"At your level, you should have already realized that the Spirit Realm is selecting administrators," Sovereign Haotian said in a calm, gentle tone, a bagua dial symbolizing time revolving behind his head. "That is one of the reasons we created the Spirit Realm in the first place."
"And the purpose of choosing administrators is to fight against those invaders?" Zhang Yuanqing asked.
He thought of the Demon Seed, of the catastrophe that had brought about the fall of Empress Wa, and of those terrifying existences lingering at the very end of the evil class paths.
Sovereign Haotian did not answer right away. After pausing in contemplation for a few seconds, he said, "Fighting the invaders is a process, not the ultimate goal.
"On the contrary, the reason the invaders are eroding the Spirit Realm is precisely to prevent its administrators from being born."
*In other words, the clash between the evil and orthodox factions stems from a core objective, and the Spirit Realm is merely the battlefield of that confrontation... If the orthodox faction wants to achieve that objective, they must groom an administrator, while the invaders of the evil faction must stop an administrator from emerging...* Grasping the meaning behind his words, Zhang Yuanqing could not suppress his urgency and said, "Please enlighten me on the reason behind all this, Sovereign Haotian!"
Sovereign Haotian let out a soft sigh.
"It all began with a conflict among the deities!"
*A conflict among deities... Above demigods really are deities, and deities must be the administrators of the Spirit Realm! Existences possessing full administrator privileges.* Zhang Yuanqing nodded inwardly. The concept of deities was far from unfamiliar to him now.
With a gentle wave of his hand, Sovereign Haotian manifested a taiji yin-yang fish pattern on the ground and said in a slow voice, "All things under heaven possess both yin and yang aspects. Prosperity wanes at its peak, and fortune rises when misfortune reaches its extreme—this is the fundamental law of the cosmos.
"At the dawn of the universe, a group of beings endowed with immense power came into existence. Aligned naturally with the attributes of yin and yang, they called themselves deities. The yang deities were responsible for creating planets, birthing life, giving vitality to the earth, and bestowing civilization upon time.
"When those worlds reached a certain 'lifespan,' the yin entities would bring down calamities, destroying the worlds and even entire planets.
"There was neither mercy nor evil in this process. The deities were simply acting in accordance with their inherent attributes to maintain the operation of the universe."
Hearing this, Zhang Yuanqing could not help asking, "Are you a primordial deity?"
Sovereign Haotian nodded slightly and continued, "Destruction, creation, an endless cycle. After boundless eons, Empress Wa discovered that the universe was steadily marching toward its demise. No matter how she divined, the end of the cosmos held only total destruction."
*Empress Wa was also a primordial deity, rather than an ancient human who cultivated step by step to seize administrator privileges?* Zhang Yuanqing was startled. That was something he had not expected.
However, since Sovereign Haotian was a primordial deity, it was hardly surprising that Empress Wa, who stood alongside him as one of the three supreme figures, was also one!
"Therefore, she stole the Stars—one of the universe's fundamental origins—and, combining it with her divination arts, deduced three possible endings for the cosmos. They were 'Tear,' 'Collapse,' and 'Oblivion.'" Sovereign Haotian recounted in an even, dispassionate tone:
"Among them, Collapse is the best possible outcome. All things in the universe converge into a single point, and upon reaching the absolute peak of collapse, an explosion ensues, birthing a new universe so that everything may cycle anew.
"As for Tear and Oblivion—the former means the cosmos will be ground into fine dust, ceasing to exist entirely, while the latter means that all living beings, spiritual energy, and matter in the universe will fall into perpetual dead silence, including the deities.
"To alter the universe's fate and allow life to endure, the yang deities hatched a secret plan. Through repeated deductions, we conceived a method: granting human nature to the cosmic origin. That way, the universe itself would reject death and make the corresponding adjustments."
Zhang Yuanqing's heart surged with stormy emotion. Thoughts churned in his mind like boiling water, threatening to burst his skull. Tentatively, he asked, "The cosmic origin is..."
Sovereign Haotian gave a slight nod of confirmation. "The three great origins—Sun, Moon, and Stars—constitute the universe."
*Just as I thought!* Zhang Yuanqing let out a deep inward sigh.
Sovereign Haotian continued, "This was undeniably a blasphemy against the rules and against order. The yin entities uncovered our conspiracy, and a war erupted between the two factions across the cosmos, causing deities to perish in vast numbers."
Zhang Yuanqing suddenly recalled something Catherine had once told him back in New York County: *The pinnacle of order is the absence of order. The pinnacle of chaos is destruction, and destruction is the only eternal, unchanging order.*
That had been the divine revelation she received.
At the time, Zhang Yuanqing had assumed her perception was warped and her mind unhinged, like that of a fanatical cultist.
Now it turned out that the evil faction were the damn defenders of order all along.
Those who sought to prevent the universe from being destroyed, who wanted life to endure eternally in this world—the orthodox faction—were the truly mad breakers of order.
The corruption of the Xiaoyao Organization, as well as the fall of Shanhe Yongcun, seemed to carry identical philosophies.
With his mind racing, he listened as Sovereign Haotian elaborated:
"Deities are embodiments of cosmic rules. As long as the universe does not perish, deities do not truly die. Yet regaining sentience requires immense stretches of time. Later, we discovered that humans could gradually absorb spiritual energy and assimilate rules through specific means to become deities.
"Thus, the Spirit Realm was born. The first purpose behind creating the Spirit Realm was to 'resurrect' the mightiest of the yang deities so they could unite against the yin entities. The second was that the simplest and most efficient way to endow the cosmic origin with human nature is to foster a human to become the universe's incarnation."
Having heard this, Zhang Yuanqing finally understood what Sovereign Haotian had meant at the beginning: fighting the invaders was a process, not the purpose.
The struggle centered around the Spirit Realm's administrators was only the process.
The goal of the orthodox faction was to groom a Night Roamer to become the incarnation of the cosmos.
The goal of the evil faction was to sabotage that 'conspiracy' and uphold the inevitable destructive order of the universe.
Zhang Yuanqing asked, "Why must it be a human? Can deities not become the universe's incarnation?"
Sovereign Haotian shook his head. "Deities cannot command the Sun, Moon, and Stars. Because deities are themselves manifestations of cosmic rules, every deity is unique, and disparate rules cannot be harmonized within them.
"Humans are different. Humans are weak and clean, like blank sheets of paper. Whatever rules you brand onto that blank sheet, they become.
"As for the godhood left behind by fallen deities, primordial deities can at best make limited use of it; they cannot integrate or truly master it, falling short of drawing forth its genuine power. Therefore, we needed to foster humans to become the new deities."
Zhang Yuanqing asked another question: "Which primordial deities created the Spirit Realm? Why did they subsequently perish?"
Sovereign Haotian answered every question freely:
"Back then, those who created the Spirit Realm alongside me were Empress Wa, the Mother Goddess, and the Chief God of Fate. Empress Wa and I were responsible for... in your terms, the construction and operation of the Second District. The Mother Goddess oversaw the First District; as the goddess of gestation and reproduction, fertility and pleasure became the dominant themes of the First District. The God of Fate excelled in magic and sacrifice, so the laws of sacrifice became the underlying tone of the Third District.
"Naturally, we also utilized the divine powers of other deities' godhood. The divine power of the God of the Void maintains the stability of the various Spirit Realm spaces, and the teleportation power that allows Spirit Realm walkers to enter and leave the realm relies entirely on his strength. At the same time, he manages the Spirit Realm's trading system, though because the Sun, Moon, and Stars have not returned to their proper places and the Spirit Realm has not fully awakened, those corresponding functions have yet to be unlocked.
"The reproductive and vital divine powers of the Mother Goddess and Empress Wa are the fountainhead from which the myriad living beings in the Spirit Realm were born. Empress Wa's scholar authority bestowed them with wisdom.
"The covenant and guardian powers of the God of Oaths are what allow main and side quests to constrain Spirit Realm walkers. Entering the Spirit Realm is equivalent to entering a pact with it: completing main and side quests earns rewards and permits a return to reality, while failure brings execution by the power of the covenant.
"Wind and lightning represent chastisement, specifically aimed at demigods who break the rules, while also forming the air currents and thunder within the Spirit Realm spaces.
"The God of the Ocean represents calamity, as well as the oceans within dungeon worlds.
"The godhoods of the Third District likewise have their respective functions.
"The powers of these godhoods built a complete Spirit Realm system. You can view the Spirit Realm as an item, a dharma treasure—one assembled collectively from various godhoods.
"Of course, these are all auxiliary functions. The true core of the Spirit Realm artifact consists of the three origins: the Sun, Moon, and Stars. The primary function of the Sun origin is to deter invaders and purge their corruption; you can think of it as an antivirus tool.
"By comparison, the Merit Roster, a causality-type item subordinate to the Sun, is merely an insignificant function.
"The function of the Lunar origin is 'secrecy'—concealing the entire Spirit Realm where no deity can find it, while simultaneously sustaining the realm's yin energy.
"The most vital of all is actually the Stars. Its function is the calculation and generation of the Spirit Realm worlds—generating dungeons, calculating data, and preventing loopholes from forming.
"Ever since the Lord of Stars was born, the Spirit Realm's computational capacity began to decline, which is why the dungeons you refer to as 'bugged' have become increasingly frequent."
***
Hang City.
Hang City University Security Bureau.
Chen Yuanjun and two subordinates had spent the entire afternoon buried in the bureau's vast sea of archives.
They were sifting through missing persons records from July 2019.
Under the security bureau system, reports regarding missing persons could be filed with the security bureau of the area where the person disappeared, or with the authorities in their registered household locality.
Lei Yibing's mother had reported his disappearance to her local precinct, the Kangyang District Security Bureau.
In such cases, the Kangyang District Security Bureau would typically dispatch the case to the security bureau at the location of the disappearance to request assistance with the search.
Therefore, the local security bureau in Hang City would undoubtedly have a case file on record.
However, because the files and records at the Kangyang District Security Bureau had been purged and the officer in charge at the time could no longer be found, they had no way of knowing which specific Hang City security bureau the case had been routed to.
They could only narrow down the most likely candidate bureaus based on the information that Lei Yibing had traveled to Hang City at the time.
After finishing a stack of files, a security officer named Xiao Gao exhaled heavily. "Captain Chen, nothing."
Chen Yuanjun pinched the space between his eyebrows, let out an affirmative grunt, and said, "On to the next one."
Just then, the door opened and the director of the security bureau walked in. He was a middle-aged man who, despite reaching the age where men typically gained weight, maintained a well-proportioned build and a lean face.
At a glance, he looked like a pragmatic, hands-on leader.
Chen Yuanjun set down the files and offered him a cigarette. "Director Yang, we're all done here. Sorry for disrupting your work."
Director Yang took the cigarette, glanced at the room full of files, tucked it behind his ear, and chuckled. "What case are you investigating? Going door-to-door like this is a waste of time. I can speak to the higher-ups on your behalf to run it through official channels and have the local bureaus help you search."
Chen Yuanjun smiled. "Then I'd really appreciate that, Director Yang."
Director Yang's smile remained unchanged. "I hear that back in Songhai, Captain Chen deals with those cultists quite often. Come on, let's head to my office and have a chat."
Chapter 972