The moment Mu Sichen stepped into the library, a sharp snap echoed through the hall, and the view from his left eye fractured into a spiderweb of cracks.

The lens of his gold-rimmed glasses had shattered.

Mu Sichen quickly took them off and stuffed them into his pocket, but the damage didn’t stop. Another snap signaled that the frames themselves were beginning to crack. Panicking, he tried to shove them into his System Inventory. Initially, the inventory rejected them, but once the right lens also shattered into a web of cracks, the System finally accepted the item and provided a new description:

[Damaged Glasses: Shattered by the power of the “Single-Eyed Moon” within the First Quarter Library. Forced to lower its grade to hide within a Pillar-level player’s inventory. The item may be repaired if a suitable opportunity arises in the future.]

Mu Sichen hadn’t expected that even though Shen Jiyue had already reduced the Sky Eye to mere glasses, the item would still be destroyed within Shen Jiyue’s own domain. Talk about scorched-earth tactics.

The glasses were doomed to be destroyed. Even if he kept them in his pocket or a box, as long as they were a “Star-Hiding” grade item and not in the System Inventory, they would shatter upon entering the library. The only alternative would have been leaving them in his own semi-domain. But since that area still technically belonged to Bright-Eye Town, Mu Sichen feared that if a resident who still longed for the Sky Eye’s era found them, something far worse might happen.

If that was the risk, he preferred to lose the convenient tool. Having them damaged in his inventory, where they might one day be fixed, was the best possible outcome.

Now, the priority was finding He Fei and reclaiming the library.

But the library was baffling. Mu Sichen had prepared himself to face a horde of residents driven mad by the colliding powers of Shen Jiyue and the Sky Eye, pickaxe gripped firmly in hand. Instead, it was completely empty.

He checked the game app on his phone and saw several bizarre messages from He Fei in the group chat:

Your Brother Fei: Mommy, mommy, am I the smartest little rainbow fish?

Your Brother Fei: Hello everyone, I am a little ant who wants to taste the flavor of ice and snow. Today I packed my bags and set out for the North. Please bless me.

Your Brother Fei: How do I kill the King and marry the Queen?

Your Brother Fei: I’ve been hanging on the city wall for ten days. I really want to know what the Prince is thinking right now, so I’ve decided to hang the Prince up there tonight to empathize with him.

Your Brother Fei: Did the Queen get tricked by that mirror?

Your Brother Fei: So I am just a speck of mud from Nuwa.

Your Brother Fei: How did we manage to fly the spaceship to this planet full of parasitic worms? Can we still return?

Mu Sichen: “…”

Piecing the information together, it wasn’t hard to imagine what had happened to He Fei. He was inside the books.

Yet, it didn’t seem terribly dangerous. He Fei was treating this like a role-playing game, hopping from book to book. It seemed the library wasn’t empty; everyone was trapped within the stories.

Stranger still, since Mu Sichen logged in, messages from Chi Lian and Cheng Xubo had vanished. Whenever he tried to @ them, the message failed to send. He didn’t know if they could see He Fei’s frantic spamming.

Mu Sichen tried contacting He Fei, advising caution, but He Fei didn’t react to his messages at all. It seemed the messages were one-way—Mu Sichen could see He Fei’s notifications, but they didn’t sound like He Fei’s natural style; they felt like automatic System summaries of book plots.

To save He Fei and find the Pillar, Mu Sichen had to enter the books. But blindly charging in was foolish. He needed to understand the rules of entering and leaving the stories.

He didn’t rush to open a book. Instead, he cautiously observed his surroundings.

The library was a circular building with three floors. The ground floor was filled with desks for studying, looking up toward a high ceiling. Each floor was constructed around the perimeter: inner shelves filled with books, outer rows of seats for reading. If readers on the second or third floors got tired, they could look down into the main hall or out the windows. Of course, outside the windows, there was no scenery, only thick, gray mist.

Near the entrance on the ground floor, a piece of paper was taped to the wall, bearing strange words:

“The Eye wants to find me, the Moon wants to find me. I am in the book, yet not in the book. I am nowhere to be found, yet I am everywhere.”

What was this “I”? The Pillar? If so, was the Pillar in the library becoming a bit too anthropomorphic? Perhaps it was developing a degree of human personality under the pressure of the Sky Eye and Shen Jiyue’s colliding forces.

That was possible. Pillars functioned by absorbing human emotional energy. The first two Pillars Mu Sichen encountered held stances contrary to the Sky Eye, operating based on rigid rules and order. However, they were relatively dim-witted, functioning like programs that didn’t know how to adapt and frequently crashed.

Now, under the influence of Shen Jiyue’s power, the Pillar was showing a degree of intelligence, evading capture by hiding itself within the stories.

That made things complicated. The Pillar in the nursing home was hard to find, but it was confined to a seven-story building. The Pillar in the factory was fixed in place, reachable with enough defiance. But in a library? How do you find a Pillar hidden inside a book?

Look at He Fei’s messages. Within a single hour, he had swapped themes every ten minutes: from toddler stories to classic fairy tales, from cliché romances to sci-fi, from Chinese mythology to space travel. He was spanning five thousand years of history.

The geographical range of this Pillar was the smallest Mu Sichen had ever encountered—just a three-story building—yet it was also the largest, inhabiting every single book.

More dangerous was the line, “The Eye wants to find me, the Moon wants to find me.” Mu Sichen suspected that an avatar or Apostle of Shen Jiyue was hidden in one of the books. In the factory, Shen Jiyue’s main consciousness had possessed the Pillar by contaminating Mu Sichen. After Mu Sichen purged that contamination and expelled her, Shen Jiyue had been forced to seize the library directly, a second descent.

This proved that for Shen Jiyue, the best way to descend was to utilize Mu Sichen’s “Pillar.” It was out of necessity that she had forcibly occupied the library.

Based on Yao Wangping’s attitude toward treating the Pillars, Mu Sichen believed that Outer Gods treated the Pillars differently than he did. Mu Sichen treated the Pillars as something to be “mined,” using his ability to forcibly convert their power into his own. Yao Wangping, however, chose to use Qin Zhou’s power to destroy the Pillars. Could it be that the Gods preferred to completely destroy the existing Pillar and rebuild a new one of their own, rather than occupy an existing one?

Initially, Qin Zhou had accused Mu Sichen of breaking a promise. It was only after Mu Sichen obtained the first Pillar that they changed their cooperation method, with Qin Zhou assisting Mu Sichen in obtaining the second Pillar while descending with his permission.

Therefore, at the time, Shen Jiyue, in a desperate move, emulated Mu Sichen by using her strength far exceeding the “Star-Hiding” level to forcibly change the library’s name, but she hadn’t actually fully mastered its power.

If Shen Jiyue had completely devoured the Sky Eye at that time, perhaps the library’s Pillar would have ceased resistance and converted to her power. But the other half of the Sky Eye had been snatched by Qin Zhou. Shen Jiyue hadn’t obtained the complete power, preventing her from making the library entirely hers.

Therefore, she must have sent people into the library to find the “Pillar.” That was why “the Moon wants to find me.”

Outer Gods couldn’t easily leave their own towns. Shen Jiyue could observe and dominate subordinates through mirrors, but her main consciousness wouldn’t descend. So, the “Moon” referred to here was an Apostle bearing Shen Jiyue’s totem, likely more than one.

In this visit, he had to protect He Fei, find the Pillar, and guard against Shen Jiyue’s Apostles.

What a difficult fight, Mu Sichen thought, rubbing his forehead.

He briefly regretted not bringing Chi Lian. Her face-swapping ability would have been invaluable for deceiving Shen Jiyue’s Apostles. Then he realized Chi Lian probably couldn’t enter this instance. He had required the little octopus to perform decontamination just to get in; who would decontaminate Chi Lian and Cheng Xubo?

This Pillar was destined to be taken by him alone.

Fortunately, based on He Fei’s messages, he didn’t seem to retain his human form inside the books. He might be a little rainbow fish or an ant. He didn’t believe that even if he became an ant, Shen Jiyue’s Apostles would recognize him.

After reading the note on the first floor, Mu Sichen didn’t rush to open a book. He went upstairs and found a second note, the content of which was even more chilling:

“I am a person who loves to read. I want to read every book in this world. Thank you, my Lord, for granting me eyes that can read forever. My Lord has not entirely fallen. He is in my heart, in the books, in the revered gazes of everyone.”

The “I” on the second note was clearly not the Pillar. Based on the language, it was a follower of the Sky Eye loyal to the library. It seemed the Sky Eye had left behind a contingency plan for resurrection. If handled poorly, the Sky Eye might be revived. No wonder the note on the first floor mentioned “The Eye wants to find me”—it seemed the Sky Eye also needed the power of the Pillar.

Mu Sichen put down the note and wandered around the second floor. He found a desk covered in white bookmarks. The top bookmark had a drawing of half an eye, but it was unfinished, and the bookmark itself had been torn in half by some force. Some bookshelves also held bookmarks, but they were all blank.

Mu Sichen felt these bookmarks were important, so he risked taking two blank ones.

Then, Mu Sichen headed to the third floor.

Sure enough, the staircase to the third floor had a note, and its content was even stranger:

“I like the sky, I like the ocean, I like the earth, I like the stars, I like the universe of knowledge. Thank you, my Lord, for granting me eyes that can see everything. Thank you, my Lord, for granting me moonlight that illuminates the soul.”

It felt as though the “I” in this note wasn’t a single person. The words were contradictory, and the faith was extremely chaotic.

Mu Sichen suspected that the “I” on the third floor represented the trapped residents of the library. Initially, they were followers of the Sky Eye. After Shen Jiyue partially seized the library, a portion of them became her followers, resulting in this incoherent babble.

As if confirming his suspicions, the third floor bookshelves and desks held a few small items: reading notes spread across a desk, pens on the shelves, reading glasses, tissues, and thermos cups on open books—and a small mirror that made Mu Sichen feel deeply uncomfortable.

Furthermore, a curved First Quarter Moon floated above the dome. The library had no lights; all the illumination came from this moon.

Mu Sichen understood: when the moon became a Full Moon, the library would completely belong to Shen Jiyue. At that point, the rules here would inevitably change, and he might not be able to reclaim the Pillar from a competitor who had attained a higher level of power.

He had to act quickly.

But which book, on which floor, should he start with? There were so many books; he couldn’t browse them all. That would consume too much time. His goal was to find the Pillar. Since the first-floor note gave information about it, it was better to start searching there.

As for He Fei, Mu Sichen wasn’t sure he could precisely find the specific book He Fei was in among this massive sea of literature.

After all, while Mu Sichen was gathering information, He Fei had already changed books again.

Your Brother Fei: Who can tell me why, after marrying me, he still plans to cut out my corneas to give to his ‘White Moonlight’? If he wants to save the White Moonlight, why not use his own corneas? I’m going to go learn how to formulate anesthetic, knock him out tonight, and send him to get his corneas cut out!

This time it was probably “trash-sadism literature.” He Fei’s range of reading was too broad. Even if Mu Sichen jumped into the book He Fei was in, He Fei could be anywhere.

Based on He Fei’s continuous messages, he seemed to be… doing quite well in the books. Knowing how to kill a king, marry a queen, hang the prince who hung him on the city wall back up, and mix potions to anesthetize trashy men to cut out their corneas… well, he was probably safe for now.

It was better to find the Pillar first. Once this space was dominated by Mu Sichen, He Fei would naturally reappear.

Thus, Mu Sichen returned to the first floor, checked the book classification index, and went to the “Bedtime Stories” section.

It wasn’t that he thought children’s literature was safer, but because the bedtime stories in this library were different from the ones he knew.

Take the book Mu Sichen picked up, for example. What kind of bedtime story is called “Once Upon a Time, There Was an Eye That Desired to See Everything in the World”?