Chapter 1 Illusions Vanish

All the illusions vanished like smoke, and Hao Ren looked around the spaceship cabin, which had returned to normal. Lilia and Vivian reappeared beside him, their expressions as normal as ever. It seemed he was the only one affected by the illusions.

Or rather, the Goddess of Destruction—the Lord of Madness—had merely found him and said a bunch of nonsensical things.

He couldn't help shaking his head, muttering under his breath, "Putting on airs."

"She already knows we're here," Lilia said calmly, looking towards a certain spot in the cabin—only a silvery-white metal wall. But her gaze seemed to penetrate the wall, seeing the distant scene in space. "Everyone, get ready…"

Almost as soon as Lilia finished speaking, a powerful sense of oppression suddenly overwhelmed Hao Ren and Vivian.

The feeling was like facing a giant beast capable of devouring all things, where all their strength was meaningless. Even the strongest would be regarded as food and torn to pieces without resistance.

Lilia unhesitatingly activated her divine protection and took out the sacred notebook. As the pages turned, divine inscriptions recording millions of orders and rules floated in the air, enveloping the entire spaceship.

The brief mental influence was dispelled by Lilia, and Hao Ren immediately took out two longswords from his dimensional pocket, while turning to Vivian and shouting, "Just concentrate later, don't worry about us!"

Several flashes of teleportation flickered across the three of them. The next second, they were on the upper deck of the Petrified Turtle Rock, facing the vast and chaotic dark universe.

As the chaotic spacetime collapsed, the deep zone of the Dark Abyss and other layers became a continuous structure again. Those enormous chaotic structures in distant space appeared like mountains floating in the darkness. At the center of all the chaotic structures was a vast area, where the remnants and ruins of ancient times floated—prison facilities destroyed long ago.

At the center of all the ruins, a dark celestial body quietly hung in the air.

It was shrouded in thick fog, its surface undulating, constantly showing indescribable vortices and faces. Dark red lightning and streamers wandered in the depths of the fog, like blood that might flow out at any moment. Between this dark celestial body and the Petrified Turtle Rock, a pale figure stood quietly in space.

The figure quietly looked at the uninvited guests, a smile suddenly appearing on its face: "Welcome to the end of the world. You are the first visitors here—and soon, the last."

Sound could not travel in a vacuum, but for the people standing here, communication didn't require real sound—all voices resonated directly in everyone's mind.

The moment Hao Ren saw the pale figure, he knew that the fusion was complete.

She still looked the same as he had seen her in the Dark Domain, but that same body contained a completely alienated essence. If the Goddess of Destruction had a little bit of reason and sensibility back then, now this shell was filled with pure madness and the desire for destruction. Although she was smiling, although she was speaking, every seemingly "normal" word and action gave Hao Ren a huge sense of disharmony.

It was an unspeakable thing wearing a human skin. The body visible to the naked eye was just a "mimic" she showed in real space. Her true form was hidden in the infinite darkness of the vast universe—a disgusting, wriggling mass. Hao Ren could clearly see those things with his special vision. They filled the entire space here, extending from the Goddess of Destruction's body, connecting to the dark celestial body behind her, and spreading infinitely in all directions.

"After merging with an ultimate madman, you've become more poetic than before," Lilia said, without anger or retreat. She mocked her evil counterpart, "How is it? Does it feel better to be a monster?"

Facing the ridicule from her other half, the Goddess of Destruction simply raised a finger expressionlessly and pointed towards the Petrified Turtle Rock.

The moment she took action, Nolan reacted, and the remaining thrusters were set to maximum output. The spaceship instantly left its original position, and Hao Ren and the others teleported thousands of meters away.

A pale, giant sphere silently appeared where they had been. The sphere was fleeting, but after it disappeared, it left behind a huge dark void. Light was abnormally distorted around the void, collapsing towards a certain point in the center.

Although the void was fleeting, Hao Ren immediately realized what had happened: A part of the Dream Plane universe had been permanently deleted.

"You think you're the only one who knows such simple tricks?!" Lilia laughed. The large book floating in front of her opened again. Between the shining divine inscriptions, the space around the Goddess of Destruction immediately began to distort, and large swaths of spacetime were torn from the overall structure of the universe. "Knowledge is power!"

The moment Lilia attacked, Hao Ren also raised the longsword in his hand, chanting the name of Raven 12345 while rushing towards the pale figure in space.

In the midst of the huge energy impact, the spatial structure began to crumble. With the point of engagement as the center, all the light and shadow appeared hazy and chaotic, as if a layer of blurred lens covered the entire area.

The Petrified Turtle Rock, having lost most of its propulsion units and suffered serious damage to its energy system, could no longer participate in the battle. Taking advantage of the sudden chaos, it quickly left the most severely damaged area to avoid interfering with Hao Ren and the others. It rushed towards a piece of ancient wreckage floating in the darkness at the edge of the battlefield, a part of the former prison guard system. The residual energy in those wreckage could mask the spaceship's own information fluctuations.

Vivian also did not participate in the direct attack. While Hao Ren and Lilia were attracting almost all of the Goddess of Destruction's attention, she opened her arms and looked up at the chaotic, dark space.

"Get ready to bathe in moonlight…" she whispered to herself, "The real… moonlight…"

…

A powerful impact came from the side, and the shield on Hao Ren flickered. His figure appeared thousands of meters away in space, and the data terminal screamed on his shoulder, "Buddy! Focus!"

"I'm already focused enough!" Hao Ren crossed his swords, splitting apart the chaotic energy clusters flying around in space. "What can I do if my evasion can't keep up with the other side's accuracy!"

"Why struggle?" The voice of the Goddess of Destruction echoed in everyone's minds. She stood in the void, arms outstretched, as if preaching, and endless pale rays and light spheres appeared around her, gradually devouring every inch of space on the battlefield. "The universe will eventually be annihilated, just as this narrow space will be completely devoured by me. You are just wasting your energy in a limited countdown!"

Lilia's figure re-condensed thousands of meters away, her body shrouded in a layer of light golden light. The pages of the Holy Book had separated, turning into countless pages floating around her: "The universe will eventually be annihilated? Okay, I never said I didn't admit that!"

The Goddess of Destruction glanced at Lilia, as if a little surprised that the other party would suddenly say this: "Oh?"

"The universe will indeed eventually be annihilated… but what's that got to do with you!" Lilia raised her right hand high, and then waved it down forcefully. Countless divine inscriptions emerged from the pages around her, blocking the pale rays that were flying around and devouring space one by one. "Knowledge is power!"

A golden glow rapidly expanded with Lilia as the center. The disordered universe space was quickly straightened out under the illumination of the glow, and the ancient wreckage distorted by spacetime dislocation briefly recovered its original appearance.

"People can't give up living just because they will die one day, the universe won't stop being born because it will eventually perish. Death is a link in the cycle of all things, doesn't that mean life isn't?!

"This universe will eventually perish, and now I can even calculate the time of that moment to the millisecond, but so what? It has its own death date, but you want to take action to bring it forward—what do you think you are?

"What is the Lord of Madness!"

A grand brilliance emerged from the void, and under the shroud of the brilliance, all chaotic and misplaced information was instantly restored. This kind of "repair" was no less than a flood of beasts for the Goddess of Destruction who controlled the power of madness. She finally couldn't stay calmly in place, but rather teleported away from the range of "the Light of Order" in a slightly embarrassed manner.

She roared: "You actually…"

"Did I say a word wrong?" The pages around Lilia rotated rapidly, and in the illumination of the brilliance, her figure seemed to be magnified a bit. "You keep saying that the struggle for survival of all beings in the world violates some natural law, but you advancing the destruction of everything doesn't violate it? You really think you represent the fate of all things returning to death just because you control a bit of destructive power—you yourself will eventually perish one day, why don't you die first!"

Lilia rarely had such outbursts, but at this moment, facing the Lord of Madness and her evil counterpart, she thought of the disasters that this universe had suffered since ancient times, and the tragic destruction of countless lives she had created. Thus, a monstrous anger ignited. Seeing her performance at this moment, Hao Ren realized that the goddess of creation's calmness and indifference before were all the result of self-suppression. The one who truly released her anger…

"Her trash-talking is super amazing."

The data terminal floated next to Hao Ren's head, sincerely sighing.