When the mutated Sage descended, everything fell under control—yet an unforeseen change arrived without warning.
Ji Jue felt as though his reason and senses had deceived him. He could scarcely believe it—the Workshop personally created by the Sage had launched an attack on Mercury?!
He froze where he stood and turned back in disbelief, looking towards the Prophet.
But the Prophet said nothing more.
From within the silence, cracks emerged across her incomplete skull. Behind that shattered face, a radiance appeared, more dazzling than anything Ji Jue had ever seen.
In that instant, he felt once more an unprecedentedly immense pulse.
It blanketed the heavens, covered the earth, filled the entire Rift World, and spread everywhere, forcibly halting the operation of every Spirit Essence Circuit while, in reverse, obstructing the operation of Creation Theory.
At this moment, the Workshop's creator was being suppressed by the Workshop.
Even...
Imprisoned within a cage!
No, perhaps Mercury had been shackled and imprisoned by the Workshop from beginning to end?
Even the changes that had greeted the outsiders after they entered the central core had not been meant to repel an invasion, but to seal away the many embers Mercury had left behind...
And yet, it had preserved her soul, refusing to allow her to cast herself into that abyss of nothingness.
Between the tragedy of having nothing and the tragedy of futile struggle, it had chosen a new tragedy that was neither—planting new bitter fruit between bitter fruits.
"Everyone is so pitiful."
The Prophet murmured softly, gazing at the colossal creature imprisoned above the heavens—having lost everything through endless cycles and torment, even the persistence and determination she had once taken pride in had gradually peeled away. Over four hundred years, she had wandered alone through pain and despair, reduced to this state.