Looking back now on the Heavenly Kingdom Fall.
What it had caused was not merely the collapse of Utopia. The rules established by an entire era had been changed along with it. That change was not limited to the Present Realm; it had even reached deep into Hell.
Calling it a collapse would not have been an exaggeration.
Nowhere escaped the aftermath of that towering edifice's fall.
Though the schism triggered by Golden Dawn had been a crucial turning point, it was merely the fuse. What had truly pushed Utopia to the brink of collapse was precisely the Fourth Project: Heaven, upon which such high hopes had once been placed.
The First Project: Great Arcanum: Thus Spoke Zarathustra had replaced the laws of the gods.
The Second Project: Rainbow Bridge had connected the Present Realm and the borderlands, bringing the entire world into true unity.
The Third Project: Silver Sea had bestowed upon all humanity a shared soul, spreading throughout the realm and existing everywhere. It suppressed every toxic corruption that seeped in and protected each person's will to the greatest possible extent.
Every one of them had been an unparalleled achievement.
And then there was the Fourth Project, Heaven, which even Utopia had ultimately failed to complete.
A library that integrated every trace and Living Event Record in the world, collecting all valuable souls and the essences of events; it preserved all True Knowledge and history. Going one step further, it could draw upon the imprints left behind by every hero and sage in history, endlessly iterating and evolving. It would not have been an exaggeration to say it could create beings like saviors.
"In truth, that was only Heaven's first stage."
During one of their long journeys, Russell had told Huai Shi, "If that were all it was,