After being coldly rejected through a screen by the Chief of the Long Nation, the President of the B.E.N. had sat in this dim underground command center for three consecutive days and nights.
Those hands, which once controlled carrier battle groups across the entire Blue Planet, were now neurotically interlaced. He no longer paid attention to the unresponsive satellite monitors; instead, he stared fixedly at several reports sent back at the cost of his agents' lives—lists of countries that had not yet been "reckoning".
In this catastrophe for all humanity, these small nations, which he had once viewed as mere "pawns", had somehow found an anchor in the raging storm and remained startlingly stable.
"It is not luck; it is the Golden Ingots."
The President's voice was hoarse, as if ground against sandpaper. After weeks of observation, he had reached a conclusion that drove him to the brink of madness:
the reason those nations had escaped the collapse of physical logic was that they held that shimmering metal in their hands. It was a divine "Medallion of Immunity", the final cornerstone maintaining the existence of civilization.
To obtain this cornerstone, the Bald Eagle Nation, the former global hegemon, completely tore away the last shred of its diplomatic dignity. Using the few remaining old-fashioned radios, he privately contacted countries on the list whose national power was far inferior to that of the B.E.N. He used threats, deception, and even humble pleas. Finally, through an underground trade, he exchanged with several small nations—who wavered out of fear of the B.E.N.'s "remaining prestige"—for a small bag of divine Golden Ingots.
But this transaction cost the B.E.N. a price more painful than war. For that bag of gold, the President signed secret documents, packaging the B.E.N.'s most guarded aeronautical engine blueprints and even quantum encryption algorithms that had not yet seen combat, sending them off like scrap metal.
This was not just a leak of technology; it was a "self-mutilating" civilizational downgrade. Ironically, when he personally handed over this priceless scientific knowledge, the look in the other party's eyes was like looking at a fool trading a gold brick for a steamed bun.
"As long as the gold is real, it is enough," the President stared at the small, shimmering objects on the desk, his eyes reflecting the madness of a gambler. "As long as the logic remains, the B.E.N. has not yet fallen."
By sheer coincidence, the residual purifying power on these Golden Ingots did indeed have the effect of delaying the footsteps of the "collapse of physical logic".
However, this exclusion of "reckoning" was locked to a radius of only one kilometer around the Golden Ingots. In total, he had acquired only 5,811 ingots, so he had to make a choice.
This faint and precious "logical anchor" was entirely invested into the final fortress—the state of Dorokora.
Dorokora. The name sounded imposing, but it was actually a desolate place where nothing existed except for the vault claimed to have the highest defense rating on the Blue Planet.
On this day, it was Lieutenant Anderson's turn for guard duty.
He dangled a nearly finished cigarette, staring boredly at the surveillance screen. This godforsaken place—even rats found the feng shui bad. He muttered to himself that the alloy doors of this vault, half a meter thick and made of aeronautical-grade titanium steel, were hyped up beyond belief, claiming they could theoretically withstand a nuclear strike.
"Nonsense. If there were a nuclear strike, I'd be ash long ago. Who'd care if the door is hard or not?" Anderson grumbled.
Just as he was lost in thought and preparing to extinguish his cigarette to fetch a cup of coffee, his peripheral vision caught something wrong. He suddenly leaned closer to the screen and rubbed his eyes, wondering if he was hallucinating from exhaustion.
The half-meter-thick titanium steel door, which was originally as smooth as a mirror and reflected a cold, hard metallic luster, was now slightly "writhing".
The sensation was like a giant of steel and bone suddenly having all his bones removed, the skin beginning to stack and sag powerlessly.
Anderson reached out a trembling hand, attempting to touch the image through the monitor. At that moment, the monitor emitted a sharp howl. Under the overhead gaze of the camera, that blast door, claimed to be able to withstand a nuclear bomb, was "collapsing" in a way that defied physical common sense.
It was not destroyed, nor was it melted; rather, the "logic" supporting the stability of the metallic molecular structure had vanished. The half-meter-thick alloy looked like a piece of jelly that had been baked in the sun for three hours, sagging powerlessly against the doorframe and sliding to the floor with a tooth-aching "ziss-ziss" sound, resembling the friction of a soft-bodied mollusk.
"The logic... has collapsed."
The cigarette butt fell from Anderson's mouth onto his thigh, burning through his pants, yet he was entirely unaware. He stared in terror at that pile of once-priceless "jelly," a desperate thought remaining in his mind: even the divine Golden Ingots could not save this place.
"That... that door..." His voice was shaking.
He practically scrambled and crawled to the steel door that symbolized "absolute safety".
His palms were soaked with sweat, and his heart pounded so hard it felt as though it would leap from his throat. Subconsciously, he reached out, wanting to touch it to see if this was all just a hallucination.
The moment his fingertips made contact, Anderson's pupils contracted sharply, and the hair on his entire body stood on end.
"Fuck... this is impossible!" he shrieked, the sound sharp and unlike his own voice.
It wasn't cold. It wasn't hard. The sensation... it was slimy, somewhat warm, as if he had touched a piece of fatty meat just pulled from a boiling pot, or perhaps... Anderson's stomach churned. It felt like a piece of jelly that had been baked under the Sahara sun for three hours!
He watched with his own eyes as that steel door—a door capable of stopping a tank shell—began to "flow" toward the floor like melting butter, sagging against the frame in an utterly slow and grotesque posture. Behind him, the red light of the surveillance camera flickered rhythmically, recording this supernatural event.
Anderson's head buzzed. He recalled seeing fragments of a phrase in some top-secret document: the atomic structure remained, but the logical attribute supporting the characteristic of "hardness" in metal... had been completely withdrawn by that thing called the Beast God.
"Physical desertion... this is the physical desertion after the 'Providential Patch' is removed..." Anderson slumped to the floor, muttering to himself, every drop of color drained from his face.
This was not just a nightmare for Dorokora. Almost simultaneously, regions across the Blue Planet outside of the Long Nation fell into this state of frantic "quantum fluctuation." This was no longer simple destruction; it was more like a collective "amnesia"—a functional forgetting of the laws of physics.
In the Federal Eagle Nation, at a heavily fortified military base:
Bang! Bang! Bang! Thousands of elite soldiers were conducting live-fire drills. Suddenly, the gunfire stopped in perfect, eerie unison. Everyone froze, the rifles in their hands suddenly feeling like useless fire-stoker irons. No matter how hard they pulled, the triggers wouldn't budge! It wasn't a jam; when they stripped the weapons down, they found the springs inside were limp and entirely devoid of tension, like overcooked noodles! The soldiers stared at one another, their faces masks of terror and disbelief.
In a famous port of the Three Blue Lion Country, the ten-thousand-ton giant vessel, the President, was slowly pulling in. The captain was leisurely enjoying his afternoon tea when, without warning, the hull suddenly lurched downward! Without a trace of reason, like a lead weight, it dove straight for the seabed! Chaos erupted on the bridge. The sonar operator screamed, "Depth! Water depth is normal! But... but we are sinking! It makes no sense!"
Yes, it made no sense. Because at that moment, the buoyancy constant of water "forgot" how to support steel.
Anderson looked at the puddle of "vault door jelly" still slightly writhing on the ground, then at the chaotic images flooding in from around the world on the monitors. A chill rushed from the soles of his feet straight to the crown of his head. He knew the rules of the old world were utterly finished.
Just as the Blue Planet plunged into a despair of "softening" and the lighthouses of human civilization were on the verge of flickering out, deep within the Long Nation Academy of Sciences, the core laboratory of "Project Dawn" remained brilliantly lit. The air was thick with the unique scent of ozone mixed with metallic coolant.
Dean Hao Xue, a veteran scientist nearly sixty years old with hair long since turned white, stood like a statue. He was leaned halfway across the observation platform of the electron microscope, his eyes bloodshot with a strain unbefitting his age, staring deathly at the strange halo on the screen.
Before him, inside a specially made high-strength vacuum levitation chamber, a single Golden Ingot granted by the deity—now officially codenamed "Divine Gold-001"—floated quietly. It was only the size of a thumb but emitted a soft, ghostly green glow, resembling a frozen star that ignored the surrounding physical rules.
The laboratory held only the low hum of instruments and the dean's slightly hurried breathing. Behind him, several core researchers stood with bated breath, their faces solemn and filled with exhaustion, yet their eyes burned with a near-combustible expectation.
Beep— Beep—
A crisp notification tone shattered the silence. Xiao Wang, the young researcher responsible for data analysis, spoke with a voice trembling with irrepressible emotion: "De... Dean, the scanning results are out!"
Hao Xue straightened up abruptly and hurried to the main control console. His hands shook with excitement as he rapidly scrolled through the torrent of data on the screen; complex formulas and 3D models flashed through his eyes. Gradually, his breathing became more and more labored until, finally, he was holding his breath entirely.
"This… this is impossible…" Hao Xue muttered to himself. He suddenly looked up, his eyes erupting with an incredible light, his voice raspy from sheer shock. "This is not any known element! Its atomic structure… no, within its core energy levels, there exists a subatomic particle we have never discovered! A particle… a particle capable of stabilizing the fundamental parameters of a spacetime bubble!"
He took a deep breath, struggling to calm his surging emotions, and announced each word with unquestionable authority: "I shall name it—the 'Karma-Stabilizer'!"
As soon as the name was uttered, a synchronized gasp filled the laboratory.
Karma? Stabilizer? It sounded like a concept found only at the extreme frontiers of theoretical physics or within the pages of science fiction!
"Dean, this 'Karma-Stabilizer'… what is its specific function?" a senior physicist asked with a trembling voice; he had already begun to guess the answer but dared not believe it.
Hao Xue pointed to a set of dynamic simulation diagrams on the screen. "According to the experimental data, this 'Karma-Stabilizer' continuously emits an extremely weak yet highly penetrative field. For now, we have named it the 'Rule-Anchoring Field.' Within a radius of approximately 1,000 meters covered by this field, we have discovered to our surprise that those physical constants—such as the Planck constant, the local apparent value of the speed of light, and even minute fluctuations in the gravitational constant—which had become chaotic or even randomly volatile due to 'Providential Leakage,' are being forcibly 'anchored' within a relatively stable interval!"
He waved his arms excitedly, his voice rising with fervor. "What does this mean? It means that in this 'softening' world, we have found a patch of 'hard ground'! If you drop a piece of Divine Gold the size of a mung bean into an engine's fuel tank, that machine can forcibly ignite and operate in an apocalypse where the laws of physics are collapsing! Install it in a generator, and you have stable power; embed it into a building's structure, and it can resist the structural disintegration brought about by the 'softening'!"
"Whoever possesses this Divine Gold possesses the ability to relight the lamps, drive machinery, and establish order upon this wasteland! They possess… the spark to restart civilization!" Hao Xue's voice rang out like a great bell in the silent laboratory, striking the hearts of everyone present.
Xiao Wang's eyes grew moist. "Dean, are we… are we saved? Is humanity saved?"
Within the Divine Realm, the temple was devoid of beasts. Only the Beast God remained, leaning against the armrest of Her Divine Throne, gazing at all the Karmic Pools within Her sight.
—Soon. Very soon. They have discovered the efficacy of the Golden Ingots. Now, the New Era is almost upon us. I must… endure.