With winter approaching, the evening sun set especially fast.
The sky darkened layer by layer, as though painted in deepening shades. The "dark, deep space" Ronan had watched alongside the "comrade" at the workstation next to his soon grew less conspicuous.
That was also largely because the text of A Brief History of Human-God Relations had gradually absorbed the draft history of the Calamity Era. It still showed signs of "indigestion," but the textual framework of the Hollow Sphere around it was slowly recovering. A bright orb gradually replaced the illusory stars rising and falling in the dark depths of space.
At Ronan's will, the orb soon dimmed. It even flowed back into Liang Lu's stark-white skull, entering through an eye socket and mingling with the fragment of Rotten Bone Star inside, leaving Ronan free to talk to his "former comrade."
"Trying to design my life... That really pisses me off. But when I think about how someone designed yours too, I almost feel sorry for you. Was that what the Relay Station was designed to do?"
Ronan picked up Liang Lu's skull with one hand and made as if to fling it far toward the chaotic boundary where sea met sky. After a couple of feints, he smiled and lowered his hand.
But the faintly absurd smile soon faded.
The rising night cast deep shadows across his face.
For over the past few days—not just moments ago—as Ronan sorted through the history of the Calamity Era, he had caught a glimpse of a terrible and all-too-likely possibility. It emerged from the threads of information, from the rise and fall of those "illusory stars"... or, more precisely, from the methods the Myriad Heavens Divine Kingdoms and the Six Heavens God Calamity had employed without fail since the Calamity Era began: