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Chapter 280 The Perfect Choice
If you said this to a stranger, they would most likely just laugh it off.

After all, my salary is only 3000 yuan. What does the end of the world have to do with me?

But for the officers of the limited agency... especially someone like Honglian, warnings are not easily ignored.

The reason is simple: the Dimensional Organization has actually witnessed the destruction of many worlds and has personally come into contact with worlds on the verge of destruction. In fact, the organization itself was established with the idea of ​​maintaining world stability. For them, this matter is not so distant or abstract, and preventing the world from heading towards destruction is indeed one of their responsibilities.

The end of the world is not a legend, but something that happens all the time.

Compared to countless world lines, this world is nothing special.

Honglian looked at Elori, "Is the world of angels like this too?"

“That’s right. A hundred years later, a natural disaster destroyed the entire surface of the earth, killing billions of people. The survivors were forced to move underground and built huge cities underground. Even so, the disaster showed no signs of ending. Sooner or later, humanity will lose all its living space.” Lin Qing said slowly, “...And what I’m talking about is not hypothetical, but a fact that has happened. It is also the world you first arrived in after the Five Rings Machinery Factory’s erosion occurred.”

"Ugh!" Honglian suddenly felt a tearing pain in her head.

She covered her forehead, as if a scene flashed before her eyes.

Team members completely covered in protective suits...

The desolate city ruins...

A blue crystal standing tall in the center of the skyscraper...

But if you think about it a little more, these fragments will disappear without a trace, like sand slipping through your fingers.

What's happening here?
Did I really go to such a place?
“In order to change the future, Elori made a series of attempts, and she did succeed... You’ve already heard what happened next,” Lin Qing continued. “That’s why she received the attention of the World Ability Center. For her world, she was the key figure.”

At this point, Honglian finally understood the whole story—if the other party wasn't lying. Besides, she couldn't find any problems with it for the time being... Her emotions told her that these things were simply a fantasy, but her rationality was already inclined to believe that these messages were true.

"I don't understand, why would this so-called collective consciousness issue a warning to us?" she asked, voicing the question that had been on her mind the most. "Did it ever try to save those worlds that have already been destroyed?"

Lin Qing shook her head, her answer somewhat surprising to Hong Lian, "It won't save us; only the people of this world can save themselves. As for the reason it issued the warning, it's probably the reason it was born—only with the existence of humans can abilities become diverse, thereby strengthening the consciousness itself."

Honglian found it hard to imagine such a scene: that the ability was not a talent or a curse, but an alternative life form that coexisted with humans.

She had heard that computer clusters with a certain amount of data could potentially develop consciousness, and this consciousness wouldn't be confined to a single hard drive or a few memory modules, but would span all the machines in the cluster, even spreading along the network and coalescing into an unprecedented life form. Any chip involved in the computation could be considered part of it.

But at least a computer has a physical form, so can't we have something like capabilities too?
“If you can’t understand it, there’s no need to waste your time on it.” Lin Qing shrugged. “For example, I don’t care what World Heart is. As long as it can provide valuable information, it’s worth believing. By the way, Xiao Kanong has a meeting with the demon on the first of next month. It’s probably about in-depth cooperation. You can check it out yourself then and see what the Limited Agency is really like behind the scenes.”

"In Jiangcheng on the other side?" Honglian frowned. "The erosion point is currently in a rest period. Without permission, no operator with the capability is allowed to cross that space."

Those with abilities will cause the eroded area to expand, so after the exploration period ends, those with abilities will be prohibited from passing through until the area returns to a stable state.

As for ordinary people, it doesn't matter.

"There isn't just one passage to that world... Of course, this is also a convenience brought about by the World Heart."

Freely entering and exiting other worlds without relying on intrusion points? This was another piece of information that overturned Honglian's understanding, but she was already somewhat numb to it. "You said before... that our world was on the verge of destruction. What was the reason? Could this also be related to the mechanism?"

"You're very smart. The answer is yes. After monopolizing the ability, the Limitation Agency gradually became a behemoth organization. It replaced the ability with high-tech prosthetics, which did achieve the goal of preventing the spread of the ability, but this is actually not a good thing."

Lin Qing gave a general overview of the future situation—there was no need to keep this part a secret anyway, the more Honglian knew, the easier it would be to verify later. "In short, due to blind development and excessive arrogance, a technology called nanobots completely went out of control, ultimately destroying the surface ecosystem, and no one could survive."

Clearly, this intelligence was also provided by the World Capability Center.

Honglian fell silent for a moment. The organization had witnessed so many worlds on the verge of destruction, and now she was about to become one of them, with the organization itself being the instigator. It was all too ironic. She couldn't verify the information, but she remembered Xiao Kanong's opening remarks when he parachuted into the Jiangcheng branch…

"Headquarters is trying to resolve the problems caused by the capability, and perhaps it won't be long before we can truly block the capability..."

Such a prophetic description clearly cannot be simply dismissed as a coincidence.

At the same time, she also realized that Lin Qing had called Wang Baihu and herself here not because they could save Elori, but to persuade them to rebel against the authorities.

Or even further—simply to persuade her alone.

Wang Baihu was merely a prelude set up by the other side.

Honglian didn't want to ask "why herself?" at all.

From the outcome, the other party's choice was almost perfect: if the organization would truly cooperate with a demonic group that had murdered hundreds of people for profit, then it wouldn't deserve to call itself the protector of the world, and she wouldn't stand idly by. If this was just a scam, she wouldn't have acted rashly before thoroughly investigating. Other agents who couldn't withstand the pressure might have turned around and reported the matter to headquarters.

“I will check,” Honglian said in a deep voice.

"I knew you would do that," Lin Qing said with a smile of relief.

If you ignore the hair, accessories, and makeup, Honglian has a vague feeling that she's having a conversation with herself. And for some reason, she feels that this woman seems to value her quite a bit.

"Have we met before?" she couldn't help but ask.

Lin Qing shook her head, then changed her mind and said, "No, maybe I've seen him once."

"When?"

She found a piece of white paper, drew a picture on it, and then held it up in front of her.

Honglian instantly understood her identity.

"You are the masked woman!"

No wonder she found this person's knowledge of mechanisms incredible...

Honglian initially wanted to reprimand her for allowing the botanical garden's intrusion point to expand, leading to that area being swallowed by the overlapping space. However, considering the collateral consequences, she suddenly shut her mouth. Firstly, no one was injured. Secondly, its most direct impact was bringing the Limitation Agency to the surface, moving it from behind the scenes to the forefront. If the other side had considered the Limitation Agency an enemy long ago, this move would be precise and deadly, strategically flawless.

Unexpectedly, the target that Xiao Kanong had been trying to catch was still active in Jiangcheng, brazenly undermining the security measures. This contrast made Honglian feel quite uncomfortable.

This is undoubtedly a serious dereliction of duty by the intelligence team!
"Are you a wanderer from another world? Are the White-Clad Immortal and the Flesh Butcher also with you?"

“No, I belong to this world, not the wanderer you speak of. As for the others… I don’t know much about them.” Lin Qing tacitly acknowledged what the group said. “But one thing I’m certain of is that they also received a call from the World Ability Center.”

(End of this chapter)