The chill brought by the truth had yet to fade.
Just as Tu Hu and Xingtong searched for a way out, the World Will's "Divine Punishment" suddenly descended.
The first place to suffer was the frostlands in the northern reaches.
It had been the Velvet Spirit Tribe's largest source of psionic crystals, but now it underwent an earth-shattering transformation. An invisible force smoothed away the mineral veins deep underground, restructuring the geology in an instant.
The snow on the plains remained unchanged, but all the psionic crystals beneath it turned into ordinary crystals.
To address the crisis, Xingtong decisively activated the Dreamweaver Barrier Plan.
This technology came from the Dreamweaver Tribe's defensive techniques and deceived the World Will's perception by creating semi-independent spaces.
But maintaining the barriers consumed considerable energy, barely breaking even against the resources gained.
Outside the pale golden dreamweaver barriers, the land was undergoing changes that defied all reason.
Rivers flowed backward into the clouds, mountain ranges flowed like liquid, and towering ancient trees completed the cycle from sprouting to withering within a breath.
These were merely the World Will's unconscious "thoughts" of cleansing, yet they were enough to reduce any creation of civilization to dust.
On the twenty-seventh day after the barrier plan was implemented, a new threat appeared.
In the command room where Tu Hu was stationed, a message arrived from Shi Tian of the War Department: "The Corrupting Spirits are here."
In the holographic footage sent back, a bank of gray "mist" was slowly seeping through from outside the barrier.
They had no fixed form, sometimes resembling drifting clouds, sometimes patches of light. Wherever they passed, all energy constructs began to fail.
A border outpost's psionic turret turned to stone the instant it touched the mist, and the warriors stationed there discovered that the