The moment the Mother Goddess descended, bright gold fell upon the mortal world.
At first it was just a few wisps, slender and drifting, leaking down through the gaps in the polluted clouds, moonlight, and starlight.
Then there were more and more.
Golden phantom wheat ears, carrying a dry and warm aura, drifted down like dandelion seeds or the first light snow of early winter.
They fell very slowly and lightly, with almost no weight, making no sound when they touched the viscous air congealed by pollution; they merely pierced and drifted silently, finally landing on the ground, on the eaves, on those twisted and distorted objects, and on the upturned faces of the people.
There was no grand burst of light, no deafening sacred sound, just this quiet, gentle "rain" of wheat ears.
Yet the effect was immediate.
When the phantom wheat ears touched the stone-paved road covered in pale bone branches, the writhing of the stones slowed down.
Tiny, tender green grass shoots poked out from the gaps in the bone branches; although their shapes were somewhat odd, with fine serrations along the leaf edges and faint blood-red veins... they were indeed plants, exuding a fresh breath that belonged to soil and life.
Those giant eyes on the walls that constantly blinked and leaked pus slowed their blinking frequency as a few wisps of wheat-eared phantoms brushed past them.
The pus dried up and congealed, turning into a dark brown, soil-like hard chunk; immediately after, weak vines poked out from the cracks in the hard chunks, and thumb-sized, bright red berries rapidly sprouted on the vines, glistening with crystal-clear dew on their surfaces—if one could ignore the fact that those dewdrops occasionally reflected the outlines of human faces.
The viscous smell of sulfur and rotting flesh in the