I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

Brain storage space...

The Kunlun Mountains, with an altitude of 4700 meters.

This is a forbidden zone for life, and also the closest place to the stars.

At 11 p.m., the cold wind howled, like countless invisible blades scraping against the hard frozen ground. The air was so thin that every breath felt like a physical workout.

Gu Qing wrapped his windbreaker tighter around himself and stood on an unnamed, desolate mountain ridge. He held a thermos that was no longer warm in his hand, his gaze calmly fixed on the breathtakingly brilliant starry sky above.

"So beautiful."

Gu Qing sighed softly, his breath instantly shattered by the wind. "Unfortunately, all this beauty is built upon cold and rigid physical rules. Stars burn, gravity pulls, photons travel... everything is as precise as a clock with a pre-programmed schedule."

In this materialistic world, mythology has long since died.

People no longer revere mountains and rivers, because geological survey teams can analyze the composition of every rock; people no longer yearn for the celestial palace, because satellites have already photographed the ugly face of the moon's craters.

The mystery has vanished, leaving only dry, uninteresting data.

But tonight, one of the gears in this clock is about to break.

Gu Qing put down the thermos, and a pale blue, semi-transparent panel silently unfolded on his retina. This was an interface only he could see—

[Mythical Deception System]

Host: Gu Qing

Current script: None

Faith Points (Initial Bonus): 100 points

Current global mythological revival rate: 0.0000%

Core Ability: [Deception (Lv 1)]: You can consume Faith Power to fabricate illusions. When enough people believe it to be true, or experience strong emotional fluctuations (fear, shock, awe), you will gain more Faith Power. When Faith Power reaches a critical value, you can completely [manifest] the illusion as reality.

"100 initial faith points are pitifully few."

Gu Qing looked at the number and shook his head slightly. This amount of energy wasn't even enough to manifest a Sun Wukong, let alone a most ordinary mountain spirit.

To break this solid material world, one must learn to use force like a lever.

"System, activate [Edit Mode]"

Gu Qing issued the command in his mind.

The world before my eyes instantly changed. The sky was no longer the sky, but a vast, unedited canvas. The countless stars transformed into movable specks of data.

"I don't create anything new, I only modify the path of light."

Gu Qing stretched out a finger and gently pointed at the star field directly above Kunlun Mountain through the void—Tian Shu, Tian Xuan, Tian Ji… that is the location of the famous Big Dipper.

"Consumes 100 points of Faith".

Gu Qing's voice sounded exceptionally clear in the cold wind.

"Script Title: 【The Twinkling of the Stars】."

"implement."

……

Meanwhile, fifty kilometers away from Gu Qing's location, at Hongya Pass.

A small national astronomical observatory is located here.

Although it is a national-level facility, due to its remote location and outdated equipment, only two or three doctoral students are on duty here year-round to record some basic deep space data.

Li Mo is the unlucky guy tonight.

As a doctoral student in astrophysics, he had been sitting in front of his computer for four hours. The green waveforms jumping on the screen made him feel a sense of nausea—radio signals from distant extragalactic galaxies, boring and meaningless.

"When will this hell of a day ever end?"

Li Mo yawned, picked up the strong coffee on the table, and took a big gulp. The bitter taste slightly dispelled his drowsiness.

He grabbed the walkie-talkie next to him and pressed the call button: "Hey, Lao Zhang, is it windy outside? I want to go out for a smoke and adjust the angle of the optical telescope while I'm at it."

A buzzing sound came from the walkie-talkie, followed by a muffled reply from his colleague, Lao Zhang: "Go ahead... the wind's died down a bit. Remember not to go too far, watch out for wolves."

Li Mo put on his military overcoat, pushed open the heavy insulated door, and walked onto the observation station's terrace.

The biting cold wind instantly sobered him up.

He walked skillfully to the large-aperture optical telescope that had been set up. Although observations now mainly rely on computer imaging, he still retained the habit of observing with the naked eye. It was a matter of sentiment.

"Visibility is good today."

Li Mo leaned close to the eyepiece, skillfully adjusted the focus, and aimed the lens at the sky due north.

In the footage, the Big Dipper appears like seven dazzling diamonds set against the black velvet of the night sky. For those who study astrophysics, the positions, spectra, and distances of these seven stars are intimately familiar, as if they were their own furniture.

"Tian Shu Star is still so bright..." Li Mo muttered, just about to look away to light a cigarette.

Sudden.

His hand froze in mid-air.

In the eyepiece's view, the "Tian Shu" star, located at the front of the Big Dipper, seemed to... sway slightly?

"Are you seeing things?" Li Mo rubbed his eyes and leaned closer again.

The next second, he saw a scene that completely shattered his worldview.

It's not just Tian Shu (天枢).

The Big Dipper, which was originally stationary and hundreds of light-years away from Earth, suddenly shifted slightly and irregularly at the same time, as if it had been manipulated by some invisible force!

They do not follow gravitational orbits, nor do they follow the law of inertia.

They were like... like seven mischievous children who "came to life" in that instant, trembled slightly in the night sky, and then quickly returned to their places.

This process is extremely short, taking less than 0.5 seconds.

But Li Mo saw it clearly!

"Holy crap?!"

Li Mo suddenly took a step back, his heavy military overcoat tripping over a chair leg, causing him to fall awkwardly onto the cold cement floor.

Ignoring the pain, he scrambled back to the indoor control panel.

"Alert! Data anomaly! Data anomaly!"

The screen on the console had now turned a glaring red.

That was the observatory's automatic detection system. The system detected the abnormal refraction of starlight within milliseconds and immediately displayed an error message.

Error code: E-999

[Description: Unknown optical distortion has occurred in the target satellite region (BeiDou).]

Duration: 0.43 seconds.

[Possible causes: Severe atmospheric turbulence/Equipment sensor malfunction/???]

Li Mo stared intently at the red pop-up window, his fingers trembling as he brought up the 0.43-second high-definition video playback.

Slow down tenfold.

On the screen, the light from the seven stars, at a certain moment, defied the principle of rectilinear propagation of light and twisted into an extremely bizarre arc.

That's not atmospheric turbulence. The atmosphere couldn't possibly have simultaneously "blown" seven stars, each light-years apart, out of alignment!

That's not a gravitational lensing effect. To create that visual effect, at least an invisible black hole would have to momentarily pass between Earth and the Big Dipper!

If a black hole had passed by, Earth would have been finished long ago!

"This...this is not scientific..."

Li Mo's face was pale, and cold sweat streamed down his forehead.

As a PhD in physics, he knew exactly what this meant.

If we disregard equipment failure (although the probability is extremely small), then there is only one explanation:

On this night, in those brief 0.43 seconds, the speed of light, or perhaps the spatial structure, changed in this area above the Kunlun Mountains.

Newton must be turning in his grave; a hole has been torn in Einstein's theory of relativity.

On this cold night, the edifice of physics, a sturdy structure, had its first brick knocked away.

……

Fifty kilometers away, on a desolate mountain ridge.

Gu Qing looked at the line of small print on her retina and a slight smile appeared on her lips.

[Ding! The performance of the script "The Twinkling of the Stars" has ended.]

[The first "high-quality observer" (Li Mo, PhD in astrophysics) was detected to have experienced intense emotional fluctuations: shock, fear, and a shaken worldview.]

[Gained Faith Points: +5.]

Current credit balance: 5 points.

"Only 5 o'clock?" Gu Qing wasn't disappointed. "After all, this is just the beginning. We've only scared one person so far."

He turned around, his back to the starry sky that had just returned to calm, and poured the last sip of cold tea from his cup onto the frozen ground.

"Don't rush, Dr. Li Mo. Soon, you'll have to write more than just this one report."

The wind picked up.

But Gu Qing knew that compared to this wind, the storm that would sweep across the entire astronomical community tomorrow morning was only just beginning to brew.