The First Throne, Phanes, Was the World's Conqueror-Tang San Realized That Cross-World Invasions Weren't Isolated Incidents!

His laughter grew louder and more unhinged, filled with self-mockery and despair.

"So that's what it was all along..."

He lifted his head, his bloodshot eyes sweeping over the dazed, numb faces around him.

"What's the point of fighting? What's the point of competing? Ruling the Divine Realm? Becoming the strongest God King?"

Zhou Weiqing rose to his feet, spread his arms toward the Light Screen in the sky, and let out a hysterical roar with all his strength.

"Stop fighting!!"

"Get in line! Every last one of you, get in line! Go be pets for that thing called Nibelungen!"

"Maybe you'll get lucky and become a watchdog! That's still better than lying to yourselves here!"

Zhou Weiqing's roar continued to echo above the God Realm Committee. Each word struck the hearts of all the God Kings like a heavy hammer.

Surrender?

Become pets?

Watchdogs?

Coming from a God King, those words were utterly absurd—and... horribly real.

No one argued.

Because Zhou Weiqing had shouted the very thought that had just crossed all their minds, one they were too afraid to admit.

In the face of absolute, incomprehensible power, dignity and glory were nothing but a facade they struggled to maintain.

Rong Nianbing slumped back onto his divine throne. The God of Emotion now wore nothing but a numb expression. He stared at his hands. Those hands could create the most exquisite delicacies in the world and wield the magic of ice and fire, but right now, all he wanted was to cover his eyes with them.

Ji Dong and Lie Yan held each other close. They had once defied the entire Divine Realm for the sake of their love, but now they realized that what they had fought against might have been nothing more than a slightly larger cage.

Chang Gongwei, Lei Xiang, A'Dai... These beings had come from different worlds and ultimately ascended to the rank of God Kings. Now, they all fell into a long silence. They had once been the protagonists of their own worlds, the darlings of fate, but the Light Screen in the sky mercilessly told them that their stories might not matter at all.

In the midst of this deathly silence, the Golden Light Screen lit up once more.

It never cared how the onlookers felt.

It simply stated, coldly, one world-shattering fact after another.

[The age of peace must eventually come to an end.]

A line of concise text appeared, like an ancient prophecy.

Everyone's heart skipped a beat, beyond their control.

The age of peace? Whose peace?

[An uninvited guest came from the depths of the cosmos, tearing open the skies of Teyvat.]

Teyvat?

Another unfamiliar name.

Like Nibelungen before it, the name carried a chill from an unknown cosmos.

Douluo Continent.

Inside Sea God Pavilion at Shrek Academy.

Huo Yuhao had pushed his Spiritual Eye to its limits, but all he could see was the clear golden text. Nothing else. There were no energy fluctuations, no traces of Laws. The words seemed to have appeared from nowhere, as if they were truths engraved there at the birth of the universe.

"Another... another one?" He Caitou muttered. He felt as though his brain couldn't keep up anymore.

The existence that could defeat a world had already left them feeling insignificant. And now the Light Screen had revealed another being... one who had torn open the sky of a world?

Tang San furrowed his brows.

Unlike the other God Kings, he hadn't been completely swept up in Zhou Weiqing's despair. As someone who had once been in control, he forced himself to maintain the last shred of his composure, trying to glean useful information from the cold words.

"An uninvited guest... the depths of the cosmos..."

Those two phrases sent a bone-deep chill through him.

It meant that crossing between worlds to invade them might not be an isolated incident in the vast cosmos!

As he pondered this, the text on the Light Screen changed again.

[The First Throne, the supreme Heavenly Principles—Phanes.]

"Heavenly Principles?"

The term made every God King deeply uncomfortable.

They were the heavens of the Divine Realm, the ones who established and upheld its Laws. But now there was a being whose title was "Heavenly Principles"!

What arrogance—and yet, what utter... naturalness?

As if Phanes's existence were itself a cosmic axiom, the principle governing all things.

Then the final line appeared, the most devastating one of all.

[He was the first Descender to come from beyond the heavens, and the first "Conqueror" of the Teyvat World.]

Conqueror!

If "defeating a world" had been a vague notion, then the word "Conqueror" was drenched in naked bloodshed and violence!

It told everyone exactly what the being called Phanes had done to the world called Teyvat!

He wasn't a passerby, nor a destroyer.

He was a Conqueror! He had trampled an entire world beneath his feet and made it his own!

"Boom!"

An invisible storm exploded in the minds of all the powerful beings.

Deep in the Star Dou Great Forest, at the heart of Lake of Life.

The sleeping Dragon God abruptly opened his enormous golden eyes. For the first time, those pupils, powerful enough to eclipse the sun and moon, revealed an emotion known as "uncertainty."

The Dragon Clan had once been the conquerors of Douluo Star, its absolute rulers.

But beside the idea of "conquering a world," his rule back then seemed like a childish game.

Beside him, the Dragon Prince lowered his proud head, suddenly looking powerless.

The Divine Realm.

Tang Wulin's body trembled slightly. The Golden Dragon King Bloodline within him roared in fury, enraged by the insult to the dignity of a King.

Yet, at the same time, a chill rising from deep within his blood kept dousing that anger.

His gaze drifted involuntarily toward Gu Yuena at his side.

Then he saw something he would never forget.

Gu Yuena's face was deathly pale.

Her silver hair stirred without any wind, and her body trembled uncontrollably. A trace of pain—and... fear—appeared on her flawless face.

Yes, fear.

The most primal fear, born from the difference in their very levels of existence, from the source of her bloodline.

"Na'er?" Tang Wulin hurriedly reached out to support her.

Gu Yuena didn't respond. Her violet eyes had lost focus, as if they had pierced through time and space to glimpse some indescribable being.

Her Silver Dragon King Bloodline, inherited from the Dragon God and immeasurably noble, was now keening.

No, not keening.

It was... submitting!

As if an antelope had heard a lion or tiger's roar, as if a mortal had stood before a God.

It was absolute suppression, imprinted in her genes—something she could neither resist nor understand!

"Heavenly Principles..."

Gu Yuena's lips moved, and she uttered the dry words.

Those two words alone seemed to drain all the strength from her.

Tang Wulin's heart shuddered.

He could clearly feel an oppressive force coming from Gu Yuena, one that left even him breathless. But it didn't belong to her. It came from the being named "Phanes" on the Light Screen. Just the title alone had caused a change in Gu Yuena's bloodline!

What kind of existence... was this?