For the time being, Yuzhou did not reveal his Ultraman identity to his parents. After making up a casual excuse, he slipped away on his own.
Another month passed.
While he was asleep, the little girl in the red dress once again entered Yuzhou's dream.
"How was your experience in the other world?" she asked, hugging a red ball as she looked at the sleeping Yuzhou within the dream.
Hearing her voice, Yuzhou awakened in his dream.
"Average," he replied after some thought. "The world of The Wandering Earth wasn't particularly interesting."
That assessment was fair. As a post-apocalyptic Earth, there was not much Yuzhou could actually do there.
"Help me with something," the little girl said with a faint smile.
Yuzhou was startled. She rarely smiled and seeing it now genuinely surprised him.
"What kind of help?" he asked.
He found it unexpected that the will of a universe would ask him for assistance.
"I think you've noticed this already," the little girl said, her bright eyes fixed on Yuzhou. "Although I am the will of this universe, my abilities are not particularly strong in many aspects."
"That's because the time since my consciousness was born is not very long."
"Hm?" Yuzhou paused, then asked, "Do you know how long it's been since you awakened?"
"Not exactly," she replied, placing a finger against her lips as she thought. "Roughly… ten or so billion years."
The corner of Yuzhou's mouth twitched.
"At that age, you could already be my great-great-great-great-grandmother. And you're saying that's 'not long'?"
He had never expected that beneath such a cute appearance lay an age so absurdly ancient.
Then again, the universe itself was over ten billion years old—perhaps even older. Humanity had no real way of knowing what existed in the unimaginably distant past.
"Right," Yuzhou said, steering the conversation back. "What exactly do you want my help with?"
"Help me grow," the little girl said, looking up at him.
"This…" To be honest, Yuzhou's thoughts briefly went in the wrong direction, but being a respectable person, he did not say anything inappropriate. "How am I supposed to help?"
"When you enter other worlds and change events that were originally meant to happen," the little girl explained, "the spatial vortex absorbs a portion of the spacetime distortion. That distortion is converted into the universe's origin power and brought back to this world."
With a casual wave of her hand, an image appeared in midair.
Within it was a scene of Yuzhou leaving various worlds, accompanied by a faint, invisible force being drawn into the spatial vortex.
If the little girl had not shown him this, Yuzhou would never have realized such a power existed.
"The spacetime rift is enormous," the little girl continued with a sigh. "I can only repair it using the origin power you bring back from the Ultraman worlds. Relying solely on the Universe Needle, complete restoration would be impossible."
"And when I used the Universe Needle to separate what you call the 'New Domain World' into its own independent existence, a massive amount of origin power was consumed."
"As a result, my growth stagnated at this stage—my childhood phase."
"So that's how it is?" Yuzhou was genuinely surprised.
Seen this way, he really did owe her a great deal.
The spacetime rift existed because of him, and the consumption of origin power had also been for his sake.
"You've worked hard, Little Red," Yuzhou said sincerely, stepping forward and gently patting her head.
"Little Red?"
The girl looked at him with a speechless expression but did not argue.
"Using the universe's origin power you bring back," she added, "I can materialize certain objects from those worlds for you. Of course, only half of the origin power will be used for that. The other half, I'll be keeping."
"It can do that?" Yuzhou asked in surprise. "Then why didn't you materialize any items for me in the earlier Ultraman worlds?"
"Then you can fix the spacetime rift yourself," the little girl snapped irritably. With that, she vanished from the dream.
"Hey, don't be mad—I was joking!" Yuzhou shook his head as he watched her disappear.
He never expected that even the will of the universe could have a temper.
Still, since she had entrusted him with this responsibility, Yuzhou knew he would have to take future worlds more seriously.
Changing the course of a world's story—this was something he was particularly good at.
Of course, he also understood that the universe possessed a self-correcting mechanism. Sometimes, even if events were altered, history would partially realign itself.
That said, such cases were rare. Most of the time, history truly changed.
…
The next morning, Yuzhou awoke from his dream.
He lowered his head and gently kissed Camearra, who was still lying in bed.
Then, a spatial vortex appeared out of thin air.
"Could you at least let me brush my teeth first?" Yuzhou muttered.
Ignoring the vortex entirely, he walked into the bathroom and began washing up.
The vortex did not close. Instead, it followed him into the bathroom.
Just as Yuzhou started brushing his teeth, there was a sudden whoosh—and he was sucked in, vanishing without a trace.
"Damn it!"
By the time Yuzhou reacted, he was already standing on a steel truss bridge.
That's right—on the steel framework itself. Judging by the surroundings, it was a sea-crossing bridge.
He glanced up at the stars in the sky. Nighttime.
Traffic flowed endlessly across the bridge like a river, indicating a busy, prosperous route.
"So… what kind of world is this?" Yuzhou muttered.
Having just arrived, he had no idea which plane this belonged to.
Not bothering to overthink it, Yuzhou calmly continued brushing his teeth right there on the steel bridge.
To the residents of this world, it was night.
To Yuzhou, however, the sun had just risen.
Halfway through brushing, the bridge erupted with continuous horn blasts. Yuzhou glanced over—it seemed traffic had jammed.
At one end of the bridge, something resembling a car accident had occurred.
"Is this part of the plot, or just a normal accident?"
Situations like this often signalled the start of a storyline. Still, since he hadn't finished brushing his teeth, Yuzhou didn't move to investigate.
At that moment, people began getting out of their cars in panic, fleeing toward the opposite end of the bridge.
Yuzhou narrowed his eyes.
A massive, lizard-like creature was hopping forward from the far end, smashing cars and sending them plunging into the sea.
Screams, crashing metal, and chaos filled the air.
"A lizard monster?"
Now certain that a plot had begun, Yuzhou still couldn't identify which world this was.
But in situations like this, interfering was usually the easiest way to alter the course of events.
With that thought, he sped up his brushing, preparing to act.
Suddenly, a figure moved like the wind and landed right in front of him.
The two locked eyes—and both froze.
The sudden arrival seemed just as startled as Yuzhou. After all, no normal person would be brushing their teeth on an elevated bridge in the middle of a disaster.
Yuzhou calmly spat out the last mouthful of water, placed his cup and toothbrush at his feet, and began examining the newcomer.
It was a man wearing a red-and-blue bodysuit, his head completely covered by a mask.