# Chapter 8: The Missing Evil God and a Possible Experiment 7200
Most of the information in the database was publicly accessible.
During the Era of Radiance, the civilization's leaders, led by the Sages and the Gods, divided the permissions of all civilization members into seven levels. Ordinary people with military service and citizenship rights were Level Four. Those above and below were respectively divided into the 'Upper Three Levels' and the 'Lower Three Levels'.
For the Upper Three Levels, Level Five consisted of Ultimate-rank experts and regional rulers. Level Six included those approaching Legendary, on the verge of approaching godhood, or true Legendary experts, sub-god powerhouses, and leaders of large organizations. The highest, Level Seven, represented the supreme authority of the Gods and Sages, the leaders of a civilization.
For the Lower Three Levels, Level Three included tourists, ambassadors, and immigration applicants from other civilizations, who had access to some public facilities but could not enter certain important communities. Level Two consisted of refugees from other civilizations, who only had the right to stay in certain specific demi-planes. The lowest level was for minor criminals who could be reformed and were serving hard labor. They had no rights except for their penal labor, but once their reformation was confirmed and their sins were atoned for, they could be directly promoted to Level Four citizens.
Outside the seven-level permission system were the 'Untouchables'. This category included death row prisoners, Chaos-corrupted individuals, cultists, and various heinous criminals judged as 'unreformable', 'unassimilable', 'unusable', and 'valueless'—anti-social, anti-human, and anti-civilization elements. Their only outcome was a clean death, with no other possibilities.
Except for the division between the Upper and Lower Three Levels, which was separated by the barrier of citizenship class, the permission levels were not very useful in reality and were applied quite vaguely. However, for the Unified Grand Database, it was the only indicator for determining information reading permissions.
Ninety percent of the data could be read by Level 4 citizens. Only twelve percent of the data was open to temporary visitors from the Lower Three Levels, members of other nations, and serving criminals. The remaining ten percent—hidden, important information—could only be browsed by Ultimate-rank experts and those above them.
The humans of the Era of Falling Stars, because their bloodline was directly inherited from the Era of Radiance, were basically all granted the most basic Level 4 citizen permissions. Many of those with high strength even obtained Level 5 or Level 6 high-level permissions. For example, Joshua—without doing anything, just standing at the entrance, the Unified Grand Database directly granted him Level 6 permissions. According to him, if he wanted, he could immediately obtain a special permission called 'Sage's Inheritor'.
But Number 3 was different. Perhaps not many people knew or remembered this, but she had indeed obtained the inheritance rune of 'Sky God Gael' from the former Era of Radiance. She was the only being in the entire Falling Stars civilization, including Pope Eagle of the Church of the Seven Gods, who was not a deity but had obtained 'Level 7 Divine Permission'!
And the reason Number 3's eyes widened was that she had actually used her special permissions to find a considerable amount of 'hidden information' among the numerous materials related to Evil Gods!
"Magic images and videos of battles with Evil Gods! How did they preserve them?!"
The Artificial Intelligence Girl merely swept a single data chain over the directory and felt immense shock, because these important pieces of information hidden beneath a large amount of surface data were all first-person combat records! This was simply unbelievable, because according to everyone's current understanding, the existence of Evil Gods was indescribable and could not be recorded.
For example, when Joshua, Firefly, Lin, Black, and Loranda went to the Ilgena World and participated in the final battle between the Father of Nature and the Calamity Evil God, all five of them had witnessed the indescribable, extremely twisted 'Evil God Projection' behind that calamitous meteor. But to this day, no one could accurately describe or reproduce the image of the Calamity Evil God's projection. Even if Joshua opened his own memories and let the mental dominator William try to copy them, it was impossible.
But the Era of Radiance had clearly solved the 'Chaos Information Disturbance Effect' of the Evil Gods. They could use advanced technology to restore the indescribable Evil Gods into a form that 'could be described'!
Originally, Number 3 should have immediately notified the Legendary experts in other information storage halls, such as Barbarossa and Faina, to let them receive and transfer these most precious first-hand Evil God battle records. But the Artificial Intelligence Girl keenly noticed that these encrypted and sealed pieces of information seemed to be preserved in an extremely complex form. If she did not continuously observe them, these pieces of information would naturally collapse, disappear, and become invisible.
Number 3 had no way to guarantee that these materials would reappear, so she could only grit her teeth and continue reading by herself, while also sending out a semi-autonomous mana projection to notify the other Legendary experts.
Among the countless complex data, thousands upon thousands of images and pieces of information floated and fell. The first thing Number 3 saw was the war log of a certain Legendary expert from the former era.
[Day 41 of the Total War: The reinforcement force heading to the Carlis World was ambushed by the 'Famine' Evil God. The flagship 'Transcendence' was swept into a space-time vortex. Over 134,000 people were devoured by Chaos. The 9th Independent Army was routed... All surrounding worlds have now fallen. All adjacent space-time domains have been sealed off. We have completely lost our channels of communication with the outside world.]
[Day 288 of the Total War: The Seventh Abyss was destroyed. His Majesty Gael extinguished the sun of that Abyss, turning the entire world into an extreme ice prison, using absolute zero to block 1.7 million demon reinforcements. These remnants who collude with Chaos don't even think—they are also life forms. Their worlds might have also been destroyed by Evil Gods. Why do they help the damned Evil Gods destroy orderly civilizations?!]
[His Majesty Gael was ambushed by an Evil God. His fate is unknown. Fortunately, the Winged Legion did not rout. They even want to launch a counterattack—but the current situation cannot tolerate the existence of passion and hatred. We must calmly hold the Fairy Fortress. Otherwise, the Chaos minions, a hundred times our number, will trample all our determination and glory.]
[Day 532 of the Total War: Another world was drained dry by the Earth God. The fire at the world's core was completely extinguished. The surface became as pale as a burned-out torch. But all this is to resist Chaos. At least we have migrated all the unenlightened primitive races into the Sanctuary... If we don't drain this world's energy, the Evil God will devour it all anyway. We are not wrong.]
[We drained the energy of another sun to withstand the impact of the 'Imbalance' and 'Decay' Evil Gods... Ha, the surrounding star domain is dark and dim. Even if the war is won, the once magnificent and spectacular Thousand Star Domain will turn into pitch black.]
[...The Sage has returned! He killed the Plenty Evil God at the lowest level of the Abyss! But the Sage looks very bad. He was escorted by the Saints into the 'Genesis Nexus'. The Mother of All Things is unprecedentedly serious... My God, without the Sage, we would never have been able to win in this desperate situation. I hope everything is safe.]
[The trumpet for the counterattack has sounded. Everything I hold dear... If I could return home...]
After the brief log came many scattered images and videos. These should have been the battle scenes and recordings of this Era of Radiance Legendary expert during the 'counterattack' period. Because the battle log had no follow-up, it was obvious that he had died in this counterattack.
Of course, it was also possible that he didn't die. After all, the Unified Grand Database was knocked into the periphery of the dark star domain before the war even ended. Perhaps the database was knocked away during this great counterattack, so naturally, there would be no subsequent records.
Number 3 sighed silently in her heart. She 'flipped through' the endless data stream and continued browsing the specific information of this counterattack.
To this day, the Era of Falling Stars did not have a very good understanding of the specific circumstances of that war. They couldn't even imagine what methods the Mycroft Civilization of the Era of Radiance used to fight and win against the endless Evil Gods and their minions. Now, they could finally learn a little from the hidden information in the Unified Grand Database.
Although the Era of Radiance seemed to have solved the Chaos disturbance problem of the Evil Gods, due to energy fluctuations, perspective issues, and other factors, many battle images were extremely unclear, or the perspectives were very strange, making it impossible to obtain much valuable information. Number 3 flipped through thousands of photos and videos before barely finding a few images and recordings that were somewhat viewable.
This was the frontal battlefield of a battle with an unknown Evil God. One could see high-energy flames burning in the sky. Huge wreckages of Void Warships were falling from the sky. Under the gray-black sky, large, writhing, twisted, and amorphous shadows hung—the sun had already gone out. This world was destined to perish. But in its final moments, the dazzling energy radiance emitted by both sides of the war illuminated every corner of the world, making it brighter than at any time in the past.
First Image:
Five extremely bright energy points, comparable to the sun, floated in mid-air. The existence represented by the camera itself should be the sixth. They were charging towards a huge, rotating black energy vortex that had already occupied most of the sky. The intense high-energy fluctuations even caused the surrounding mountains to collapse. The extremely high heat and strong radiation melted most of the mountain bodies, turning them into surging lava.
Second Image:
Amidst the chaotic energy debris, the four tethers of the black vortex were shattered by the combined efforts of the light points. The central dark Chaos field was directly pierced, revealing a hazy, indistinguishable dark cloud mass at the center.
It was surrounded by three rings of material rings, like planetary rings, on which twisted and evil runic light paths leaped. At this time, the cloud mass released a large amount of deep black ripples, attacking everything around it indiscriminately. The existence represented by the camera raised its hand, propping up a semi-transparent defensive barrier, seemingly trying to block the invasion of those ripples.
Third Image:
The perspective suddenly changed. It seemed that the camera owner was knocked to the ground. With the already scorched black, still fiercely burning flame earth as the background, one could see that only one of the other five light points was still struggling to hold on amidst the dark ripples. The others had all been knocked down to various parts of the world. But the most strange thing was not this—after all, the opponent was an Evil God, no matter how strong, it was not surprising. What was truly puzzling was the hand of the camera owner. Originally, one could see that it was a pair of weathered, middle-aged hands, broad and powerful. But now, what was seen in the camera was a pair of hands that seemed to belong to an underage boy or girl—slender, fair, and completely lacking any strength.
The camera owner's current action was trying to stand up. One could see him using his hands to support the ground. But this action, which was very easy for an ordinary person, had now become extremely difficult.
Fourth Image:
All the light points were knocked down, but three more light points flew up. The hazy vortex hanging in the sky had now become very bright. Its core turned into a mass of silver-gray light mist. However, strangely, after the cloud mass at the core of the black vortex turned silver-gray, it stopped all attacks. It even allowed the three light points to unleash all kinds of terrifying attacks on it without any reaction.
It seemed to have fallen into a strange state of stagnation, until it was almost about to be destroyed.
When Number 3 saw this, her entire soul core's operation stalled for a moment. Because based on her extremely rich experience, that mass of silver-gray light mist was extremely similar to Joshua's Steel Force—or rather, it was Steel Force! The Artificial Intelligence Girl, who had seen the warrior use Steel Force countless times, could confirm her judgment.
But why? Obviously, those light points were the Legendary and sub-god powerhouses of the Era of Radiance world. And the hazy cloud mass at the center of the black vortex was undoubtedly the main body of a powerful Evil God. Several Legendary experts charged to their deaths, only shattering its outer barrier. With just a slight counterattack, it knocked all the Legendary experts to the ground, even making them young and weak.
But how could such an Evil God suddenly generate such a vast amount of Steel Force? And after generating this Steel Force, why did it suddenly stop and allow other Legendary experts to launch destructive attacks on it?
"Damn it, why don't you guys hurry up and reply!"
With countless doubts in her heart, Number 3 desperately hoped that the other Legendary experts, or rather, that Joshua, would receive the notification from her other projection bodies and come to the Unified Grand Database early to watch these images and information with her. She vaguely sensed an unusual flavor from these seemingly ordinary images and photos.
Then, after saving those images, the Artificial Intelligence Girl opened the following recordings.
First Recording:
Accompanied by passionate war cries and the harsh wind sounds brought by the changes in heaven and earth, one silver pillar of light after another fell from the sky, striking the ground and creating huge cracks. These cracks went straight to the world's core. One could see that at the core, where the energy had been drained, the magma had originally cooled and solidified. But with the fall of the silver pillars of light, the cooled core furnace actually showed signs of re-igniting and restarting.
"The 'Decay' Evil God has changed its form? This is a phenomenon that has never been observed before. It seems it can no longer distort the form of matter and revert our bodies to a weaker state. It can only use these meaningless strange energy pillars of light... Now's the chance!"
In the noisy battlefield, one could clearly hear an unknown Legendary expert shouting loudly: "Charge with me! Move forward against the pillars of light!"
Second Recording:
Around the increasingly bright Evil God cloud mass, it no longer looked like a black vortex. Instead, it resembled a dark gray planetary ring, with strange rainbow-colored halos flowing on it. A total of nine Legendary experts regrouped and began to rapidly approach this Evil God named 'Decay' again. Meanwhile, the ground forces were using various terrifying and advanced mana weapons to block and hinder the Evil God's minions from interfering with the powerhouses' battle. But everyone was surprised to find, seconds later, that these Evil God minions, which originally floated in mid-air like dark clouds covering the sky and earth, began to dissipate in large numbers, turning into black light points and disappearing without a trace.
"What's going on? The Chaos reaction is dropping rapidly, and the minions are all self-destructing?"
"Is this Evil God committing suicide? Could its name be 'Self-Destruction'?!"
A loud voice with a heavy dwarf accent echoed through the psychic network, vibrating in the minds of all the Legendary experts. But no one glared at this noisy fellow, because everyone was shocked by the Evil God's inexplicable behavior.
Third Recording:
The battlefield had already left the world and entered the Void. The excessively powerful energy light currents made the dark and barren Void also become colorful and splendid. Nearly ten Legendary experts rapidly followed behind a silver 'meteor'. This meteor should be the main body of the so-called 'Decay' Evil God. But for some reason, its originally chaotic and formless cloud image had turned into a silver meteor radiating the aura of Steel Force. This immediately gave it a physical form and countless weaknesses.
After years of war, the camera owner and his comrades naturally would not miss this opportunity. At this time, the Decay Evil God could no longer use its signature Decay Ripples to revert its enemies to a very weak state. Losing this most core Chaos ability, the Decay Evil God, which was not very powerful to begin with, naturally could not resist the attacks of many Legendary experts and Void fleets. So it immediately chose to flee to the edge of this World Star River.
"The Decay Evil God is routed!"
"We have driven back an Evil God!"
"It's too special—the Central Chaos Research Institute hopes we can track the Decay Evil God's whereabouts. It would be best to obtain some living tissue! An Evil God that can convert Chaos and Steel Force—this is an unprecedented situation!"
In the recording, many light points gathered together, including the camera owner. They brought their troops and warships and rapidly advanced towards the direction of the weakened Evil God.
The video ended.
All information came to an abrupt halt.
Number 3 stubbornly continued to flip through other images and recordings. But in the end, she had to admit that the third clear recording was the final scene. A total of nine Legendary experts, leading their Void fleets, pursued a strange, heavily injured Evil God. After that, there was no news at all.
Perhaps it was because the Unified Grand Database was knocked away. Perhaps they were ambushed by other Chaos Evil Gods during the pursuit and were completely annihilated. There might be other possibilities. But just based on this matter alone, everything had ended.
"...What's going on? That's it?"
Number 3 looked incredulously at the number of the hall she was in, Information Hall 447. Obviously, this was not the last storage hall of the Unified Grand Database. Hall 551 was the final record before the Unified Grand Database was knocked away. This meant that the great counterattack lasted for a very long time, and the various war information and Evil God information that occurred during that period was unimaginably vast. But precisely because of this, Number 3 found it extremely strange.
A full nine Legendary experts, along with information about a heavily injured Evil God, seemed to have been completely and deliberately ignored. In the subsequent information, there was neither any information about the reappearance of these nine Legendary experts, nor any announcement about the killing of a certain Evil God. The 'Decay' Evil God was not even among the previous twenty-one titled Evil Gods. It was a special Evil God, deliberately concealed within historical information!
This was extremely unbelievable. Because for some unknown reason, the Decay Evil God had generated a large amount of Steel Force from Chaos. This conversion of Chaos and Order was exactly what the Sage had pursued in the past. There was no reason for the powerhouses of the Era of Radiance to not pay attention... No.
Perhaps, it was precisely because the Sage and the Gods paid too much attention to this 'Decay' Evil God that there was no 'after' after that. Even the Unified Grand Database was kept in the dark, making it a truly top-secret piece of information.
Think about it. Nine Legendary experts who mysteriously disappeared on the battlefield, along with a heavily injured Evil God... Number 3 couldn't help but wonder what kind of secret was hidden behind this deliberately obscured history.
Thump, thump, thump.
Not long after, continuous footsteps came from outside the 447th Information Storage Hall. With a knock on the door, Number 3 opened it. Three Legendary spellcasters—Baniel, Barbarossa, and Faina—entered together. They approached with puzzled expressions, wondering why Number 3 had sent an urgent notification to call them over.
"Lady Number 3, what earth-shattering news have you discovered?"
Baniel was not Joshua. Facing an Artificial Intelligence older than himself, he naturally addressed her as 'Lady'. This Rune Master habitually made a joke: "Could it be that you found a treasure map left by the Sage, or obtained the magical cultivation method he practiced back then? That would be quite a significant discovery."
Number 3 naturally did not respond to such stiff small talk. She directly sent the important information she had retrieved to all the Legendary experts present.
At first, everyone was dismissive. A battle log from a Legendary expert of the Era of Radiance—although it filled in many historical gaps and provided numerous war records, it was all in the past. No matter how important, it couldn't be that important. In terms of value, it might not even be as good as an ancient Transcendent cultivation method.
But as they read on, seeing the nine Legendary experts tracking the heavily injured Evil God and disappearing into the Void, everyone's expressions became serious.
"Wait, you mean there is no further information about these nine Legendary experts and the Evil God after that?"
Barbarossa browsed through the data again and again, but that was the fact. No matter how many times he flipped through it, he couldn't find the data he imagined. This extremely intelligent spellcaster's gaze immediately sharpened: "We have a list of Evil Gods that have been eliminated, and the names of Evil Gods that are still alive. But 'Decay' is not among either..."
"It might have been eliminated, or it might still be alive... But it definitely did not disappear into thin air."
Faina frowned deeply. The Sage lady said in a low voice: "According to Lord Count Radcliffe, the reason the Steel Serpent of our Mycroft World was corrupted by Chaos was precisely because the Sage and the Steel Serpent conducted an experiment regarding 'the mutual conversion of Order and Chaos'—the result of the experiment was not good. The Steel Serpent was corrupted and nearly fell. But the result was also not bad. The world, which was on the verge of collapse, regained a period of Order and was recently completely repaired by Lord Count Radcliffe."
"Obviously, even the Sage would not be arrogant enough to casually conduct an experiment on the conversion of Chaos and Order on a whim. He must have obtained inspiration from somewhere, conducted some preliminary experiments, and only after having some successful examples would he use this method to repair the Mycroft World."
Baniel took over the conversation. He said thoughtfully: "Without a doubt, the strange change that occurred in this 'Decay' Evil God should be the source of inspiration for the Sage... It must be dead already, at least used as experimental material by the Sage. The question is, where did the Sage conduct the experiment? Can we find the location of His laboratory? Does the 'Decay' Evil God still have remains that we can use to continue our research?"
Everyone present nodded in agreement. After the final battle back then, the Sage could not have left the Mycroft World too far. At least, he could not have left this World Star River. He must have conducted several experiments regarding Order and Chaos in some secret place unknown to other life forms... After all, the war had just ended at that time. Even the Sage probably didn't want to deliberately stimulate the fragile nerves of all races by attempting to touch the power of Chaos.
Although it was just a guess, this guess was still reasonable and could match the information and historical processes known to everyone. Since that was the case, it was better to treat this guess as true and proceed with further deductions.
During the deductions of the many Legendary experts, although Number 3 did not speak, she also had a rather bold idea in her mind.
—Although I don't know why, but if the Chaos pollution caused by the Evil Gods can really be restored to Order... then those polluted and eroded worlds, such as the Carlis World, which still has large expanses of deserts and sand plains, might truly be able to be genuinely repaired into normal Order worlds?
The Sage failed back then because the time left for His experiment was too short. The dying Mycroft World did not give Him any extra opportunity. Now, although the time left for the Mycroft Civilization is also not abundant, at least it can try...
This process would definitely be extremely difficult, even very dangerous. But if one does not try, difficulty will always be difficulty, and danger will always be danger. Someone always has to take that step and explore in this direction.
"At least."
The Artificial Intelligence closed her eyes. The girl sighed once again in her heart: "This is one of the few things I can do for my homeland."
...Time passed.
Just as the three Legendary spellcasters had left Hall 447 and headed to the information libraries with subsequent numbers to see if they could retrieve any clues regarding the 'Decay' Evil God and the Sage's mysterious whereabouts, accompanied by an obvious space-time fluctuation, heavy footsteps echoed in the corridors of the Unified Grand Database.
Number 3, who was still continuing data transmission, turned around in surprise. After a not-so-long wait, a familiar voice sounded outside the door of Information Hall 447.
"An urgent message all of a sudden really startled me... Number 3, what's wrong?"
The door opened. Joshua, who had arrived a step late, immediately reached out to catch the Artificial Intelligence Girl who suddenly pounced and hugged his waist. He blinked, somewhat puzzled, and asked: "What do you need me for?"