Xu Fang burned through ninety-five percent of his energy in an instant.

Encased in ice, Gust turned into a cannonball-like blur. He ripped through the thin upper atmosphere, shooting away from Earth at terrifying initial speed.

He broke the first cosmic velocity.

Gust instantly understood what Xu Fang was trying to do—he wanted to throw him off the planet so he’d never come back.

Compressed down to the size of a basketball, Gust didn’t face much drag. He’d easily break into the thermosphere, maybe even slip Earth’s grip entirely.

Realizing this, Gust panicked for a brief moment, then couldn’t help but…

…laugh.

“Hahaha… hahahahaha!!”

“What’re you laughing at?”

“I thought you’d come up with something impressive. Turns out this is all you’ve got. Guess there’s no need to decode that gene sequence anymore. I’ll just quietly wait for this body to collapse.” Gust’s delighted thoughts echoed in Xu Fang’s mind from far away.

“You’ll never be able to come back,” Xu Fang said calmly, as if stating a fact.

Gust laughed. “This body will quickly disintegrate in the cold of outer space. Once I revert to my soul form, I’ll return to Earth.”

“Illiterate…” Xu Fang muttered.

“Start regretting it, Xu Fang. You just threw away your one chance to kill me.”

Free-falling at high speed, Xu Fang kept his pitch-black eyes locked on Gust’s direction. His emotions were as calm as his face, not the slightest bit flustered.

“Gust, I planted explosives inside your body.”

“I know. But that amount doesn’t even tickle.” Gust said, “Xu Fang, once you’re back on land, just wait to die. I don’t mind if you kill yourself, either. As long as I stay in this world, I’ll eventually find another perfect body. I’ve got patience.”

By now, Gust had entered the thermosphere. Unfortunately, even there, he still caused friction against the thin air. The ice sphere’s speed began to bleed off bit by bit. Without any thrusters to keep up his kinetic energy, he wasn’t as fast as at the start.

Projected outcome: eventually he’d drop below first cosmic velocity and settle into a stable orbit around Earth.

“Looks like I can’t even shake off this planet. If you’d thrown me a little farther, I might’ve needed more time,” he said.

This body of Gust’s had only one percent energy left. In that freezing environment, it was on the verge of collapse. Soon he’d be free again. Once he got back to Earth, he wouldn’t give Xu Fang a second chance.

“Wait, what am I seeing?”

Right then, Gust seemed to spot a large metallic object in the distance. From it, he caught the familiar scent of electromagnetic signals.

A jolt of joy ran through him. With those communication waves, he could instantly return to Earth, to any location—he could even get back to Boston before Xu Fang landed.

“Xu Fang, I’ve gotta say, your luck is awful. Heh heh heh. I’ve changed my mind. I’ll head over and finish you off… I’m guessing you don’t have much energy left, do you?”

Xu Fang used the last of his energy to deploy a shield and flatten his own body, slowing himself early so he could land safely.

“Gust, remember the Symmetry World? You might not know what happened there, so I’ll tell you.”

“In the Symmetry World, I ran into a kind of monster called the Gypsum Guardian. They’re nowhere near as strong as you. But I found three traits you all share.”

Gust knew about the Symmetry World, but he figured Xu Fang was just bluffing or plotting something. “No matter what you say, it won’t change your situation.”

Xu Fang held up one finger and went on at his own pace. “First shared trait: you’re all made up entirely of black light particles.”

“Second trait: physical attacks don’t bother you. But you’re scared of explosions. So I can assume that intense, sudden energy changes can hurt you.”

He raised a third finger. “Last shared trait: you’re all terrified of human gazes. Whether it was attacking Luo Xiaoming or invading the duplicate, you never showed up on cameras or in crowds. My guess… human observation has a serious impact on you.”

“You… you…”

Every word Xu Fang spoke made Gust feel his soul tremble. He forced himself to stay composed, to show no weakness. “So what? There’s no one here…”

“November 1st. Eastern Time in the States, 13:40. The International Space Station will perform a docking maneuver. The whole process will be streamed live onto the screens of millions of viewers worldwide. And that metal object you just saw—that’s the station I’m talking about. Mm, the timing’s just right…”

“What… you…”

“Now then, let’s start counting down. Ten… nine…”

…

Seventy-three meters long, metal “wings” spread on both sides, the International Space Station, shaped like a giant capital “I,” orbited Earth at a linear speed of 7.7 km/s.

Built by sixteen countries and jointly operated by NASA, Roscosmos, ESA and several other space agencies, this orbital lab was staffed around the clock. Today at 1:40 p.m., it was carrying out a crew rotation.

The spacecraft carrying the new astronauts had already entered the station’s orbit. The distance between them was under one kilometer, and it was now closing in at three meters per second.

Several HD cameras monitored the distance between station and ship from multiple angles, feeding real-time data back to the U.S. mission control, and streaming the footage to live platforms.

When the spacecraft was less than a hundred meters away and the two were about to enter the tense docking phase, something unexpected happened.

“…three… two… one…”

A dozen or so kilometers from the station, a blinding white flash suddenly flared, as if something had exploded.

Faced with the incident, the docking procedure was aborted. Station staff linked into their computers, checking for system failures. Half the HD cameras swung toward the light source, trying to see what had blown up.

The duplicate was completely shredded in the blast, and Gust, just separated from the body, was suddenly bathed in the gaze of countless people.

From mission control. From the station and the spacecraft. And from even more people watching the live stream…

Gust dreaded being observed. Even a single observer would damage his soul. He’d never told anyone about this weakness, not even Josiah. Yet Xu Fang had seen right through him.

“In the end, the one who kills you isn’t me, and it isn’t that website. It’s the people,” a faint, unreal voice etched itself into Gust’s final thoughts.

“Damn humans, I’ll kill all of you!!” he howled in silence, twisting and writhing, trying to resist the stares pouring in from the entire world.

“Oh my God! What is that thing? It’s… it’s moving. Am I seeing things?” a crew member on the station cried out.

“Jesus, I see it too. What is that?”

“It looks like it’s in pain… wait, it… it disappeared?!”

Others had seen that unnameable thing as well.

It was the first time Gust had ever been observed by so many humans. It was also the last.

“I, Gust… how could I die to you humans…”

He had no room to struggle. He wasn’t just up against humanity—he was up against the world itself. The black light particles that made up his body collapsed and peeled away at terrifying speed, until they vanished completely into the vastness of space.

“So it’s true. For him, the Force of Existence is poison… no wonder…” Xu Fang let out a breath in his heart, closed his eyes lightly, and fell toward the ground.

Xu Fang had only been testing one thing—whether the Force of Existence came from Horror Novel Web, or from the world’s own laws. From Gust’s reaction, it was clearly the latter.

No matter how that test turned out, Gust would never have made it back to Earth.

If Gust’s soul form didn’t experience force or inertia, Earth would fling him away immediately, while the solar system sped off at 240 km/s. Unless Gust could surpass that speed, he’d never catch up to the planet again.

If his soul form did experience force, he’d move in uniform circular motion around Earth, never able to draw closer or drift farther away.

In the end, though, he was killed by the Force of Existence.