Fragrant flowers and fruit, an immortal behind the water curtain, Sun Wukong, Great Sage Equal to Heaven

"Ha ha!"

Keane tipped his head back and laughed scornfully.

"How ridiculous. Worshipping an Outer Deity before a great being-should I call you ignorant and fearless, or simply stupid? In Senegal, after the sun fell, only the omniscient, omnipotent Lord of Chaos remained the one true god."

Joey could no longer hear anything else. His ears were filled with whispers from underground, frenzied and chaotic. He could not make out what they were saying at all.

"O omniscient and omnipotent great being, you are the one who ends the endless darkness."

Keane and Joey both knelt on the ground, one offering a sacrifice, the other advancing to become a Beyonder.

"Why is there no response? Shut up! All of you, shut up! Stop screaming!"

He clutched his head, trying to cover his ears, but the whispers seemed to pour straight into his mind. There was no way to shut them out.

The last shred of clarity he possessed told Joey that those whispers came from the corruption underground, from the very being that had caused the sun to fall.

Fortune Master was sequence 9 of the pathway of light, one of the Ancient Sun God's three pillar pathways.

Joey could not understand why advancement along the pathway of light would lead deep underground. Had the Sun God truly fallen?

That was impossible. Although the sun no longer rose, sacrifices still received responses. Everyone in Senegal believed that the Sun God had merely fallen asleep, and that one day his light would shine over Senegal again.

Had Alisa lied?

Joey recited the honorific name over and over, but received no response beyond the endless whispers. He could even feel his internal organs being hollowed out, little by little.

Was he going to die?

The sensation of his life draining away felt all too real. Keane's mocking face seemed to hover right before his eyes.

He was sneering, taunting, watching a clown's final struggles before death.

Defiance-a deep, bitter refusal to accept his fate-filled every cell in Joey's body.

The Agate Worm writhed and opened its gaping, blood-red maw. There was a scent on Joey that excited it.

Crunch, crunch!

He could even hear his own body being chewed. Strangely, he felt no pain at all.

One last try! If he had to die, they would all die together!

A vicious gleam flashed through Joey's eyes. With blood staining his lips, he struggled to speak.

"Fragrant flowers and fruit, an immortal behind the water curtain, an abyss in the Eastern Sea, a wondrous stone upon a peak, heaven as your father, earth as your mother, Great Sage Equal to Heaven."

As he recited the honorific name, the frenzied whispers in his ears vanished, replaced by the roar of surging ocean waves.

Joey gritted his teeth and forced out the final three syllables, one at a time.

"Sun. Wu. Kong."

Those three syllables fell like a drop of water into boiling oil, stirring up towering waves.

If a single Foundation Stone could not bear it, he would offer the entire Carson Silver Mine as a sacrifice.

The Agate Worm seemed terrified. It dropped the remaining half of Joey's body, curled into a ring, and trembled.

Realizing something was wrong, Keane stopped reciting the honorific name and tried to eliminate Joey, that unpredictable variable, at once.

He had no idea what had happened. The only thing he could think of was killing Joey.

Yet the moment he took a step, his head exploded without warning, as though he had triggered some mechanism. Thick black blood gushed from his ruptured body, writhing and transforming at his neck until it formed a vaguely human shape.

With a slight lift of its hand, the enormous Agate Worm floated helplessly into the air. It struggled and shrieked before finally bursting into a cloud of bloody mist.

"Keane" opened its mouth and sucked sharply, drawing all the bloody mist inside.

As its Adam's apple bobbed in a swallowing motion, it seemed thoroughly satisfied.

Tap, tap, tap! The footsteps drew closer. It looked down at Joey from above. Only his upper body remained, and his face was deathly pale, without a trace of color.

"Remnants, destroy, eradicate, Huaxia, must die."

It muttered broken phrases that Joey could not understand.

"Who are you?"

Joey was certain that the thing before him was not Keane. Could it be the Lord of Chaos? He asked tentatively, "The Lord of Chaos?"

"Moon, Sun, Endless Sea, Huaxia, must be destroyed."

"Remnants, eradicate, unstable, must kill."

It was like a machine devoid of thought, merely repeating the same words over and over.

Several of those words left Joey utterly stunned.

In another world, he had actually heard the name "Huaxia"-and from the mouth of what appeared to be a god, no less.

It was simply too incredible. While he stood stunned, a large hand silently descended toward his head.

Bang!

He could even feel his skull bursting apart.

His vision sank into endless darkness, and his consciousness slowly began to dissolve.

Was this what death felt like?

Whoosh!

Suddenly, the sound of crashing waves rang out, and his vision gradually returned.

Joey discovered, to his astonishment, that he was now a disembodied consciousness floating in midair. Beneath him stretched a boundless expanse of thick black substance, which looked like a sea at first glance.

Nearby, a cloud of black mist condensed into a human shape, without features or a face.

"The Lord of Chaos?"

Joey asked again, but the response was a flood of whispers. He could not understand any of them, and they made his head feel as though it would split apart.

"Huaxia, remnants, die!"

In the end, those were the only words he understood.

Countless tentacles reached out of the thick black sea, trying to drag Joey into it.

He wanted to flee, but found he could not move. He could only watch as the tentacles drew closer and closer.

"Who dares say Huaxia has no gods!"

Suddenly, a deafening roar rang out. As the voice thundered, an enormous wave erupted in the middle of the black sea, and a sky-supporting pillar emerged from the water, thrusting straight into the heavens. Four great characters stood out upon it-Ruyi Jingu Bang.

As the voice faded, the writhing tentacles on the sea fell still, and the black figure burst apart. Joey's consciousness seemed to be pulled by some unseen force, flying ever upward along the immense pillar.

He did not know how much time passed before a magnificent palace appeared. At its very center hung an ancient plaque bearing three archaic characters, shimmering with golden light.

The Southern Heavenly Gate!

Joey was bewildered, his mind a complete muddle.

Could someone tell him what on earth was going on?

With a shift of thought, his consciousness drifted farther inside. More than half the buildings within the palace had collapsed, and everything spoke of desolation and decay. His consciousness wandered through the place, but he found no living beings. Apart from a ruined palace, there was nothing.

"Could this be the Heavenly Court from the myths of Huaxia?"

In Huaxia, he had grown up hearing legends of these gods. Joey had never imagined he would find proof of them in another world, and he did not know whether to rejoice or grieve.

"But it doesn't really look like it."

From the outside, this was merely a ruined ancient complex. At least, he had found no sign that any gods existed here.

At last, his consciousness settled upon the sky-supporting pillar. Only when he drew close did he discover that its surface was densely covered in the script of Huaxia.

"In the year 1368, crimson descended from the heavens."