The Sky Over This Continent Needed to Change

Rumble—

Hooves pounded through the slum streets as fully armed noble troops and high-ranking Soul Masters began a brutal purge.

Blacksmith shops burned to the ground, and heaps of sulfur were dumped into the moat.

Countless ordinary people who had only just worked out the formula for gunpowder had chains driven through their collarbones and were hanged from the city walls. Their blood dyed every river on Douluo Continent red.

Oppression! Bloodshed! Brutality!

The ruling class wanted to use absolute violence to snuff out this spark that threatened to overturn the world before it could catch.

But they had underestimated the frightening vitality of a truth once it had spread.

Faced with raging fires and the nobles' blades, most ordinary people chose silence.

They hid their tools, buried their gunpowder, and bowed their heads again to toil like oxen and horses.

But some did not.

One man carved the formula into his own ribs, then jumped into the moat. When his body floated up three days later, fish and shrimp had gnawed the writing beyond recognition. But a patrolling soldier said he had died with a smile on his lips.

Another stuffed his last packet of gunpowder into a crude clay jar. When a whole squad of imperial soldiers passed by, he made himself the fuse and took seventeen fully armed Soul Masters with him.

Others did nothing at all.

They hid in pitch-black sewers and mine shafts deep in the mountains. Trembling all over, they raised their heads and looked through the golden light of the Firmament at the coal-smudged young man in Tack Town, murmuring:

"Holy Teacher... when are you coming to save us?"

They dared not resist or speak out. They did not even dare admit they still remembered the formulas.

But they remembered.

As long as they remembered, the fire would not go out.

Far from extinguishing that spark, the oppression had raised Lin Fan onto the altar of the "one and only savior."

Meanwhile, inside the Firmament.

Compared with the rivers of blood flowing through the world outside, the refugee quarter in Lin Fan's Tack Town looked like a bustling campaign of mass production.

Lin Fan had no idea how savage a class war the few chemical formulas he had casually written on the blackboard had sparked outside.

He was too absorbed in the immense satisfaction of building up his little settlement.

Splash—

Beside the refugee quarter, several large waterwheels turned slowly in the river's swift current.

Their drive shafts connected to sets of crude wooden gears, turning the force of the water into mechanical power that drove the simple hydraulic forging press newly assembled in the smithy.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Driven by the water, the heavy steel hammer fell again and again, swiftly beating pieces of red-hot refined iron into shape.

In the smithy yard, dozens of ordinary teenagers each had a clearly assigned task.

Some used a simple lathe to smooth the insides of steel tubes. Others assembled the Flintlocks' firing mechanisms, while another group refined granulated gunpowder beside a distant Blast Furnace.

That was right. An assembly line!

It was still only the beginnings of a hand-operated workshop, but it was the first industrial assembly line in Douluo Continent's history!

Lin Fan wore a coarse jacket riddled with holes, and two dark streaks of coal dust marked his face.

He walked up to the rack of finished weapons, picked up a freshly assembled Smoothbore Flintlock, pulled back the hammer, and took aim. Then he frowned.

"Tsk..."

Lin Fan clicked his tongue in irritation and began picking it apart.

"This crappy game's base-building experience is awful! Without rubber, I can't get a perfect seal. At least thirty percent of the gunpowder's force is going to waste!"

"And this steel! The stuff that comes out of a makeshift Blast Furnace has too much carbon. It's brittle as hell—it'll definitely burst after twenty shots in a row! This lousy tube might bully a few low-level NPCs, but against a thick-skinned Soul Emperor or Soul Saint, it wouldn't even break through their defenses!"

He tossed the gun—one that could scare the wits out of nobles outside—back onto the rack. Wiping his hands, he sighed. "Hammering out iron tubes by hand every day is way too slow. When can I unlock the tech tree for smokeless powder and mercury fulminate? Without them, how am I supposed to build a Maxim Machine Gun? Or a Multi-Barrel Artillery Battery? This trash game's progress is so slow it makes me want to smash my keyboard."

When Lin Fan's extravagantly ungrateful complaints came through the Firmament to the real world, word for word.

Xue Ye, who was in his palace desperately directing the army to suppress ordinary people and contain gun technology, felt a sweetness rise in his throat.

"Pfft—!"

He spat out a great mouthful of blood, then toppled straight backward.

"Your Majesty!!!" The ministers in the hall were scared out of their wits.

Their ruling class had gone to such lengths, accepting infamy for all time to wash the slums in blood, all to defend against that crude iron tube.

And now? The madman who had set off this continent-wide disaster was complaining in the Firmament, his face full of disdain... that the thing was garbage?! That it was too weak?!

A heavy machine gun? A Multi-Barrel Artillery Battery?

What earth-shattering horrors were those supposed to be?!

Xue Ye's hands shook uncontrollably. He stared at the coal-smudged young man in the Firmament, who seemed to hold the truths of the universe in his hands, and closed his eyes in despair.

"It's over... It's all over! We thought we were holding back a flood, but who knew the thing he meant to build in the Firmament... was a sun that could burn the entire sea dry!"

Spirit City, the Papal Palace.

Bibi Dong stood alone in the center of the empty hall, looking up at the coal-smudged young man speaking with such easy confidence in the Firmament.

Suddenly, she smiled.

It was the first smile she had given since becoming Pope that held no calculation at all.

"You're always one step ahead of me," she said softly, as though speaking to the man in the Firmament, or perhaps to herself. "But this time, I won't fall behind again."

She turned and strode toward the Papal Throne, each step carrying the force of the wind.

Outside the hall, the night wind carried faint gunshots from afar and stirred her papal robes.

"Pass down my Pope Token! From this day forward, Spirit Hall will no longer take part in the Two Great Empires' hunts and crackdowns against civilians! No one belonging to Spirit Hall may attack an armed civilian for any reason."

"Your Holiness... this..." Chrysanthemum Douluo and Ghost Douluo stood outside the hall, hardly able to believe their ears.

Though Spirit Hall and the Two Great Empires had long vied in secret, they had never openly broken with one another.

Once this order went out, Spirit Hall would be publicly taking a stand against the empires.

Bibi Dong swept a cold gaze over them. "What? Was I not clear?"

"We wouldn't dare!"

"The sky over this continent needed to change."

The night wind carried her words away.

In the distance, another gunshot split the long night, as if in answer.