# Chapter 1: Meeting with the Gods
Year 837 of the Falling Stars Era, June 11th, Northern Empire, Moldavia Inner District, Lord's Mansion.
In the mansion's kitchen, a silver-haired girl hummed a cheerful but slightly off-key tune while organizing the freshly delivered ingredients.
The girl's eyes were happily squinted, a pair of pupils like emerald-green crystals, within which flowed magical power that shimmered like flames—just from this alone, one could tell that its owner had already crossed the barrier between Silver and Gold, becoming a member of the higher-level Transcendent Beings. At this moment, this young Gold-rank girl tied her long silver hair into a ponytail, then stood cheerfully before the sink, washing a bunch of plump purple-red grapes.
The enticing fragrance of fruit mixed with clearly detectable life energy fluctuations emanated from this seemingly ordinary bunch of grapes. After washing, they were placed into a crystal fruit bowl nearby. Ying carried this plate of obviously expensive fruit, walking all the way to the study on the second floor of the Lord's Mansion.
Along the way, by the window corridor, one could see through the window into the courtyard where a Dragon Girl floated on the water's surface in human form. Her face was bloodless, appearing on the verge of death, while a light orb rolled back and forth on her belly—this was the consequence of Hei sneaking off to swim in the Northern Sea of Bewilderment instead of training while someone was away. Now, with double the training volume, the Dragon Girl, exhausted from depleted stamina, was effectively confined to Moldavia. Soaking in the Lord's Mansion's pool counted as her rare moment of rest.
Passing through the hall, one could hear unhurried conversation. Lin was instructing the mansion's maids to replace various decorations inside the Lord's Mansion. Because the master's trophies were simply too numerous, a small castle couldn't possibly display them all, so decorations like dragon heads, demon horns, and demon specimens were changed every quarter. For ordinary people, this should have been terrifying—whether dragon bones or magical beast horns, they carried part of their former owners' pressure, not to mention the malevolent fluctuations from demon specimens. But looking at the maids' calm expressions, they seemed quite accustomed to it.
Going up to the second floor, passing by the secret room, Ying heard Number Three's muttering. She naturally couldn't understand things like "server load 45%" or "Hey, how did a bug appear here again?" Since the Information Terminal began its formal trial popularization, the Artificial Intelligence Girl seemed to mutter to herself like this from time to time. Fortunately, Number Three had many avatars; the one currently in the Lord's Mansion was specifically for work. As far as Ying knew, she had at least two more avatars in the city—one responsible for reading and walking, and one responsible for monitoring and eating.
Walking slowly, Ying opened the study door. She entered carrying the fruit plate, then placed it before a man sitting on the sofa, eyes closed in meditation.
"Master, these are special grapes recently developed by the Elf Clan. According to them, they can accelerate wound healing and provide a certain amount of life energy—of course, most importantly, they're delicious."
Speaking softly, the silver-haired girl knew that although the man before her had his eyes closed in meditation, if he wished, he could scan the entire Northern Lands with his eyes closed, even ruins and magical beasts a thousand meters underground.
"Hmm, thank you."
Opening his eyes, Joshua nodded slightly. He casually picked up half a bunch of grapes from the crystal fruit bowl on the table before him, then tossed them into his mouth. He nodded: "Tastes good. This ability to accelerate wound healing is roughly equivalent to Number 14 Holy Water in the short term. The extra life energy can also slightly strengthen the constitution... The Elf Clan has cultivated something decent."
"Hey—" Beside him, Ying, who had already sat down next to Joshua and was preparing to serve the warrior, blinked her large emerald-green eyes. She looked at the grapes that were already half gone and complained somewhat disappointedly: "At least let me peel them first..."
What's there to peel when eating grapes?
Although thinking this, Joshua didn't say it out loud—if he had to say it, he didn't need to eat at all now. Whether peeling grapes or eating anything, for him it was merely a human habit and ritual... Life was like that; no need to take it too seriously.
On the side of the study, a large liquid crystal screen newly purchased played a replay of the Royal Channel's morning news. Amidst melodious music, a male and female pair of hosts narrated from the Empire's internal purge operations to the major trends of foreign nations. Special guest speakers from the Mage Weekly frequently spoke, explaining the inside stories in detail. Overall, it was roughly: foreign lands were in deep water and scorching fire, while domestically there was active reform.
In less than two short months, this world had become very different. Not to mention other things, just the liquid crystal screen and its derivative 'news reports' and 'current affairs analysis' could already be called revolutionary developments.
Through the joint research and promotion of Winterfell Academy and the Sky-Piercing White Tower, liquid crystal screens had begun to popularize across half the continent. Almost all slightly wealthy families would install a liquid crystal screen in their homes. This special crystal, derived from Ancient Dragons, capable of adjusting color and brightness through special electromagnetic waves and magical power, was a natural magical material—one could even say it was a naturally formed magical artifact itself. After meticulous planning and cultivation, the Empire and the Sky-Piercing White Tower could mass-produce liquid crystal and sell it as a commodity.
"So many novel things have been happening lately."
Sitting beside Joshua, Ying carefully peeled a grape and fed it into Joshua's mouth. She glanced at the liquid crystal screen and sighed with emotion: "It feels like the changes in the past seven or eight years aren't as big as the last half year."
"Of course."
Joshua ate the grape, looking at the liquid crystal screen, and replied casually: "After all, this is a new era."
Since that legendary battle that involved the World Will and affected several worlds ended, the entire Mycroft World had been changing with each passing day. It seemed that feeling the constraints and oppression were gone, basically all major powers had begun comprehensive reform and innovation, each pulling out some of their bottom-of-the-barrel treasures to display to the world.
In the Northern Empire, the third batch of Information Terminals was being manufactured at the industrial base on the Eastern Bant Highlands. More than half were already packaged and could be activated immediately. These over one hundred thousand Information Terminals would mostly be distributed to the military, while the remaining small portion would enter the market for sale, allowing ordinary people to gradually adapt to this novel gadget.
Besides Information Terminals and liquid crystal screens, Void Warships, as an important promotional point for the Empire, had also entered the field of vision of many citizens. However, since the vast majority of people didn't understand what the Void truly was, to them, Void Warships were just faster and stronger floating warships. The response was unexpectedly small, even far behind the teleportation network optimized by Nostradamus—the originally expensive teleportation fees, after improvement by the legendary expert, had been reduced to one-third of the original price. For most people, this was tremendous good news.
Additionally, in these past two months, the restless nobles within the Empire had become much more well-behaved. Guided by Israel, who sat high on the Watchtower Throne, the originally scattered and free regions of the Empire had been unified, either actively or forcibly. Even the most unruly local great nobles trembled under the strike of the Skyfire System. They didn't want to resist, but everyone understood that when a legendary expert stopped being reasonable, he became reason itself.
In the Western Mountains, aside from Duke Roman, who was actively preparing for war and planning to annex surrounding duchies to proclaim himself king, a special spiritual communication array was spreading among local Psionic sorcerers and mages. This was a spell that could connect consciousnesses. Participants could share thinking speed and inspiration, and could strengthen the toughness of souls and wills. It could greatly increase spellcasters' work efficiency, but because the two parties undergoing the connection would lose privacy due to spiritual intercommunication, even the closest people found it difficult to use.
In the Western Mountains' spellcaster circles, this special spell had caused an uproar. Many criticized it from moral and ethical standpoints, accusing it of destroying the independence of human souls and wills. A small portion of spellcasters who supported it believed this was the direction for future human cooperation and progress. The debate and struggle between the two sides had already caused large-scale academic disputes, and real-world conflicts were entirely foreseeable.
Compared to the Western Mountains, the Eastern Plains had too many novel magical creations emerging endlessly. Even picking a few typical ones to describe was difficult—artificial earth elementals for plowing driven by elements, artificial water elementals for automatic watering and fertilizing, rune machine tools for mass-producing simple magical items, automated construction alchemy puppets that could turn earth into stone and stone into earth... Years of academic accumulation erupted at once. All magical collectives in the Eastern Plains had more or less thrown out a few bottom-of-the-barrel technologies. Competing with each other, the Eastern Plains were now almost on the eve of a magical revolution.
These were all things that, in the previous life, during the Abyss War, various major powers had been forced to bring out due to desperation. Looking at the liquid crystal screen, where the host displayed various novel technologies from around the world one by one, Joshua couldn't help but sigh with emotion: "I didn't think they had them now. I thought they were all improvised on the spot back then."
These technologies were not unfamiliar to Joshua; in fact, they were very familiar.
For example, the teleportation network and the Western Mountains' shared spiritual spell—both were technologies that only appeared in the previous life when resisting the Abyss invasion. To fight against the almost omnipresent demon armies, the Empire had to spend huge sums to strengthen the original teleportation network, greatly reducing teleportation costs and preventing interference from various special situations, maintaining teleportation stability.
And the three-person shared connection array used by Psionic sorcerers, who were spiritually sensitive and easily eroded by Abyss power, to prevent spiritual pollution, became their standard combat equipment at that time—as the saying goes, "one Psionic is a joke, two Psionics need caution, three Psionics means run directly," all because of its existence. As for morality and ethics, discuss that after defeating the demons.
And the Eastern Plains' automated construction puppets, in the previous life, had the full name "Fully Intelligent Automated Construction Template." Because of the tsunami that caused massive population loss among Eastern Plains spellcasters, they had to use alchemy puppets for farming, construction, and combat. Of course, that wasn't reform then, but desperation forced by being cornered.
These technologies, which were once combat trump cards or desperate substitutes, were now just immature concepts and speculations. In the previous life, they were top-secret technologies for war, but now people brought them out, improving and using them little by little as civilian technologies, making this world increasingly beautiful.
Of course, these were all human progress. For this world, there was another aspect requiring special attention.
That was the descent of the gods, and the Boundless Heaven.
Amidst Ying's protests, Joshua casually picked up a grape from the plate. He swallowed this improved magical plant from the Elf Clan, then casually looked up, his gaze penetrating the walls, looking at the sky.
In the western part of the world, there was a clearly visible distorted space, surrounded by holy radiance, like a gentle white moon.
The Boundless Heaven had completely merged into the Mycroft World. The inheritance engravings of the gods had all fallen into the mortal world. Divine Calamity Mist sought its inheritors in the human world, passing down ancient knowledge. These inheritances from the Era of Radiance might be somewhat inappropriate or even outdated in some places, but their subtlety was enough to make even current legendary experts nod in admiration.
Like during the early period of the Great Magic Tide, there was also quite a bit of Divine Calamity Mist within the Empire. But compared to the initial mystery and unknown, they now had the experience given by Joshua. Now, after a period of pioneering, these Divine Calamity Mists had become trial grounds located everywhere. Many organizations, including Winterfell Academy, used them as trials to temper the next generation—due to the effect of divine power, some lucky ones could occasionally bring out various precious materials and relics from the previous era.
Besides Divine Calamity Mist, the current Seven Gods and other racial gods had all revived from fatigue, but their revival was silent and traceless, like a drop of water merging into a river. In the Eastern Sea, countless Fishmen cheered and rejoiced because the god protecting the deep sea and mermaids had descended into the mortal world. A giant jellyfish drifted into the sea, entering the temple lair prepared by the Fishmen. This was the most high-profile god's descent; other gods' descent was silent, not even causing any ripples.
A week ago, the gods joined hands to display divine miracles. They swept across the Mycroft Continent with divine power, cleansing the accumulated gloom and deathly aura deposited by years of war. Countless undead were thus redeemed. These souls, sleeping in unknown dead lands, who died in war, died in conspiracy, died from desire and betrayal, were freed from resentment. In the all-embracing holy light, all souls returned to the distorted space at the top of the western mountain range—the Boundless Heaven.
Other than that, the gods had not acted again or displayed divine miracles.
Was this abnormal? For many ordinary people, this was indeed hard to understand, but actually, it was very normal—gods were not monkeys; gods didn't need to show their power to humans. They only needed to fulfill their duties, and people would naturally praise their names. The gods incarnated as saints and descended into the world, not to command wind and rain in the mortal realm, but to prevent this world from being destabilized by the magic tide.
But this didn't mean the gods did nothing. For example, in the Far South, one of the Seven Gods, the God of Love and Decay, descended at the location of the largest temple, which was also the forest of the Elf Clan. It was rumored that the Nature Mentor and the Fairy Empress met with this god and had an in-depth exchange that lasted many days.
To this day, no news had come from within the Elf Clan. They were tight-lipped about the content of the exchange.
Such things were actually happening everywhere in the world. Although the gods had no intention of making big news, their every move was watched by everyone. For example, the Western Mountain Dwarf Clan welcomed the God of Law and Freedom; the Sky-Piercing White Tower met with the God of Wisdom and Choice; and the Seven Gods Church, the Holy Mountain Fortress rose into the Void, connecting with the Saint's Eye, becoming the largest man-made facility outside the Mycroft World. It was rumored that all incarnations of the human Seven Gods had once spoken with Pope Eagle here, but no one knew what they discussed. Everything was moving in the shadows.
The differences between this life and the previous life were increasing. The originally despairing, chaotic world full of malice and strife had become so peaceful and positive. Technologies that developed rapidly in the previous life due to war, though having systems, were actually quite flawed. Now they appeared in incomplete forms, but Mycroft People no longer needed to drink poison to quench thirst. They had plenty of time to modify the flaws in these technologies, allowing them to reappear in the world as civilian technologies without side effects.
Northern Lands, Moldavia, Lord's Mansion. Joshua extended a finger and turned off the liquid crystal screen before him.
Seven days.
He touched Ying's head beside him. Smooth hair slid through the warrior's palm. The girl made comfortable humming sounds. Joshua closed his eyes and continued his meditation.
Seven days. In seven days, the incarnation of the God of Might and Justice would come to the Eastern Bant Highlands, wanting to meet with the Empire's three legendary experts. No one knew about this except the three of them: Joshua, Israel, and Nostradamus. The gods wanted to speak with them—what for?
The warrior was very curious. He could hardly wait. Closing his eyes, Joshua felt the power within his body.
[Steel Force Fusion Rate: 91%.]