"They..."
Xia Lian's knuckles turned white as she gripped her twin blades, her voice trembling uncontrollably.
"Were they... sacrificed together by that Evil God? Or... when the Dreamscape shattered, did they... vanish along with it?"
Su Wan frowned and took a step forward, carefully sensing the ground with her Magic Power, her expression growing increasingly grim.
"No, there are no traces of souls dissipating, nor is it spatial teleportation."
"It's as if... as if they were a line of text erased by an eraser."
"Directly wiped from this world."
This description sent a chill down Lin Xiyue's spine.
Physical death wasn't terrifying.
This kind of erasure from existence itself was what truly made one's blood run cold.
In this eerie silence, a terrifying pressure, more tyrannical and filled with the rage of a grumpy big sis waking up than ever before, swept over them from the direction of Winred, the City of Corruption
That wasn't Mental Pollution.
Nor was it magnified desire.
It was pure, undisguised rage after being provoked by an ant!
It was the impotent fury of having its Divine Body pierced by a worthless nobody!
As the pressure swept over them, all four froze in place.
The Power of Holy Light within Lin Xiyue felt as if its internet connection had been instantly severed, its connection sluggish, its light dimming.
She instinctively tried to raise Blackstone's Protection to shield her companions, but this reflexive action now felt impossibly heavy. The Paladin's protective instinct sensed absolute powerlessness at a fundamental level.
Su Wan's brain processor instantly blue-screened, countless logic modules frantically reporting errors under the terrifying Divine Might, on the verge of burning out.
Knowledge and logic lost all meaning before absolute power.
Xia Lian's legs went weak, and she nearly performed an on-the-spot burrowing act to bury herself.
She felt like a rabbit stared down by a dragon, frozen in place, even her breathing had stopped.
The four looked up in horror toward Winred City.
Above the City of Corruption, the vast, cloudless sky was brutally ripped open by an invisible blade!
A massive, hideous, pitch-black wound was branded upon the celestial canopy.
Behind the wound lay a bottomless, chaotic expanse of crimson.
In the next instant, the upper torso of a colossal female figure, beyond all imagination, violently squeezed its way out of the rift!
Her body should have been flawless, every inch of her skin radiating the ultimate temptation of corruption.
But now, that perfection was utterly shattered.
On her chest and abdomen, two gaping wounds, pierced by the golden light of Order and the blue power of Pioneering, were hideous and conspicuous.
The power of Rules stubbornly prevented the flesh from healing.
The edges of the wounds even displayed a "pixelated" state, like a corrupted video file.
The locations were identical to where she had been pierced by the light pillar and struck by the train in the Dreamscape!
Droplets of divine blood, like molten gold, slowly seeped from the wounds, dripping into the chaotic crimson expanse.
The attacks from the Dreamscape just now...
They had actually harmed the Evil God's true body!
"YOU—ALL—!! VERY—GOOD—!!"
A divine thought, cold to the extreme and venomous to the core, smashed into the four's minds across the vast distance!
"I will make you understand..."
"The price... of angering a True God!!!"
Following this death sentence, which nearly roared through their souls, the colossal upper torso in the sky abruptly retracted, as if yanked back by an invisible hand.
The massive black wound snapped shut with a crack, like a door slammed with all one's might, seething with impotent fury.
The sky returned to its clear state.
But the world-destroying rage, like the most vicious curse, was deeply branded into the depths of each of their souls.
The good news was that the first step of Plan B had succeeded.
The bad news was that it had succeeded too well.
They had been marked with a death sentence by a True God.
"Sis..."
Lin Xiyue's face instantly drained of color, her voice trembling as she immediately looked to Lin Qingyue.
Her eyes were filled with the despair of someone who knew they had completely screwed up.
Su Wan clutched her throbbing forehead; human reason seemed pale and powerless before the concept of a "True God."
She forced herself to calm down but found she couldn't even construct the most basic Ice Cone Spell model. Her Mental Energy was in utter chaos.
Xia Lian collapsed to the ground, her small face ashen, lips trembling, unable to utter a single word.
As a Hunter, her intuition for death far surpassed that of an ordinary person.
In that instant, she had seen a future where she was torn apart by countless tentacles.
The atmosphere within the team grew heavy to the extreme.
However, Lin Qingyue, the primary target of the "special attention" and the one who had borne the greatest pressure, reacted completely differently.
The moment the Divine Might pierced her mind, an icy chill also crawled up her spine to her brain...
...only to be crushed into dust by a pink glow!
[Miss Pink Elf's Blessing] shone brightly!
She let out a long sigh of relief.
On her face, there was no fear, no despair.
A smile, genuine and radiant to the extreme, slowly blossomed at the corners of her lips.
"This is great."
She clapped her hands crisply and announced in a cheerful tone.
"???"
Lin Xiyue, Su Wan, and Xia Lian—three pairs of eyes screaming "Are you insane?"—all turned to look at her in unison.
"Great? Sis, what's so great about this? We've been targeted by a... a True God!" Lin Xiyue was on the verge of tears from anxiety.
"But we came here specifically for It, didn't we?"
Lin Qingyue nodded as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, then raised a finger and tapped lightly in the air.
"Haven't you noticed the key point?"
"The key point?"
"It's injured."
Lin Qingyue's eyes shone with astonishing brightness, like a hardcore gamer who had just discovered a hidden game mechanic.
"It's bleeding! Even though it's golden blood, it's still blood!"
She paused, looking around at her three teammates who were still frozen in shock, and dropped a bombshell that shattered their understanding.
"You've played games, right? What does this mean?"
"Before, the 'Mother of Rebirth' was just background lore to us, a source of Mental Pollution, an invisible, intangible 'World Disaster' we had no idea how to fight."
"But now," Lin Qingyue's smile grew even more audacious, filled with a glee that would make even an Evil God want to crawl through the internet cables to beat her up.
"We forced It to reveal its true form!"
"We wounded It!"
"And It even came down personally to trash-talk us!"
Lin Qingyue's voice rang out, resonating with unparalleled infectious energy.
"It's revealed its health bar, comrades!"
"A god that can be injured, get angry, and throw a tantrum after getting hit by a train..."
"Is that still a god?"
She surveyed her three teammates, who were gradually snapping out of their daze. Her staff, Beloved, tapped lightly in her hand as she pointed it toward the distant Winred, City of Corruption, her smile audacious and confident.
"Since the BOSS has personally invited us to the party, it would be rude not to accept!"