He didn't hide his concerns. After considering the suspicious points in the Guardians' bizarre rampages, Hao Ren immediately told his thoughts to those around him.

The general opinion of the masses was that the mastermind was definitely the damn ****, and they had known all along that everything that went wrong in the Dream Plane was related to it. Lily even cheerfully suggested listing that mastermind as the "scapegoat-in-chief," so that any unpleasantness encountered in the Dream Plane from now on could be blamed on it. In short, everyone was happy to finally find someone so black they couldn't be whitewashed to take the blame.

Even though they didn't even understand what that mastermind actually was.

Before this, Hao Ren had already studied the Guardians' rampages in his own way. Apart from the obvious external mutations in the Guardian Giants, he hadn't found any observable negative energies within the Guardians. But he knew his research definitely had shortcomings, and the corruption of Yggdrasil proved this point: the corruption originated from the illusory level, and the pollution would first spread from the non-material realm, only entering the real world in the final stages. Now that there was such "hidden pollution," wouldn't there be something similar within the other Guardians as well?

Little White flitted around the Throat of Toca, first marveling at how big her compatriot had grown, and then diving straight into the bottomless vertical shaft.

After Little White jumped down, the nerve lines around the Throat of Toca immediately reacted. Visible rays of light surged out from the depths of the cave, leaping and spreading along those black tendrils, and triggering bursts of electrical light between the nearby neural pulse spires. Hao Ren didn't know what method Little White was going to use to examine this giant body symbiotic with the planet, but he figured she had probably already found a problem.

A full fifteen minutes later, the energy surges around the Throat of Toca slowly calmed down, and a ball of white shadow emerged from a tendril near Hao Ren's feet: "The situation below is really complicated—it's the first time I've seen the internal structure of another First Born, and it seems different from mine."

Hao Ren was immediately stunned when he saw this shapeless mass of light and shadow: "Little White? Why have you turned into this lump again?"

Little White paused, seeming to just realize that she had lost her human form after taking a stroll down there. After a while, she asked a little embarrassed, "Um... what did I look like before?"

Everyone: "..."

It seemed that Little White had been affected after entering Toca's body, and her memory had become somewhat muddled. But fortunately, the data terminal still had her previous form stored. After some fussing, Little White finally regained her "human interaction interface." Seeing that she had recovered, Hao Ren couldn't wait to ask about Toca's condition.

"It's hard to draw conclusions," Little White said, shaking her head slightly with a hint of apology on her face. "He has no brain, no soul. I can only read primitive neural impulses from the depths of this planet. You can't detect any signs of corruption from neural impulses."

Hao Ren immediately looked disappointed. He had been hoping that this special First Born, Yggdrasil, could show some clues of corruption in the other Guardians.

He had thought about the Godslayer Sword as well. The Godslayer Sword was quite familiar with the corruption of "evil forces," and had successfully found the source of corruption in Yggdrasil's spiritual world. But unfortunately, the Godslayer Sword had lost most of its power now. It could only sense whether there were corrupting forces of the same origin as itself after entering the target's spiritual world—but Little White had just said that Toca had no brain and no spiritual activity at all, so the Godslayer Sword's senses were useless here.

Dr. Hao Ren wanted to recreate his feat of treating Yggdrasil, but he couldn't even find a place to start with Toca...

"But it's not without any discoveries," Little White suddenly added.

Hao Ren almost choked: "Don't give me such cliffhangers!"

"Because it's just a suspicious clue, not solid evidence," Little White said expressionlessly. "I found some traces of suspected corruption in a few nerve nodes deep within Toca's body. Those nerve nodes were soaked in degenerated Source Blood, and there were remnants of violent, negative thought-forces. Although the brain cores there have been removed, the mental energy of the First Born is too powerful, and it still left some traces around the nerve nodes."

"Traces of corruption? Degenerated Source Blood?" Hao Ren was stunned when he heard this. "That's not right... the probes I left on this planet before should have examined every inch of Toca's body, and they didn't find any lesions."

"Corruption doesn't necessarily have to be severe enough to cause lesions to be called corruption," Little White glanced at Hao Ren. "Source Blood is the source of life created by the Mother. Every subtle change in it can reflect all kinds of information. Some changes seem normal to you, possible evolutionary forms of Source Blood itself, but in my opinion, they are abnormal evolutions. Hmm, it's hard to explain clearly to you."

"Hey, what's so hard to explain about that?" Lily chimed in. "The layman sees the excitement, the expert sees the details. In my opinion, two boys hugging and kissing is especially beautiful, but the landlord said the scene was toxic..."

Everyone around was immediately choked. Hao Ren glared at the husky spirit: "Is that how you use the phrase 'The layman sees the excitement, the expert sees the details'?"

Little White thought about it very seriously for a while, and asked Lily, "Would you consider the example you gave as corruption?"

Before Lily could say anything, Hao Ren and Nangong Sanba, who was closest, said in unison: "It's corruption! Severe corruption!"

Vivian couldn't bear it anymore: "Alright, alright, can you guys talk about topics that can pass censorship when thrown out?"

Hao Ren coughed twice: "Ahem... in short, we can basically confirm now that the Guardians collectively went crazy after the goddess fell, not because of 'raging madness,' at least not purely for this reason—that mastermind who calls himself the 'root of the universe' is fueling the flames behind the scenes, leading to the current situation. I personally think the way he intervened is similar to the way he tempted the prodigal sons to fall, which is to extremely amplify the negative factors in the Guardians' hearts."

"But the information we've gathered so far is still too little," Little White said with some regret. "'Toca' is not a good analytical object. I need a more complete sample to figure out what exactly happened to the Guardians."

"I have a complete sample," Hao Ren smiled slightly. "In the Dream Plane, I have a large space station, and there are two First Born locked up in the space station after going crazy. And most importantly, those two First Born are still alive."

A look of joy appeared on Little White's face for a moment, but soon her expression darkened again: "I can't return to that world. You know, the strength of the Wall of Reality can't withstand an individual like me crossing it again."

Hearing this, Hao Ren patted Little White on the shoulder—but he patted empty air. He awkwardly retracted his hand: "Uh, that's right, it is indeed a bit difficult to send you back to the Dream Plane as a whole right now, but I still have a way to let you come into contact with things from the Dream Plane. In fact, the reason I let you and the Nine Kingdoms settle down in this star cluster is precisely for this—do you know what this place is?"

"The Rift Nebula, of course I know," Little White nodded. "I wasn't even 'born' back then, but I know that Little Black tore open a similar rift when he crashed into this world!"

"In fact, I'm about to reopen the door to the Dream Plane here," Hao Ren said, crossing his arms with a proud look on his face. "Right on the border line in the center of the Rift Nebula. Of course, considering the tolerance of the Wall of Reality, even if this door is opened, individuals like you who have a serious karmic entanglement with the Goddess of Creation still can't cross the border casually. But the door itself will change the environment of the entire Rift Nebula. At that time, this nebula will be a region where the surface world and the Dream Plane overlap. Here, residents of the Dream Plane and the surface world can communicate and interact without any obstacles!"

Listening to Hao Ren's grand plan, Little White slowly showed an expression of "Holy crap, you're so awesome, but is there really no problem with your plan? Although I don't understand, it sounds very dangerous, but even so, I still hope you can succeed. I'm so conflicted, should I support your crazy plan or not?"

Hao Ren didn't pay attention to Little White's changing expression. At this moment, he was immersed in the excitement of about to change history, and couldn't wait to see the Rift Nebula open its doors.

The "docking" process between the Nine Kingdoms and Purgatory Star lasted for three days and three nights.

Under strong public opinion guidance and the comforting words of the spiritual leaders of both sides, the Sun Tribe of Purgatory Star and the Twilight people of the Nine Kingdoms finally accepted the changes in the world in a relatively calm manner.

After docking, the Nine Kingdoms became a spectacle in the sky above Purgatory Star. In turn, Purgatory Star also hung in the skies of the Nine Kingdoms, becoming the "Hanging Kingdom" familiar to the humans of Midgard for countless years to come.

The two kingdoms hung in each other's skies, and the strange illusion caused by gravitational distortion formed a towering aurora curtain between the two kingdoms. Yggdrasil stretched out the thickest branch from Nibelungen, turning into a space elevator connecting the two kingdoms—the Tower of Heaven. In the thousands of years that followed, this Tower of Heaven was one of the greatest miracles between Purgatory and Yggdrasil. Humans from the two worlds traveled back and forth through this tower, spending all the years of testing, cognition, war, peace, unity, division, and jointly stepping into the sea of stars—these are all stories for later.

And while Yggdrasil and Toca were holding hands to build a new world, a door was beginning to be built in the eye of the storm in the Rift Nebula.