Volume 1, Chapter 31: Could it be... that the rumors are false?

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“The First Ancestor is enlightening us! True power does not lie in destruction, but in acceptance. Not in annihilation, but in guidance. Even an enemy must be given the chance to attain enlightenment. I understand now. I understand completely!”

He respectfully turned toward Gu Changsheng and bowed deeply.

Nearby, Ye Qingxian and Ji Ruxue had also gone from their initial tension to sheer stupor.

Naturally, they could not see the “mercy” and “guidance” that Uncle Fu had imagined. They had seen only the result.

An Upper Realm divine envoy who looked capable of destroying the world had shouted for less than two sentences before the Young Master, annoyed by the noise, covered his ears with a pillow—and turned him into a “work of performance art” suspended in the sky.

The entire process had been even more effortless and casual than crushing an ant.

Ji Ruxue swallowed and whispered to Ye Qingxian, “Is he… dead?”

Ye Qingxian shook her head, her expression complicated as she gazed at the “statue.”

“No. I feel… he’s suffering even more than if he were dead.”

Indeed.

At that very moment, the Divine Punishment Envoy was enduring torment billions of times more terrifying than death.

His consciousness remained clear.

He could perceive with perfect clarity the desperate predicament in which he was trapped.

At first, he struggled frantically, exhausting every possible means in an attempt to break free.

After an hour, fear began to take hold of him, followed by despair.

After a day, he abandoned his struggles and began to pray, hoping that the Hall Master would notice something was wrong and come rescue him.

After two days, his consciousness began to fall into disorder amid absolute stillness and nothingness.

After three days…

When he saw the young man below finally wake from his sleep and yawn as he stretched, the divine soul of the Divine Punishment Envoy, imprisoned for countless years, finally collapsed completely beneath the weight of endless loneliness and terror.

He had gone mad.

Within the Myriad Gods Hall, divine radiance shone eternal.

The Lord of All Gods, seated high upon the divine throne, had kept his brows tightly furrowed for three days.

Three days earlier, he had dispatched the Divine Punishment Envoy. Yet instead of seeing the envoy’s soul lamp blaze forth with dazzling divine might in the lower realm as he had expected, he had witnessed a bizarre change that remained incomprehensible to him.

The soul lamp representing the Divine Punishment Envoy’s life and divine soul had neither gone out nor dimmed.

It had… “stopped.”

The flame no longer flickered. The light no longer flowed. It was as though it had been eternally frozen at a single instant. It still existed, yet seemed to have lost all connection with the world.

The Lord of All Gods could sense that the Divine Punishment Envoy was still “alive,” but that state of existence lay beyond his understanding of life and death.

He tried to establish contact through the soul lamp, but the only response he received was an absolute, heart-stirring “nothingness.”

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It was as though the Divine Punishment Envoy’s soul had fallen into a void abyss where even the Dao itself did not exist.

An ominous premonition, like a dark cloud, settled over the heart of the Lord of All Gods.

He abruptly rose from his divine throne. In his mind, against his will, a scene sealed away in the deepest recesses of his memory emerged.

That had been the era before the previous one, when he was still a newly risen and ambitious God King, brimming with confidence. He had founded the Myriad Gods Hall, harboring great ambitions and convinced that his talent was unmatched throughout the ages, certain that he would one day transcend the mortal realm.

After hearing the legends of the Gu family, he had gone to their ancestral grounds full of confidence, hoping to receive the recognition and blessing of that legendary First Ancestor.

To this day, he still remembered that the one who received him had been nothing more than an old servant who swept the floors.

The old servant had regarded him with the same indifferent gaze one might give a child and calmly conveyed a single oral decree from the First Ancestor:

“Your temperament is unsettled, your foundation unstable. You possess only an empty appearance and are unlikely to amount to anything. Go back.”

At the time, he had regarded those words as the greatest humiliation imaginable.

Now, recalling that judgment—and the old servant’s impassive gaze—

The Lord of All Gods felt a chill surge from the soles of his feet straight to the crown of his head.

“Could it be… the rumors were false? The Gu family never declined at all?”

A thought that even he found terrifying began to grow wildly within him.

The more he thought about it, the more frightened he became. The more he thought about it, the more he felt that sending Gu Fan to investigate had been an idiotic decision beyond measure. And sending the Divine Punishment Envoy afterward to demand an explanation had been no different from voluntarily placing his neck beneath the executioner’s blade!

That family had never acted according to common sense. Their strength had never been something that could be measured by words such as “decline” or “glory.”

“This is bad!”

The Lord of All Gods could no longer remain seated. He immediately issued the highest divine decree, a trace of unconcealed panic trembling in his voice.

“Pass on my order! Every member of the Myriad Gods Hall stationed outside must immediately cease all operations and return to the Hall! From this moment onward, the Hall is to seal its gates for a billion years! No one is permitted to leave, and no one is permitted to mention the word ‘Gu’! Anyone who disobeys need not wait for an outsider to act. I shall personally crush their divine soul!”

The sudden order caused an uproar throughout the entire Myriad Gods Hall.

Yet no one dared question the authority of the Hall Master. Countless streaks of divine light hurriedly withdrew from every corner of the myriad heavens and worlds, racing toward the Myriad Gods Hall.

After arranging all of this, the Lord of All Gods felt not the slightest relief. He descended from his divine throne and, facing the distant direction of the Heavenly Origin Realm, bent his back deeply—deeply—lowering the waist that had remained proud for countless eras.

He did not dare plead for forgiveness. He only prayed that the terrifying family would regard him as nothing more than a genuine “little fellow” and casually forget him.

…

The Gu Family courtyard.

“Ahhh—”

Gu Changsheng gave a long yawn, sat up from his reclining chair, and stretched. A series of crisp pops rang out from every joint in his body.

He had slept extraordinarily well.

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Especially during the latter half of his sleep, the entire world had become utterly quiet. There had not been so much as the sound of wind or birdsong, and the quality of his rest had been better than ever before.

“Uncle Fu, how long was I asleep?” he asked, rubbing his bleary eyes.

“Young Master, you slept for three days,” Uncle Fu replied respectfully.

“Three days? That long?” Gu Changsheng was somewhat surprised. Then he nodded in satisfaction. “That was a good sleep. It seems this new pillow really is excellent.”

He rose and loosened his muscles. Then, as he lifted his head, he suddenly froze.

Above his small courtyard floated… something.

It was a humanoid figure clad in golden armor, with wings on its back and a long spear in its hand. It hung motionless in midair, frozen in a rather wild pose.

Sunlight struck its armor, reflecting a dazzling glare.

“Hmm?” Gu Changsheng narrowed his eyes and examined it carefully. “What is that? Some new kind of scarecrow? Who hung it up there?”

He did not connect it in the slightest with the noise from several days earlier. He merely found it inexplicable.

Beside him, Ji Ruxue and Ye Qingxian did not dare even breathe too loudly.

They had witnessed with their own eyes how that arrogant Divine Punishment Envoy had transformed from a living deity into the “scarecrow” spoken of by the Young Master.

“It looks rather creepy.” After staring at it for a while, Gu Changsheng shook his head, a look of distaste appearing on his face.

He suffered from a slight touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder and could not stand seeing such an incongruous, ugly “decoration” in his courtyard.

He turned and waved toward Uncle Fu, his tone as casual as though he were instructing a servant to throw away some trash.

“Uncle Fu, that ornament is rather ugly and unpleasant to look at. Get rid of it.”

“Get rid of it.”

The words were spoken lightly, almost carelessly.

At last, a faint smile appeared on Uncle Fu’s placid face.

He knew that the Young Master’s “guidance” of that “fly” had come to an end.

“Your command, Young Master.”

Uncle Fu respectfully acknowledged the order. Then he slowly raised his hand and lightly swept his sleeve toward the “statue” suspended in the sky.

No laws surged forth. No divine radiance erupted.

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