purpose of those aliens abducting the perfect humans to “dispose of” them?
After the shock came fear.
Everly asked Rolinta in the consciousness world, “What should I do? Is there any way to stop this collapse?”
Immortality merely meant that her bodily functions had been optimized so that she would no longer age naturally. It did not mean Everly was impossible to kill. If she became ill or was injured badly enough, she could still lose her life.
“There’s nothing we can do… This entire space belongs to that witch. Only she can stop it from collapsing,” Rolinta replied.
A trace of despair welled up in Everly’s heart.
As time passed, the collapse of the mirror world grew increasingly severe. Everly darted from place to place, but she could no longer find anywhere solid enough to stand. When the final mirror melted away, she felt her entire body sink, like a drowning person plunging into a deep lake. The liquefied mirror surface completely enveloped her.
It was a strange sensation, somewhere between falling and floating. The surrounding slurry changed from thick to thin, from supple to fragile, layer after layer brushing past Everly’s body, yet none of it was able to hold her.
She fell through the viscous, oily liquid for an unknown length of time. Then, with a sharp crack, the ground suddenly vanished beneath her feet.
Everly dropped out through a spatial rift in midair and slammed hard onto a stone floor.
Clutching her aching tailbone, Everly scrambled to her feet and looked around. She discovered that she had fallen onto the platform at the top of the staircase. At her feet lay her hand mirror, shattered into powder. A little farther away were her backpack, clothes, weapons, and other belongings.
Being able to escape the collapsing mirror world alive could certainly be considered a stroke of luck.
Unfortunately, this was no time to rest.
The moment she returned to the real world, Everly immediately looked up and examined the dome overhead.
The space containing the staircase was located inside the island, forming a relatively enclosed spherical chamber. Above Everly had originally been a semicircular metal ceiling resembling a gigantic bowl turned upside down.
Before the alien spacecraft descended, the dome had opened outward, revealing a huge aperture through which the sky outside could be seen. Only after the spacecraft departed did the ceiling slowly close again.
Therefore, if that alien spacecraft sensed the appearance of her “perfect human” body and returned to Earth to capture her again, the dome above her would inevitably open once more.
Fortunately, what Everly had been worried about did not happen.
Whether there was some flaw in the aliens’ monitoring system or the conditions required for the spacecraft to descend had not been met, Everly didn’t know. In any case, when she returned to the platform in perfectly good shape, the terrifying spacecraft did not come back. Somehow, she seemed to have slipped through the net.
After examining the dome, Everly lowered her head and checked the time.
It had now been 2 hours and 21 minutes since she entered the island, leaving less than three minutes until the time the guard had said the island would sink.
That was nowhere near enough time for her to run from the mountaintop to the foot of the mountain, then pass through the long silver-white passage to reach the exposed outer island. Not to mention that between the mountains and the silver-white passage was a chasm hundreds of meters wide, with no path across it whatsoever.
Looks like she’d have to take the risk and ask the guard to use the “shortcut.”
Otherwise, once the time was up and the island sank, the passage between the inner and outer islands would very likely be cut off. If that happened, Everly would be trapped inside the island—possibly for hundreds of years.
Everly ran over to her belongings, hastily grabbed a piece of clothing to throw over herself, then emptied all the miscellaneous items from her backpack, leaving only the two bags of spring water Grant had packed for her.
With the backpack containing the Fountain of Youth slung over her shoulders, she didn’t dare waste another second. She broke into a full sprint toward the foot of the mountain.
The staircase that had taken her ten minutes to climb on the way up took her less than a minute to descend.
As she ran, Everly could clearly feel her body becoming even healthier and stronger. Her muscular strength had increased another level, her endurance had reached that of a professional athlete, and she could precisely control even the movement of her joints and the rhythm of her breathing. Her ability to engage every part of her body was so perfect that it was almost an art.
So this was what it felt like to become a “perfect human”…
With her final step, Everly successfully reached the foot of the mountain.
With a hint of nervousness, she approached the guard and asked him to take her off the island.
As she spoke, Everly kept a wary eye on the guard, ready for its demeanor to change at any moment. After all, this was a robot left behind by an alien civilization. What if it could detect that she had already used the Fountain of Youth and report it to its masters? Everly might end up being captured after all.
Fortunately, the guard’s duties seemed to be limited to guarding the staircase and serving the “warriors” who came in search of the Fountain of Youth. Whether or not a “warrior” had actually used the Fountain of Youth was apparently none of its concern.
The moment Everly made her request, a ripple of red light appeared across the electronic display on the guard’s face.
“Command received. This task will be carried out in one minute. Warrior, please remain where you are and do not move unnecessarily,” it said in a flat, mechanical voice.
Everly did as instructed, standing still and patiently waiting out the minute as she watched the seconds tick by on her watch.
During that time, the guard made no visible movement. Then, the instant the sixty seconds were up, a brilliant column of light suddenly illuminated beneath her feet, enveloping Everly completely.
The light was so intense that the sudden glare instantly washed her vision in white. By the time the spots lingering on her retinas finally faded, Everly had somehow been teleported from the foot of the mountain to the inflatable dinghy at the edge of the island.
Everly stared in stunned disbelief and turned her head.
On one side of her was a cliff nearly ten meters high at the island’s edge. Two ropes hung down from the cliff. Not long ago, Everly had climbed onto the island using one of them.
On the other side stretched the vast, boundless sea. Not far ahead, a huge whale silently surfaced, revealing its beautiful crystal-like dorsal fin.
The sea breeze swept over her, carrying the strong, briny smell of the ocean.
Everly greedily drew in a deep breath. From that not-particularly-pleasant smell, she caught the fragrance of something called freedom.
She had made it out!!!