Three Foreign Deities

In the void, Ye Chuan hung suspended in stillness.

His eyes were tightly shut, his face pale as paper.

There was no Heaven-Shaking Banner unfurling, no thousands of avatars charging into battle. All those roars, the clash of swords, the brutal hand-to-hand combat against the Outer Gods—they were nothing more than illusions within a prison of perception.

His consciousness had long been dragged into the depths of the void, leaving only his physical body behind.

At this moment, the edges of Ye Chuan’s robes were beginning to fade into nothingness. His fingertips took on a translucent, ashen gray, merging with the surging gray mist around him, flickering in and out of existence—on the verge of dissolving into smoke at any second.

Even his breathing had stopped.

“Ye Chuan!”

Bai Qianshuang, her eyes red with desperation, charged forward and slashed out with a condensed, razor-sharp azure blade at full power.

The sword energy screamed as it cut through the air, striking the pale gray tendrils coiled around his ankles, but it vanished like snowflakes falling into boiling water.

Refusing to accept it, she struck three more times, each blow landing solidly—yet each one disappeared without a trace.

“Chuan Chuan!” Luo Xi raised her hand, conjuring an ice wall to shield him. Frost flowers bloomed across its surface, and even the surrounding gray mist was frozen motionless for a brief moment.

But it didn’t hold even three breaths.

Cracks like spiderwebs spread from the outer edge of the ice wall, growing with a sharp cracking sound before it shattered into a storm of frozen shards.

They couldn’t touch these things from the void!

They couldn’t even reach them!

“As expected… Ye Chuan, this guy—probably because he’s never truly encountered the void…” Lillith caught up, her staff of light hovering at her side. She scanned the dissipating fluctuations of Ye Chuan’s soul energy, then looked deep into the gray mist.

“His consciousness has been dragged into the depths of the void. His soul and body are being assimilated together, turned into nourishment for those bugs.”

“Then… is there a way?” asked Bai Qianshuang.

“The best option,” Lillith said calmly, “is to abandon this planet. I’ll use my last strength to tear open a spatial rift. Take the people in the apartment building and run—save as many as you can.”

“No.”

Bai Qianshuang stood firm, her sword held before her. The Imperial Seal on her forehead suddenly blazed with blinding golden light.

“Where he is, there I will be.”

“I’m not going either.” Luo Xi moved to stand beside her, icy blue chill surging from within her as she began to unleash the power of her own Imperial Seal.

Together, they poured their strength into the barrier.

Watching this scene, Lillith shook her head. “You really are…”

“Fine, fine…”

“I’ll give my last bit of strength.”

“Anyway…”

“Victory isn’t coming…”

The astral alignment array beneath Lillith’s feet flared to its peak.

All her remaining soul energy flooded into the crumbling Star-Vault Barrier.

Purple light and golden light intertwined, forming a tension-soaked net that actually managed to briefly halt Ye Chuan’s dissipation.

The gray mist beyond the barrier was pushed back thousands of miles.

It was then that the outer layers of the mist slowly parted.

Three monstrous shadows, so vast their edges were invisible, hung silently beyond the planet.

Outer Gods!

The one on the far left was draped with gray-white tentacles stretching tens of millions of kilometers, each section covered in rotating vertical pupils.

The one in the center was a mountain of rotting flesh, its surface split by countless mouths filled with jagged teeth, opening and closing in silence.

The one on the far right had no physical form—it was merely a sea of eyeballs forming a cloud, each eye reflecting an image of Blue Star.

They did not act.

Instead, countless freezing gazes descended upon the tiny planet below.

They looked down as a man might lower his head to observe ants struggling inside a glass jar—

With just that gaze, the entire protective magic array began to collapse, violently corroding.

Cracks spread endlessly across the barrier’s surface.

“We can’t hold on…”

Blood seeped from the corner of Luo Xi’s mouth, pouring out more and more, the light of the Imperial Seal dimming sharply.

Bai Qianshuang’s hand trembled as she gripped her sword—the same was true for her.

Their souls were nearly consumed by the void’s corrosion. And Lillith’s body began to turn translucent from her toes upward, spreading higher and higher.

First her ankles, then her calves.

She stared into the gray mist at those three colossal figures, and suddenly let out a laugh. “So it’s you… it really is you…”

“I should have destroyed you all then, even if it cost me everything…”

“DESTROY YOU ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Lillith roared in fury.

As her words faded, the last wisp of blue-purple light exploded from within her, like a star-flower suddenly blooming. It slammed violently into the barrier, forcing back the surging gray mist for a single moment.

But the three Outer Gods gave no response. They were utterly unaffected.

Lillith’s body began to dissolve. The staff of light slipped from her grasp, tumbling toward Blue Star.

Crack—

The Star-Vault Barrier shattered.

It broke into countless blue-purple specks of light, and the red-gray mist poured down like a breached dam, roaring catastrophically toward Blue Star.

Luo Xi and Bai Qianshuang were swallowed, vanishing without a trace.

Under this corrosion, the orbital satellites mutated first.

Their metal shells bulged with dark red flesh, countless eyeballs sprouting across the surface. Antennas twisted into writhing tentacles, spiraling down as they crashed into the earth.

The screams in the city lasted only seconds before they fell abruptly silent.

Lamp posts sprouted fleshy growths; light bulbs turned into vertical pupils, casting an eerie glow.

The asphalt roads grew soft and spongy, like rotting skin—any footstep would sink right in.

The leaves of roadside trees mutated into pale gray tentacles, shedding eyeballs one after another with every gust of wind.

Where the gray fog swept past, pedestrians stood frozen in place.

The entire world was rapidly rotting, devolving into a world of flesh and blood.

"Sis..."

At the Ten Thousand Realms Apartment, Ye Yue stood at the very front, all her tentacles stretched to their limits, forming an impenetrable net that held firm against the surging mist.

She shared the same origin as the Outer Gods, so she could endure the longest.

But even she was nearing her breaking point.

Behind her, many were using their own powers to resist the corrosion, yet their strength was already far below that of Luo Xi and Bai Qianshuang, let alone capable of fighting off this erosion.

Lan Xiaoke, after realizing her own power had no impact on the dense fog whatsoever, curled up behind the sofa in tears, her voice trembling with horror.

"It's over, it's over, it's over—we're going to die again."

"No way, I've just had one good year, boohoo."

"I'll never call myself lucky again."

"We're done for!"

Just then—

Ke Ning walked out wearing her crumpled white coat. She carried a coffee cup, her curly hair a mess, and her black-rimmed glasses had slid down to the tip of her nose. She yawned as she strolled.

She glanced at the overwhelming gray fog, then at Ye Yue who was about to give in, and made a strange expression.

"Huh? What's all this?"

"Ke Ning... go back..." Ye Yue forced out the words through her struggle, but she could no longer hold on. Her tentacles were swiftly corroded, torn apart—

The gray mist surged into the apartment. Everyone inside began to mutate.

Ke Ning froze for a moment. When she saw that her own arm was sprouting countless eyes, she tilted her chin toward the cube floating beside her and spoke.

"Rubik's Cube V2, rewind the time of this world."

"Acknowledged." A cold electronic voice responded.

"Now expending all energy to initiate temporal rewind. Target coordinates: all domains."

"HUMMMM—"