Chapter 1 The Beginning

Hassu stared at Hao Ren from beginning to end as he busied about, but in truth, he had been struggling to keep up for several minutes now. He watched the three of them discussing things animatedly, but felt like he couldn't understand a single word. Then, watching Hao Ren pull a pile of strange broken bowls, brush handles, and brick fragments from his magical pocket, he couldn't help but ask, "Are you… affected by the disc?"

He thought Hao Ren was having a mental breakdown from the pressure.

Hao Ren happened to be taking out his Celestial God contract at that moment, sighing at how quickly time flew by as he looked at the A4-printed sheets. Hearing Hassu's words, he was taken aback. "Huh?"

"You're planning to use these things…" Hassu pointed at the low-quality printed papers in Hao Ren's hand, "to seal the Solar Wheel?"

"You never know until you try." Hao Ren nodded earnestly, but in his heart, he was completely confident—this wasn't the first time he had used the divinity carried by these contracts to solve a problem. Although the things Goddess gave him were always bizarre, their reliability had never failed him.

Hassu immediately considered whether he should decisively knock Hao Ren unconscious to prevent him from being too deeply affected by the disc and completely losing control, but Hao Ren was already heading towards the altar on his own. He took out his Celestial God contract and extended it towards the Solar Wheel—that is, the golden disc. The golden disc was ten meters in diameter, and Hao Ren standing beneath it was like a tiny bug that could be crushed at any moment, but when he held the papers near the disc, the latter immediately emitted an incredible sound.

The sound was difficult to describe. It sounded like a sigh, but also like the friction of metal. It seemed to echo loudly throughout the hall, but when you concentrated on listening, you found it to be as ethereal as an illusion. As this wonderful sound came, the rotation of the golden disc slowly stopped, and the flickering patterns on the altar also stilled. In the face of a higher level of divinity, all these things reverently chose to lie dormant.

And the flowing black things below the golden disc visibly faded as the Celestial God contract approached, and quickly surged towards other parts of the disc, as if avoiding pressure.

Hao Ren was overjoyed when he saw this situation. "This works!"

Hassu, seeing this situation, had a blank look on his face. "...What exactly is going on?"

The poor old demon hunter desperately tried to understand what was happening before him with his normal logic. For example, guessing that the few printed papers in Hao Ren's hand were actually filled with profound runes, or that Hao Ren was actually using the paper as a medium to cast powerful magic—anyway, he didn't believe in things like divinity and true gods. As a traditional demon hunter, when he heard these words related to "gods," he automatically filtered them into the mumbo-jumbo of those heterodox deities.

Vivian patted Hassu on the shoulder when she saw this. "Don't think about it. Didn't I tell you? Just think of him as a Doraemon. Don't pursue his rationality."

The Celestial God contract produced unexpected results. Hao Ren saw that the black substance on the golden disc was not only suppressed, but even showed obvious signs of dissipating. He suddenly realized that he might be able to do better: not only seal the disc, but if the power of the divine names carried on these contracts was strong enough, he might even be able to completely purify this disc on the spot!

So he separated the pages of the Celestial God contract and began to carefully stick them on the parts of the disc most severely contaminated by black shadows. Because he couldn't find suitable glue for a while, he used his own saliva to stick them on…

Hassu had completely given up thinking at this point. He just watched Hao Ren tinkering there quietly: in this ancient relic's secret realm, on this ancient and mysterious altar, Hao Ren was sticking printed papers onto the world's most ancient artifact with saliva while crouching on the altar, and the most unbelievable thing was that he had actually tamed this violent and dangerous artifact. Hassu felt that it was time for him to retire from the position of demon hunter. The world was changing too fast, and his worldview couldn't keep up with the situation at all. Perhaps it would be good to be a gatekeeper at headquarters after retirement, but he didn't know if his eyesight was still good enough…

And Hao Ren saw that as Celestial God contracts were stuck on the surface of the disc, those turbid black shadows had faded to the point where they were almost indistinguishable to the naked eye, and around the paper with Raven 12345's name, a soft white light could even be seen actively purifying the pollution of the golden disc. Under the illumination of the white light, the black shadows dissipated in the air like dust, not being suppressed or sealed, but truly and completely annihilated.

"I should have thought of this earlier." Hao Ren looked at his achievements with satisfaction, muttering casually.

Izhaks didn't know what expression to make. "Your way of solving problems is really unexpected every time."

Hao Ren smiled modestly, taking Izhaks' words for some kind of compliment without any misgivings. At this time, the black shadows on the golden disc had almost completely dissipated. Hao Ren looked at the parts that had just been purified a few times and suddenly noticed something suspicious.

He saw that after those black "substances" disappeared, there were still some shallow marks left on the golden disc. Those marks were obviously not the previous pollutants, but a kind of black-red imprint, like some kind of liquid had been sprinkled on it and then dried.

Vivian noticed Hao Ren's daze and asked from afar, "What's wrong?"

"I don't know what it is. The surface of the disc is a little dirty," Hao Ren said casually, and then, prompted by some inexplicable attraction, he reached out to touch those imprints almost unconsciously. "It looks like…"

"Boom!"

A deafening roar suddenly struck, and Hao Ren instantly felt dizzy and disoriented. He felt as if he had been thrown from space to the ground, and slammed down hard in a frenzy of rotation and sway. After finally waking up from this deadly shock, he opened his eyes and found himself in an unfamiliar place.

"Hiss… that hurts…" Hao Ren stood up, gasping, and saw that he was standing in a magnificent and luxurious, but ruined, palace. Huge palace pillars and indescribable majestic sculptures were collapsing around him. The hall paved with red crystal stones was splitting apart in violent tremors. Above him was a vaulted ceiling inlaid with colorful crystals, but the vault had a big hole, and through the hole, he could see the sky filled with blazing flames and rain of sulfur. Countless burning fragments were falling like a storm on this world, and deafening explosions could be heard from all directions.

"Vivian?" Hao Ren shouted loudly for his companions. "MDL!?"

His voice disappeared emptily in this chaos, and no one responded to him, including the mental connection with the Data Terminal that never broke off.

"Old Wang?!" Hao Ren covered his forehead and staggered towards a place that looked slightly more stable. "Hassu?!"

A cracking sound suddenly rang out. A palace wall in front of him collapsed and fell down. When the wall disappeared, Hao Ren's eyes widened.

He saw an endless red ocean outside. Large patches of flames were burning on this red sea, and the mysterious palace he was in was floating on this endless sea. And now, this palace was constantly collapsing and slowly sinking into the sea.

Towers and giant stone pillars were breaking away from the palace, falling into the red sea with huge sounds. Hao Ren was stunned for a moment and finally realized where he was:

The Star of Creation, the moment the goddess fell.

As if something was calling him from the shadows, Hao Ren suddenly felt an urge. Although he had no idea where he should go, he suddenly turned around under the drive of instinct and ran towards the depths of the palace.

He crossed burning gates one after another, crossed the bodies of countless dead guardian giants, and he also saw those rebellious sons in bright armor. Some of the rebellious sons and guardian giants were even still fighting. The places in the palace that had not yet collapsed were still battlefields at this time. But Hao Ren completely ignored these, he just passed through this chaos at the fastest speed, as if a voice was telling him to hurry over.

And those rebellious sons and guardian giants who were fighting fiercely seemed to be completely unaware of Hao Ren's existence. They were killing each other on their own, and no one was stopping the outsider.

Finally, Hao Ren broke through the last collapsing gate.

He saw the scene that changed the fate of countless creatures ten thousand years ago.

A huge golden disc was standing at the end of the long hall. In front of the golden disc, a female figure was standing there. Her face could not be recognized, and seemed to be shrouded in a layer of eternal mist, but she was the most dazzling existence in this entire space. When Hao Ren focused his gaze on that female, it seemed that all the flames and destruction scenes around him disappeared. He immediately and clearly realized that it was the figure of the Creation Goddess.

And in front of the goddess, a warrior in golden-red armor was standing silently opposite her.

They seemed to be talking, or maybe they were just confronting each other silently. Hao Ren felt that something was wrong with his vision, and the scene in front of him became more and more blurred, and everything around him was shaking violently.

And in the midst of the visual shaking, he saw that the warrior in golden-red armor raised a long sword in his hand. The long sword was pitch-black, inlaid with twinkling lights, like a fragment of the universe.

He swung his sword and stabbed the goddess.

Hao Ren felt that his consciousness was on the verge of dissipating, but he still used all his strength to rush up. He wanted to take out his weapon, but found that the dimensional pocket did not respond at all, so he grabbed something beside him—it might be a stone, or it might be a piece of metal. He only felt that the thing was extremely hot, and it should be a burning fragment. He used all his strength to throw this burning remnant at the god-slayer in golden-red armor, and roared loudly, "Stop it, you son of a bitch!!"

The flaming boulder he threw seemed to disappear into the air like a phantom, and the god-slayer's dark long sword had pierced the goddess's body.

When the goddess was stabbed by the long sword, she seemed to have no power to resist like a mortal. She staggered twice and slowly leaned against the golden disc and fell. Then she turned her head and looked in the direction of Hao Ren.

Hao Ren actually realized at this time that what he saw was just an illusion, just an image left ten thousand years ago, but he was still sure that the Creation Goddess was staring at him—that gaze crossed time, crossed space, and even crossed reality and illusion. The Creation Goddess looked up at the direction where Hao Ren was running from the moment she was assassinated ten thousand years ago, as if she knew that someone was coming in this illusory image.

Hao Ren was terrified by the goddess's gaze, and then he heard a faint voice coming from the air. "...Forgive..."

The goddess finally fell, and at the moment when this act of god-slaying was realized, divine punishment descended as promised.

The god-slayer's body instantly disappeared in a pillar of light. Immediately afterwards, countless such pillars of light rose up in other parts of the palace at the same time. Those rebellious people who had slain the gods did not even have time to resist before they turned into dissipating light particles.

Hao Ren finally ran the longest few dozen meters of his life. He was one step late and didn't even have time to see the faces of the god-slayer and the goddess. He came to the golden disc and found that the bodies of the god-slayer and the goddess had disappeared, and everything was gone, only a shocking red color was left on the golden disc.

The blood of gods splashed on it, becoming the evidence of the biggest evil deed in the entire universe.

The blood dripped slowly, drop by drop, slowly turning pitch-black. The entire space began to shake, and countless guardians' painful roars came from the air. Hao Ren closed his eyes and felt that the Star of Creation was slowly collapsing under his feet and was beginning to brew a flash that was enough to illuminate the entire universe.

The Great Extinction had begun.