Chapter 1 The Beginning

Hao Ren slowly opened his eyes and found himself standing in a strange place.

He still remembered what had happened before, the battle against the bizarre "Giant Brain," and why he was seeing these strange sights before him—therefore, he was one hundred percent certain that everything before him was an illusion, and that these illusions were perhaps coming from that "Giant Brain."

An endless, crimson sea stretched out before him. No mountains, no land, no islands. As far as he could see, there was only this blood-red seawater gently undulating. The seawater even stained the horizon red, giving the originally pale, chaotic sky a reddish tinge. Hao Ren looked down at his feet and realized that he was standing on a sea of water as well... no, he shouldn't be standing, because when he looked down, he couldn't see his legs. He seemed to be just a pair of eyes in this world. He didn't know what kind of perspective he was using to view everything before him, and even from the seawater below, he couldn't see a reflection of himself.

Hao Ren's mind stirred slightly, and he found that he could move in this strange world, but the speed of movement seemed very slow, as if he had become a bloated and clumsy floating creature.

He knew that the "Giant Brain's" activity in the real world should have stopped. Through some inexplicable connection, he could feel his hand still touching the "Giant Brain's" tentacles, and fusing with its mind. Faced with this connected state, the latter's powerful mental attack ability was helpless. It could only stiffly allow Hao Ren to break into its ancient memory world like a malfunctioning machine.

Hao Ren lowered his head and fell into thought. In the previous accidental contact, he had accidentally glimpsed these illusions. Now, the second contact had verified his conjecture and stabilized the illusions. However, he didn't know the ratio between the passage of time in the illusions and the real world, so he couldn't be sure when he would suddenly be awakened by the Data Terminal. Before that, he curiously looked around this monotonous and boring world, trying to understand what kind of information the "Giant Brain" was trying to convey with its memories.

Just as he was racking his brains trying to understand the strange phenomenon before him, a sudden booming sound came from afar. Hao Ren looked in surprise and saw a bulge suddenly rising from the crimson sea, as if something was surging beneath the ocean and was about to break the surface. A moment later, he saw a huge, boundless red sphere, perhaps hundreds of meters in radius, floating up from the seawater and rising into the sky.

The sphere had an uneven surface covered with strange patterns, giving it a strange sense of mystery and sanctity. On the sphere, one could also see slightly swaying fluff and openings that looked like facial features, making one wonder if it might be some kind of creature. Hao Ren watched in astonishment as the huge sphere slowly rose into the sky. The sphere seemed to be a vanguard. After it rose into the sky, continuous booming sounds came from all directions, and more things identical to the sphere slowly rose from the seawater, floating into the sky like dandelion seeds carried by the wind.

Okay, dandelion seeds with a radius of over two hundred meters.

A word flashed through Hao Ren's mind for no reason: sowing.

A strange feeling flashed through his heart, and Hao Ren turned his head sharply, only to see a vague figure appearing behind him at some point. This figure was directly condensed and emerged from the seawater. Its facial features were blurred, and one could only roughly make out that it was a female form. This "woman" condensed from red liquid seemed to be looking at Hao Ren, or perhaps she was simply seeing off those spheres, as if she was discussing something with someone, or perhaps she was just talking to herself:

"Well... what's so fun about the distance? I really want to see those stars..."

With a loud bang, the crimson illusion violently shook. Everything began to collapse rapidly. Scenes of rapidly changing images flooded Hao Ren's mind at an unprecedented speed. He saw the cycle of life, the growth of plants, the succession of species, evolution and decay, a group of reptiles raising their forelimbs from the ground, a group of deep-sea fish building houses on the seabed, a group of apes tremblingly raising the first torch, and a group of giant insects covered in sturdy armor solemnly leaving their own portraits on the rocks.

He saw countless species rise from ignorance and fall in confusion.

Then everything shattered with a bang, and he felt like he hadn't seen anything at all.

A sharp pain came from his head, and the Data Terminal's piercing wail came from the depths of his mind. Hao Ren suddenly felt his body return. As the illusion before him became more and more bizarre, he also felt the heavy pistol in his hand becoming more and more clear. The Data Terminal was shouting, "Success! It's stopped!"

Hao Ren subconsciously raised his hand, and the instinct remaining in his body made him aim in a certain direction and pull the trigger.

The chaotic scene before him finally disappeared completely. He saw that he had returned to the gloomy evil cult ritual site. The Inspector's pistol in his hand was emitting a blue-white afterglow, and half of the body of the bizarre creature that looked like a giant brain had turned into a crystalline substance.

The crystallization on the "Giant Brain" spread rapidly. Its black vertical slit, like an eye, stared at Hao Ren, seemingly full of resentment and mockery. However, the monster finally lost its strength and fell heavily to the ground. The moment it touched the ground, the crystallization was completed, and the "Giant Brain" shattered into dust scattered across the sky.

A voice slowly dissipated in Hao Ren's mind: "...you are just scum..."

Hao Ren was stunned, waking up from the strange illusion. He looked thoughtfully at the speck of light left after the "Giant Brain" dissipated, shrugged his shoulders, and said, "Sorry, I'm not from around here..."

At this moment, the sound of fighting coming from the other corner of the rocky hall suddenly startled him. Hao Ren then remembered Nangong Wuyue was still there!

The "Giant Brain's" constant mental attacks had exhausted Hao Ren both physically and mentally, so much so that he had forgotten about Nangong Wuyue. Now, he quickly turned his head to look, but saw that the siren, who couldn't fight at all, was already in critical condition!

He saw that the remaining dozen or so cultists had surrounded Nangong Wuyue in layers, waving various weapons and attacking wave after wave. The siren girl herself was not good at fighting, and in her current form, she was large and difficult to avoid, and was almost certain to be severely injured in the group attack. She swung her huge tail, sweeping the enemies away again and again, but still couldn't stop the increasing number of wounds on her body.

What was worse, the cult leader was obviously very strong. After summoning the evil god, he didn't show any signs of fatigue. Instead, he floated in the air and suppressed Wuyue's movements with black and red magic arrows like a torrential rain. The cold-blooded cultist had already seen that the "snake spirit" was protecting the child behind her, so he deliberately shot the magic arrows in that direction. Nangong Wuyue had to frequently coil her tail to protect the child behind her—each time, she would have another wound on her body.

Hao Ren had solved the Giant Brain and finally had the opportunity to help, but just as he was about to lift his leg, an unexpected event occurred.

Wuyue seemed to have finally been beaten silly. She suddenly shrank her body completely, seemingly giving up resistance, and allowed the weapons to chop at her body. Amidst the dull sounds of knives and swords entering flesh, she raised her head and looked angrily at the cult leader: "I told you! Don't make me take action!"

The cult leader was stunned for a moment, as if sensing a great danger approaching. His years of combat experience made him choose the most decisive solution: kill his enemy before things changed.

A burst of lightning erupted from the end of the staff in his hand, and then his entire body rapidly fell, piercing Wuyue's chest with the staff before she could act.

Nangong Wuyue's body swayed, and layers of water shimmered on her skin. Then, the color quickly faded from her entire body, turning into pure water. With a crash, the body condensed from water splashed all over the ground.

Hao Ren was dumbfounded at the time: Wuyue... was killed?

No!

The cultists had just revealed victorious smiles when they suddenly convulsed and fell to the ground, screaming madly!

These "monsters," who originally should have had no sense of pain, could not resist the inhuman pain. Their bodies rapidly swelled, their entire bodies festered crazily, and all the water-containing tissues in their bodies boiled as if they were being steamed. A large amount of water seeped from their skin in an almost spraying manner, and their bodies shriveled at a speed visible to the naked eye. Trickles of water were extracted from each cultist, re-converging into a familiar figure in the hall, while the cultists quickly turned into piles of dust fluttering in the wind—without leaving a trace of moisture!

Nangong Wuyue completed her rebirth in the trickles of water. Her originally somewhat evil sea serpent figure seemed to have just absorbed enough nutrients to become even more enchanting. She watched her body regain its color from transparency and sighed softly: "I told you... don't make me take action..."