On the Castro Continent, the Great Catastrophe turned a once peaceful world into a bloody hell. Demons ravaged the land, and humanity’s plight was utterly miserable.
Demons, a ferocious race never before seen on the continent, hideous creatures born from the void. Human power seemed so small and hopeless before them…
Yet on the Sin Continent, Ye Chui and his group remained completely unaware of it.
Ninety days after the Great Catastrophe, Ye Chui and his companions had also spent ninety days in the middle-layer world.
At this moment, they were in a jungle filled with blooming flowers, surrounded by beautiful scenery, with enchanting fragrances drifting everywhere. Green, looking tense, was cooking a meal. Flames burned fiercely around a strange object. It appeared strange because it was not whole. Most of it was hidden in the void, with only a small portion exposed. The boundary between the object and the void shimmered with cyan light. Green was using space magic, storing the roasting item in a pocket of space and exposing only a small part to the flames.
He would eat one portion, then roast the next. Though the fire was small, Green’s cooking could satisfy the appetites of over a hundred people around it…
More than a hundred people were enjoying the barbecue. Besides Ye Chui, his close companions, Cass, Loss, Merlin, and others, countless new partners had joined them in the past three months.
Now they were all citizens of the Stan world. Their divine inheritances had been absorbed by the Stan artefact, placed under Ye Chui’s control as his lower inheritances.
Ye Chui called these inheritors of the divine race the Temple of All Gods.
An upgraded version of the Temple of Gods.
Green alone could feed so many mouths, and he wielded space magic without any auxiliary grimoire. This showed how powerful he had become, though applying such mighty space magic solely to barbecuing felt a bit wasteful.
Green had now formally inherited the legacy of the God of Space.
In three months, Ye Chui had led the Stan world to conquer domain after domain. With his iPad’s help, he had fully unified all divine domains in the middle-layer world. The place where Ye Chui, his domain warriors, and Temple of All Gods members now stood was the final stop of this campaign, the last domain to resist yet ultimately fall to Ye Chui’s absorption.
The Barbaric Beast Domain.
It bore this name because it housed a terrifying barbaric magical beast, the domain’s master.
The beast was originally a seventh-tier black wolf, but after inheriting the legacy of the mid-tier Barbaric God, it had become immensely powerful.
Yet the Barbaric God was merely a subordinate deity of the God of All Beasts. When Ye Chui’s group arrived, it had little room to fight back. Now Green was barbecuing its carcass.
Admittedly, the beast had been ferocious, unreasonable, and hot-tempered, but its meat was tender and rich in magic, leaving a lingering fragrance on the lips and teeth. Simply grilled without extra seasoning, one bite sent flavours that could make the soul soar.
Everyone who ate it declared it delicious.
“The middle-layer world is fully conquered. Next comes the upper-layer world.” Ye Chui, fresh from a brutal battle, sat with his companions enjoying the food. The battle had indeed been brutal. The beast’s body was even larger than Turtle Treasure’s original form, and butchering it had been exhausting…
“When do you plan to enter the upper-layer world, Ye Chui?” Debbie asked.
At her words, the others turned to Ye Chui. Lesha, Gwen, and the rest were simply curious about his next move, while the War God’s successor and others waited reverently for his instructions.
The Temple of Gods had existed for three hundred years, founded by the War God’s successor’s grandfather (divine inheritors lived longer). The grandfather’s dying wish had remained unfulfilled across generations, yet Ye Chui had accomplished in three months what they could not in three centuries. This left the War God’s successor and his peers utterly convinced.
He was the one prophesied to break the chains binding the Sin Continent.
“Soon,” Ye Chui replied, wiping oil from his mouth.
He had made extensive preparations over this time. Using the iPad’s [Beep Beep Become a God] ability, he had turned many around him into divine inheritors. Among his close companions, Lesha and Green aside, Celty had been directly elevated to Goddess of Beauty.
This goddess governed the appearance of countless girls, a lower deity subordinate to the Faceless God, but Celty cared not at all and was instead very proud. Her greatest ability after becoming an inheritor was to alter a person’s appearance, making her a divine plastic surgeon, capable even of body reshaping with ease.
Unfortunately, even her divine power could not add any fullness to the stubbornly flat figures of Debbie, Gwen, and Salome.
“Just as my baldness is the will of the great universe, your flat chest must be too,” Green seized the chance to console Debbie.
Merlin received the inheritance of the God of Chaos from Ye Chui, another space-related mid-tier god. Merlin had also reunited with the female magician who had shared his love-hate history, and they now leaned affectionately together.
Additionally, Cass received the Brave God’s inheritance, Loss the Female Warrior God’s, and no acquaintance was overlooked. Divine inheritances were handed out like cabbages.
Legend said that when the God of All Gods first obtained sealing power, he had done the same, once granting the God of Joy position to a waiter who served him well at a restaurant.
Of course, Ye Chui’s current sealing power could only grant existing inheritances.
Dragon Treasure and Baby had originally been divine entities, merely weakened. Re-granting them inheritances greatly boosted their strength.
What frustrated Ye Chui was Celty. Her headless state seemed eternal. Domain theme packs could not affect her, nor could Ye Chui’s sealing power grant her a new body. This left Celty depressed for a long time.
Ye Chui felt regret too.
In Celty’s words, among the divine race, the God of All Gods had been the strongest fighter, followed by the two Wealth Goddesses, then the Destruction Goddess. Her own Undead Ferryman ranked only fifth.
During the large-scale granting of inheritances, Ye Chui discovered something odd.
Among the divine race, upper gods were the rarest. He had tried to find inheritors for every upper god. While conquering a domain called the Divine Book Domain, he met an elderly scholar of profound knowledge whose wisdom was astounding. In every way, he seemed the perfect inheritor for the Goddess of Wisdom, so Ye Chui attempted to grant him that inheritance.
Yet [Beep Beep Become a God] offered no option for Goddess of Wisdom.
“Could the Goddess of Wisdom not have fallen?” Ye Chui wondered.
The Goddess of Wisdom was called Freya, a half-human, half-elf goddess and one of the God of All Gods’ women.
The barbecue feast continued.
“Who will you choose to accompany you into the upper-layer world?” The War God’s successor exchanged glances with his original Temple companions, asking with anticipation clear in their eyes.
The upper-layer world was essentially a battlefield, similar in nature to the trials and battles of the lower layers. When the number of entrants reached a threshold, it would automatically activate. Multiple divine inheritors would fight within, and the final victor would claim ultimate victory in the War of Gods.
However, the War of Gods was not so brutal as to require everyone or every team to die until only one remained. Victory came when one person defeated all others and teams, becoming the upper inheritor over everyone.
The victor’s rewards included artefacts, Divine Orders, and other precious items. Participants also received artefact parts or divine inheritance fragments based on performance.
The middle-layer world’s artefacts had originated from the upper-layer War of Gods battlefield.
But now Ye Chui had absorbed every domain, making him effectively the upper inheritor over all. Entering the upper layer would naturally grant him final victory.
The War of Gods, for Ye Chui, was already over.
According to the War God’s successor, the Magic Emperor had once done the same, becoming upper inheritor over all and finding the chance to leave the Sin Continent.
Thus, this entry into the upper layer would decide the Sin Continent’s ultimate fate.
The War God’s successor and others naturally hoped to witness the moment personally.
Yet after brief thought, Ye Chui smiled at his familiar close companions.
Debbie, Green, Lesha, Gwen, Celty, Salome, Dragon Treasure, Baby, Turtle Treasure, Celty. Since leaving Stan Town, they had accompanied him through adventure after adventure. Now the journey seemed nearing its end, and he wanted them by his side.
Seeing Ye Chui’s gaze, Debbie and the others immediately understood. Green grinned. “President, we’ll always be with you. You wouldn’t have made it this far without us.”
“Then let’s eat heartily and set off soon!” Ye Chui said with a laugh.
…
The Stan world had now grown immensely vast. All middle-layer domains had fused with it. The original Stan Town sat at the centre, surrounded by the Green Forest world, Bovine Plains world, Buried Sword Land, and others. The ladder of light pillar stood in the Green Forest’s heart. As domains were absorbed, the pillar’s position shifted several times, and temples were built around it.
Ye Chui and his close companions prepared, carrying ample super magic scrolls. Amid expectant gazes, they entered the temple.
As they stepped into the ladder of light, their bodies gradually blurred and faded, soon vanishing completely from view.
During this, Ye Chui’s consciousness briefly spun. When he came to, he found himself in a cosy wooden cabin.
“Here…”
Bookshelves lined the walls, filling the room with a subtle scent of paper. Through the wooden window, he saw a meadow covered in flowers, with cute small animals scampering about.
Everything felt warm and perfect.
Inside the cabin was a person, a rather short girl with black hair but pointed elven ears. She was arranging a kettle and cups at a small table. Ye Chui watched her curiously, guessing her identity as she poured coffee and brought it to him.
“Who are you?” Ye Chui asked, accepting the cup.
“My name is Freya,” the woman said.
“Freya? The Goddess of Wisdom!?” Ye Chui exclaimed. She had black hair, unlike the green of elves, but her pointed ears marked her as half-elf. So she was the Goddess of Wisdom, Freya.
“You truly did not fall…” Ye Chui said in surprise. “Where are my companions?”
“They are fine, staying right by your side,” Freya replied with a smile, sitting on a stool before him and studying him curiously.
“By my side…”
Ye Chui blinked. Where were Debbie and the others in this cabin?
He realised something. “This isn’t the real world?”
Freya nodded approvingly. “Here… is inside the ladder of light pillar, as you call it.”
“The ladder of light pillar? The first artefact created by the God of All Gods. We’re inside it now, so you…”
“My physical body is dead. To help the God of All Gods complete his plan, I abandoned my body and entered this artefact. Those void creatures never detected me, treating the artefact as their tool to control the Sin Continent. So I have remained here,” Freya explained calmly.
“Another plan of the God of All Gods. What exactly is he trying to do? And what is my role in it?” Ye Chui asked.
“My purpose is to help you resolve the ultimate question,” Freya said with a smile.
“Then tell me what the answer to all this is,” Ye Chui pressed.
“Are you sure you want to know?” Freya seemed to hesitate.
“Of course. Everything I’ve done in this world seems to lead to that answer. Now, at this final moment, I certainly want to know what it is,” Ye Chui said urgently.
“Then…” Freya suddenly stood, walked to him, and gently placed a finger on his forehead.
“No one knows the answer to the question except you yourself. And that is the only answer to the question,” she said.
The next instant, the coffee cup slipped from Ye Chui’s hand and shattered on the floor. His consciousness plunged into dizziness.
…
When Ye Chui awoke, he found himself lying in a hospital bed, the scent of disinfectant filling his nose and mouth.
“This kid is really unlucky, hit by an iPad.”
“It’s the first time I’ve seen something like this… Hope his brain isn’t damaged. He’s been in a coma for so many days.”
“Who knows…”
Faint voices reached Ye Chui’s ears.
He opened his eyes wide in shock.
