Of course, Mei's intention was to comfort the seemingly broken Shu, to tell him that everyone would definitely apologize formally later, that it wasn't his fault.
But Mei found that as soon as her voice fell, Shu's head suddenly turned towards her, the grievance on his face even more pronounced.
Was I really that fierce?
Alright, he had indeed been very fierce just now.
The thought of his attitude towards Kiana and the others causing them to flee in disarray made Shu's entire being deflate.
Mei looked at Shu, who had already retreated into a dark corner, sighed, and stepped forward to pat his shoulder. "Alright, don't be discouraged. It's not that everyone is afraid of you scolding them, they're just worried that they'll disappoint you even more.
"Give Kiana and the others some time. They'll properly prepare how to apologize to you. For now, you should go back and rest... or perhaps, you could go talk to Overseer Otto first?"
Shu raised his head. Mei's words had truly struck a chord with him.
He had a lot of pent-up questions he wanted to ask Otto properly right now—about this competition, about his own problems, and about Chen Tianwu... no, about Ana.
Chen Tianwu had disappeared after whispering "nice to meet you." Shu had searched all over but couldn't find any trace of him.
If he hadn't witnessed the entire experience with his own eyes, and if it weren't for the Divine Keys scattered around Ana, Shu would really think he might still be under the hard control of the Book of Time.
But what truly made Shu feel strange was that everyone had a normal expression when they saw Ana. No one had any questions about her appearance. It was as if... the problem had always been with Shu himself.
This sense of detachment was what was making him most uncomfortable right now. His mind was filled with questions, and the key point was that he couldn't just casually talk about these things.
What if he said something he shouldn't and caused some kind of accident?
Don't say "it's just a few words." He really didn't want to become that old woman buying water spinach by the roadside who caused Bi Gan's death.
After much thought, it was Mei's words that enlightened him.
Chen Tianwu had said that this "resurrection" was a gift prepared for him by Otto. Then even if Otto had deleted his own related memories to cooperate with Chen Tianwu, he could still talk to Otto about this.
The key point was...
Shu's fist clenched and unclenched slightly. Then, he gave Mei a grateful smile.
"Uh... actually, they don't have to force themselves..." But after thinking about it, Shu still said this to Mei.
Mei smiled back. "It's not forcing, but we can't stop them from insisting on forcing themselves."
Alright... it seemed that Kiana and the others would definitely come to give him a formal apology... hopefully it wouldn't be the kind where they came with an apology letter and recited it to him.
...
The sixth underground floor was still the research and development floor of the Fire Moth. In the past, only Otto was a permanent resident here, and most people didn't even have the authority to enter the sixth underground floor. And now, only Schrödinger had been added.
We're short on people... Otto thought, bored, as he spun in his office chair.
The more than ten thousand people brought over from the City of Sighs had barely filled the empty shell of the Fire Moth, giving this "last candle of humanity" some real fuel to burn.
And even now, Otto still felt that Shu's impulsive decision in Sapphire City back then had really burned his brain out.
Not to mention the act of impersonating official personnel, which would have landed him in jail before the Great Honkai. The fact that Shu had later insisted on acknowledging the name "Fire Moth" was really...
No, looking at it now, could it be that Shu didn't dare to deny it back then?
Otto's spinning suddenly stopped. He tilted his head back, stroking his chin, and seriously considered this possibility.
It seemed... for Shu, it was quite common to not dare to say things that would disappoint others because their expectations of him were too high?
"Pfft..." Otto couldn't help but laugh. Then, he controlled the chair to spin one more time before covering his face with the documents in his hand.
He had thought that Shu was just too responsible, that he really wanted to save everyone. Hmm... although that wasn't wrong.
But at that time, Shu's answer was obviously not well-thought-out, nor was it the youthful spirit of a hot-blooded teenager. He was simply afraid of being looked at with disappointed eyes by so many people.
The Fire Moth was born out of a desire not to disappoint people? That was completely different from what everyone in the Fire Moth imagined.
Clang—
The sound of the electronic door sliding open came, stopping Otto's thought of spinning one more time.
The person he was waiting for had arrived.
But it seemed a bit strange. In the past, Shu would always knock first, and he would open the door. This time, Shu had come in directly.
Considering the moral standards Shu had always shown, it was a bit impolite.
But it was also understandable. After all, he had prepared such a big gift for him. It was normal for him to be a little impolite in his eagerness now.
Clang— It was still the sound of the electronic door sliding. Otto smiled knowingly.
It was indeed the Shu he was familiar with. He still knew to close the door behind him.
Shu walked over without a word. Otto also met him with his trademark confident and elegant smile.
He raised his hand to Shu, as if to embrace him.
And Shu also raised his hand to Otto, placing it on his shoulder and holding him in place.
Otto: ?
"Shu, you..." Otto finally realized that he seemed to have misjudged something. But just as he opened his mouth, Shu suddenly sped up his actions, decisively taking a step forward, and mercilessly landed a hook on Otto's abdomen.
"Ugh—!" Even Otto's body, which had developed abs after being enhanced by the Key of Genesis, was doubled over like a shrimp by this punch. He bent over in front of Shu with a twisted expression and fell down.
Shu stood in place, retracting his hands, and looked coldly at Otto, who was half-kneeling on the ground, clutching his stomach and gasping for breath.
"Phew... you're not even going to give me a chance to explain?" After taking several breaths, Otto looked up with a bitter smile, clutching his abdomen and asking Shu.
Shu's expression was still cold. But after seeing a drop of cold sweat on Otto's face due to the pain, Shu snorted, and his iceberg-like expression shattered.
"If you had opened your mouth, would you still have been able to take this punch?" Shu said angrily. Otto nodded knowingly and got up, still bent over, and even gasped in pain during the process.
"This force... you used [Hope], didn't you?" After standing up, Otto finally had time to look at the part of his body that had been hit.
It was right on the mark, the most vulnerable part of the entire abdomen, the stomach. It was clear that this punch had been brewing for a long time.
And its effect was also very good. This was the first time Otto had shown such an ugly state in front of Shu.
But logically speaking, Shu's current physical fitness shouldn't have been able to hit him like this with a single punch. And according to calculations, the Thousand Stars of Reason, which could continuously restore the body, should have also run out of energy...
So Shu had definitely used [Hope] in this punch... even the [Hope] he had just replenished after returning to the base.
Although he knew that he might... no, he should say that he would have to take this hit sooner or later, but when this punch really came, he realized...
It really hurt.
"So what was this punch for?" Otto did not show any resentment or dissatisfaction with this punch. There was only the doubt of wanting to know why he had died.
This person's self-awareness made Shu feel a faint sense of guilt, a feeling of "he's so good-tempered."
Little did he know that Otto was thinking the same thing. It was really something for a victim to think "this person has such a good temper" about the perpetrator.
"The plan that Kiana and the others executed was your idea, right?" Shu questioned Otto in a firm tone. "It has almost the same flavor as the plan you made to deal with Evolution back then."
"Then you're really wronging me," Otto said with a smile, raising a finger and wagging it. "For this selection competition, the biggest move I made from beginning to end was to reveal your identity to them. I didn't interfere with anything else at all."
Shu took a deep breath, the killing intent in his widened eyes revealing "I knew it was you, you bastard."
He knew it! How could Kiana have seen through his disguise so easily! She hadn't even seen through "Ana"!
Forget it, forget it. The matter of Ana was still more important.
Shu calmed down and said to Otto, "Otto, you know about Ana, right?"
He was still cautious, leaving a little room for error, in case the "water spinach causing Bi Gan's death" incident really happened.
A trace of confusion indeed appeared on Otto's face. But soon, Otto understood Shu's meaning, and then smiled and raised a finger to his lips.
"I think you need a cup of coffee to relieve your fatigue," Otto's tone was a little frivolous. This blunt change of topic made Shu wisely shut his mouth. Although he didn't quite understand, he still followed Otto's lead and changed the topic.
"I think this thing is more suitable for you to handle," Shu said, raising his hand and grabbing at the empty air, as if he had caught something that had been floating around him, and then dragged it and presented it to Otto.
This scene was strangely familiar to Otto. The biggest difference was that the person who had held an object out of thin air fourteen years ago was not as casual as Shu, and the thing he was holding was not so... casual.
"Before I make my own judgment on this thing, I still want to ask a question," Otto's expression became a little troubled. He opened his hand and rubbed his temples, and asked Shu helplessly.
"What do you think this is?" Shu had originally wanted to say the answer directly, but with Otto asking like this, wouldn't it be impolite if he didn't ask Otto what he was thinking?
"Let me confirm first," Otto sighed, turned around, and walked to the corner of the laboratory. Then he moved some miscellaneous items from there, revealing a box that looked like a safe.
Otto entered his iris information, then opened the safe and took out a pair of glasses that had a unique bloated sense of technology, and put them on.
Then Shu watched as Otto fell into deep thought while looking at his own hand... more accurately, the thing in his hand.
This was the longest time Shu had ever seen Otto in deep thought. After a full minute, Otto let out a tooth-aching "tsk," and then slowly took off the glasses.
"Sigh..." When he opened his mouth, his words were filled with a kind of emotion and disbelief, like a scholar who had been abandoned by the times.
"A singularity? Am I right?" Otto placed the glasses on the table. Shu keenly noticed that Otto's hands were trembling slightly.
But before Shu could ask why, Otto suddenly laughed.
"Really... I should have been prepared for this..." He knocked his head with his fingers in frustration, let out a long sigh, and then faced Shu seriously.
"Congratulations, you have created a brand new... 'Tree Seed'."
"What thing?" Shu was stunned for a moment. "You just said this thing was called a singularity... wait, the Tree Seed you're talking about isn't the one I'm thinking of, is it?"
Otto nodded seriously. "If the tree you're thinking of is the Imaginary Tree, then what you're thinking of is the same as what I'm saying."
"Hiss—!" Shu finally knew why Otto had made that tooth-aching sound just now. This gasp of cold air really made his teeth ache.
At the same time, Shu only felt that the singularity in his hand, which had no actual weight, had become incredibly heavy, so heavy that he was a little out of breath.
"But... I made it based on the theory of the Big Bang. Shouldn't this be a big bomb?" For a moment, Shu didn't know whether the result of a big bomb was better or the result of a "Tree Seed" was better.
He felt that he could accept the fact that he was holding a big bomb more. Even if it exploded, it would at most blow up the entire universe. Perhaps because the universe was expanding and moving away, it could avoid the fate of the Big Rip and be reborn from death.
If this was really a seed of the Imaginary Tree... then the problems that could arise would be really big.
After all, everyone knew that this world itself was part of an infinitely large Imaginary Tree. Now that another tree suddenly appeared in this tree, would it really not trigger some kind of defense mechanism?
"If you're worried that this thing will attract some kind of trouble like the will of the world, I think you can rest assured," Otto comforted Shu just as he was worried about the scene of two trees fighting for the throne.
"Don't act like you have a lot of experience..." Shu complained speechlessly. He even suspected that Otto was an optimist.
Otto just smiled and shrugged at Shu.
Shu fell silent. He turned to stare at Otto, his gaze scorching, as if he wanted to stare through Otto and the group of people he represented.
"Don't tell me..." Shu said word by word, trying to stop Otto... no, he was trying to stop this world from becoming what he had predicted.
"You guessed right," but Otto still spoke, completely disregarding Shu's life or death.
"Future City does have a cultivated Imaginary Tree, so you don't have to worry about this Tree Seed causing any trouble... oh, I can't rule out the possibility of accidents if two of them appear at the same time."
Shu felt that it was necessary for him to "snap" and die here to give Otto and the group of Class A war criminals led by Joyce in Future City a piece of his mind.