CHAPTER 96 – The Moment the World Kneels
The city was a tableau of apocalypse.
A skyscraper's spire, snapped cleanly, hung impossibly still a hundred feet from the ground.
The air, thick with the smell of ozone and pulverized concrete, was now utterly silent, save for the faint hiss of dimensional static.
Xiao Xi reappeared exactly where she had vanished: in the heart of the crisis.
Her return was not a flash of light, but a silent re-assertion.
She was here, and the universe—this specific, fragile narrative—had no choice but to obey the mandate of its true governing principle.
Time locked itself in place.
The closest figure, Gu Yanzhou, was a nightmare of failing code.
Half his face was a crystalline lattice of blue pixels, his body dissolving from the waist down in a rain of digital snow.
He was kneeling, trapped between realities, kept from oblivion only by sheer, agonizing willpower.
His glassy eye,the only parts that looked truly alive,flickered up, trying to focus past the pain.
"Xi…? Xiao Xi…?"
His voice, normally a deep, calming resonance, shook like breaking glass, the sound sputtering slightly as his vocal cords glitched.
She ran to him instantly, the sound of her frantic footsteps the only thing piercing the silence of the frozen moment.
"Yanzhou!"
Her hands cupped his fading face—a face that felt cold, sharp, and slightly wrong under her touch.
But where her skin met his, the white, aggressive static of deletion suddenly subsided.
Her touch was pure, concentrated existence, stabilizing the frayed edges of his being with a wave of familiar warmth.
He let out a rattling breath, the relief profound and immediate.
"You… came back…"
She pressed her forehead to his, a desperate, anchoring connection.
"I will always come back to you.
I swear it."
Her power, the primordial Chaos, did not just stabilize him; it began to rewire him.
Violet, luminous threads,her personal Chaos,wrapped around his body like thousands of gentle, corrective sutures, pulling the dissolving pixels back into a whole, anchoring his narrative thread firmly back into the world's fabric.
Gu exhaled, the shuddering in his body ceasing.
"I thought,this time,I wouldn't make it.
I heard the void calling."
She shook her head fiercely, pulling back just enough for him to see the fire in her eyes.
"You're mine.
You are central to this world now.
I'm not letting you go."
Behind them, the silence shattered a second time, not with a noise, but with an imposed coldness.
"A sentimental return."
The Root Protagonist stepped forward from the shadow of a frozen-mid-air car, his silver eyes glowing with the fierce, sterile light of absolute logic.
His presence radiated pure, unyielding Order.
"You shouldn't have returned, Xiao Xi.
This action only proves your instability."
His silver gaze flicked to Gu Yanzhou, and a silent pressure tried to intensify the deletion on Gu's form.
Xiao Xi's chaos threads instantly flared, blocking the attempt.
"This world cannot sustain two Roots.
The inherent contradiction is tearing the narrative apart.
One of us must yield."
But Xiao Xi's Chaos flared like massive, dark violet wings behind her, casting the frozen scene in a terrifying, beautiful light.
The energy she wielded was not destructive; it was creative, a primordial force.
Her voice echoed through the suspended air, deep and vibrating with cosmic authority:
"There is only one Root."
And the world, the millions of suspended variables and glitches, vibrated in agreement with her.
The very fabric of reality seemed to bow.