BOOM.
The anticipated colossal explosion never arrived.
The sky-blotting, blood-red sea of lightning, along with the massive holographic screens suspended before the eyes of all humanity across the Blue Planet, vaporized cleanly into nothingness within a thousandth of a microsecond. No, it was not merely vaporization; it was an absolute erasure, as if a painting had been forcefully wiped clean with an eraser. Because this high-dimensional power withdrew at a velocity that completely defied the laws of inertia in a three-dimensional world, the wind speeds within the atmosphere—which only a moment prior were fierce enough to blow away entire cities—dropped straight to zero within a thousandth of a second.
Stillness. Absolute stillness.
Because the atmospheric pressure and gravitational constants underwent a violent collision and reorganization within an exceptionally brief window, countless mortals on the ground didn't even have time to steady themselves before feeling as though their chests had been brutally slammed by a gargantuan sledgehammer.
"BLURGH—!!"
Whether they were high-ranking elites or lowly beggars, at this exact moment, every single one of them without exception collapsed into the mud and ruins, clutching their chests and vomiting violently. What they spat out was stomach acid and bloody froth mixed with remnants of internal tissue—the physical rejection response of internal organs completely unable to adapt to an instantaneous, radical shift in gravity. This sudden, dead silence was more hair-raising and bone-chilling than the detonation of any ten-million-ton nuclear warhead.
There were no angry rebukes from the deities, no fires of destruction, only a deathly stillness.
In the sky, the Four Symbols had vanished, the Golden Loong was no more, and all traces of the Sin Seizer and the Wealth Devourer had been wiped clean. Only the remaining animal spirits stood blankly in their original positions.
In the final corner of the shadow where all the Divine Beasts retreated toward the void of the Divine Realm, the one walking at the very rear was the Auspicious Sentinel. It was the most merciful of the Divine Beasts, meant to represent auspicious grace and deep pity. Yet at this moment, before its departure, this sacred beast—radiating a soft, jade-like light—turned its head to cast a single look at those animal spirits.
It wept.
Two paths of crystal-clear tears slid down its face, which was covered in ancient runes, crashing into the void and transforming into a canopy of scattering white petals. Yet those petals did not land upon the animals; instead, they withered and turned to dust in mid-air. It looked at the animals who had pleaded for humanity before the gods, and its eyes held neither anger nor resentment.
There was only a boundless, suffocating grief.
"Thou hast used Her life to barter for the lives of those executioners."
The Auspicious Sentinel's voice was whisper-light, echoing slowly over the silent Blue Planet, every word hitting as bluntly as a rusted knife. "Is this the 'Mercy' thou hast spent thy entire life... only to finally learn?"
It did not wait for an answer. The void closed completely.
The night sky of the Blue Planet returned to its original form, moonlight washing over the filth, the vomit, and the stunned creatures covering the ground. The deities were gone, carrying a fractured foundation and a bottomless exhaustion that could never be healed, leaving this self-righteous planet forever in the dark.
The holographic screens were extinguished, but certain things remained.
After the high-dimensional projections of the spiritual space completely vaporized, the Blue Planet returned to its original physical sequence. However, upon the ruins where slaughter, plunder, and judgment had occurred, hundreds of millions of Orange Orbs still hovered quietly in mid-air, emitting an enticing, warm shimmer. That was the blessing left behind by the Beast God.
Accompanying them were hundreds of thousands of tons of pure gold—imbued with the protection of karmic law—that had fallen out of thin air following the karmic transactions. This wealth had never passed through the clearance of any central bank, nor was it recorded in any digital credit system; it was simply piled bluntly and abruptly in every corner of the mortal world.
The deities were gone. The Great Goddess had taken away the thunder, the guillotine of judgment, and the final oversight of this land. But She had not taken away the Orange Orbs She had bestowed, nor the Golden Ingots symbolizing the purification of negative karma, nor the wealth, houses, or even lifespans She had granted to humanity. Those rewarded objects simply remained quietly beside the humans who possessed them.
The financial order, social contracts, and moral laws that the human world relied upon to survive were as fragile as window paper before these "Divine Objects," which could not be tracked through conventional means yet possessed absolute divine efficacy.
The seeds of a global war of attrition and black-market hunting had quietly broken through the soil amidst the silent ruins. A bloody era belonging to ambitious schemers and plunderers—where the old order had completely collapsed—had officially raised its curtain.
Simultaneously, across the ocean.
The B.E.N., Strategic Command Underground Level 7.
This top-secret fortress, buried five hundred meters deep into the earth, had been trapped in a deathly stillness. Due to the descent of the Divine Realm, every electronic component had completely incinerated three days prior, forcing the arrogant elites to wait in the dark as they slowly suffocated from a lack of oxygen.
Yet, a mere tenth of a microsecond after the Beast God uttered that single word—"Return"—reality flipped.
WIRRR—!!
The sophisticated display terminals that had been dark for three days ignited in unison. The cold, blue-hued holographic light illuminated the pale, despair-ridden faces of everyone inside the command center.
Tick, tack, tick, tack.
Upon the walls, the paralyzed atomic clocks began parsing time with absolute precision once more. Immediately afterward, at the far end of the hall, the half-meter-thick titanium-steel blast door—which had softened into a mass resembling melting butter due to the distortion of physical constants—emitted a tooth-aching metallic screech as it instantaneously solidified back into a cold, unyielding piece of engineering.
The chief scientific advisor stared fixedly at the dynamic curves flashing wildly across the console. He ripped open his crooked tie, his eyes bloodshot from prolonged oxygen deprivation and sudden, extreme hype. He screamed manically at the core control station:
"Mr. President! The gravitational constant has stabilized! The nuclear reactor deadlock has cleared! The master controls are back online! God bless us, we survived!"
Sitting at the sovereign seat, the President leaned on the desk, freezing for three full seconds. In that instant, his mind shot from the absolute depths of terror straight to the highest pinnacle of power.
A manic excitement contorted the muscles of his face, and a low, raspy chuckle escaped his throat before erupting into a crazed roar of laughter:
"Haha... Hahaha! I knew it! The 'Karma' of those holy rollers couldn't sustain itself! High-dimensional entities must still obey the conservation of mass and energy!" He slammed his palm against the table and stood up, his gaze flashing with a politician's unique brand of hubris and greed. "It is our human science that has triumphed over the unfathomable miracles of the divine!"
The command rippled through the restored communication network, saturating the entire base in an instant.
In the corridors, the politicians, generals, and financial elites who had been slumped on the cold floor waiting for death erupted into deafening cheers. Someone even managed to scavenge an unbroken bottle of champagne from the debris. POP. The high-pressure release slammed the cork violently against the reinforced ceiling, leaving a streak of white foam mixed with dust—a testament to their supreme ignorance.
"Long live humanity!"
"Long live science! We have defeated the gods!"
Inside the brilliantly lit underground base, every soul joined the revelry, crowning themselves for the "Great Victory of Mankind."
None of them knew. None of them saw.
This brief pocket of stability was not a monument to human grandeur or scientific achievement. It was forged by the millions of animal spirits who, trapped in absolute despair amidst the ruins, chose to forfeit their passage into the Divine Realm and pass up their chance at a new reincarnation in the final moments of the deity's departure.
They melted their fragile, fading souls into the void, acting as a desperate "Patch" for this shattered three-dimensional world.
With the final dissolution of their spiritual essence, they mended the torn atmosphere and the fractured gravity fields. They were using this near-foolish tenderness to bid a final farewell to the owners they had once loved, and once hated.
The true heroes dissolved into the void, transformed into nameless tombstones, while the villains popped champagne on the wasteland to celebrate their triumph. This ultimate irony, driven by the echoes of the B.E.N. underground base, spread coldly across the entire globe.
Though The Great Goddess had withdrawn, She remained mindful of the Blue Planet's karma. Witnessing this display, She reached out, gathering those fading glimmering souls into Her Starry Void of Return to preserve them safely.
Long Nation, a southern city.
The torrential rain had just ceased, and the setting sun painted the sky in a morbid, sickly shade of rust-red.
Beneath the underpass of an overpass, an old, ragged beggar with paralyzed legs remained stunned, unable to process the sudden erasure of the global screens. He crawled through the mud, trembling violently. Beneath the bellies of the stray dogs huddled in his arms—creatures that were equally crippled, their fur bearing the raw scars of chemical burns—were two immensely heavy objects.
They were the divine gold ingots dropped from the sky during the final karmic transfers.
Each ingot stood four to five meters tall, towering inside the dark underpass like two golden mountains. They radiated a piercing, scarlet shimmer—the protective aura attached to high-dimensional karmic law.
As the divine live rooms faded into a permanent black screen, the cries of the passersby who had been kneeling on the asphalt, weeping as they confessed their sins to the heavens, began to quiet down.
They raised their heads, looking up at the clear sky that had fully recovered its original form.
There was no more thunder.
There were no more loong roars.
And there were no more divine punishments that could turn a man into ash or steal his lifespan at a moment's notice.
The very second this realization took root in their minds, the look in everyone's eyes changed. It was a gaze reviving from absolute terror, instantly overwritten by a bottomless, ravenous greed.
These masses of gold piled before the old beggar carried no bank limits, no proof of land ownership, and absolutely could not be tracked through any existing laws or conventional means. The exact microsecond it lost the oversight of the Goddess, this wealth transformed from a "blessing" into the most brutal, life-claiming poison in the mortal world.
"Old piece of trash, you still aren't handing that gold over?"
A few vagrants who had been loitering nearby—men who were crying and wetting their pants from terror just moments prior—exchanged glances. They wiped the muddy water from their faces, the greed in their eyes instantly smothering any residual fear of the divine. The world had returned to normal, which meant they were still the absolute tyrants of this territory.
One brawny man with a face full of scars lunged forward, extending his calloused hands to forcefully pry a fragment of gold from the edge of the golden mountain.
SHHH—!!
A piercing, sizzling sound erupted instantly, accompanied by an inhuman shriek of agony. The very moment the man's palm made contact with the scarlet aura of the gold, the flesh and blood of his entire arm was forcefully burned into black charcoal within a thousandth of a microsecond, before shattering onto the ground like biscuit crumbs.
The protection matrix didn't vanish with the Goddess. The remaining gold was radioactive with karma. The thug's carbonized fingers scattered like burnt biscuits. But humans learn fast. If they couldn't touch the divine gold, they could pull a spring-knife and force the old beggar to hand it over.
The Goddess was gone, and the law of the jungle took over the bridge in three seconds.
The old beggar clutched the stray dogs in his arms with a death-grip, scrambling backward through the freezing mud.
What he failed to notice, however, was that within the deeper shadows of the setting sun outside the overpass underpass, two retired special forces operatives wearing weathered protective suits and possessing eyes as cold as hawks had already silently drawn the bowstrings of their mechanical heavy crossbows from their tactical backpacks.
Their targets were not the old beggar. Their targets were those stray dogs, and the first batch of purgers who were about to arrive.
The deities had departed. The law had collapsed.
The human civil war and black-market hunting over these high-dimensional divine objects ignited in the mortal world the very first second the sun sank completely beneath the horizon.