Thunder Coup!

In the Firmament's timeline, Spirit City.

The sacred death knell that symbolized the highest divine authority on Douluo Continent rang out violently through the deathly silence.

"Dong! Dong! Dong!"

Pope Qian Xunji lay dead in the wilderness. The elite Ironclad Holy Knight Corps had been wiped out, and not even an intact corpse remained of the Titled Douluo who had led them. The dreadful news struck like doomsday thunder cleaving the Ten Thousand Mountains, paralyzing Spirit City's entire leadership!

Inside the Elder Hall, chaos reigned.

The red-robed bishops and powerful Soul Masters who normally looked down on everyone and fancied themselves spokesmen for the gods now paced the hall like ants on a hot pan, their faces deathly pale.

Some shouted for the city's defensive formation to be activated. Others had already dismissed their servants in terror and were packing their gold, silver, and valuables, preparing to flee the holy city before the "steel monsters" flattened it.

The pope had fallen. Divine authority had collapsed.

This was no mere defeat. The foundations of Spirit Hall's ten-thousand-year rule had fractured!

Amid this apocalyptic chaos and fear—

Boom!

The heavy bronze doors of the Saintess Hall, where Qian Xunji had confined Young Bibi Dong under heavy guard for an entire month out of fear of her, were kicked open from within!

Clad in a supremely regal purple robe and holding a sharp Asura Scepter, Young Bibi Dong crossed the threshold with a cold gaze, like an unrivaled empress emerging from the abyss.

Her beautiful eyes held no grief for the former pope's gruesome death. There was only a coldness suppressed to its limit—and ambition that towered to the heavens!

"Your Highness! The pope ordered that you must not leave..." Two Soul Emperor guards stepped forward to stop her, forcing themselves to be brave.

Shhk!

Without a moment's hesitation, Bibi Dong drove the blade at the tip of her scepter through their throats without so much as glancing at them.

Blood spattered across her purple finery, adorning it with bewitching red lotuses.

"The old era is dead."

"Anyone who stands in my way dies without mercy!"

As her icy judgment fell,

the commoner stewards and low-ranking guards who had lurked at the very bottom of Spirit City—those awakened by the Class and Commoner Soul Master Equality Declaration Lin Fan had left behind—rose up from every dark corner of the city!

This was the strongest trump card Lin Fan had left her: the revolutionary spark rooted in the deepest reaches of Spirit Hall!

With the stewards on the inside turning against their superiors and aiding them, Bibi Dong led this army of commoner Soul Masters forward like a storm sweeping away dead leaves, sealing every entrance to the Papal Palace by force.

The remnants of Qian Xunji's die-hard faction had lost their pillar of support. Faced with this long-planned coup, they crumbled at a touch. Stripped of their Soul Power, every last one of them was pinned down on the white jade square outside the Papal Palace.

Within the Firmament, Lin Fan sat atop the engine of the armored train, which had only just cooled. He gnawed on dry rations while watching his faction reputation score leap wildly across the system panel.

"Heh, they made this cutscene pretty realistic."

Watching the holographic images of the coup in Spirit City unfold in midair, Lin Fan stretched at his leisure. "After beating Qian Xunji, I finally triggered the faction reshuffle storyline. Bibi Dong sure acts fast. Good thing I left her all those ideological imprints and plans for rebellion before I went."

With the unruffled attitude of a player, Lin Fan watched the coup from the sidelines and casually clicked the "Confirm Alliance" button in the system.

Meanwhile, in Spirit City, before the execution platform on the white jade square.

"Bibi Dong! You traitor! You've committed the ultimate betrayal!" screamed a red-robed bishop pinned beneath someone's foot.

"His Holiness the Pope's body is barely cold, and you dare collude with that heretic surnamed Yu to seize power?! The Great Enshrined of the Worship Hall will never let you go! Great Enshrined! Save me!"

Hummm!

As though answering his wails, the bronze doors of the Worship Hall behind the Papal Palace, shut for decades, burst open!

A terrifying pressure belonging to a Level 99 Limit Douluo—the very pinnacle of power on Douluo Continent—enveloped the entire white jade square.

Under that pressure, every low-ranking steward dropped uncontrollably to one knee. Even their breathing stopped.

The Great Enshrined, Qian Daoliu, strode through the air.

His white-and-gold robes snapped in the rushing currents of power. His eyes, which had seen through the world's sorrows, fixed coldly on Bibi Dong's bloodstained hands—on the woman who had slaughtered his son's remaining followers.

The crowd fell deathly silent.

Everyone thought the Limit Douluo would deliver divine punishment the next instant, crushing Bibi Dong into pulp.

But then something happened that no one on the continent had expected.

Qian Daoliu did not attack.

He did not look at the wailing loyalists on the ground.

Instead, the Angel God's foremost representative slowly raised his head and gazed toward distant Fasinuo Province, toward the Ten Thousand Mountains.

At the edge of his sight, it was as though he could see the steel blast furnaces towering into the clouds, the armored trains belching thick smoke, and the bolt-action rifle in a mortal boy's hands that could slaughter the extraordinary from a thousand meters away.

Qian Daoliu's back bent slightly. In that instant, he seemed to age ten years.

That man had ushered in an era capable of crushing gods.

Qian Xunji's death had proved that the pride of the old era was a laughable pile of dogshit before industrial machines.

If he killed Bibi Dong now, Spirit Hall would lose its only link to that man.

What awaited Spirit Hall would be the merciless advance of a steel torrent that flattened everything in its path!

Before the great wave of a new era, one in which divine authority had fallen, even his personal hatred over his son's death had to give way to Spirit Hall's survival!

With his back to everyone, Qian Daoliu delivered a cold judgment destined to go down in history, his voice steeped in endless sorrow:

"As pope, Qian Xunji was arrogant beyond measure. He squandered the foundations of our order and countless elite lives. His death was deserved."

"From this day forth, Saintess Bibi Dong shall inherit supreme authority as Spirit Hall's highest commander. The Worship Hall... will stand by and will not interfere."

At those words, the die-hard loyalists collapsed to the ground, their faces ashen.

Even their greatest protector had bowed his head before that man's guns and cannons!

Bibi Dong drew a deep breath. She knew she had won this round.

Not through her own strength, but through the man far away in the Ten Thousand Mountains—the man who had blasted apart the old world's iron curtain with cannons!

Stepping through the blood of Qian Xunji's followers, Bibi Dong climbed, step by step, to the highest throne, the symbol of supreme imperial power.

She raised the new Scepter in her hand, its surface inlaid with dark golden patterns, and issued a nation-founding declaration that shook the heavens and earth:

"The old era has rotted away! The gods' arrogance must end!"

"Spirit Hall is abolished, effective immediately! In its place shall stand—the Spirit Republic!"

"I, Bibi Dong, shall be the Republic's first president!"

Summoning all her strength, Bibi Dong declared to the sky and the entire continent:

"And this Republic worships no gods. It reveres only truth! The Republic's sole founding Sage is named—Yu Xiaogang!"

Rumble!

As Bibi Dong's oath rang out, a vast black Republic battle flag slowly rose above Spirit City within the Firmament!

The Six-Winged Angel no longer stood high upon the flag.

In its place was a new sacred emblem, encircled by cold steel gears and two crossed cannons of truth!

It was the steel emblem of industry, Equality, and judgment!

Above, the Firmament displayed the stunning scene of the Spirit Republic's founding and its appointment of Lin Fan as the Republic's chief mentor. The sight tore the real world's timeline to pieces!

In the real world, at the Eastern Palace of the Heaven Dou Empire.

Crack.

Qian Renxue snapped the fine calligraphy brush in her hand in two.

The face she had always kept as gentle as polished jade was now filled with deep confusion.

Because Lin Fan existed as an anomaly, time had branched onto an entirely different path.

In the real world's timeline, her father Qian Xunji had been gravely wounded by Tang Hao, then devoured by Bibi Dong in a secret chamber.

It had been a filthy palace struggle steeped in darkness and betrayal, sickening to the core.

And Bibi Dong had only gradually seized power after more than a decade of patient restraint.

But in the Firmament?!

Qian Xunji had died on the battlefield fighting the new era. A blazing artillery shell had blown his head off in the open, before countless soldiers!

And her mother, Bibi Dong, had no need for any shameful years of hiding her intentions.

She had stood openly in the shadow of that man's steel cannons and, in a blaze of glory, overthrown the Worship Hall's oppression and ascended straight to the throne!

Even the empire's object of worship had changed from the Angel God to gears and guns!

"What heaven-defying divine art... did you use...?"

Qian Renxue looked at the empress revered by multitudes in the Firmament, then thought of the real Bibi Dong, who spent every day on the verge of falling into madness—all for that worthless fraud, Yu Xiaogang.

"Not only did you kill my father by blood in that timeline, you used your theories and machines to turn my mother into a tyrant empress ruling a new era..."

"Yu Xiaogang, Yu Xiaogang... Of those two utterly different faces, which one is really you?!"

And at that very moment—

In the real world's Spirit City, inside the Papal Palace!

The current pope, Bibi Dong, reclined languidly on her supreme throne.

She watched the steel-and-gear battle flag slowly rise in the Firmament. She watched her younger self in that timeline proclaim "Yu Xiaogang, mentor of the Republic" with such triumphant spirit.

Two streams of hot tears slid uncontrollably down her breathtaking face.

Yet she was smiling.

Her smile was so frenzied, so heartbreakingly beautiful, that every red-robed bishop in the hall felt their hair stand on end.

"So that's it... So if it were the real you, you would give me a world this magnificent."

Bibi Dong gripped the armrests tightly. The fervor in her beautiful eyes seemed ready to set the entire hall ablaze.

The worthless Yu Xiaogang in her world had given her half a lifetime of suffering worse than death, leaving her twisted and darkened by the humiliation of the secret chamber.

But the man in the Firmament?

He had not offered her a single cheap word of love.

With iron and fire, he had blasted apart Qian Xunji, the monster who had defiled her!

Assembly lines and cannons had forced Qian Daoliu back!

That Declaration of Equality had helped her tread upon the bones of the old era and ascend to the highest throne on the continent!

"You did it. You really did it..."

Bibi Dong rose and spread her arms as though embracing the man far away in the depths of the Ten Thousand Mountains. Her voice trembled enough to break a heart:

"You shattered the old world for me. I'll hold half this realm for you!"

"My Sage! My... god!"