The Eve of Civilization's Decisive Battle

Li Qing walked up to the laboratory's glass window.

The Tower of Babel had grown another level.

The third floor had appeared.

It was like a magnificent wonder of civilization, nurturing some sort of empire.

And now that the Tower of Babel had reached its third floor, Li Qing could roughly make out its external structure.

It was actually shaped like an ancient Chinese tower, an octagonal, multi-storied pavilion, similar to the demon-suppressing pagoda of the Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King. The levels of the tower had windows, filled with ancient charm.

"Ridiculous, why is their Tower of Babel's structure so similar? Or is it a coincidence?" Li Qing mused. This centuries-old wonder, built by the entire civilization of hundreds of billions, must have had its structure as the most perfect, most suitable draft for their requirements.

Not long after, more people arrived from a distance. It was the traitors again, a group of Templar knights.

"Great God!" The Pope, leading a group of cardinals, was incredibly fervent. This was probably already considered a daily pilgrimage, a regular divine worship activity for the church.

They began to talk about recent events.

Ever since the [Miracle Battle on the Divine Descendant Holy Knight Order's Border], the entire kingdom had been thoroughly shaken.

The blessings of divine bloodlines bestowed by God.

The Divine Artifacts endowed with life by God.

These were symbols of divine authority, the chosen mortals, drawing the attention of the world. In subsequent battles between both sides, the powerful strength bolstered by divine intervention inspired awe and fear.

Coupled with the deterrence of Judgment Day and the mysterious surveillance of cameras, more and more people began to fear the might of the gods, secretly flocking to the church forces they had established.

Now.

They had reached a point where even the entire empire had to take them seriously, with the Great Emperor of Atabia viewing them as a major threat.

Thus.

A schism began to appear among the populace.

And their achievements, Li Qing could indeed see them now.

This time, they had secretly crossed the border without being pursued on a large scale, indicating that their influence had completely grown. There were already people within the empire secretly converting and acting as informants!

And Li Qing simply felt this was only natural.

Brute force extinction couldn't make people submit; spiritual extinction was the most terrifying weapon!

Furthermore, those doctrines contained the essence of countless philosophical meanings, such as integrity, trustworthiness, and sacrifice.

They lacked spiritual culture, so it was natural for them to indulge in it, increasingly recognizing their "original sin" and yearning for God's salvation.

At this moment, a considerable number of people began to shout: "Welcome the Lord's descent! Tyrants are in power, this decadent and fallen world needs salvation!"

The stubborn Atabians, weren't they always quite obstinate?

Li Qing revealed a slight smile. Death couldn't make them submit, but faith could. This was the most terrifying scythe.

The Pope declared fervently, "Great True God, we have already grasped one-tenth of the empire's power. The overthrow of the tyrannical Great Emperor of Atabia is not far off!"

"However, they seem to have paid no heed to our infiltration. Knowing that with divine blessings, the tide of popular support is unstoppable, they have focused all their attention on the Tower of Babel, seemingly convinced of the divine artifact's power to slay gods!"

"But precisely because they have delegated power, we will soon be able to completely overthrow their rule!" The Pope became even more fervent.

Although Li Qing didn't think overthrowing the strongest man of that era would be so simple, he merely left behind a sentence: "I have always been with you."

He then began to open his eyes again.

One second.

Two seconds.

These popes once again received God's baptism.

"This is!?"

"God's baptism!"

And the new believers also transformed into fanatical followers during this event.

He had given them some sweet talk, then deceived the ignorant masses and the wise saints at the top into opposing each other. After watching for a while, he felt there was nothing more to see.

All the Atabians had focused their minds and efforts on the Tower of Babel. For these humans, as small as mites, to build a colossal tower reaching the heavens, equivalent in scale to Mount Everest.

He didn't leave either, sitting down by the living room window at a distance of seven or eight meters, where they couldn't detect him.

He logged into his account.

He discovered that a day had passed, and it had already garnered over 1.7 million views, with plenty of comments.

[So amazing, Cthulhu, R'lyeh, the creatures inside are somewhat similar.]

[What is that huge white pillar? A sacred piercing through the clouds, is it Cthulhu's seal?]

[So exquisite, a city in the style of mythological epics. The water ripples, humans, houses – not a single detail is imperfect in the modeling! This blows all game CG special effects teams out of the water!]

[The big shot is awesome!]

[Wait, why aren't the camera angles changing at all?]

[Stupid! This way is even more technically difficult, what more could you ask for? An overhead view of a city, with people moving inside, you can even see some knights fighting, crowds walking, as if it were a real city!]

I've downloaded the full version, over 1 gigabyte in just ten minutes. The detail is incredibly high, every frame is a beautiful HD wallpaper, and when you zoom in, you can see the lives of the people in every street.

Li Qing read through them idly.

They sure know their stuff.

But he noticed many comments on his comment section:

"Oh no, UP, someone's stealing your video," "Someone's stealing your hard work," "You forgot to add a watermark to your video."

"Watermark?" Li Qing blinked, then clicked on a video link from the comments.

In the marketing account's video, they had zoomed in on the overhead view of the ocean city map, cropped out a street scene, and paused on an Atabian.

[Look closely, this woman's name is Xiao Mei, she lives in the underwater city of R'lyeh. She's lived here for seventeen years. She walked out onto the street and got into a fight with Xiao Shuai next door. She's a devout follower of Cthulhu, and has been secretly working to awaken the evil god Cthulhu...]

Then the perspective followed them as Xiao Shuai and Xiao Mei got on their exoskeletons and started fighting in the street.

"..."

Li Qing fell silent for a moment.

But this was just the daily life of ordinary Atabian residents, and he had somehow made it sound wondrous and full of story.

He clicked on another one.

The screenshot was of a patrol captain on a street.

[Look closely, this general is the leader of the city of R'lyeh, Ah Qiang. He's leading his troops on patrol. They just received news that some cultists are hiding in this city, and an engagement is imminent...]

Li Qing watched for a while.

His original video's overhead view was huge, and zooming in on some streets still kept them very clear.

The marketing accounts didn't copy directly because the original was just plain, boring, aesthetically pleasing moving footage. So they found someone on a street, zoomed in on the footage, cropped it out, made up a story, and talked about the pictures.

There was even one particularly clever marketing account that made an episode for each street, with over a dozen episodes that told a connected story, which was just absurd.

Li Qing felt speechless, looking at these "R'lyeh City Series" marketing accounts, but he wasn't too angry.

If it had been his own hundreds of hours of hard work, he would have been furious!

But he had just recorded it casually.

Still, it didn't stop him from playing the victim to gain attention. He casually posted a comment and pinned it:

"Wuwuwu, I'm so miserable, I forgot to add a watermark, and my hard work was stolen by them. You must remember, this video is the original source."

Then he ignored it, only to find that many people were sending him private messages, interested in his technology.

Some game companies wanted to invite him.

Some film companies wanted him to do CG work.

Li Qing couldn't be bothered. He wouldn't earn troublesome money, no matter how much.

His gaze was only on the private messages from some major UP hosts. They had some self-respect and wanted to use this to make some videos, asking him for authorization.

Li Qing replied to them one by one, saying it was possible, but they had to pay.

They were all quite straightforward.

An hour later, the money from the video's playback hadn't arrived, but Li Qing had already earned over ten thousand yuan.

"This quick money is pretty good."

Li Qing had considered posting another video to explode the heat again.

But he decided against it. He was just playing around with it in the first place.

His ambitions weren't there.

As long as he had money, he could slack off for a while.

Besides, a single video took hundreds of hours to grind out, so he couldn't just blast it out quickly. Doing so would also attract too much attention.

The next morning.

He got up as usual, washed his face and brushed his teeth, then opened the surveillance feed again and looked at the lab.

As soon as he looked, he felt like the world had turned upside down.

Before, they built two to three floors of the tower a day, but now it seemed the technology was completely mastered. They had built eighteen floors overnight, rising from flat ground.

The pure white, jade-like tower pierced the clouds above the sea, like a stalk of sugarcane planted in the ground.

At the same time, on the entire crystal wall, his mole in the church had left him a small secret code.

It was a hint that the situation was dangerous, a sign of the decisive battle.

"The Atabians must have seen that things were going wrong. The mortals on the ground were quickly divided, each with their own beliefs. The king is already accelerating the construction of the Tower of Babel, and the decisive battle is about to begin."

Li Qing was surprised. He thought about it, and if they were going to have their decisive battle, he had to lend them a hand. If he could overthrow the Great Emperor of Atabia and have his own followers take the throne, then he would truly be comfortable.

"This is finally some hope." He didn't even have time to eat breakfast before grabbing the World-Ending Tools he had prepared and heading out.