Chapter 86: Beauty 06

It felt like a light, fluffy feather brushing across the fair palm suspended in the air.

Or like a soft, fragile little animal clumsily trying to please the human holding it right now.

Caught up in this bizarre association, Yu Bai couldn’t help holding his breath. Subconsciously, he extended his other hand and carefully righted the white object that had been leaning sideways in his palm.

As if he were truly cherishing some small creature curled there.

…If only it really were a small animal.

But this was clearly a bun!

In a daze, Yu Bai almost felt like he was still asleep on the plane.

The black fur coat, the turbulent airflow, boarding the ship and setting sail, the Doom Orb turning into a bun—all of it had to be a dream, right?!

In that instant of shocked silence, on the spacious deck of the cruise ship amid the vast blue ocean dotted with icebergs, the stunned humans stared at that small, round white object. They blinked in perfect unison.

But the bizarre scene in their view remained utterly unchanged.

They even saw a few wisps of white steam slowly rising, silently dissipating into the cold, serene air of the North Pole.

Sure enough, it was a freshly steamed bun.

Piping hot.

Nearby, Yan Jing couldn’t help sniffing the air. He patted his stomach and stammered, “Th-this… smells so, so good.”

He Xi, who was on tiptoes peering at the object in Yu Bai’s palm, instinctively swallowed her saliva. In a small voice, she said, “It smells just like the chicken wing bun we ate this morning. But it’s still steaming!”

If it were just a breakfast bun accidentally left out, it should have gone cold long ago.

“Yeah, what’s going on? Did it hatch from the Doom Orb?!”

After the initial shock, curiosity overwhelmed Yan Jing. He extended one finger and very carefully poked the mysterious bun of unknown origin.

“Fuck!” he burst out with another wild curse. “The texture is exactly like a bun too! He Xi, come feel it!”

The little girl followed his lead right away, reaching out to poke it herself.

“Wow—” Her eyes flew wide open in an instant, and she blurted, “It’s so soft!”

“Right? Right?”

Yan Jing immediately poked it again with his finger, lost in the delectable texture. “I bet this bun tastes amazing!”

Yu Bai just stared dumbly as the big one and the little one poked back and forth at the bun in his palm.

He watched until he couldn’t resist poking it himself.

It really was so soft.

Fluffy and plump, soft and adorable.

No—what were they even doing?!

Finally snapping out of his bewilderment, Yu Bai cleared his throat seriously. “Stop poking it. This should be the Doom Orb.”

In one of the time loops, he had indeed tried incubating the Doom Orb.

Much later, when faced with this steaming bun, Yu Bai would recall that night he used the Big Dumb Dog Plushie to hatch the egg.

Right now, however, his thoughts were fragmented, thundering through his mind like a stampede of wild horses. Yu Bai shook his head in quiet despair.

Yan Jing and He Xi quickly withdrew their hands.

They looked very obedient.

Just like the bun in his palm.

Wait—why did he inexplicably feel that way?

Staring at the motionless white bun in his hand, Yu Bai truly sensed a faint, wondrous feeling that it was “very obedient.”

Was the bun transmitting emotions to him through his skin?

Like a newborn baby gazing up at an adult with innocent eyes.

…What kind of bizarre divine development was this!

He had imagined the Doom Orb might hatch a real living being, but he wasn’t mentally prepared to become a father.

No—where had fatherhood even come from?

It was just a bun!

Even though Yan Jing had pulled back his hand, his eyes remained glued to the bun in utter astonishment. “This is the Doom Orb?! But shouldn’t it be blue?”

He Xi thought about it seriously. “A blue bun? That seems kinda weird.”

“Yeah, blue doesn’t look appetizing at all.” Yan Jing pondered, his fingers twitching with the urge to poke again. “What filling does the Doom Orb have? It smells like chicken wing filling!”

He really wanted to peel open the pleats for a peek.

Yu Bai felt the same curiosity.

Since it had already hatched, he—tempered by countless trials—decided to accept this absurd reality.

Though he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why a bizarre Doom Orb brimming with timespace would inexplicably hatch a fragrant bun.

“Since the smell is the same, theoretically it should be chicken wing filling,” Yu Bai said thoughtfully. “But where did its shell go?”

Had the Deep Blue Orb turned into a bun, or had a bun hatched from the orb?

If it had hatched, there should at least be fragments of the orb, right?

But the Black Square Box that had held the Doom Orb was completely empty now. Nothing was inside.

Yu Bai glanced at the box, then lifted his palm a little higher for a closer look at the bun.

He tried to spot traces of filling amid the pleats at the top.

Then.

The neat, pretty pleats of the bun seemed stirred by the sea breeze once more. The perfectly shaped folds parted slightly.

Yu Bai saw the filling inside the bun.

His eyes widened once more.

“Fuck!” This time, even he couldn’t hold back a curse. Incredulously, he said, “The shell is inside!”

“What?!”

Shocked to his core, Yan Jing leaned in immediately. He didn’t forget to scoop up He Xi, who was straining on tiptoes to see.

Through the suddenly parted bun skin, they could see the filling.

It wasn’t juicy chicken wing meat.

Instead, it was packed full of deep blue fragments, faint light flowing and sparkling within.

Like an infinite starry river shattered apart and then gathered back into a spherical form, brimming with strange, dreamlike hues.

The Deep Blue Orb had cracked open and hatched a snow-white, fluffy bun.

And inside the bun was another Deep Blue Orb, formed from those fragments.

So, what was inside, and what was the shell?

In the human three-dimensional world, the clear boundary between inside and outside had dissolved into chaos right before their eyes.

“…” Stunned, Yu Bai thought of something and murmured, “Could this be the Klei—”

Yan Jing stared at the seemingly alive bun skin, his scalp prickling. Almost in unison, he said, “Could this be the Kthu—”

Yu Bai blurted out: “Klein Bottle?!”

Inside was outside, outside was inside. Of course—this had to be the Klein Bottle, once merely a mathematical construct.

A bun could be a Klein Bottle!

Yan Jing blurted out: “Cthulhu?!”

This non-human entity had driven him to lose sanity—how wasn’t that Cthulhu-esque!

A bun could be Cthulhu!

The young elementary schooler didn’t understand a single word. Gazing at this one-of-a-kind bun with its chicken-wing-scented starry sky filling, and hearing the adults’ exclamations, she asked curiously, “What ‘K’? Is this a new name for the Doom Orb?”

“No, no—Cthulhu is…” Yan Jing faltered, unsure how to explain. “Anyway, it’s monsters from some myth stories.”

“Our Doom Orb isn’t really that terrifying, is it? I just suddenly thought of the term.”

The bun looked perfectly normal. It was only that instant when the pleats parted that felt a bit sanity-draining.

…But if he imagined it like untying the ribbon on a gift box, it seemed fine.

The soft bun diligently shook open its pleats a little, proudly displaying its plump filling to its owner.

Damn—so cute.

He Xi’s question led Yan Jing astray, and he actually started pondering a new name. “Now that the Doom Orb has hatched, shouldn’t we give it something more formal?”

“I don’t think Cthulhu fits… Little Bai, what was it you said earlier? Klein something bottle?”

“Klein Bottle,” Yu Bai answered on reflex. “A mathematical concept—a very special plane.”

He Xi chimed in blankly: “Is Klein a foreign name? It sounds so cool.”

The academically hopeless Yan Jing nodded in agreement. “Yeah, great pronunciation, feels advanced and vaguely indescribable. Why not go with that? Full name Klein, nickname Doom Orb.”

“Klein? That name isn’t…” not bad.

Yu Bai had almost been swept along, but he caught himself midway.

Why were they seriously discussing this?!

“Why give it a new name?” he said woodenly. “…Buns don’t need IDs!”

Besides, he still preferred Doom Orb.

It carried that soul-deep vibe of impending doom.

Aboard the cruise ship carrying a shovel toward the North Pole—the very orb he had planned to bury himself—had hatched what appeared to be a completely harmless bun.

The bun cautiously conveyed to him the emotion of “I’m very obedient.”

It proactively parted its pleats to show him the filling in its belly.

It was even theoretically a Klein Bottle, existing only in four-dimensional space.

The warmth and fragrance overflowing from his palm lingered endlessly.

Instinctively, Yu Bai turned his head to look at the silent man standing beside him.

From the moment Yu Bai picked up that bun, Xie Wufang’s gaze had been chillingly cold.

It carried an intense oppressive pressure, enveloping the bun as it lightly rubbed against Yu Bai’s palm.

Yu Bai could tell that Xie Wufang truly rejected the Doom Orb—especially now that it had hatched.

Whether out of consideration for his friend’s feelings or by following the god’s own example, he should leave the Doom Orb behind at the North Pole.

That was the most rational choice.

But…

A crew member’s loud shout came from behind him. “Mr. Yu, we’ll be docking in about ten minutes!”

Gazing out from the deck, he could already clearly see the blue-and-white icy island ahead.

Another, even more distinctive shade of blue was right before his eyes.

Yu Bai stared into those gray-blue eyes, encrusted with frost, and let out a quiet sigh in his heart.

All right, he really couldn’t bear to bury the Doom Orb.

Even if it might lose control and drag people into alternate timespaces, or unleash unforeseeable accidents and catastrophes.

But this was the first gift the god had ever given him.

It was incomparably precious.

And just so terribly cute.

Humans were always caught in the tangle of reason versus emotion.

A gradual smile bloomed in his light-brown eyes, fully reflected in the gray-blue gaze watching him.

Xie Wufang suddenly spoke. “Do you like it that much?”

In the increasingly bitter air as they neared the pole, even his voice took on an icy, detached timbre—dark and inscrutable.

Yet Yu Bai shook his head.

“No.” He explained the flecks of starry amusement in his eyes. “It was when we mentioned your ID earlier… It reminded me of that day at the police station.”

Xie Wufang now shared those memories too.

Back then, in front of the skeptical officer, Yu Bai had whispered to the man beside him, “Why does the photo on your ID look different from the one in the system?”

Xie Wufang had answered in a perfectly ordinary tone. “Because I change clothes every day.”

An ID that changed clothes.

The bun rubbing lightly against his palm.

Both carried a cuteness that defied words.

It was the god who had quietly descended to live among mortals—powerful yet so innocently naive.

After walking those long streets with Him through nights filled with fleeting time, it was the eternal gift He had silently left at the door in return.

So Yu Bai murmured, “I don’t know what to do now… whether I should bury the Doom Orb or not.”

If he brought it back, Xie Wufang would probably be unhappy, for one thing.

And once its temporary calm period ended, wouldn’t the Doom Orb just suddenly drag nearby people into alternate timespaces anyway?

Then, after they returned from those timespaces, what unexpected “impressions” would it leave on ordinary folks back in the real world?

Lost in a whirl of thoughts, Yu Bai let out a smiling sigh. “I’m really worried this world is going to get turned upside down by me and the Doom Orb.”

As his words faded, the man—who had clearly been in a foul mood—fell silent for a moment before replying. “You don’t need to worry. This world will be perfectly safe.”

“No matter what you decide,” he said, gazing steadily at Yu Bai in a soft voice, “it’ll be fine.”

“It’s your gift.”

Before those brilliant human eyes, even the god was utterly defeated.