Li Qing came into the room, sat down outside the glass window, and found that he had arrived at just the right time.
The battle to besiege the royal city in the room was incredibly fierce and spectacular.
The Sea Folk looked like knights one after another, riding enormous octopuses, shells, sharks, crabs, and gigantic exoskeletal monsters of all shapes.
The lower halves of these holy knights had actually sunk into the heads of the colossal beasts. They controlled the oceanic monsters, gripping ancient forks in their powerful upper bodies as they launched their attack.
Half human, half beast.
This was an entirely new version of exoskeleton mecha.
"Attack the Imperial City of Atabia!"
"Kill the tyrant!"
The army was highly disciplined. They emerged from the ocean and stormed the central supreme royal city located on land.
He began to feel amazed.
This war was more mythical than mythology itself. The attack of tens of millions of soldiers, every single one refined to the utmost limit.
It was simply too spectacular.
But it looked like the fighting would continue for quite a while. Most importantly, he was hungry...
"Should I go find something to eat first?"
Li Qing thought.
There was nothing he could help with anyway.
But soon, the pope still arrived with a group of high-ranking red-robed cardinals.
The daily report began.
The pope stepped out from the group and knelt on the ground:
"Lord, we discovered that the Great Emperor of Atabia has accelerated the construction of the Tower of Babel. There must be a major problem!"
"The Great Emperor of Atabia has gradually and completely relinquished his authority. He completely ignores our preaching and has concentrated all his strength within the Tower of Babel. The entire one hundred billion most intelligent sages among the Atabian people have already gathered there. Nothing enters, and nothing leaves."
Atabia's elite forces had been hollowed out.
If the country had not been left leaderless like this, the remaining ignorant masses would not have been so easily influenced and deceived.
"Therefore, we have also hastened our progress. We are now directly commencing the decisive battle, ordering the army to attack the royal city, capture the Great Emperor of Atabia, and kill the Emperor!"
Li Qing listened to the report.
The pope's decision was correct.
Although he had only been running the church for two and a half days, he knew how to lead troops into battle.
Launching a general offensive ahead of time was the best choice. Who knew what the emperor was developing?
Li Qing thought for a moment, then simply replied, "Overthrow the tyrant. The divine presence is with you at all times!"
Crash.
Holy Light descended.
They prostrated themselves on the ground, basked in the light, recited the Holy Words, fervently prayed, and confessed their original sins to the Lord.
"The Lord awakens my soul and guides us onto the path of righteousness!"
Seventy seconds later.
The entire guard unit received the blessing.
The army's morale immediately soared. The gods were watching over this Holy War, and morale surged to its peak. This elite force began charging toward the front lines and attacking the royal city.
"The Lord grants us razor-sharp blades!"
Boom!
The army moved in perfect formation, its battle intent soaring to the heavens.
"Carry out the Lord's righteousness and fight for the Lord!"
They raised their awakened divine weapons high and hacked at the enemy.
"The Lord awakens my soul and guides us onto the path of righteousness!"
Li Qing merely watched in silence.
He suddenly remembered the scene Ning Guochang had described when the two armies had clashed.
He had said it was a terrifying disaster of a battlefield, magnificent on the level of mythology.
At the time, Li Qing had thought his words too pale. Now, he finally understood the grandeur he had been describing.
"Attacking the royal city should be enough to force the Emperor of Atabia to reveal his trump card." Li Qing pondered.
This siege clearly could not be won in a short time. The empire's most elite troops were defending the royal city, seemingly buying time to complete the final stages of the Tower of Babel.
The empire's elite forces were formidable.
Their war technology for constructing Exoskeleton Sea Giants surpassed the Church of Light's civilian technology by an entire major tier. Even though Li Qing had helped them awaken their weapons, that could only make up for part of the gap.
Li Qing seriously suspected that they would not be able to storm the Imperial City until noon!
After all.
Ancient warfare was all about close combat.
A siege lasting an entire day was perfectly normal.
"I should have gone to get breakfast."
Li Qing thought for a moment.
"The pre-battle rally has already been held, and I've given the army a boost in morale. There's nothing for me to do now. It won't be too late to eat."
He took out his phone and left it monitoring the battle to prevent any accidents, then went out.
He hurriedly bought breakfast outside, then returned to the living room with his laptop.
Half an hour had passed by the time he returned, and they were still fighting!
"I knew I wouldn't miss it."
Li Qing wore an expression that said it was just as he had expected.
After watching for a while, he directly crossed the seven or eight meters into the living room and began playing on his computer. He glanced at yesterday's comments.
Apparently, marketing accounts from various platforms had been directing traffic there. It had already reached 3.81 million views, becoming the most-viewed video on the entire video site recently.
A few more people had privately messaged him asking for authorization. Li Qing had plucked another handful of wool, earning more than ten thousand yuan.
"Not bad."
Seeing that he had nothing to do, Li Qing took advantage of the attention and spent another ten minutes screenshotting the serene and beautiful ocean city from the previous night.
As for the war before his eyes?
He would not upload that. It was better to keep a low profile.
[One Day in the Undersea City of R'lyeh, Currently Awakening Cthulhu!]
The video cover was once again a beautiful image of an undersea city, with a line of text on it:
[Grinding Myself to Death! 191 Hours Spent, Polished Frame by Frame—the Century Mythical Undersea City of R'lyeh Animated Film!]
When the video was opened, there was another self-pitying introduction below:
[Waaaaah, I worked so hard on this video that my hair practically went bald. In this era ruled by marketing accounts, everyone is copying everyone else. I'm exhausted. Let it all be destroyed. This is probably my last video.]
[The high-resolution video couldn't be uploaded. The link is pinned in the comments for you to get it yourself.]
He clicked upload.
This really might be his last video.
Li Qing had originally planned to make some quick money, and the income from this next video would probably not be low either. The two videos should be enough to cover his expenses for the time being. He would deal with it later if he ran short of money.
He had only just posted the video when people quickly began clicking into it.
Comments appeared soon after.
[Waaaaah, no! Is this the end of the master's creative streak? No! It's all those marketing accounts' fault!]
[Oh my god! You Brute, you worked yourself to death for nearly two hundred hours again? Do you have two hundred hours in a day?]
[Not necessarily. It's obviously a team, guys. A few hours per person adds up to two hundred hours, right? And I watched the footage—it's still the same aerial view of the city, absolutely incredible! It's still the daily life of the Sea Folk, and even the camera position hasn't changed. The second video was much easier to make.]
[Stop messing around. Someone this obviously talented is clearly presenting a calling card and looking for a boss. Some boss must have approached him already, so he's quitting videos.]
A whole crowd chattered away with their analysis, thinking that such exquisite and beautiful CG technology was far too impressive. Someone must surely have invested in him already.
What they could not have imagined was that he was simply a salty fish who wanted to make a quick pile of money, deal with an emergency, and then pack it in.
Some people also analyzed the video itself.
[The master is incredible! Compared with the previous video, many buildings in this city have changed. It looks like several years have passed along the Timeline, and even some residents' appearances have changed, while the neighborhood relationships remain the same.]
[Exactly. That mysterious tower is already eight stories tall. This must be several years later.]
As of last night, the Tower of Babel had indeed been eight stories tall. This morning, it had already reached twenty stories, and it was still growing.
[What the heck, why does this tower look so much like a traditional Huaxia-style tower? It clashes so badly with Cthulhu's R'lyeh.]
[It really does clash. This tower must have some deeper meaning. Didn't he say it was R'lyeh? Maybe this tower is resurrecting or sealing away this Evil God, Cthulhu!]
A group of self-proclaimed analysis experts began conjuring things out of thin air.
[Wait, you're saying this tower is resurrecting Cthulhu? Then maybe this really is why it has this shape!
[A traditional Western pagoda with this shape wouldn't be out of place either!
[Don't disbelieve me. Do you know where Huaxia's octagonal pavilion-style towers came from?
[Some sources say that the original form of these towers was built by ancient people according to the human spine, subtly corresponding to the aesthetics of the human body. Look at the tower in the video—isn't it a bit like a human spine driven into the ground?]
Li Qing was stunned.
The human spine?
This white Tower of Babel, rising from the earth segment by segment into the heavens, did indeed look somewhat similar. Such a huge spine—were they trying to create a human?
Those cells from an era of primitive, backward creatures were still playing around with low-level fish. Where could they have gotten the leap in civilization level to build this with advanced human genetic blueprints?
The next moment, Li Qing immediately thought of a certain possibility.
Ning Guochang had lived inside for so long. They had human genetic blueprints.
[The human spine has twenty-six levels. If this tower has twenty-six levels, then it really is a spine. The production team is incredible!
[In this aerial view of the city, the people come and go. Although the plot isn't explained on the surface, there's actually a main storyline hidden underneath.
[Cthulhu of R'lyeh, the great ancient god, is resurrecting in this city! Don't stop updating! I'm looking forward to the ancient god's resurrection in the next episode! Chaos in the city of R'lyeh!]
"I just casually uploaded a short video, and they were able to figure all that out. Impressive." Li Qing set down the computer.
His gaze turned toward the distance.
He discovered that the Tower of Babel in the middle of the entire royal city had already reached twenty-five stories. It seemed that the final, twenty-sixth level of the spine was about to appear.
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