Chapter 676: Pain
Year 2135.
The immense tower pierced the clouds, becoming the largest terrestrial megastructure, exceeding the scale of the Tree of Fertility and the space elevator built by the Federation long ago.
This massive structure's very foundation spans 120,000 square kilometers. Over a billion descendants and Divine Descendants, with the assistance of the Knights, have tirelessly labored over the years to construct this tower, solely to enable it to reach the Moon. In this way, Divine Power Tianyang's army can travel to the Moon, using it as a springboard, before being transmitted by divine light to another reality to explore that destroyed planet.
And Divine Power Tianyang himself had been heading to that world countless times over the years, eagerly seeking the cause of its destruction.
His power originated from the black giant, and for the home planet of this giant to have been massacred, the opponent must be formidable beyond belief.
After becoming a god, he took Zhao Ling with him to confront the star imprisoning Earth in the cosmos. Initially believing the other force to be immense, they found it crumbled at the first touch. Once it transformed into the Heavenly Falling Objects, Divine Power Tianyang was already one of its own kind, rendering its ability to hide ineffective.
Divine Power Tianyang caught it, tortured it to death, and avenged himself.
Yet, after that, he sank once again into emptiness.
The stars above were all enemies, meaning the battles were unending. However, the new world promised by Divine Power Tianyang was never about endless conflict.
So, he redefined the new world.
The Earth will remain eternally peaceful, but the Divine Descendants would follow him to battle the stars until the very last moment of life.
Divine Power Tianyang sat at this moment upon the golden throne within the tower, located in a hall 30,000 meters above the ground. At the top of the chair's back was Rada Gan, transformed into a golden statue.
Rada Gan's legs were severed, his upper body fused with the chair, head hanging low, arms spread apart to form a kind of balance.
He was the first martyr and deserved this position.
And in this hall at 30,000 meters high, despite the howling winds outside, inside it was exceptionally quiet. The tower was wrapped in a layer of golden beams, resembling an extraordinarily hard staff, cleaving the storm; the unfinished part aligned with the Moon.
But in fact, the Moon would only pass over the tower's top during certain periods. Divine Power Tianyang planned to seize the time ability from the White King once found, to fix the Moon in place.
This task, he had already assigned to Cha Na.
At an altitude of 30,000 meters, the audio system previously sensed by Divine Power Tianyang was becoming clearer. He now confirmed that there were still old humans on Earth.
Those audio signals swirled at this height, forming an ion signal containing complex information: people's laughter and pain, myriad languages, the roaring of war machines, and elegant music. It was another world but hidden away.
Those worlds appeared intermittently, resembling dreams, created and then dismantled. Everything was like a fleeting illusion, never seen with the naked eye, but the abrupt, gradually vanishing rhythm imparted this feeling to him.
Cha Na began the search worldwide, but progress was exceptionally slow. After all, how does one find a hidden world?
Yaha and Kui Kui Ge remained in Heisai State. Under Divine Power Tianyang's orders, Wang Ye was taken from the hotel to the desert, where he was bound to a cross to endure the daily scorching sun, suffering disembowelment every ten days, his innards gnawed by wild dogs, then healed by Yaha, the cycle repeating endlessly...
Yet, even so, Wang Ye remained unshaken, his hatred for Divine Power Tianyang growing deeper, the pain branding itself into his mind. He became silent, refusing to speak. Even the agony couldn't make him utter a sound, as if time had paused. He endlessly experienced torture and loneliness, the sound of the wild dogs gnawing at his innards turning into a kind of beautiful music.
Meanwhile, Lin Yan had restarted the White King's dream approximately 369 times. As energy resources worldwide dried up, usable power stations dwindled, and soon there wouldn't be enough electricity to restart it.
The White King, trapped in prolonged slumber, with its wounds gradually festering, its spirit not as before, was wrapped in rainproof tarp and laid on open ground. For transfers, Fujiwara Makoto assisted, moving it into a container truck.
This was no viable solution. Hundreds of restarts had already eroded most of the foundation's confidence. As time passed, the Descendant Army became increasingly visible, complicating hiding efforts. In this oppressive atmosphere, suicides began appearing among the research team.
When the two foundation teams initially merged, their numbers once swelled to over 4,000, but now only about 1,200 remained, with over 400 being refugees that had followed them.
In this apocalypse, living was no different from dying. The restart project, initially full of hope, had become the only possible action, but soon even that would cease to be possible.
Lin Yan never wavered; it had become her conviction. Mike and Lin Yan were sometimes similar, but he was more pragmatic, urging Lin Yan to construct a stable enough world to temporarily move the team into. Otherwise, morale would plummet to the point of total collapse.
Confronted with such dire circumstances, Lin Yan could only compromise. At this moment, she could be said to have become the White King's proxy. Once the White King fell into a deathlike slumber, it ceased to speak.
She utilized the White King's long sleep to construct a fictional world the size of a city. Even then, it consumed too many resources, allowing everyone to stay for only half a year, which translated to just a few hours in reality.
Gradually, new issues arose within the team. Many people's spirits waned further due to the frequent transitions between the fictional world and the previous normal life, exerting immense pressure. Humanity's self-deception mechanisms took effect, leading many to believe the reality of Divine Power Tianyang's world destruction was fictitious, all a memetic infection by the foundation.
As a result, Lin Yan had no choice but to cease such measures. After much easing, she finally had the team come to terms with this painful reality.
Despite hundreds of restarts, they hadn't achieved their desired results. Now, Lin Yan realized they had to make some changes for the plan to proceed smoothly.