[After creating the gods from its own flesh and blood, the exhausted Ancestral God fell into a deep sleep beneath the World Tree. The newborn gods conspired to devour the Ancestral God, each claiming a portion of its authority.]
[The god who controlled space-time wove dreams, while the god who governed contracts spoke lies. Trapped in illusion, the Ancestral God shed its final tear of blood, and red rain fell upon heaven and earth for seven days and seven nights.]
[Plague and death ravaged the land. Hideous believers warped by mutation crawled from heaps of corpses, gathering the flesh and blood of the dead in a vain attempt to forge a divine body anew.]
[Seven days later, he brought the ritual materials to the gods' dwelling. The people there told the pilgrims: "All followers of the old gods have fallen."]
[Identity Card: Fallen Savior]
Rose Manor.
The eternally unchanging grayish-purple sky pressed down overhead. Torrential rain battered the muddy ground, kicking up a faint mist. Wildly sprawling roses wove a giant net across the castle's stone walls, adorning it into a solitary grave draped in blossoms.
Li, dressed in black, appeared among the flowers. The gray-white curtain of rain veered away an inch from him, as though an invisible barrier had carved out a dry pocket of space.
Li walked up to the castle gates. The heavy doors slowly opened, revealing an empty shell filled with vines.
The long table, candlesticks, and Mechanical Clock had vanished. Everywhere the eye could see was covered in dark green vines, stretching in from all directions like chains and binding a bloody figure suspended at the center.
"Contract, I've reclaimed the Ancestral God's final remains," Li said to the person amid the vines.
Contract lowered his eyes and examined the visitor for two