Extraordinary Pedigree.

Chapter 964 A Song of Mourning

Terran calendar 1591.11.02
For the land of Terra, this was nothing more than an ordinary time marker; however, for the Golden Court and indeed for all the myriad realms, it was like a crack that had been completely torn open and could not be healed.

Almost half a year has passed since the Abyss Outbreak (Kingdom Invasion) incident. In that time, no, it was less than half a year.

The Abyss—a word that could make gods whisper and believers tremble in all the heavens and worlds—is flowing upstream from the cracks in the Golden Tree with unstoppable force.

In the name of the Kingdom of Heaven, with Eden at its core, and the swordsman as its blade.

The Abyss began to devour all realms, and the Astral Plane was the first to be swallowed by it.

The astral pathway, which originally symbolized a free passage through all the heavens and the myriad realms, has now become a razor's edge leading to the gods from the abyss.

An operation orchestrated by the Kingdom of Heaven, without warning yet precise as a surgical procedure, not only shook the foundations of the Astral Realm's control but also made the royal court's chief gods, who thought their thrones were as solid as a mountain, begin to smell the bloody scent of impending dissection.

Golden Tyrant.

In the secret discourse of the pantheon of gods and the council of higher planes, this name quickly became a taboo and a focal point.

Hugh Abraham, the Fourth Lord of the Deep, became a new weight on the scales of fear.

The success of the opening ceremony pushed the Golden Court's fear of the Heavenly Kingdom and the Fourth Abyss Lord to its peak.

From the holy city of the Nine Heavens in the myriad realms to the star-studded reefs on the edge of the Chaos Sea, countless gazes are cast upon Terra, upon that base world that is constantly deepening into the abyss, yet is chillingly orderly.

All the pantheons felt threatened, and in order to curb the advance of the abyss, the Golden Court finally began to awaken the dormant agreements, the hidden artifacts, and the frozen war laws.

Numerous pantheons convened internal councils of the gods; from the Dragon God Cult's Hall of Ten Thousand Dragons to the Silver Moon Court of the Inquisition, the pantheon leaders recalled their avatars and tightened their control over the distribution of faith streams. All of this was in preparation for a holy war that had not yet erupted, a war to block the abyss.

But no one could have predicted that what would truly bring the entire divine system to the brink of madness before the gods had even completed their formation was not the attack from the Kingdom of Heaven, but rather the alienation and distortion that began within the pantheon itself.

That alienation did not originate from the invasion of the enemy, but rather seemed to be a kind of pollution lurking beneath the foundation of divinity being prematurely matured, sprouted, and grown.

The flow of faith began to become disordered.

Their most devout saints began to dream of black stars, upside-down churches, and the vision of smiling swordsmen; their most steadfast pillars of God began to crumble and reassemble within the order, as if faith were searching for a new host.

Meanwhile, those messengers and divine messengers who were working around for the "Golden Court United Front" began to disappear one by one at the end of the etheric channel, turning into heterogeneous slime, or directly becoming unrecognizable reflections of their own gods.

That was the beginning of decay.

It is the quiet tolling of the bells signaling the collapse of the royal court in its twilight years.

They finally realized that a storm far more terrifying than the abyss had been lurking within them—the seeds of alienation were sprouting in the very bones and blood of the pantheon, and that was the starting point of the Ivy War.

The winds have shifted in Terra.

The Four Lords of Chaos—they have begun to collect taxes from them.

These four individuals painstakingly combined the World Tree and Financial Street into the "Golden Tree," spreading the Golden Law, not to serve as a stepping stone for the gods and deities of all realms.

As the saying goes, free things are often the most expensive, and the Four Lords never offer anything free...

Using their things requires paying taxes!!!
These four tax collectors and a certain "golden giant" who cooperated with them have already collected taxes from these pantheons for ten thousand years to come.

These five ambitious, treacherous, and despicable "conspirators," much like the five evil gods of the Etheric Space, are the true victors of the Ivy League War.

They are the true winners of this war. In modern terms, the four monarchs have already put the entire universe and the Golden Court on the stock market.

Now, it's time for these ambitious guys to reap the rewards.

A hardworking fruit farmer who once transformed into a giant golden figure has begun harvesting them.

Now, the first fruit, the first fallen god, the first victim god has appeared.

The Ivy League Wars have entered the bloodiest phase of capital accumulation.

……

……

There are a total of seventeen outer planes in the myriad realms.

Pandemonium is one of these seventeen planes. It is an outer plane representing chaos and madness, and it was pulled over and fixed near the Aetherian space around Terra by the Golden Tree.

In the depths of that plane where the wind tears everything apart, the winds of eternal night blow eternally, as if the whole world is screaming in silence.

The gray sky resembled a collapsed divine brain, and the wind pierced through the shattered heavens, pouring into the ruins of the ancient castle located at the center of the fault line, which had long since collapsed.

This is the most famous dark kingdom—the Broken Castle.

The irregularly crumbling ruins resembled the weathered bones of an ancient god, leaning precariously to support the castle's spine, barely surviving amidst the roaring storm; beneath the deep foundations lay the remnants of magic from millions of years ago and eerie, oppressive incantations, which occasionally transformed into extremely subtle whispers that drifted through the air, as if the castle itself were cursing and sighing.

And in the deepest part of this collapsing world, on a throne pieced together from rubble, magical light, and the logic of collapse, sits Cyric, the chief god of the pantheon of the [pantheistic/dark gods].

He sat quietly on the throne that seemed to be built from countless broken dreams.

And He Himself is no longer the mad king, traitor, and god of assassination He once was.

Since some point not long ago, an inexplicable membrane of time reconstruction has covered His form—the arrival of some bizarre narrative, clearly not belonging to this plane, nor to the rules of this universe.

The world beneath that thin film slowly seeps into this layer of reality:

A steel forest is quietly spreading around the ruins, like a skeletal implant poured in from another planet that has cracked open; rusty antennas pierce the walls like sacrificial nerves, dripping electronic pus; and in the corner of the retina, one can occasionally catch some vague alien statements rolling on the surface of the castle, like Terran documents left in the etheric ocean, trying to structurally integrate with this reality.

This is an extension of the Red King-style reciprocal performance effect, except this time, it's not the Red King's doing, but a certain corrupted spacetime logic that quietly erodes the surface fortress of Cyric through the timeline.

The entire outer plane has now been shaped by an invisible logical compressive force, completely condensing into a spherical structure—a planet similar in shape to Terra.

Somewhere on the edge of this seemingly sealed world, a ring-shaped structure, where spinning and folding coexist, slowly emerges.

That's a Möbius strip.

Its boundaries are both real and illusory, with chaotic light flowing over them, as if time itself has been deconstructed and then stitched back together. What surrounds it is not energy fluctuations, but the focus of the narrative.

The next moment, Xia Xiu's figure quietly stepped out from the Möbius strip.

The black trench coat billowed, light streaming in from the inside; the top hat was pulled low, maintaining his usual aloof silhouette. The silver cane in his hand—[The Lever of Heaven]—was like a fulcrum combining authority and logical ritual, gripped tightly in his palm, drawing the first stroke of reality on the boundary of this static spherical world.

His appearance was like a needle piercing the layers of rules.

The moment he appeared, the Eden System's data control module automatically activated, and a series of calm and clear mechanical voices emerged from his mind.

[Successfully penetrated the outer dimensional spherical shell boundary—] [Logic ring key decryption completed—Permissions: Constancy—]

[Ethics Committee Data Feedback Module - Launched!]

[Complete set of containment data imported—]

[The Fourth Sequence Strike Fleet of the Mortal Realm has arrived in the outer airspace and has completed its silent encirclement tactical deployment.]

[The Imperial Guard and the 17th Branch of the Blood Oath Legion have completed the sealing operation of the hyperspace passage; the target plane has been anchored by the Faith Lock.]

[Full-Frequency Combat Simulation - Connected - Combat Loop Perpetual Daytime Logic Diagram - Established]

The codename for this containment operation is: Song of Mourning!

At this point, less than a week had passed since Xia Xiu completed his tee-off.

But in less than seven days, rivers of blood have already begun to flow throughout the myriad realms.

Those anomalous weapon projects that the four monarchs quietly buried around the various pantheons.

These were originally silent and dormant, like booby traps buried under the earth.

Suddenly, everything erupted.

Without warning or omission, it was like a nightmare of collective awakening.

The Golden Court was the first to be affected.

The faith in deities is built upon a stable divine structure and the will of believers. However, the weapon projects that the four monarchs scattered throughout the divine realm used faith as a trigger. Once activated, they turned into a malignant tumor that devoured the spirit and structure of the gods.

Many beings who were ranked among the chief gods were corrupted and fell out of control within just one or two days and nights. The entire pantheon was like a plague-stricken forest, with wailing and flames rising together.

At this point, the alienation was no longer an isolated incident, but a systemic crisis that swept across all the myriad realms.

Against this backdrop, the decision-makers of the Kingdom of Heaven Reserve were always entrusted with the heavy responsibility of containment.

He will complete the containment operation based on the Ivy War, harvest all the heavens and myriad worlds, and destroy the corrupted Golden Court deities.

tread--

As soon as Xia Xiu landed, the ground beneath his feet emitted a dull thud, as if he had stepped into a ruin that could collapse at any moment.

He took a deep breath—and the next instant, a strong, pungent smell of decay almost assaulted his senses, a mixture of rust, spores, damp leather, and the stench of dead entrails, as if a coffin that had not been opened for a thousand years had suddenly been flung open.

"……Well."

He subconsciously frowned, while the [Black Mark] inside his body trembled violently at that moment, like the frantic beating of the heart of some wild beast.

There are perfect embryos nearby, and... more than one.

“…Four.” Xia Xiu uttered in a low voice.

That wasn't a guess, but a direct response from the [Black Mark].

He stood on this strange yet familiar land, his gaze slightly narrowed, his senses spreading like a spiderweb. In his perception, four enormous and bizarre life forces slowly drifted across different coordinates, the characteristic pulses of an "embryo"—twisted, thirsty, and pregnant with new disaster.

"The Four Monarchs' move... is truly ruthless."

Xia Xiu muttered something under his breath, his tone a mixture of sarcasm and admiration.

"They're just using the Golden Royal Court as a petri dish, throwing all fifty projects into the backyard of the gods they worship, and then using the divine backlash of these gods to accelerate the projects' growth..."

"Poor Cyric, he was completely paralyzed by the scam."

As he spoke, he began to survey the surrounding scenery, and what he saw made him frown.

The area where he stood was covered by a strange phenomenon of world merging.

The sky was filled with etheric fluid and fragments of reality, and the edges of space shimmered with walls of light reflecting an unknown reality. But the streets, buildings, and mottled walls beneath his feet clearly bore the name he knew all too well—Johannesburg.

Yes, this place is very similar to the Johannesburg area of ​​Terra, except that it looks very dilapidated.

The remnants of the elevated railway are entangled by mutated plants, and organic protrusions that do not belong to reality have appeared on the reinforced concrete buildings; broken monuments have collapsed at the boundary of the fused geology, and apartment buildings have their windows opened by wildly growing fleshy vines, as if they are groaning silently.

That was Terra's original urban landscape, forcibly grafted onto it by the alienation mechanisms of the myriad worlds.

Xia Xiu stood amidst the ruins, gazing into the distance at the familiar old financial building—its top had been replaced by some kind of uterine cyst, with blood-like strands entwined around the antennas, and a dark red gauze net hanging high above, resembling an embryonic placenta.

He gently closed his eyes.

The next second, it seemed as if four pitch-black threads simultaneously climbed up from the depths of his consciousness, feeding back four chaotic, distorted, and almost frenzied life fluctuations in response to his perception.

That was not ordinary, abnormal pollution.

Rather, it is... the resonance of four perfect embryos.

Deep within this decaying divine realm, Xia Xiu could clearly see the tragic appearance of the deity who originally belonged to the Golden Royal Court.

He gasped for breath like a broken respirator, his divine fragments scattered and chaotic, his spiritual essence scorched and melted, turning him into a half-dead, alienated shell.

"What a disaster. He's suddenly entangled with four embryos and four abnormal weaponization projects from the era of demon king armies... This guy is just incredibly unlucky."

Xia Xiu chose this place as the first containment point because he sensed the strongest alienation echo in this plane when he completed the ascension ceremony.

There were four perfect embryos gathered here; he had no choice but to come.

He had learned from intelligence shared between Eden and the Ethics Committee that the prototypes of the four aberrant weapon project specimens in front of him were the mutated bodies of four little girls.

Xia Xiu learned from the documents analyzed by the Ethics Committee that the Demon Kings had used a miniature world to simulate the experimentation of these four weapon projects.

The simulation's final result was that the weapon was successfully developed.

They succeeded in destroying the world!
Looking at the scene before him, Xia Xiu roughly understood why the place was in such a terrible state.

"The miniature world was directly smashed here, causing the phenomenon of world merging and decay..."

He raised his hand to his chest, feeling the [Black Mark] still trembling restlessly, like a wild beast ramming against the fence of consciousness.

"These are... the calamities and hells created by the Demon King's army."