Chapter 657: Chapter 263: The Progenitor’s Power, World Quest

"I see all the unborn lining up on the surface of the pipeline, the queue biting its own tail. Don’t cut it open..."

"Cut it open, and you’ll become the pipeline itself! Pipeline, pipeline, pipeline..."

In the conference room, the darkness on the light screen gradually faded.

The screen returned to the deathly silent desert.

Xiao Lingchen’s teammates had vanished without a trace, as if they had never existed.

Only he remained, lying alone on the cold sand. His eyes were wide open, pupils completely unfocused, and his hands clawed frantically at the air as if trying to grasp something invisible.

And he was still endlessly repeating that one word in a myriad of different tones.

"Pipeline! Pipeline! Pipeline? Pipeline... pipeline... pipeline, hehe...? Pipeline? Pipeline! PIPELINE—!!!"

The sight sent a chill down the spine of everyone in the conference room.

Even a hardened general like Sun Lie felt his skin crawl and couldn’t help but rub his arms.

Zhu Mingyi’s expression was grim. He couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing at all. He could only turn to Hou Guanghe and ask in a hoarse voice, "What... what in the world happened to him?"

"What is he saying? Has he gone mad?"

Hou Guanghe said faintly, "You could call it a mental breakdown."

He watched the completely shattered genius on the screen, a trace of... fear, one he himself hadn’t even noticed, flickering in his cloudy old eyes.

"To be precise..."

"He was... by some kind of meme we can’t comprehend..."

"Contaminated."

"A ’me...’ a what...?"

Sun Lie’s face was a mask of confusion.

Yan Che pondered for a moment before speaking. "A meme is something that spreads through a population via imitation and replication..."

He paused, glanced at Sun Lie, and gave up on the explanation. "Forget it. It’s no use explaining it to a blockhead like you."

"All you need to know is that Xiao Lingchen’s brain was flooded with a pile of junk data he couldn’t process or delete. It basically crashed."

Zhu Mingyi’s expression was darker than ever. He ignored Yan Che’s explanation and pulled the topic back. His voice was hoarse. "Yui Hanyi... his Spirit, Spiritual Night Filling the Heavens... is it really only SS-rank?"

Hou Guanghe slowly shook his head, his murky eyes filled with an unprecedented gravity.

"SS-rank was just the crudest classification we could make based on the abilities he has displayed in the past."

"This Spirit is too unique. We don’t know its upper limits, or what exactly it can drag out from... that place."

"We... know nothing at all."

Zhu Mingyi stared at the screen, his heart sinking.

They say fear is born from the unknown.

And Yui Hanyi, from head to toe, was the very definition of unknown.

’Lin Ye...’

’Faced with such a bizarre, incomprehensible existence, how are you supposed to win?’

...

「Celestial Dragon’s Nest, before the Sun Palace.」

As the last ashes of the Caesar clan scattered, the shackles of fear that had pressed deep into the bloodlines of the entire Dragon Race vanished with them.

The chorus of worship from the myriad dragons was still as loud as a tsunami, but Lin Ye merely raised a hand, and the clamor ceased instantly.

He turned, his gaze falling upon the two titans of the Dragon’s Nest, who had just scrambled to their feet nearby.

Regner’s massive body trembled slightly. His single, fierce eye was now filled with awe and... a sliver of fear that made it impossible to meet Lin Ye’s gaze.

’He had, after all, intended to kill this new king.’

Compared to Regner’s unease, Liliana, at his side, was far more composed.

She took a step forward and knelt gracefully on one knee, her purple dragon eyes filled with sincerity.

"Aurelian Liliana greets Your Majesty."

"Thank you for removing the cancer from the Dragon’s Nest and freeing us from a thousand-year-old yoke. I was blind before and offended Your Majesty’s dignity. I await my punishment."

Her tone was neither servile nor arrogant; she expressed both gratitude and loyalty while taking the initiative to apologize for their earlier conflict.

Seeing this, Regner hastily followed her lead. His enormous body knelt on one knee with a THUD that shook the very ground.

He struggled for a moment before forcing out in a booming, muffled voice, "I... I’m bad with words! But... what she said!"

Lin Ye looked at these two subordinates, whose styles were polar opposites, and found the situation both funny and exasperating.

On the surface, however, he maintained his profound and inscrutable air of authority, his voice level and devoid of any emotion.

"It’s nothing. Rise."

"Thank you, Your Majesty!"

As if granted a royal pardon, the two rose to their feet.

"I need to go to the ancestral land."

Lin Ye wasted no time on pleasantries, getting straight to the point.

Upon hearing this, Liliana’s expression turned serious. She respectfully turned and gestured toward the now-deserted Sun Palace behind her.

"Your Majesty, the true entrance to the ancestral land lies in the deepest part of the Sun Palace."

"There, you will find a secret passage that cuts through the main trunk of Yggdrasil, leading directly to the heart of the world."

...

「A few minutes later.」

Lin Ye stood before a passage of indescribable magnificence.

It was as if an ancient god had cleaved a chasm deep within the World Tree’s trunk with a giant axe. The passage was bottomless, shrouded in utter darkness.

The three of them leaped down, and the surrounding scenery blurred past them in a rapid retreat.

Along the way, Lin Ye took the opportunity to ask the two about the history of their branch of the Dragon Race.

A flicker of sadness crossed Liliana’s eyes before she began to recount for Lin Ye the age-old history of their particular lineage of the Dragon Race.

"Our homeland is not this desolate world."

"In our inherited memories, our homeland is called Akasha, which means ’the place of all beginnings.’ The entire Dragon Race was born there. It is a true sanctuary."

"Our ancestor, Igexis, was once one of the most powerful Dragon Kings under the command of the supreme Black Dragon Emperor in that sanctuary."

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