Chapter 1 When He Left the Forest

Even when he had left that forest, Hao Ren had already begun to suspect the "illusion" he had experienced.

Until now, all the illusions he had experienced had a carrier—either the golden disc, or the Creation Goddess's palace, or even the goddess's divine blood. So where did that distorted, hazy starry sky come from?

Hao Ren easily connected it to the scepter, because that was the last thing he had come into contact with before falling into the illusion.

And now, when Raven 12345 used her divine power to dispel the disguise of the scepter's core, revealing its essence as a fragment of the universe, this guess was immediately confirmed. He was almost certain that the starry sky he had seen was something within the fragment: a piece of the universe that had been torn off.

Raven 12345 held the fragment in her hand, cautiously separating some of her own power to try and delve into it. She was very careful, because she could feel that this thing was quite unstable: as a torn piece of the universe, it was rapidly "self-evaporating," and its incomplete information structure was constantly collapsing in this real world because it couldn't reconcile itself. After several attempts, she withdrew her power: "There are indeed some things left in the fragment, but my power can't penetrate it. This damn thing is part of the Dream Plane. Just like I can't interfere with the Dream Plane, I can't interfere with this thing. It's too resistant to external divine power."

Hao Ren wasn't surprised by this. He just nodded. "But I think my guess is still correct."

"Yeah, it's more effective to trust your intuition at times like this," Raven 12345 returned the fragment to Hao Ren. "You should keep this thing with you. You have some strange abilities that allow you to resonate with the products of the Dream Plane. If anyone has a chance to unlock the secrets of this thing, it's only you."

Hao Ren took the fragment, but his gaze fell on the Godslayer Sword not far away. "If there are still materialized universe structures left in the fragment, then this sword... could there be something inside it too?"

The Godslayer Sword was circling around boredly, but shuddered when it heard this. "Are you going to dissect me? I don't like stabbing people, but I don't like being stabbed either, I'm telling you..."

"Shut up, who said anything about cutting you open?" Hao Ren glanced at the Godslayer Sword. "Keep circling and be quiet."

"Oh."

"I've already left the sample information of the universe fragment," Raven 12345 said. "After I go back, I'll give the information to the data center of my superiors and let those guys over there help analyze it. Maybe they'll have a way to send you back in. Before that, you should keep the Godslayer Sword and this fragment with you. They've both been purified and won't cause any more harm in the future."

Hao Ren gave an "oh" and carefully put the two things away again.

Then he and Vivian left this place together.

In the following days, everything seemed calm.

Summer had come to an end, and the hot weather that had lasted for nearly two months was finally gradually cooling down. Yesterday there was another good autumn rain, and the air after the rain seemed particularly fresh. Hao Ren sat in his favorite window seat in the living room, leaning out to look at the window.

From here he could see the open space behind the house, which had now completely become the territory of the little demon Elizabeth. The little demon girl had piled up the discarded appliances she had collected from the surrounding villages, and had pulled her dad to build a colored steel shed in the open space to protect her treasures. Now she was tinkering with her collection, checking whether yesterday's rain had poured into the shed, while "Roll" followed her around, just like when she was still a cat: jumping around in various high and low places, looking incredibly dangerous, but having a great time.

And Izhaks stood not far away with his arms folded, looking helplessly at his precious daughter. The "Demon Realm Princess Ascension Special Training Plan" he had designed for the little girl had completely failed. It seemed that there was no hope of training the little girl into a qualified demon queen in three hundred years. The old demon had recently been reflecting on his educational problems, but with his daughter-controlling tendencies, he estimated that even if he reflected for another two centuries, he would only be able to accompany his daughter to collect waste products in the streets.

Hao Ren withdrew his gaze from the window and refocused on the scroll in his hand.

This was the second scroll. The first one had been analyzed and recorded. Starting today, he would deal with the second one.

Raven 12345 had thrown this hot potato to him, but she wasn't completely shirking responsibility. The unreliable goddess sister had given Hao Ren some auxiliary tools and instructed him on how to read these things more safely, mainly three key points: don't try to understand too much at once; don't think about anything related to that Lord of Madness while reading the scroll; and silently recite Raven 12345's name before reading the scroll.

Hao Ren translated it, which was: don't read it all at once, don't use your brain while reading, and imagine your female boss before reading.

The third one feels a little weird...

Hao Ren shook his head, took out a crystal from his pocket and placed it on the table. After the soft light of the crystal spread out, he began to read the remaining part of the scroll:

"...The war reshaped the order of the universe. The foreign god gained supreme authority. He sealed the Lord of Madness in the darkest depths of the universe and set up layers of prisons to suppress him. The tyrant's howls in the cage shook the stars, but he couldn't escape: because the stars were silent, and there was no way to escape. After the war, the gods were grieved by the chaos in the universe, so they decided to completely change the rules of the stars..."

"He visited the first people between the stars. The first people were a race born from the earliest order of the universe. They had been ruled and enslaved by the Lord of Madness, but now they had gained freedom. These ancient creatures emerged from their shelters and called the foreign god the 'Opener'. They decided to follow the new god to build an orderly world... After hundreds of centuries, the universe entered an era of orderly idyll..."

Hao Ren put down the scroll and casually tapped the data terminal. The terminal immediately projected the interface of a notepad, which displayed lines of notes. Hao Ren started a new line at the end of the notes and wrote a line: First People Between the Stars = Starry Sky People?

He glanced at the crystal on the table. The crystal was still emitting a constant light, but the boundary of the light was already showing visible fluctuations. Perhaps he could read a little more, he thought.

"...Order sprouted between the stars. The First People and the new god formed a solid alliance. They began to clean up the scars left by the Lord of Madness, and at the same time, the Lord of Madness was constantly impacting his own cage. This tyrant was unwilling to be trapped, and its power spread out from the darkness, so the stars were extinguished, matter was torn apart, and the core of the universe was gradually covered with cracks..."

"...The new god noticed this change in time, so he strengthened the prison. The new prison was an even more empty and silent space of the universe, with ninety-nine layers of barriers, and a powerful wall of divine power was set up every thirty-three layers. In the deepest layer of the wall of divine power, the Lord of Madness was imprisoned. The First People selected the most steadfast members of their race, who volunteered to become the eternal jailers of this prison. The jailers were one with the stars, watching this immortal prison in the darkness... After the new god had done all this, he saw that the world was operating normally, so he rested in his palace and handed over authority to his descendants..."

The light around him suddenly dimmed. Hao Ren suddenly looked up and saw that the crystal on the table was flickering, and the light released by the crystal had shrunk to within half a meter of the table.

This crystal was given to him by Raven 12345. Its function was to constantly purify the distorted power released by the scroll during the reading process, and to provide a warning. When the crystal started to flicker, it meant that the distorted power released by the scroll had reached a dangerous threshold: at this threshold, the crystal could still purify it, but Hao Ren had already learned too much forbidden knowledge at once. At this point, he had to stop.

So he closed the scroll, stretched, and casually threw the thing back into the storage box and put it in his personal space.

Although he was quite curious about the second half of the scroll, he knew very well what he was doing. As a demigod, the bewitching and alluring power released by the scroll could not affect him. He could easily resist the desire to continue reading.

After resting for a while, he awakened the data terminal again. The terminal had recorded the latest scroll analysis data, and several lines of system-automatically-added annotations had been added to the notepad. He added a sentence to the end of the record:

The Creation Goddess allied with the Starry Sky People. All the history up to this point has never appeared in the records of the Guardian Giants.

Finally, he thought for a while and added another sentence:

Are the Guardian Giants and the First Born really the first creatures created by the Creation Goddess?