Chapter 34: The Abyss of Heaven
At the center of the dark galaxy, all the jubilant Chaos Minions suddenly ceased their every action, and as if by a single command, they ‘turned their heads’ to look in one direction.
That direction was pitch black, devoid of any light. The brilliant radiance blooming tens of thousands of light-years away would require tens of thousands of years to arrive here. By then, the relentless stream of near-light-speed particle flows and gravitational waves, carried by warped space, would annihilate everything along their path—but that was a matter for tens of thousands of years hence. The light cone of the event had not yet reached this place. For those beings in the distant beyond, this event had not yet occurred; it did not exist.
Unless they possessed superluminal perception, or superluminal scouts, or, quite simply, an unreasonable void warning from beyond the world.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—
In the vacuum, warp rings of varying sizes flickered to life. The torrential tide of Chaos Minions began to reorganize their formations. Their numbers were vast enough to shroud entire star systems, like a nebula blocking off domains measured in light-years—a tide of malevolence nurtured by the hundreds of billions of stars of an entire galaxy. If unleashed, it could drown all things.
Now, these monsters were rapidly shuttling through space, forming a colossal cluster fortress, a flesh-and-blood structure akin to a cosmic Great Wall. In the vacuum, stellar-level Chaos Mother Beasts adjusted their coordinates via warp micro-adjustments, forming the foundation stones of this wall. These beings of staggering size began to release subordinate Chaos Minions of varying sizes and shapes, serving as the bricks and mortar of the wall… If one had to describe it, it was like a school of sardines circling a coral reef in the deep ocean—a sky-covering mass of Chaos Monsters linked to one another, forming an incredibly sturdy living fortress.
If so-called order was the society of ants and bees, then the Chaos Evil Gods could also be called order. Witnessing this perfectly synchronized scene, even the most meticulous human commander would be shamed into utter self-abasement. If their command was akin to controlling a human body to perform ballet, then the Evil God’s command of its minions was probably like a micro-managing Transcendent controlling its own flesh and blood cells to reorganize a brand-new organ.
One could see, at one corner of this immense formation, a cluster of hundreds of billions of Chaos Minions released a powerful energy field, creating a diffuse magnetic light in the vacuum. This section of the Chaos Great Wall was under the illumination of a giant star at the galactic core. This star possessed seventy-five times the mass of an ordinary yellow main-sequence star, and its luminosity was seven million times that of a normal star.
The magnetic field of the Chaos cluster collided with the solar wind of this giant star, creating an auroral ring over eighty million kilometers in diameter.
Within this dazzling, flowing cosmic aurora, even a star was nothing more than a rolling glass bead. Planets were as insignificant as dust, their atmospheres and crusts torn apart by the violent magnetic field, roasted and ignited, becoming unremarkable red sparks against the magnificent backdrop.
At this moment, the Evil Gods and their minions were fully prepared.
And then they were annihilated.
In an instant—or even less—the speed of warped space was hundreds of times the speed of light, or even faster superluminal travel. Even within warped space, the cruising speed was close to ninety-five percent of light speed.
But any life form without ‘superluminal thought’ was destined to be unable to comprehend or see this scene—two ‘bowling balls,’ one emitting silver light and the other silver-blue light, cleanly and decisively crashed into the pin formation of trillions upon trillions of Chaos Minions, effortlessly smashing everything in their path into elementary particles.
At this speed of impact, even interstellar dust would trigger nuclear reactions, let alone the incredibly dense Chaos Minion cluster. One could see countless materials instantly shattered and fused, creating a continuous chain of nuclear reactions. Even atoms, neutrons, and protons were smashed. Directly in front of the two ‘bowling balls,’ at the point of direct collision with the Minion cluster, a thick, turbid quark-gluon plasma splattered like a burst water jet, creating a vast aftershock spanning two hundred light-seconds.
In that moment, there was only light.
At one corner of the magnificent Chaos Great Wall, a ring of light was expanding at light speed, like a spark igniting and growing on a black curtain. The exaggerated energy surge in an instant approached the limit temperature of the Big Bang. Countless Minions and Behemoths, without any awareness, were blasted into drifting particle clouds in the cosmos.
[Prompt: Based on calculations, we have arrived at the central region of the galaxy, the location of the Evil God.]
The voice of the Triple Veil sounded within the mental world.
“I also felt like we hit something just now.”
Sensing this, Joshua began to gradually decelerate from warped space, returning to normal cosmic space. He sensed the surrounding situation and the location of the Evil God—he discovered the Minion cluster he had plowed through, and the endless Chaos Monsters, without any hesitation, surging in from all directions. He raised an eyebrow. “Basically confirmed.”
“We have indeed arrived.”
Saying this, Joshua’s first left hand tightened its grip on a weapon—a giant sword, formless and intangible, composed entirely of pure warped space, a ‘gravitational well’ condensed together. At this moment, facing the silver-blue orb that was the avatar of the Triple Veil, the Giant God raised it high.
—Last time, in the Starry World, facing millions of Chaos Minions, he had worried that the enemy was too numerous to deal with easily.
But now, even if the entire galaxy, all the ‘weaklings’ of the entire Starry World, came to besiege him, it would mean nothing.
Five fingers clenched, merging with gravity, Joshua calmly faced the Chaos Minions that filled almost all three hundred and sixty degrees of his vision. Without giving them any chance to attack, the Giant God raised the Gravity Sword and heavily swung it down into the vacuum.
Then, space-time began to warp. Light, which normally travels in straight lines, was bent into a vortex-like anomaly. Rotating light, rays, and electromagnetic waves spread out at light speed in all directions, forming an insurmountable iron wall.
All Chaos Minions that touched this warped space-time, regardless of size, whether larger than a star or as fine as dust, were sucked into the gravity barrier like a deep well, then shredded by the cascading gravity vortex. Endless darkness surged in, but instead of obscuring the seemingly insignificant silver point, it was like lemmings rushing into the sea for mass suicide, filling the bottomless abyss, the millstone that grinds all things into nothing.
But this was merely the prelude, like the preparation before throwing a punch. After a period of time, having confirmed that enough energy had accumulated, Joshua, at the center of the space-time vortex, casually swung the giant sword, then released his fingers and tossed it upward.
Then, the giant sword exploded.
Simultaneously, the space-time vortex, which had already grown to a diameter exceeding seven hundred light-seconds, also exploded. In that instant, one could see formless, intangible waves sweeping outward like a tsunami. All Chaos Minions that came into contact with these waves were helplessly flung in directions they themselves did not know, like water droplets caught in a tsunami.
One could see the magnificent Chaos Great Wall beginning to collapse from its center. The incredible gravitational slingshot effect was flinging all the Minions away one by one, casting them aside. The aftershocks spread, even twisting a section of the Chaos Great Wall into a pretzel shape before sequentially hurling it to who-knows-where. The Minions struggled helplessly in this vast gravitational sea, but with their power, they could at best ensure they didn’t die too ugly a death.
[Prompt: Chaos density has been reduced to 26.43563% of the initial value.]
The dense Minion cluster had been scattered, but this was not the entirety of Joshua’s offensive. With the Gravity Sword detonated, Joshua’s second right arm raised. It extended, and he made an empty grasping motion towards a nearby giant star that had been twisted into a wave-like shape by the gravitational tide.
“Sword, come!”
The giant star, whose total mass was close to half of the Giant God’s own, began to tremble violently. This celestial body, over thirty-seven million kilometers in diameter and already beginning to collapse, completely disintegrated, rapidly undergoing supernova transformation. But the power to incinerate everything, the supernova reaction unfolding at its core capable of creating heavy metals, was perfectly controlled by an individual. Endless light, flames, and near-light-speed high-energy particle storms began to take shape in the vacuum, coalescing into a sword of the Abyss of Heaven that spanned darkness and light!
Boom—The shaped and condensed blade began to extend at light speed in the vacuum. Along the path of the light blade were countless ignited Chaos Minions. Golden-red flames leaped and spread, triggering a chain of explosions.
Joshua swung the light sword in his hand, performing a flourish in the vacuum. The Supernova Sword traced an exceptionally complex, whip-like arc of explosions in the vacuum, yet the blade showed no sign of stopping its expansion. If not halted by the Giant God, it would have spread for dozens of light-years, becoming a true sword of the Abyss of Heaven that cleaves the stars.
But it didn’t need to wait until then. Joshua calmly swung the Supernova Sword in his hand, charging into the already scattered Chaos Minion cluster, wantonly creating destruction and ruin.
No one knew how many Chaos Minions were annihilated in this segment.
Meanwhile, the neutron star core that hadn’t fully reacted from the giant star was extracted separately. It orbited Joshua like a satellite, rotating around the four-armed Giant God. Not only that, but during the previous period of warped space travel across vast distances, all the stellar cores Joshua had shattered were orbiting him. Dozens of neutron stars and white dwarfs, large and small, revolved, creating gravitational well-like indentations in the vacuum.
Their purpose was initially unknown, but soon, as a Chaos impact from an unknown source solidly struck a rapidly rotating white dwarf and was directly deflected, their significance became obvious.
It was Joshua’s outer defense system.
“Evil God?”
Even Joshua only detected the enemy’s presence after being attacked. He wasn’t surprised by this. In fact, if the enemy couldn’t even manage this, it would likely have been sliced into elementary particles by his Supernova Sword’s wild strikes. So the Giant God turned his head, looking towards the source of the attack.
In the not-so-distant sea of fire from the still-exploding Chaos Minions, a dazzling crystalline twenty-four-faced polyhedron flickered with the turbid, dim nebula light within, exuding an undisguised malice of despair.
-Evil God·Famine-
The white dwarf hit by the previous Chaos impact had ceased its rotation and movement. Its light had turned into a dead black, like the residue after cooling for hundreds of trillions of years. It slipped out of Joshua’s outer defense system and shattered, becoming a cloud of chaotic particles… In that instant, the gravity and electron degeneracy pressure maintaining the entire star dissipated, along with all its heat and angular momentum.
Without any words or hesitation, facing this Evil God, an old acquaintance, what Joshua could do, and had already done, was swing the Supernova Sword in his hand and directly bring it down upon its head.
The already extended burning light sword, spanning thousands of light-seconds, lashed out like a whip towards the distant Famine Evil God, that dazzling crystalline core. Joshua didn’t ponder why this remnant of the ancient Crystal Insect Uldamas civilization appeared in a form so utterly un-insect-like. He needed to attack, to probe its various abilities and data, and then, destroy them.
Soon, the Giant God understood why the Famine Evil God appeared in this form.
Facing the lashing sword of the Abyss of Heaven, the crystalline core showed no intention of moving. It merely released an intangible wave, causing all the surrounding burning explosion aftershocks, and the Chaos Minions flung by the aftershocks, to rapidly cool, dissipate, and turn into cosmic dust.
—Famine needs no form. It only needs to sate its hunger, only needs to devour everything it can devour.
Rotating its twenty-four-faceted body, the Famine Evil God actively met the sword of the Abyss of Heaven, and then, like a bottomless, profound pit, devoured all light and heat.
Amidst the raging flames, under Joshua’s raised-eyebrow gaze, the supernova flames plunged into the Evil God’s body. Endless energy was devoured and absorbed. The twenty-four-faceted polyhedron spun rapidly, spewing out turbid, dark-gold energy weapons. In an instant, an enormous dark-gold crystal insect, adorned with flame patterns, took shape. Its form resembled a dragonfly. Its wings, half an astronomical unit long, grazed a small star, smoothly slicing it in half, causing it to explode, and then devouring it into nothingness.
Magnificent, dazzling, exquisitely crafted—more like a meticulously carved work of art than an Evil God—the Famine Evil God, having absorbed endless energy, vibrated its crystal wings and launched an attack, charging straight towards Joshua’s location.
But at that moment, Joshua had already charged forward. The warrior of warped space was even faster than the Famine Evil God.
“Famine?”
The Giant God’s face showed no expression. His four arms had discarded all weapons—replaced by several neutron stars emitting intense pulses. Joshua’s attack was simple and direct. Facing the similarly charging Famine Evil God, he brought his four palms together before his chest, forcibly pressing the neutron stars together, like kneading a few compressed biscuits.
“Love to eat, do you?”
The Oppenheimer limit was cleanly and decisively crossed. A singularity took shape. One could see a dazzling flash of light appear for an instant, then transform into a twisted darkness—the final darkness of doom tore at space-time, causing even light to fall. One could see a pitch-black gravitational well, surrounded by an incredibly brilliant halo, like a total solar eclipse, appearing between the Giant God’s four palms, before his chest.
“Go and compete with a black hole to see who can eat more.”