Gu Yue: "I Am a Complete Dragon, Enough to Judge the Gods!"

Qian Yuhan stood atop the shattered city wall, her head tilted back.

Her pupils trembled violently.

So this was... a god?

Ever since she could remember, her clansmen had taken her to the stone temple to worship the divine statue.

That statue was ugly, twisted, and indescribable.

Like a demon crouching upon an altar.

She had never understood why everyone, including her father,

had to kneel before that hideous stone idol, foreheads pressed to the ground, their entire bodies trembling.

She had asked her father.

Her father had said it was the God of Creation.

She had asked why they feared it if it was the God of Creation.

Her father had not answered.

At this moment, she finally understood.

Fear.

A terror that burst forth from the depths of her marrow.

Her organs twisted into a knot as it frantically climbed up her spine.

Her knees were going weak.

Her soul was screaming.

"The Ninth Era..."

Qian Yuhan forced the words from her throat.

"Has our final chapter come as well?"

The First Sea God stood at her side.

His body, shrouded in divine radiance, seemed incomparably small at this moment.

He had already become a god.

He was the pinnacle existence of this era.

Yet when he looked up at that figure suspended at the end of the heavens,

he experienced helplessness for the first time.

The God of Creation looked nothing like the statue enshrined in the stone temple.

There was no savage face.

No twisted limbs.

It was a purer kind of terror.

It was cold.

Silent.

Morbid.

Infinite light burned behind it.

Yet that light held no warmth, no color.

It transcended every concept humanity could comprehend.

With only one glance, the Sea God felt as though an invisible hand had seized his soul and was madly tearing it from his body.

It wanted to leave his shell, fly toward the source of that light, and return to its embrace.

"No! That's not right..."

The Sea God's lips trembled.

"Why should it conform to human aesthetics?"

"Humans are insignificant, powerless, laughable."

"In the vast cosmos, before it, humans do not even count as bacteria."

His voice carried a despairing realization.

"Every time we worshipped, every time we prayed, we thought it was watching us."

"But in truth, it had never looked at us even once."

"Just as we would never look at the birth and death of a grain of sand beneath our feet."

The sun went out like a candle being snuffed out.

Darkness descended.

But it was not complete darkness.

For there was still light—the sole source of illumination was that river of time stretching across the sky.

It reflected eternal radiance, coldly illuminating the collapsing world.

Below the city walls, countless people stared blankly upward.

They did not scream.

They did not run.

Because at that moment, everyone's soul had been hollowed out.

An old man dropped to his knees.

There were no tears in his eyes, only empty bewilderment.

He opened his mouth as though reciting a prayer.

But before he could finish, his body began to turn into dust.

Starting from his fingertips, he crumbled away piece by piece like weathered rock, drifting through the air.

Then came the young man behind him.

Then the mother holding her child.

Then the entire city.

No one struggled.

No one resisted.

Because before pressure of this level, every living creature had only one instinct left—

to return.

"No..."

Qian Yuhan's eyes widened.

She suddenly raised her head, looked toward the indescribably enormous figure in the sky, and used the last shred of strength in her body to roar.

"Why?!"

"Why destroy us?!"

"We have clearly offered you our most devout and sincere faith!"

"We built civilization according to your guidance!"

"In every era, we never ceased worshipping you!"

"We humans—are we not the most loyal believers you chose?!"

Her voice echoed through the silent heavens and earth.

Then, a cold voice descended from overhead.

"Foolish."

At some point, Gu Yue had already flown into the sky.

The Silver Dragon King's true body had appeared, but it was no longer a dragon.

After devouring the origin of the entire world,

her body had swollen to an unimaginable size, cold radiance curling around her.

Her draconic eyes looked down at Qian Yuhan.

As though looking at an ant.

"Before an existence of this level, your faith is meaningless."

Gu Yue's voice held a pity born of superiority.

And an irrepressible ecstasy.

"Only false gods like you need to rely on human faith."

She felt the power.

Strong.

Strength that transcended dimensions.

The Dragon God at its peak?

No. Even if the Dragon God himself came, he would not be worthy of being her opponent for even a single exchange.

The entire world was being devoured by her, becoming nourishment for her colossal dragon body.

Her consciousness was expanding.

Her soul was ascending.

She felt herself breaking some kind of restraint, surpassing some kind of boundary.

Dimensions.

She was breaking through dimensions.

"I lack nothing now."

Gu Yue suddenly threw back her head and let out an enraged roar.

"I am a complete dragon, enough to judge the gods!"

Though she did not know why that one had helped her.

Why he had frozen time, erased her calamity, yet released the restraints on her at the end.

He had even poured the power of the entire world into her.

But she knew he would regret it.

Cold radiance shone from Gu Yue's pupils, and a scornful smile curled across her lips.

Then, the world collapsed.

The earth shattered into countless fragments.

The oceans evaporated into nothingness.

The sky peeled away in pieces like shattered glass.

All matter was disintegrating.

All laws were failing.

The entire city, the entire continent, the entire era—in an instant, all became nothing.

Lin Yan stood in the kitchen, looking down at the pot.

His expression was blank.

The Ninth Era had been destroyed.

To him, that world was no different from a miniature ecosystem evolved by a cluster of fungi.

Its destruction was no big deal.

At most, he would have to go out and pick a few more blue-staining boletes.

What followed was a faint energy feedback.

He closed his eyes to sense it, then suddenly opened them.

A flicker of surprise passed through his eyes.

It was immense.

Far too immense.

Two streams of feedback were especially massive—absurdly so. They actually exceeded the total energy of all the first eight eras combined.

One was chilling to the bone, like a cold current from the depths of the sea.

The other was gentle as spring, carrying a soft yet unignorable resilience.

The two streams of energy flowed into his meridians, striking at the bottleneck he had long been unable to break through.

Level ten.

He could feel that with just one soul ring, he could directly break through level ten and become a true soul master.

Unfortunately, he had none.

The laws of the world were the laws of the world.

Without a soul ring, no matter how much soul power he had, he could only remain stuck at the threshold of level ten.

Like a transparent wall—he could see it, but could not break through it.

Lin Yan sighed, lowered his head, and let his gaze fall upon the two beings he had deliberately spared.

The Six-Winged Angel, Qian Yuhan.

The First Sea God, Poseidon.

He had not destroyed them.

The feedback these two gave was far too powerful; wiping them out all at once would be a waste.

If he let them live and build a new era, perhaps he could harvest another wave.