Chapter 1464: Reclamation and Rescue

Meanwhile, deep within the devastated Ash Realm, after the second pass of the Red Star, the closer one got to the Ash Realm's core, the more the forms of matter resembled the chaotic embers of civilization. In this region, suspended between "annihilation" and "existence," three figures moved calmly.

"How is it? Have you found it?" Bai Ye, dressed in a suit, scanned his surroundings.

"...Not yet." Beside him stood another figure in a suit. His light blue long hair was tied back, and a serpentine tattoo on his neck was largely hidden by his collar. His faintly glowing eyes gazed at the sky, as if deducing the trajectory of something. A Queen of Diamonds card lay quietly in his chest pocket.

"However, it should be somewhere nearby."

"Cough, cough, cough." Between the two men stood a white-haired old woman. Her hunched figure reached only to Bai Ye's and Queen of Diamonds' waists. Leaning on a cane, she appeared very elderly, as if a gust of wind could blow her over.

"Grandma is old and can't handle all this commotion... Let's speed things up a bit... Cough, cough, cough..."

Bai Ye's lips twitched slightly, and Queen of Diamonds beside him also wore a strange expression. The two tacitly ignored the old woman's complaints.

Carried by the wind, Queen of Diamonds searched among the scattered ruins for a long time. Suddenly, as if sensing something, his gaze locked onto a distant deep pit. "Found it." He quickly moved towards the pit.

It resembled a meteor crater from a horrific impact, though the surrounding terrain, influenced by the embers of civilization, had floated skyward, making it difficult to discern its original shape. However, massive fragments of stars now lay buried over the pit, incredibly heavy.

"Are you sure?" Bai Ye asked.

"Positive." Queen of Diamonds turned to the old woman. "Grandma of Spades, he's underneath... Please, lend us your strength."

The old woman sighed softly. "You youngsters... you don't understand how to be considerate of us old people. You always think of Grandma for all the heavy, tiring work... Oh, the world is really going downhill..."

The old woman slowly took off her outer Chinese jacket, revealing a black tank top underneath, along with well-defined, powerful muscles. On her bronze-colored skin, a fearsome and intricate playing card suit was tattooed on her left shoulder: the Queen of Spades.

She "tremblingly" placed her cane on the ground, then walked to the crater. With a five-fingered grab, she single-handedly lifted a meteorite fragment over a hundred meters high, then tossed it several kilometers away as if it were trash. The heavy meteorite crashed to the ground, once again creating a spiderweb-like crater in the distant Ash Realm!

The old woman effortlessly cleared away the meteorite fragments from deep space, as easily as bagging trash at home. In just a few dozen seconds, the entire pit was cleared.

After doing all this, the old woman "tremblingly" put her jacket back on, sat on a nearby rock, and exaggeratedly wiped sweat from her brow: "Ah... I'm old now... The rest is up to you youngsters."

Bai Ye: ...Queen of Diamonds: ...

Both men looked simultaneously towards the bottom of the pit. The body of a young man in a white lab coat lay quietly amidst the fine meteorite debris. Bathed in the faint sunlight, he appeared to be sleeping among the stars.

Bai Ye reached into the void and telekinetically retrieved a coffin, placing it beside the body. Queen of Diamonds gently raised his hand, and a gentle breeze lifted the corpse, slowly suspending it. His hair was smoothed by the wind, the wrinkles on his clothes were flattened, and finally, he slowly settled into the coffin, lying neatly in the center.

"Lord Tianshu, recovery successful."

Just then, Bai Ye seemed to sense something and frowned, looking in the direction of Changdao Guzang. Then he raised his hand and grabbed something from the void; a note appeared in his grasp.

"A letter from the Gray King?" Queen of Diamonds raised an eyebrow.

Bai Ye scanned the note's contents, seemingly unsurprised, then passed it to Queen of Diamonds, whose expression was quite shocked. When the note finally reached Queen of Spades, the old woman squinted and looked at it for a long time before finally making out the words.

The old woman's lips curved slightly upward, "Interesting..."

"A new boss has arrived?"

***

**Tianshu Realm**

"How are things? Have the casualty figures been compiled?"

"They're compiled. Thanks to Mr. Han's domain, even though over 80% of the Tianshu Realm was destroyed, our death toll for both residents and Shinto practitioners is no more than five hundred... Most of these were severely wounded in battle and died after Mr. Han's domain disappeared and resuscitation efforts failed."

"Fortunately, the Tianshu Realm had invited the Kite Rescue Association in advance, so our emergency medical system didn't collapse..."

"That's good, that's good. Buildings can be rebuilt, but people are the foundation of everything."

"No... this is bad!"

"What's wrong?"

"It's... it's Mr. Han..."

"What about Mr. Han?"

"Mr. Han's body, which we just transported back to the morgue... it's gone!"

***

**Tianshu Realm, a certain hidden underground space.**

Delicate fingers, as refined as scallion jade, gently unzipped a black body bag. As the surgical light overhead switched on, a gruesome, almost fleshless corpse lay quietly beneath the illumination.

"How terrible," the girl sighed from beside her. "What's the difference between this and death by a thousand cuts..."

Under the pale light, a white-haired girl with a bun flashed a look of pity. Her gauze-like surgical gown seemed to exist between reality and dream, rippling in the faint light. A surgical lamp was tilted on her head, illuminating a cool, doll-like face below. On the table beside her, a playing card lay next to a scalpel: the Eight of Hearts.

"The difference is, he's not dead," Chu Muyun's calm voice resounded from the other side of the operating table.

He slowly put on rubber surgical gloves and opened a nearby briefcase, revealing a dazzling array of over a dozen types of hammers, screwdrivers, and saws—a sight that made one's scalp tingle!

"On the surface, he's indeed dead. His heart has stopped, and his blood has almost dried up... But his domain has locked him in a state of near-death."

"Yet, from another perspective, he is already dead... Under extreme overexertion, his mental world has collapsed with brain death. Once the last shred of mental energy is consumed and his domain dissolves, his physical body will inevitably perish..."

"In more advanced terms, he's currently in a superposition of 'dead' and 'near-dead.'"

"Heh, Schrödinger's Cat, right?" The girl glanced at Chu Muyun. "Haven't seen you in a while, have your cultural studies improved? Work harder, and in a few hundred years, you might catch up to Bai Ye."

Chu Muyun: ...

"I can handle his physical injuries." Chu Muyun couldn't be bothered to argue with her. "But the death of his mental world, that's your domain... Can you manage it?"

"What's with all this 'you, you, you'... I think you've really forgotten your roots, not even willing to call me 'Teacher'." The girl scoffed and straightened the tilted surgical light on her head, "Don't forget, I saved your life too."

Chu Muyun helplessly closed his eyes, wearing an expression that said, "Say what you will, I'm not calling you that even if it kills me."

"Alright, let's get to work." The scalpel, appearing to exist between dream and reality, danced at the girl's fingertips. She spoke leisurely, "I'll handle the mind, you handle the body. Whoever finishes healing him last pays for dinner."

"No problem."