In the projection of Eschatology, there was no concept of time, nor any need to wait.
In this projection rooted in the mortal realm, every change brought by an action was naturally proclaimed, and the outcome of every choice was laid bare before the eyes of all observers.
There was no room for forgery, and even less for ambiguity.
Between yes and no, there was no "or."
Success was success; failure was failure!
As the artisans took action, the shifts grew ever more intense.
In under half a minute, right before everyone's eyes, violent flames had filled the entire apocalypse, swallowing everything whole.
All reified and mutated things were utterly annihilated; every inch of soil and foundation supporting Stagnant Rot was eradicated.
When the last mutated colossus was burned to ash amidst purple lightning and black flame, not a single reified creature could be seen across the devastated land.
Upon the wasteland, surviving humans cheered, shouted, and danced with joy, bathing in the rising sunlight once more, tears streaming down their faces.
The apocalypse was no more!
The rising glare of flame illuminated the murky sea and sky, yet Elder Zhen remained impassive, showing no reaction whatsoever, not even the slightest intention of intervening.
He merely watched.
Even though the apocalypse had been completely overturned, the Saintly Fool Instrument remained steadfast. The form of Beigong's Creation continued to extend and expand without wavering in the least!
Instead, Tianlu's expression shifted slightly as he lifted his eyes.
A flicker of gravity surfaced.
Even after every calamity had vanished and all degradation had been swept clean, the anticipated collapse and destruction remained nowhere in sight, and victory was still undecided.
Entangled between the Embers and Stagnant Rot, the evolution of Eschatology continued.
Faster and faster, even—
As if a fast-forward button had suddenly been pressed on time, the moment Ji Jue made his choice, sun and moon flashed by, and oceans turned into mulberry fields.
The barren world swiftly returned to abundance; all that had fallen into ruin was rebuilt anew.
Within rapidly sprawling cities, skyscrapers pierced the sky, ablaze with lights; amidst surging traffic, scenes of bustling prosperity greeted the eye.
It was as though humanity had sung a triumphal song after surviving the apocalypse, ushering in a glorious tomorrow.
Until the gloom of destruction resurfaced—
In a subway station, amid the surging crowd, an emaciated figure stumbled and fell to his knees, coughing violently and vomiting. Thick, bloody fluid and fragments of visceral organs splattered on the ground, spreading a foul stench.
Screams erupted. In the midst of spasms, the fallen figure staggered back to his feet—face pallid, veins bulging, fissures spreading across his flesh, within which an eerie, ghostly light flickered.
Suddenly, he bared his teeth and lunged, pinning another person to the floor to feast ravenously.
Amidst spreading chaos, one panicked figure after another was brought down and devoured—or, merely scratched, was consumed by mutation and reification. By the time they staggered to their feet once more, they were unrecognizable.
In just a few days, the entire world tore apart once more. Amid the blinding glare of falling fusion bombs, mutation engulfed the globe like a tidal wave.
Once again, Ji Jue heard weeping and screams.
Countless reified corpses converged, dense as ocean tides, encircling a settlement on the brink of collapse. They assaulted it wildly, tearing at fences and battering walls.
Inside the walls, the survivors were plunged into chaos, fighting among themselves for phlogiston and supplies in a bid to flee. Yet an armored vehicle had driven only a dozen meters before it was completely swamped, providing the horde with a breach to swarm through.
From among the zombies, a putrid giant overgrown with metal stepped forth, utterly shattering the settlement's last shreds of morale.
"It's over! It's all over!"
"A Tier Three Zombie Emperor!!!"
"Help!"
Ji Jue's expression twitched; he couldn't help a sigh. "What kind of ridiculous name is that...?"
Flicking his fingers, purple lightning and black flame surged forward. A rolling torrent spread, and beneath Zhanlu's scorching blaze, countless zombies turned to flying ash.
With his intervention, the horde besieging the settlement was soon wiped from existence.
Only now did wails of having survived the catastrophe ring out in waves.
"Everyone, stop crying."
Ji Jue surveyed the devastation and gave a rueful sigh. "Quickly organize yourselves and gather supplies. I'll lead you to a safe—"
Before he could finish, his voice cut short. He finally noticed the gazes directed at him.
There was not a shred of gratitude or reverence, only wariness.
Even bitter hatred and malice!
"Why did you come so late?" A sobbing child curled up, glaring and weeping. "If you'd just come a little earlier, my dad wouldn't have died! I hate you!"
"My daughter was only twelve! Why didn't you save her? Why?!"
"I'm warning you, even if you saved me, don't think—"
*Bang!*
Expressionless, Ji Jue pulled the trigger. After a thunderous crack, a corpse that had been clutching his collar collapsed into a pool of blood.
Dead silence descended, followed by renewed shrieks of terror.
The indignant crowd froze. Those who had just been furiously accusing him took a step back on instinct. A trembling old man cried in shocked outrage, "Wh-what are you doing? Have you gone mad—"
"He was infected. Couldn't you tell?"
Ji Jue stepped on the corpse at his feet and looked back. "Oh, so you're infected too. I see—"
*Bang!*
A second gunshot rang out. The old man who had incited the crowd turned into a headless corpse, followed by the child glaring viciously at him.
"Help! I'm not infected! I'm human!"
Finally, the man stared down the gun barrel, collapsed limp to the ground, and scrambled backward on all fours. "You've got it wrong, ple—"
*Bang!*
"To stay alive, you even learned human speech?" Ji Jue pulled the trigger again. "You zombies are an absolute disgrace!"
After emptying an entire magazine, the world was finally clean and refreshing.
Peaceful and serene, so wonderful.
"Whew..."
Ji Jue exhaled a long breath and turned around, refreshed, smiling at the terrified faces. "Now, as I was saying: organize people, gather supplies, and prepare to evacuate. Does anyone still not understand?"
This time, no one objected.
Compared to the previous biosphere of thorough reification and mutation, resolving this zombie crisis proved easy, simple, and utterly mundane.
Once the scattered survivors were reorganized, armed, and trained, it didn't take long before armies began sweeping across the land. Under heavy firepower, corpses reified into grotesque forms were ground to dust and scattered to the winds.
When the mountain-like colossus stitched together from countless corpses burned to ashes in the flames, the final source of contagion was eradicated from the world.
Once again, the apocalypse was beaten back; the world was saved.
Cause for celebration, truly cause for celebration!
Pity was, before Ji Jue could even smile, he saw it—torrential rain pouring from the heavens!
As though the entire world were drowned in downpour, disasters struck anew amid endless rainstorms and floods.
After the deluges came extreme cold dipping over a hundred degrees below zero. The entire world froze into a ball of ice. In every shelter, people fought vicious life-and-death battles over the remaining resources, while news arrived constantly of other sectors falling.
Anomalies erupted one after another. Someone would suddenly undergo reification, spreading mutations that magnified or shrank objects by a hundredfold, dispersing corruption and inciting chaos.
Others, having inexplicably had bizarre dreams, believed themselves to be reincarnators who had returned from the future, spreading clandestine rumors about sinister plots harbored by the artisans.
And in some shelters that were in pristine condition, bizarre incidents of high-IQ black bears killing people cropped up without cause or warning.
Foolish lovers, on the precipice of catastrophe, were still entangled in melodramatic oceans of love and hate, fussing over trivial, life-and-death domestic dramas.
No matter how thoroughly prepared they were or how abundant the supplies, the moment they left the artisans' direct oversight, they would collapse completely over all manner of absurd reasons. Yet under the artisans' direct rule and control, there appeared more and more giant overgrown babies who seemed utterly devoid of brains—
Under the formless corruption of ignorance, everything was like rotten mud that couldn't be plastered onto a wall; the moment attention lapsed, it sank into absolute degeneration.
Even when the artisans gave their all to sustain order and narrowly survived the apocalyptic doom, the remaining settlements shockingly waged brutal, fratricidal wars against one another.
When, with great difficulty, everything was pulled back from the brink of total destruction, humanity renounced war and reunited as one, founding an unprecedentedly colossal city-state.
In accelerated time, everything developed on a grand and majestic scale. Unprecedented civilization and prosperity manifested before Ji Jue's eyes.
Soon, towers scraping the clouds looked down upon the earth like thrones of deities. Seventeen mega-corporations, holding a total monopoly over everything from technology to resources, controlled all like gods, bringing everything under their ruthless dominion.
The flames of Stagnant Rot reignited. This time, even the artisans were treated by the mega-corporations as rare test subjects and property, subjected to pervasive encirclement and pursuit under high-yield bombs, heavy ordnance, and even satellite strikes—
Through Eschatology's evolution, enduring countless struggles and sacrifices, regrouping and counterattacking time and again from the brink of defeat, when the mega-corporations' dominion and rule high in the clouds finally vanished into thin air, it seemed as though true civilization and a real future had at last arrived.
Having weathered setback after setback and lesson after lesson, humanity had finally learned to step forward.
As time flew by before the artisans' eyes, everything once again became prosperous and resplendent, flowers blooming upon brocade, oil sizzling in the fire—amid unprecedented glory, the world gradually took on the countenance of hope.
Until, at its most glorious apex, everything came crashing down, ushering in annihilation.
All that once was fell apart yet again.
A chain reaction of destruction arrived.
Amid swirling yellow sands, humans reified and mutated into insects crawled out from the dunes, launching attacks once more against the artisans before them, their mutated compound eyes burning with venomous malice and ravenous hunger.
After endless corrections and alterations, the world thus returned to square one.
Struggle without end, futile after all.
Chapter 819