Chapter 1 The Fading Light

The light before her eyes was gradually receding.

The fairytale-like crystal forest, the glittering streams, the sparkling bushes and flowers, and that magical crystal stag – everything was gradually merging into a hazy ball of light. Within this light, Vivian saw a blurry figure waving at her. She subconsciously reached out as well, but the figure had already dimmed to the point of being almost unrecognizable.

Soon, all the light disappeared, and a heavy darkness rushed in from all directions.

How long this darkness lasted, she didn't know. Suddenly, a glimmer of light reappeared, and Vivian heard a familiar voice calling her name: "Vivian, wake up, Vivian, are you alright? Wake up—Salaman, wasn't the connection supposed to be interrupted?"

As her consciousness returned, the faint light expanded sharply, and the smooth, mirror-like crystal wall reappeared before her eyes. Vivian felt a wave of dizziness, the strange sensation of struggling to regain balance when suddenly returning to solid ground from a weightless state. But her frequent flying experience allowed her to quickly grasp her slightly swaying body. After instinctively stabilizing herself, she let out a long breath, and her slightly disordered breathing also steadied.

"I'm fine," Vivian said after taking a deep breath, quickly adjusting her state—both psychological and physiological. Then she smiled and nodded at Hao Ren, who was looking at her with concern, "Look how nervous you are—you get sucked into illusions every other day, and you're worried about me."

Seeing Vivian fully awake, Hao Ren finally relaxed. He wiped his forehead and smiled somewhat awkwardly: "You finally woke up. You scared me for a moment there. Besides, my situation is different from yours, I have plenty of experience. This is your first time..."

Vivian rubbed her forehead: "What just happened? How long was I in there?"

"In there? You didn't go anywhere," Hao Ren said with some surprise. "You were just standing here and suddenly stopped moving, and your whole body became semi-transparent and glowing, just like those fairies. But the Data Terminal said that was a protective measure. The whole process lasted about a dozen minutes."

"Only a dozen minutes..." Vivian frowned, "It seems the flow of time really is different. What happened after that?"

Hao Ren pointed at the crystal wall: "After that? After that, this thing suddenly blue-screened, then a fairy popped out and said there was a problem with the main system, so the connection was interrupted. I was just calling your name, and you woke up after two minutes."

"Blue-screened?" Vivian was stunned when she heard that, and quickly turned back to look at the crystal wall again. She then realized that the crystal wall hadn't completely returned to its original state. It was still "lit up," and at the top of the crystal wall were several lines of chaotic strings of characters that looked like garbled code, jumping up and down.

Below the string of characters was a looping animation of a little person bowing...

A dozen fairies had already emerged from the crystal wall and were now frantically scurrying around the crystal clusters on the cliff, probably restarting the system.

Looking at the image of the bowing little person, Vivian couldn't help but twitch her lips: "The Goddess really did design a lot of useless features..."

"You saw the information left by the Creation Goddess?" Hao Ren guessed something from Vivian's attitude and couldn't help but ask, "Did you figure out what this place is all about?"

Vivian hummed softly, but didn't continue to answer. Instead, she looked up at Salaman, who was standing beside her: "Commander Salaman, this main system suddenly... blue-screened. Does that mean I passed or failed?"

Salaman had several glittering little fairies surrounding his head, listening intently to what the fairies were chirping. Finally, he nodded gently. Facing Vivian's question, the Guardian Giant took two steps back and knelt down on one knee in a neat motion, startling Hao Ren and Vivian, "You have passed, Master of the Seat of the End, Queen of all Resonance Nodes, Controller and Executor of the New Era. In accordance with End Protocol Articles 1266 and 8325, command of all defensive forces in the Holy Land has been transferred. The Agudar Fortress, the Nexus Defense Perimeter, and the Star Citizen Fleet under the Guardian Legion will be at your disposal."

Hao Ren and Vivian were wondering how to solve the problem of the system blue screen, but they didn't expect Salaman to suddenly do this, and they were both stunned. Hao Ren was stunned for a few seconds before he reacted, and quickly tugged Vivian: "Hey, hey, he's kneeling to you..."

"Get up first, get up first," Vivian also reacted and immediately wanted to pull Salaman up, but looking at the other party's size, which was about the same as her with one palm, she could only stand aside and move her lips, "It's hard for me to do this if you suddenly do this."

Salaman nodded when he heard this and stood up—fortunately, he didn't say anything like "The fate of the world hangs by a thread, and I dare not rise unless Your Majesty ascends the throne," otherwise Vivian would have had to blast him up with a ball of lightning.

But after standing up, Salaman was still emphasizing the matter of the Master of the Throne: "Please forgive our caution, but we really didn't expect the Pathfinder to have amnesia, so we had to carry out this test. Now that your identity has been recognized by the main system of the Seat of the End, the Guardian Legion's many years of perseverance have finally had meaning. This will be the greatest turning point in the fate of this world—the plan left by Mother can finally continue."

"Plan?" Hao Ren raised an eyebrow, "Right, now that Vivian has passed your verification, according to what we agreed on before, you should be able to explain the ins and outs of this 'Holy Land' to us, right? What exactly is the Creation Goddess's plan?"

Before Salaman could say anything, Vivian took the initiative to speak: "You don't need to tell us, I already know what this place is all about—the Creation Goddess left a reserved data file in the system, which records all her plans here in detail."

Hao Ren was overjoyed, never expecting that Vivian's gains during the connection process would reach this level: "Then..."

"This is a plan that will shock everyone. We need to find a safe place to talk slowly, and we can also explain our situation to Salaman in detail," Vivian said as she looked around, "The fairies probably won't be able to fix this place for a while. How about we go back to the ship? Let's go to... Salaman's Aier, shall we?"

Soon, the group returned to the Aier, which was parked on the great plain. The Guardian Giants had learned through the mind network that Vivian had passed the verification and that the Pathfinder had finally arrived at the Seat of the End. Hao Ren and Vivian could feel the enthusiasm and respect from the surrounding gazes everywhere they went when entering this Guardian warship: of course, these gazes were basically directed at Vivian.

But in order to have a quiet conversation, most of the Guardian Giants could only wait outside. Only Hao Ren, Vivian, and Salaman entered a "reception room" on the Aier.

Vivian's first sentence after sitting down almost made Hao Ren jump up again: "The Creation Goddess's plan is very simple, it is to make the God and the Lord of Madness be annihilated forever, and then use a special thinking network to make the Dream Plane enter the 'Era of God Extinction'. Whether it is the Creation Engine or the Seat of the End here, and the divine power resonance network based on the stellar skeleton that we found outside the X star cluster before, they are all serving this plan. In short, everything is working hard to completely erase the Goddess's imprint on the Dream Plane."

"Era of God Extinction?!" Hao Ren stared, "Tell me more, I need to digest this slowly..."

Vivian nodded: "We already know the situation of the Creation Goddess's split before her fall—Salaman, you probably know something about it too. What we don't know is that in fact, the Creation Goddess also grasped a fatal weakness of the Lord of Madness at the same time as the split.

"Strictly speaking, this weakness was not originally possessed by the Lord of Madness, but a result of the interaction between divine power and chaotic power after the Goddess and it had a great battle: the power of the Lord of Madness infected the Creation Goddess, forcing her to split into two, but conversely, the power of the Creation Goddess also acted on the Lord of Madness, making the latter no longer pure.

"Yes, that's it: the Creation Goddess also 'infected' the Lord of Madness at the same time.

"Because the Lord of Madness itself is a chaotic and empty individual, it will not produce any split like the Creation Goddess after being affected by the Goddess's divine power, but only has some 'characteristic factors' of the Creation Goddess, and this part of the factor is also one of the main culprits that cause the Lord of Madness's seal to not be truly long-lasting: on the one hand, the Creation Goddess's 'memory' of the Lord of Madness will cause the latter to never truly disappear or stagnate, and on the other hand, the Lord of Madness itself has the imprint of divine power, which allows it to gradually break through the seal.

"So, the existence of the Lord of Madness cannot be erased, and its breaking of the seal is inevitable.

"The Creation Goddess offset the effect of the first factor by cutting off her memory, but this only delayed the Lord of Madness's breaking of the seal. She still had to solve the second factor.

"She didn't even know of the existence of the second factor, but after the Lord of Madness's power caused the Goddess to split, she not only understood the process of how she vaguely 'infected' the Lord of Madness back then, but also knew that this was an opportunity.

"The divine power factor that the Lord of Madness 'infected' is the root cause of the loopholes in the seal, but in fact... it is also the biggest weakness that makes the Lord of Madness lose its invincibility. Hao Ren, guess what the real function of the Creation Engine is?"

Vivian suddenly stopped telling the story and threw out a question, which stunned Hao Ren: "What is it?"

"It is to delete gods—not the half-baked 'god-killing' of the god-killing races, but to truly, completely, and never resurrectedly destroy a god," Vivian took a breath, "The Creation Engine will essentially be a 'simulated god' after it is completed, so it will have the 'equal authority' to destroy a true god, but because the engine's equal authority is inherited from the Creation Goddess, its priority when executing the order to kill gods will be lower than the divine power of the Creation Goddess, which requires the rebellion of the god-killing race: whether the god-killers actually killed the Creation Goddess or not, this will lead to the 'divine position' of the Dream Plane being missing. In the absence of the Goddess, the Creation Engine's priority will rise..."

Hao Ren understood: "This is equivalent to a set of instructions executed in order. Because the Creation Goddess is still alive, and she is a self-looping and endless level-one instruction, the Creation Engine, this 'level-two instruction', will never be executed. In order to make the Creation Engine effective, and also to eliminate the hidden danger of the Lord of Madness using the memory of God to make a comeback, the Goddess directed and acted in that rebellion?"

"That's right," Vivian nodded, "After the Creation Goddess's divine power becomes the second level, the Creation Engine will execute its own instructions, and its function is only one: to delete all information entanglements that have the divine characteristics of the Creation Goddess and whose power level reaches or approaches the true god in the entire Dream Plane."

There are only two such information entanglements: one is the Goddess herself, and the other is the Lord of Madness.