In the central region of the Andromeda Galaxy.
Due to the grand battle, the vast three-dimensional space-time here had become extremely warped and boiling.
The Dirac Sea, hidden behind space-time, was vibrating and roaring. Yet, even though this expanse of space—resembling a cosmic apocalypse—was so chaotic and disordered, there was no sign of the Gods of Hunger, nor the silhouette of the Sage.
No trace of either side could be seen.
No, that's not right.
The two combatants had moved beyond what could be called close-quarters combat. Their battlefield had expanded to encompass the entire, massive starry sky.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Hundreds, even thousands of White Dwarfs, Red Giants, and Neutron Stars collapsed and exploded like fragile soap bubbles, bursting into countless streams of searing matter that roared across the infinite void.
CRASH! CRACK!
Amidst this vast, scorching, white-hot vacuum, infinite streaks of phantom light flickered and flashed, while countless faster-than-light space-time turbulences surged and swirled.
Every second, massive clusters of terrifyingly intense light—capable of piercing, tearing apart, and vaporizing giant stars—merged with large swathes of warped space-time currents.
After series of colossal explosions covering hundreds of billions of miles, resembling the blooming of giant flowers, they birthed wave after wave of millions of blurred space-time spheres, each shrouded in torrential energy.
The moment these energy-rich space-time clusters were born, they scattered in all directions at millions of times the speed of light, racing toward the far corners of the galaxy.
SWOOSH! SWOOSH! SWOOSH!
Like shimmering stars, the massive space-time clusters streaked toward the horizons.
A short time later.
SWOOSH!
In the misty void, an orange-red star two million kilometers in diameter was struck by a beam of flickering, hazy phantom light.
BOOM!!!
Instantly, a colossal point of light appeared on the star's surface, large enough to fit several gas giants. This blinding light served as a gateway to a fire-hell, drawing the searing currents from the star's core through the photosphere, convection zone, and chromosphere, before violently erupting outwards.
Following closely, a dozen smaller points of light exploded across the star's surface, each spewing jets of high-temperature plasma larger than planetary diameters, stabbing into the infinite space.
The massive loss of matter caused internal pressure to plummet.
Consequently, the thermonuclear fusion reactions deep within the star rapidly weakened, and the entire celestial body grew dim. As the fires of fusion died, the internal radiation pressure was no longer sufficient to support the massive, searing outer shell.
Then, the star began a violent collapse.
Finally, the cooling outer shell crashed into the core, triggering a massive supernova explosion. The star was destroyed.
Light-years away.
Another dark-red star was similarly grazed by a streak of hazy, intense light, collapsing and exploding in a short span of time.
Pulling back the perspective, within the swathes of void surrounding these two dying stars, stars of various colors and sizes were being struck one after another by space-time spheres.
Along with the many intelligent races living in systems around these stars, they were drawn into an irreversible descent toward extinction.
This terrifying, faster-than-light bombardment lasted for several full days.
Under wave after wave of violent energy baptisms, the vast interstellar space spanning tens of thousands of light-years around the center of the Andromeda Galaxy was reduced to a wasteland.
Hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, or even tens of billions of star systems had vanished into nothingness. The vast space was momentarily riddled with scars.
And within the central region of the Andromeda Galaxy, where the battle was most intense, the four fundamental forces of the universe that support the operation of all things had been pounded into a state of total chaos and imbalance.
Even the Higgs field in the wide vacuum had fallen into a state of collapse.
In this chaotic region of space-time, every second, thousands of massive, chaotic torrents, each with a diameter exceeding the span of ten Solar Systems placed side-by-side.
But in the next instant, these terrifying torrents, capable of easily swallowing and vaporizing star clusters of thousands of suns, simply vanished, leaving no trace.
Beyond this, millions of crimson spheres of light, each larger than a Red Giant, hummed into existence across all directions.
They darted through the void at irregular, faster-than-light speeds, detonating in a chaotic bombardment. This triggered wave after wave of tides, quadrillions of miles wide, that thundered through the vast vacuum.
They seemed intent on shattering every microscopic strong and weak nuclear interaction binding matter, grinding everything into meaningless protons and neutrons.
Within this terrifying battlefield, the infinite, blinding glare and the shifting space-time currents gradually merged, weaving into a boundless Ocean of Light.
Floating within this massive hell of warped space-time, radiation, and plasma were hundreds of millions of massive, shattered, and melted fragments.
These gargantuan fragments, resembling void continents, were the hull of the Sanchegues super-structure. After enduring relentless attacks, these hull sections had completely lost their self-repair capabilities, becoming nothing more than meaningless debris.
Indeed, throughout several days of combat, the High-tier Sage of the Andromeda Galaxy had ultimately failed to protect the super-structure. The battle had utterly annihilated the megastructure. As for the countless sentient beings of various races living upon it, they had all perished alongside it.
While the battle raged toward its climax, several hundred light-years away on the surface of a brilliant white neutron star, four or five beings were gathered.
Despite their human-like appearance, they completely ignored the crushing gravity, hundreds of billions of times stronger than a rocky planet's, the tens of millions of degrees of heat, and the magnetic fields sextillions of times more powerful than Earth's.
They stood or sat, chatting leisurely while using various super-luminal abilities to observe the battlefield from afar.
These seemingly ordinary humanoid beings, who could exist comfortably on the surface of a neutron star, were the God of Hunger race.
Just then, merely a hundred meters from these humanoid Gods of Hunger, a small, shimmering wormhole emerged from the vacuum.
Buzzing
The wormhole rapidly expanded from its tiny point of origin.
Once the wormhole reached a diameter of one hundred meters and stabilized, a slightly chubby young man of average height stepped lazily out.
He wore a black baseball cap and a grey hooded sweatshirt.
The moment this hoodie-clad youth appeared, the Gods of Hunger sitting on the brilliant white surface of the neutron star immediately stood up. Alongside the others, they bowed slightly and spoke in unison with deep respect:
"Ancestor Tu."
Indeed, this humanoid being who emerged from the wormhole, looking exactly like an ordinary youth from the old Earth, was the creator of the Galactic Continent Gravitational Dragon clan, the Ultimate God of Hunger, Tu.
"Hmm."
Tu nodded vaguely, his eyes drooping. He strolled forward while pulling out a palm-sized square box, asking casually, "They've been at it for so long. They should be finishing up soon, right?"
One of the Gods of Hunger immediately replied:
"Reporting to Ancestor Tu: that High-tier Sage has quite a few tricks. He holds several leftover weapons from the Houiste people, making him difficult to take down. Therefore, the battle continues."
"Tsk, I see."
Tu pursed his lips, his expression neutral. He showed no intention of reprimanding them, but simply lowered his head and flipped open the lid of the square box.
The box, made of an unknown material, was packed with dozens of thin, white cylindrical objects. He gave the box a casual shake, causing one to slide out. He caught it between two fingers and placed it in the corner of his mouth.
SNAP!
With a snap of his fingers, the end of the thin cylinder caught in Tu's mouth ignited with a faint red glow and began to burn slowly.
"Hiss... Phew..."
He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled a cloud of hazy smoke.
This was unmistakably a cigarette from the old Earth.
Yet no one knew how a cigarette could exist on the surface of a neutron star, let alone burn and be smoked normally. It was as strange as the fact that Tu's seemingly ordinary grey hoodie wasn't instantly vaporized by the neutron star's extreme heat.
"Hiss... Phew..."
After taking a few leisurely puffs, Tu shrugged indifferently.
"It's fine. Sooner or later makes no difference. After all, those Houiste people are all dead. No one in this sector can stop us anymore."
Having said that, he strolled past the silent Gods of Hunger, moving toward a point further away.
Tu looked toward the center of the galaxy, narrowing his eyes as light flickered within them. He "watched" the distant battlefield.
The Gods of Hunger behind him stared curiously at the back of his hoodie. It featured a simplified white graphic of a swan-like bird flying toward the right with its wings spread. Below the graphic were two lines of rounded English text.
The first line read: E K K E
The second line: To Be No.1
One of the Gods of Hunger asked cautiously, "Ancestor Tu, I heard that you have already ascended to the rank of Gluttony King?"
"Gluttony King, huh..."
Tu replied leisurely without turning around, "Indeed. I've reached it."
At this definitive confirmation, the Gods of Hunger couldn't hide their excitement.
"My god, Ancestor Tu really became a Gluttony King!"
"I told you, but you didn't believe me."
"After waiting so long, we finally have a Gluttony King!"
"We're going to be invincible in the universe!"
"Haha! That's an existence on the same level as the Sage Kings of those Houiste mongrels!"
"..."
"Hmm... Not bad. The super-structure is already smashed."
After observing for a few more seconds, Tu turned back to the Gods of Hunger, took a puff of his cigarette, and asked, "Since the megastructure is destroyed, the Activation Seed has been cast into the black hole, right?"
A God of Hunger replied respectfully, "Yes, Ancestor Tu. Although the battle isn't over, under the joint attack of Elders Imolda and Salipana, the Star Core super-structure has collapsed. The Activation Seed has been launched into the black hole. We are just waiting for the incubation to complete."
"We're about to have another brother. I just wonder..."
Tu sighed softly as he gazed into the distance. "I wonder which old friend it will be."
Finishing his cigarette, he snapped his fingers.
"Let's go. Time to take a look."
SNAP!
In an instant, Tu and the Gods of Hunger vanished. Simultaneously, the neutron star beneath them, only thirty kilometers in diameter but more massive than the Sun, instantly blinked out of existence.
...
"Still not finished after all this time..."
Before his words could fade, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Andromeda Galaxy, possessing a mass one hundred million times that of the Sun, suddenly began to vibrate deep within the Ocean of Light.
Amidst these eerie vibrations, the cosmic microwave background radiation throughout the vast void underwent a strange resonance for reasons unknown.
BUZZING!
It was as if this resonance had triggered something.
In an instant, the Andromeda black hole pulsed with waves of faint, hazy ripples that rapidly expanded in all directions. These ripples appeared weak, yet upon contact, they easily permeated the Barrier between the material world and the Realm of Phantasm, covering a massive expanse of space-time in a short span.
Tu sensed this ripple immediately.
He instantly looked up, analyzing the cosmic microwave background radiation to decipher the inexplicable changes within it.
"Source-Information injection?!"
His lazy eyes widened, and he followed with a chuckle. "I didn't expect it. This isn't a newborn being birthed, but an old friend recovering. Haha."
Tu gazed down at the Ocean of Light, which was flashing with terrifying high-energy phenomena, and shook his head with a sigh.
"Since you haven't settled this after so long..."
He took a slow puff of his cigarette, then flicked the glowing butt away. His voice turned ice-cold.
"Then I shall bring this to an end."
He raised his hand, his fingers slowly closing into a fist.
"Gluttony... World Devour."
BUZZ!
In a heartbeat, the entire, boundless expanse of space shuddered.
It wasn't just this immediate sector. Every God of Hunger present discovered to their horror that even the vast reaches of space far beyond the galaxy's center were trembling in unison.
The scale of this vibration far exceeded their individual Holographic Domains, reaching into the most distant sectors.
Their senses were correct.
If the perspective were pulled back ten thousand light-years, fifty thousand, even a hundred thousand light-years...
Looking down upon the entire Andromeda Galaxy, that massive disk-shaped structure composed of nearly a trillion stars, one would witness the phenomenon.
Deep within the dim, vast dark matter halo that drifted like a shroud above the Andromeda Galaxy, a faint, terrifying visage emerged.
A face, nearly 150,000 light-years tall, loomed over more than half of the galactic disk. It had no eyes, no nose, no ears; only a massive, slightly agape mouth spanning hundreds of thousands of light-years, its interior lined with countless layers of serrated teeth.
The moment this giant face appeared, it unhinged its maw and bit down savagely on the Andromeda Galaxy below.
SWOOSH!
Under the aggressive devour of this sky-piercing mouth, the vast space across hundreds of thousands of light-years groaned and buckled. It triggered millions of crashing space-time tsunamis that surged and collided in a chaotic frenzy.
BOOM! BOOM!
Space-time fell into disorder; violent currents swept through the void.
Two dwarf galaxies closest to Andromeda, each thousands of light-years in diameter and home to hundreds of millions of stars, were instantly swallowed by the world-blanketing space-time waves. They were brutally ground into massive, radiant torrents of white-hot plasma that scattered into the distance.
As the primary target, the Andromeda Galaxy fared even worse. Surrounded by faster-than-light energy currents and layered space-time tides, its galactic core, halo, one major spiral arm, and three minor spiral arms, totaling hundreds of billions of star systems, were bitten off and devoured by that monstrous maw.
Under this cataclysmic, cosmic-scale disaster, the Andromeda Galaxy, now missing half its territory, lost its structural integrity. It fragmented into a dozen irregular dwarf galaxies that crashed away toward the distant reaches of space in every direction.
CRACK! CRACK!
Energy boiled and swirled; space-time reached a point of extreme disorder. After a long while, the chaos finally subsided.
By now, the central region of the former Andromeda Galaxy had vanished, leaving only an endless, desolate vacuum.
No, one thing remained in that dark void.
The central black hole of the Andromeda Galaxy.
Just outside the event horizon, within the massive accretion disk, Gluttony King Tu and his seven or eight Gods of Hunger stood in silence.
A few tens of thousands of kilometers ahead of them, a grey mass the size of a city, its surface dotted with countless colorful points of light, floated lifelessly.
That grey, fleshy mass was the High-tier Sage who had dominated the Andromeda Galaxy for countless eons, ruling over innumerable interstellar civilizations and intelligent races.
The moment Tu struck, this super-expert, capable of easily destabilizing a galaxy, was instantly forced out of his field-like wave state and back into a physical form. His vitality and consciousness were annihilated in a heartbeat, leaving behind only a fading sphere of high-energy flesh.
"So, this is the 'difficult' Sage?"
Tu tilted his head, evaluating the fleshy mass from tens of thousands of kilometers away. He curled his lip in disdain. "Ugh, he was ugly. He deserved to die."
"Well said, Ancestor Tu." A voice vibrated through the massive energy of the accretion disk.
Elders Imolda and Salipana, the two Gods of Hunger who had been battling the Andromeda Sage for days, suddenly materialized in the void and walked toward Tu.
One wore a traditional Daoist Moon Crown, with long eyebrows and a flowing beard, dressed in deep blue robes. The other was tall and thin, sporting a sharp undercut and gold-rimmed glasses.
After bowing to Tu, the glasses-wearing Salipana adjusted his frames and spoke with a hint of arrogance.
"For eons, I've looked across this sector and found that aside from us, the humans of old Earth, every other intelligent race is grotesque and misshapen."
"Old Earth, huh..." Tu narrowed his eyes and sighed. "I'm impressed. For a member of the younger generation, you still remember that term. Rare indeed."
"Of course I remember. After all, that is where our humanity was born," Salipana mused. "Even though I have no personal memory of it, one shouldn't forget their roots."
"Exactly," Imolda added with a touch of mysticism. "Our old Earth human lineage was born from the essence of the stars, the spirits of all things. In the entire cosmos, only humans are perfect. All things in the universe should serve our race."
He pointed to the surrounding desolate void and said coldly, "Like this galaxy, its very existence was meant to nourish the birth of our clan's newest member. As for the creatures living here, ugly as demons... they deserved to die."
Salipana interjected suddenly, "What about the Houiste people? They look just like us."
Imolda froze, then spoke with simmering rage. "Those are thieves! A pack of ungrateful, shameless bastards!"
"Tsk, I don't think about it that much, but..."
Tu rubbed his chin. "Water flows from the earth to the streams, from the streams to the rivers, and back to the sea, eventually forming rain to fall again. That is the natural water cycle of a planet. Animals eat plants to survive, and plants absorb the carcasses of animals to grow. The predator becomes the prey. That is also a cycle. The universe is the same; the stars must follow their laws and orbits in constant motion. Another cycle. Everything must operate in an orderly fashion according to fixed natural laws."
He suddenly grinned. "So, we are simply the end point of all the universe's cycles. Everything is meant to be devoured by us. This is the Way of Heaven. This is Natural Law."
Upon hearing Tu's words, Imolda, Salipana, and the other Gods of Hunger nodded in silent, deep agreement.
At that moment, the scorching accretion disk, glowing like an ocean of white-hot light, suddenly buckled and vibrated. Even the long, narrow jets of plasma erupting along the black hole's rotational axis began to writhe and shudder strangely.
Buzzing
Tu's eyebrows twitched, and he turned toward the supermassive black hole in the distance. The other Gods of Hunger followed his gaze, staring at the black hole trillions of kilometers away.
"It seems... someone is about to be 'born,'" they thought.
Sure enough.
Just ten minutes later, a spherical expanse of space nine quadrillion kilometers in diameter, centered on the black hole, began to blur and shimmer.
Amidst this distortion, reality and illusion merged across a thousand light-years; the material world and the Realm of Phantasm blurred together.
Two massive space-times with completely different rules, once separated by a "Barrier," fused into a single Holographic Domain.
After a few minutes of stillness, the Andromeda black hole, with an event horizon diameter of 840 million kilometers, along with the entire thousand-light-year Holographic Domain, suddenly contracted.
It wasn't a physical collapse, but a rapid decrease in "resolution," similar to a glitching video game; its outward appearance became increasingly blurred and phantom-like as it shrank.
A mere ten minutes later, the supermassive black hole, which had existed for billions of years as the gravitational anchor of the entire Andromeda Galaxy, simply vanished from the material universe without a sound.
The extra-dimensional accretion disk, the polar jets, the event horizon, and even the terrifying gravitational field itself: all gone.
In its place stood a mass of completely materialized Information Flow.
Buzzing
This Information Flow, composed of countless shimmering, light-like strands, congealed into a blurred "entity." It automatically assembled into a pale, thin, humanoid figure, only 1.75 meters tall.
Once the pale humanoid was formed, it drifted in the vast void in a prone position, motionless. It looked weak and powerless.
One of the Gods of Hunger couldn't help but move forward to investigate, but he was stopped. It was Tu who held him back.
Gazing at the newborn God of Hunger, who was struggling with all its might to crawl up from the void despite its weakness, Tu, standing trillions of kilometers away, said softly:
"He doesn't need help. He's just hungry. He needs to eat something."
As he spoke, Tu raised his hand, spreading his fingers and clawing at the void.
Buzz
Instantly, an irregularly shaped dwarf galaxy drifting a hundred thousand light-years away was firmly grasped across the vast cosmic expanse.
Under Tu's will, that dwarf galaxy, containing over a million scorching stars, collapsed and disintegrated. The stars aligned one after another, merging into a massive river of light like a serpent of suns. Aided by rings of warped space-time that appeared from nowhere, it stretched its quadrillion-kilometer-long "body" and streaked across the void at faster-than-light speed.
BOOM! BOOM!
Under Tu's boundless power, the serpent of suns took only a minute, moving tens of billions of times faster than light, to reach the sector. It thundered toward the newborn God of Hunger, who had just managed to stagger to his feet.
As the river of stars surged toward him, the newborn God of Hunger instinctively deployed his Holographic Domain, a funnel-shaped field covering the void above him.
The galactic flow arrived, slamming into the newborn God of Hunger, whose physical volume was almost non-existent by comparison.
Instantly, a series of colossal, terrifying explosions and roaring, surging energy tides swept through the surrounding void. Even Tu and the other Gods of Hunger were engulfed by the blast.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
For a moment, this region of the universe seemed to suffer a continuous barrage of gamma-ray bursts. At every millisecond, quadrillions of miles of space centered on the newborn God of Hunger were rocked by catastrophic explosions.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
In this scene of utter devastation, where seven or eight hundred massive stars fell and exploded every second, no living being below the Sage level could survive.
Even a top-tier Overlord of the Milky Way, if caught in such a storm, would only last a few seconds before being pulverized into dust.
Yet, for this pale humanoid, who was born as an elite Mid-level God of Hunger, these crashing, scorching stars were like scoops of sweet, delicious cream. They were satisfying to the taste and rich in energy.
As for the lower civilizations or interstellar races living among those stars, no one present gave a single thought to their fate.