Chapter 1 The Storm Subsides

The storm subsided as suddenly as it had appeared.

The blood-red tornado vanished into thin air, and the various things that had been swept up into the sky came crashing down. Fortunately, everyone had been evacuated or had taken shelter in time, so these falling debris didn't cause any harm. Lily, who had been spinning in the sky for half an hour, finally landed—strictly speaking, she was slammed against a nearby wall, slid down, and after staggering a few steps, the husky girl decided it was more comfortable to lie down where she was…

But most people's attention was on the center of the tornado: there, Hao Ren was holding Vivian, who seemed to have lost consciousness, standing on the only intact piece of ground. He looked completely bewildered.

"Landlord, are you alright!" Nangong Wuyue shouted as soon as she saw Hao Ren. "How's Vivian?"

"I just heard some big news… Vivian's fine, just too tired and fell asleep," Hao Ren's bewildered expression didn't fade at all, but he shook his head, forcing himself to focus on the current situation. "We need to find her a place to rest, she'll probably wake up in a while. Where's Lily?"

Lily, who was still lying on the ground, completely dizzy, wagged her tail when she heard Hao Ren's voice, her tone sounding weak: "I'm here… Ugh… Landlord, don't worry about me, I think I'm going to throw up if I get up, give me a minute… Ugh…"

Hao Ren handed Vivian over to the team's ace healer, Nangong Wuyue, to take care of her temporarily. Then, he went over to check on Lily. After confirming that the husky girl was just dizzy from being spun around and had a small bump on her forehead, he felt relieved and came to Hilda with an embarrassed expression: "Looks like the experiment still went a little haywire in the end, made a mess of this place."

"No need to worry, it's just a small matter," the Elf Queen still had that gentle, calm smile on her face, because this level of accident was really nothing to an Irim elf. "Conducting a summoning ritual of this scale is beyond the imagination of every Irim elf. Compared to this incredible ritual, this little mishap at the end is completely negligible. The magic tower's energy was cut off in time, and the damage was limited to the hall. The other facilities were not damaged. We can just find someone to repair the main magic array here later, and the function here can be restored at most tomorrow."

Hearing this, Hao Ren felt a little relieved, but was still a little embarrassed: "I'll have the autonomous machines clean up for you, they're more efficient."

"That would be great," Hilda didn't refuse, nodded, and then looked in Vivian's direction. "But you should check on her first."

Although the energy storm summoned by Vivian looked amazing, the damage it caused was limited due to the timely response and the fact that Vivian controlled the storm's scale to some extent. A group of mages and engineers were quickly summoned to repair the hall, while the others took Vivian, who was still asleep, to the middle level of the magic tower to rest under Hilda's guidance.

Looking at Vivian's tranquil face and steady breathing, seemingly having a sweet dream, Lily, who had finally recovered from her dizziness, was full of questions, grabbing Hao Ren's arm and asking non-stop: "Landlord, Landlord, what happened? What's the big news you were talking about? Why did the bat suddenly fall asleep? How did she suddenly lose control? Didn't you say that the Red Moon was completely under control? What did you see on the Red Moon? And and…"

Hao Ren used all his strength to pry open this incredibly strong husky. The number of question marks in his head was no less than Lily's: "Don't throw so many questions at me at once—I'm still confused. After going in just now, Vivian said one sentence to me, something about 'The Creator is the leader of the Godslayers,' and then she just passed out like that. I reckon only she herself knows what's going on."

Hao Ren successfully spread his confusion to everyone's faces.

"...Woof, I suddenly want to slap the bat awake and make her explain what this nonsensical sentence means," Lily muttered, looking at Vivian lying on the bed. "Digging such a big hole before going to sleep is going to get you killed."

Nangong Sanba couldn't help but nudge his sister with his elbow: "What do you think Vivian's sentence means?"

"How would I know? There's no context, how can I analyze it? Actually, I suspect the Landlord misheard. After all, it must have been very noisy inside the tornado. How could you have time to communicate when you can't even stand still…"

"You stupid sister, you don't understand this. There's not much noise in the center of the tornado. I told you to read more books…"

Then came the beloved daily Great Windmill time.

Hao Ren didn't pay attention to Nangong Sanba, who had already started spinning in the air, or Lily, who couldn't help but feel dizzy and nauseous when she saw the "Great Windmill." Instead, he sat alone beside Vivian, and the scenes he had seen in the illusion world before flashed through his mind.

The figure that appeared at the end of the illusion and was sealed along with the Crystal Throne… is that the Creator?

If so, why was she sealed on the Crystal Throne? What exactly was that world that didn't look like the Star of Creation at all? What was its relationship with the Crystal Jungle in the Red Moon Sea? If that figure wasn't the Creator, then who was she?

In addition, why did Vivian suddenly say "The Creator is the leader of the Godslayers"? Recalling her unwavering expression and clear eyes when she said this, Hao Ren firmly believed that this sentence was not a delirium.

This seemed to mean that Vivian had suddenly recovered some memories, but this memory recovery process was much more lively than the "nothing will happen" that Raven 12345 had sworn to. It was clearly an unexpected situation, so what was the reason for this unexpected situation? Was it related to his own immersion in the illusion world? Did he activate some "switch" when he touched the Crystal Jungle in the Red Moon Sea?

This pile of questions made Hao Ren feel a faint headache, but the good news was that the key figure who could answer the biggest question among them—Vivian—finally woke up.

She hadn't been asleep for long. She woke up just as Nangong Wuyue was spinning her brother for the four hundred and sixty-second time. At that time, Lily was holding a brick and waving it around beside Vivian, muttering while she waved it: "The bat isn't planning to sleep for another two hundred years, is she? We agreed that this sleeping sickness was cured. Landlord, do you think she'll… Ah, I'm just kidding…"

Then this husky spirit was turned into a chow chow by a bolt of lightning that hit her in the face.

"The big bat's awake!"

Lily's shout immediately brought everyone together. The crowd gathered around Vivian's bed, asking about her condition. The most concerned was what that nonsensical sentence meant. Lily didn't even care about her exploded hair when she saw this, with a smirk on her face: "Hehe, waking up and being blocked at the bedside to urge you to update, let you taste the nightmares I often have…"

Hao Ren guarded the bedside, grabbing Vivian's hand as soon as possible: "You're awake? Are you hungry? Want something to eat?"

"I'm fine," Vivian smiled awkwardly, sitting up with Hao Ren's help and leaning against the headboard. "I didn't expect to fall asleep because I exhausted too much energy, but I've recovered almost completely after a sleep."

Hao Ren looked into her eyes: "You… recovered a part of your memory?"

"Yes," Vivian exhaled. "About the Creator… That shouldn't be my own memory, but the information passed down with the part of the 'God Blood' that the Creator left me."

"So that sentence of yours…"

"The Creator was corrupted by the Lord of Madness. It happened during her great battle with the Lord of Madness. This is the truth we've been looking for—the truth about the Creator's various unusual behaviors in her last years."

Hao Ren: "…"

At this moment, he suddenly realized the lack of his vocabulary. There were so many exclamations with rich meanings, strong emotions, and powerful sounds that he could use, but at this time, all that lingered in his mind was just one "fuck."

Vivian looked at the circle of people around her who were also stunned, knowing that everyone was waiting for the explanation, so she didn't keep them in suspense. After taking another breath, she told all the information that had suddenly appeared in her mind:

"This is a secret that no one knows—not even the Creator's closest guardians and those Ancient Ones, because the corruption she suffered was in the deepest part. She herself didn't realize it until the end, and even if she realized that she was being corrupted, she couldn't tell the truth… The power of the Lord of Madness had been implanted in her body many years ago, and with every step she took to create life and explore the universe, it continued to spread outward. The entire Dream Plane was actually completely infected tens of millions of years ago. Except for a few native ecological planets, everywhere that has life, where the Firstborn exist, has the shadow of the Lord of Madness, is an extension of the Lord of Madness.

"Even if the main body of the Lord of Madness has been defeated and sealed, its power has never stopped spreading. In some ways, the Creator won the great battle of the ancient era, but in other ways, the Lord of Madness never actually failed, and even… that great battle never ended at all.

"This is why the Firstborn went completely crazy after the Godslaying incident, and the Guardian Giants also underwent that terrible mutation—the power of the Lord of Madness amplified all the negative influences. It wasn't that someone tampered with the guardians' mental network, but that the mental network itself had problems.

"But these infections are all trivial matters. The truly fatal infection is on the Star of Creation…"

Vivian paused here, seemingly looking for a more appropriate way to express it. Finally, she frowned and shook her head: "The Creator was split into two."