Chapter 1 Unexpected Harvest

The exploration of the Crimson Moon yielded entirely unexpected results.

Hao Ren had initially been interested only in the Crimson Moon summoned by Vivian itself, his interest limited to wanting to know the specific principle behind it and, if it possessed a physical form, what its structure would be. However, he had not expected that he would not only explore the mysteries of the Crimson Moon but also be drawn into a seemingly information-rich illusion, and even more so, inadvertently activate a segment of Vivian's memory, learning the shocking secret that the Creation Goddess had once been divided into two.

Although there was no clear evidence to prove it, Hao Ren had ample reason to believe that Vivian's sudden recovery of this memory was related to this Crimson Moon test.

He couldn't determine how deeply the Creation Goddess had been influenced by the Lord of Madness back then, nor could he be certain how much of the "final measures" before the Goddess's fall were her own will and how much was to release the Lord of Madness. As a precaution, he could only have Lemendusa temporarily halt the construction of the Creation Engine: because he was very worried that the function of that Creation Engine might be to release the Lord of Madness...

He needed to re-examine the blueprint of the Creation Engine, and if possible, have Raven 12345 analyze it again to confirm whether that thing was safe.

The amount of data that needed to be sorted was mountainous, and the things that needed to be reported were earth-shattering. Hao Ren felt that he would be busy next.

Vivian rested in the mage tower for half a day and recovered her energy, and the ritual hall on the top floor of the tower also quickly returned to normal operation with the help of autonomous machinery. This large-scale experiment, which could be considered relatively smooth, came to an end. Hao Ren found Hilda and expressed his gratitude for the strong support of the Irim elves.

"This is what we should do," the Elf Queen also seemed relieved after seeing Vivian recover her energy. Facing Hao Ren's gratitude, she just shook her head with a smile, "And if we have to say it, the Irim have benefited greatly from this experiment. If anyone should be saying thank you, it should probably be us."

Hao Ren couldn't help but raise his eyebrows after hearing Hilda's words: "You guys actually comprehended some Heavenly Dao from the process of summoning the Crimson Moon?"

Hilda never understood Hao Ren's strange words, but she could still guess the general meaning. She smiled slightly: "The process of the Crimson Moon's descent is too complicated. Although we have collected a massive amount of data, none of the Royal Mages can understand the principle behind it. On the contrary, the analysis of moonlight and the observation of Vivian's use of energy have given us tremendous inspiration. With just a period of research, I believe we can make significant progress in energy extraction."

Letting the Irim elves participate in this Crimson Moon summoning ritual was not only because Hao Ren needed a group of magic-skilled assistants, but also because the elves themselves could benefit from this ritual. The Crimson Moon itself was a kind of extraordinary creation that was difficult for mortal races to understand, but some of the simpler techniques in Vivian's gathering of magical power could still be studied. The group of aliens on Earth whose civilization had been cut off might not be able to do it, but the Irim elves—they had been trapped in their home world for nearly ten thousand years, and although they had not been able to leave the solar system, they had been forced by this predicament to accumulate thousands of years of basic technology, and had even discovered many cross-level technologies that exceeded their civilization level. They had far more technical accumulation than civilizations of the same level, but they just needed an opportunity.

Now the resource-rich New Irim Star gave them this environment, and the Crimson Moon gave them inspiration in the field of new technology.

At the beginning, Hilda and her Royal Mages had been a bit worried, fearing that this thing that looked like black technology was a confidential project, but Hao Ren took the initiative to invite their technical experts to the scene, dispelling the elves' doubts: after all, this was a process that could benefit both parties, and the Crimson Moon was not the real God-tier technology issued by the Xiling God System, so allowing a lower civilization to study it did not violate the rules.

After this, the Irim elves invited Hao Ren and his party to stay on this planet for a few more days, so as to fulfill the duty of "subjects" to their "lord," but Hao Ren politely declined this kind offer: in the face of the big news of the Creation Goddess, he really didn't have the leisure.

After returning home, Hao Ren immediately became busy.

First, he compiled all the new intelligence he had collected in this "experiment" into a report and uploaded it to Raven 12345, and at the end of the report, he noted that he hoped the superiors would provide technical support (the kind that wouldn't explode) to re-examine the Creation Engine blueprint. Then, he turned out all the information he had found about the Creation Goddess in the past two years and compared it item by item, retrieving it to find contradictions and speculate on the extent of the Lord of Madness's influence on the Creation Goddess. If possible, it would be best to find the "dividing line" between the Creation Goddess and the Lord of Madness.

The so-called "dividing line" was a series of quantifiable and repeatable behavioral characteristics. These special characteristic points could help analyze which personality the Creation Goddess was acting with at that moment. Hao Ren hoped to find these characteristics from various clues and organize them into something like a comparison list.

But this seemed a bit difficult.

Hao Ren sat on the sofa, the Data Terminal floating not far in front of him and projecting a large amount of organized data. This data was all information related to the Creation Goddess that had been collected in the past two years. Hao Ren's gaze swept across these data line by line, his expression extremely serious.

Dou Dou was lying on his lap, silently playing with a super-small Rubik's cube (this Rubik's cube was made for her by Nangong Wuyue herself). The little girl didn't quite understand the Creation Goddess, but she felt that her father was doing important work, so she was very well-behaved and didn't cause trouble.

And next to Hao Ren were two helpers: Nangong Sanba and Lily. They were also helping to analyze the data and offer some useful suggestions.

This showed who was specialized in what: there were many people in the family who were powerful in combat, but there were not many who could help with this kind of paperwork. Nangong Sanba usually couldn't help much in combat, but this guy relied on his half-baked exorcism ability to catch ghosts for money all over the world, but instead cultivated a far superior information analysis and organization ability. To be fair, his own strength was not very good, and if he didn't have this intelligence talent, he would have been killed eight hundred times over with his jumping and showing-off personality...

As for Lily... as long as she took out those few yellowed and brittle graduation certificates, no one in the family would dare to call themselves a cultured person...

After studying the data for a while, Nangong Sanba said, "It should be impossible to separate the behavior of the Creation Goddess's two personalities from these things. At least from what we have on hand, her behavior does not show a clear divergence of purpose."

Lily also shook her head: "Although the Creation Goddess eventually split into two, these two individuals are not completely separated. They influence each other, so every action of the Creation Goddess actually has two personality factors interfering at the same time. The difference should only be in the proportion of the two interfering factors. Sometimes the Creation Goddess has the upper hand, sometimes the Lord of Madness has the upper hand, but it is unrealistic to completely separate the two."

Hao Ren stroked his chin: "Taking the Creation Engine as an example, that thing may indeed be used by the Creation Goddess to save the world, but maybe some of the parts in it are the work of the Lord of Madness. Conversely, there may be a trace of the Creation Goddess's kindness in the Lord of Madness's actions to destroy the world..."

Lily and Nangong Sanba nodded together: "That's about the meaning."

"Then this trouble is big," Hao Ren spread his hands, "Our plan all along has been to save the Creation Goddess and kill the Lord of Madness, but now the two are intertwined and difficult to separate, which makes it very difficult. Not to mention, if one day I really find the Creation Goddess's grave, and I dig halfway and find that there is half a bone of the Lord of Madness buried inside... do you think I should continue digging?"

Nangong Sanba looked at Hao Ren seriously for a while, and nodded slowly: "Landlord, your mouth is indeed very unique..."

"Damn you, I didn't ask you to sigh about this."

At this time, Vivian happened to be pinching a few slices of meat to feed the Little Chick. She stopped when she heard Hao Ren and Nangong Sanba's conversation: "Actually, what I'm most worried about now is this... the memory I inherited from my bloodline ends with the Godslayers attacking the temple, and I don't know what happened after that. The Creation Goddess split into two, one of whom was assassinated and fell, but what about the other individual who inherited the will of the Lord of Madness? No one knows the follow-up of this 'Goddess Number Two'. According to logical judgment, she should have been somewhere on the Godslayer battlefield at that time, and would most likely have been dragged into the Dark Domain along with the Great God Kingdom Explosion... so if we really find the Creation Goddess one day, will we be saving the Goddess, or the Lord of Madness?"

This sentence made the atmosphere even more heavy. Hao Ren had a feeling that countless previous efforts were about to die because of choosing the wrong flag at the beginning, and not far away, the Little Chick in the rat hole poked its head out and waited for a long time. When it found that its meat slices had stopped halfway and no longer moved, it was immediately furious. It chirped and rushed over, jumping and protesting on Vivian's hand.

Looking at the Little Chick pointing at the meat slices in Vivian's hand with one finger and pointing at its own mouth with the other, saying "Ha-sss ha" to indicate that it was hungry, Hao Ren understood another thing:

Why did Vivian, as the divine avatar of the Creation Goddess, have a soul corruption similar to a "congenital disease"? And why did she frequently fall into sleep, madness, and release evil thoughts due to this soul corruption?

Now there was even an explanation for this—even Vivian's own birth was influenced by the Lord of Madness.

Vivian herself was ironclad proof that the Creation Goddess was eroded by the Lord of Madness.

Fortunately, even if he didn't know the cause and effect before, this crisis was finally resolved.

Just as Hao Ren was thinking wildly in his head, a mental message suddenly sent by Raven 12345 brought him back to his senses.

"Hao Ren, I have received your report. First of all, let me express my goddess's praise for you—you are really a goddamn talent..."

Hao Ren didn't know whether to laugh or cry: "Please don't make fun of me, old lady, I'm in a daze and my life is confused right now. We just discussed a particularly serious question here: what if I really find the Creation Goddess's grave, and buried inside is a Goddess controlled by the Lord of Madness?"

Raven 12345 "tsk"ed, seemingly a little speechless at the big news Hao Ren had created, but after a moment of silence, she still gave a "divine decree."

"Remember the 'Bible' I gave you? The Bible of the Dark Valkyrie. It has an unbreakable connection with the Creation Goddess, and the power it houses is far more powerful than the Lord of Madness's erosion of the Creation Goddess. If you really encounter the worst situation you described, then release the power of that Bible."