The Erased God

Sunlight cast a long shadow behind him as his question came crashing down. "Tell me—how did all the gods, the Gods of Destruction, the angels, and the ties connecting the other universes, vanish completely from this universe?"

Inside the temple, time seemed frozen.

Beyond the windows, the sky of the Supreme Kai Realm was an unreal blue. Wisps of cloud hung motionless in the air, as if someone had painted them there.

The air carried the scent of old wood and a faint divine aura, but the oppressive feeling seeping from the conversation was stronger than anything else, making it hard to breathe.

Old Kai curled up on his high-backed divine throne, thin as a dead branch.

Even his dark crimson divine robe, embroidered with mysterious patterns, had lost its luster.

His head hung low, his wrinkled hands clasped tightly together. His knuckles had turned white, trembling faintly.

The hall fell deathly silent. Only the occasional cry of a divine bird drifted in from afar, making the stillness feel even more bottomless.

After a long while, he slowly raised his head.

Eyes that should have been able to see through the universe now held only murkiness and exhaustion, as though they bore the storms of countless ages.

"I... don't know."

His voice was hoarse and dry, like dead leaves scraping over gravel.

Qi Heng stood across from him, his brows tightly furrowed, a deep crease carved between them.

He stood straight, his short black hair gleaming coldly beneath the temple's light.

His gaze was sharp as a blade, fixed on Old Kai as though he wanted to find something in that deeply wrinkled face.

"You're a Supreme Kai," he said quietly, yet every word struck the heart, his voice echoing through the empty temple. "You're one of the highest-ranking gods in this universe, in charge of creation and order. How could you possibly know nothing?"

The muscles in Old Kai's face twitched. The pain was not fleeting; it spread like ink dropped into clear water, staining his entire face in an instant.

He suddenly looked even older, his back bending further.

He raised a trembling hand as if he wanted to point at something, but in the end, he lacked the strength and let it fall.

"I told you... when all this happened, I was sealed..." He paused, his Adam's apple bobbing as though he were forcing down something bitter. "I was sealed inside the divine sword."

His gaze became distant and empty, as if it had passed through the temple walls and returned to that humiliating moment long, long ago.

"Five million years ago... Beerus of this spacetime—the irritable, willful God of Destruction with absolute power—argued with me over the balance of the universe. He thought I was too weak, unworthy to stand beside him."

At this point, Old Kai lowered his voice. Every word seemed dug out from beneath the dust of memory. "He was standing where you are now... His purple skin darkened with rage, and his golden eyes held not a shred of respect for a fellow god—only coldness and contempt. He said..."

Old Kai closed his eyes. Even as he repeated the words, his voice trembled. "'Trash like you only knows how to prattle on about creation and balance. You're so weak you can't even protect yourself—you don't deserve to be a Supreme Kai. Reflect properly on the cruelty of the universe inside that sword!'"

He opened his eyes, and they still held the terror of being imprisoned and torn apart by overwhelming power before finally sinking into darkness.

"Then he raised his hand. The power of destruction mixed with an ancient sealing technique, becoming shackles I had no way to resist... Just like that, I was sealed alive inside the Zels Divine Sword, the sword that represented the authority of the Supreme Kais. All my senses were severed, leaving only my thoughts floating in endless nothingness. I could not feel time. There was only eternal loneliness."

"And then?"

Qi Heng pressed on, leaning slightly forward.

He could probably imagine that despair. For a god, it might have been even more unbearable than destruction.

"And then..." Old Kai let out a long breath, as if expelling five million years of stale decay. "He disappeared. Whis, that unfathomably powerful angel who was always smiling, left with him. At first, I thought Beerus had merely fallen into another long sleep, or stormed off in anger. But soon, through the faint, intermittent perceptions I had within the sword, I realized... something was wrong."

His fingers unconsciously scratched at the patterns carved into the throne's armrest. "It wasn't just Universe 7. Every God of Destruction, every angel, disappeared completely soon afterward, like the tide receding. There was no earth-shattering farewell, no upheaval of universal energy. They simply... vanished."

He looked up at Qi Heng, his eyes full of irretrievable regret.

"By the time I was accidentally released from the seal—I don't know how many tens of thousands of years had passed—and was found and freed..." He shook his head, his graying beard trembling with it. "Everything was too late. The dust had settled. The structure of the universe had changed, leaving only a hollow, fragile balance with no Gods of Destruction or angels to maintain it."

"You never investigated?" Qi Heng could not help asking, suspicion and dissatisfaction already coloring his voice.

Who could understand it? A Supreme Kai, utterly helpless in the face of such a monumental change?

"I did..." Old Kai answered at once, but there was no confidence in his voice, only helplessness that ran to the bone.

His hunched back lowered further.

"I investigated. I mobilized the records of every known galaxy and searched every space that might have contained residual energy... There was nothing."

His voice grew softer and softer, nearly inaudible. "It was as if an invisible giant hand had gently erased them from the 'existence' of space-time. No dispersing energy, no ripples in space, no battle, no trace—not even a single word left behind. Cleanly erased, as if they had never existed at all."

Qi Heng fell silent.

This silence was even more oppressive than the last.

He closed his eyes, not to avoid it, but to piece together that unimaginable scene in his mind—twelve universes, twelve Gods of Destruction, twelve angels, along with the vast systems and rules they maintained, all evaporating together without a sound at the same moment.

This was no longer simply a matter of power. It was some kind of higher-dimensional "operation."

He took a deep breath. The cool air of the temple filled his lungs, yet it could not cool the doubts in his heart.

He opened his eyes again, sweeping his gaze over Old Kai before turning to Shin, the new Supreme Kai standing to the side with clenched fists and a grave expression.

"What about the other universes?" Qi Heng's voice regained its calm, but it had become heavier. "Universe 6, Universe 11... Did the Gods of Destruction and angels of every universe disappear as well?"

Supreme Kai Shin took over. His young face was filled with a gravity far beyond his years.

He stepped forward, his red skin looking dull beneath the temple's light.

"They all disappeared, Mr. Qi Heng."

He spoke with certainty, but his tone was steeped in profound exhaustion.

"Not only that, we later discovered that every connection between this spacetime and all parallel spacetimes—even the core domain where Lord Grand Zeno resided—had been completely severed and sealed off during the same period. Or perhaps, more likely, destroyed directly from the other end. None of the messages we sent ever received a response again, and every attempt at crossing through was like crashing into an invisible wall."

He looked out at the unnaturally quiet sky beyond the window, his eyes filled with loss and confusion.

"We became a true isolated island—a lost spacetime forgotten and cut off by the multiverse."

After hearing this, Qi Heng asked nothing more.