Facing the Divine Punishment of Takamagahara, unleashed by Amaterasu as one with the entire divine realm, Lin Qiye felt his very "existence" being stripped away.
It wasn't physical pain, nor was it mental torture. It was something far more fundamental—a cold, systematic process of being completely erased from the world.
His memories began to fade rapidly. Images of his aunt, Team 136, and Cangnan City—once vivid and alive—became pale and blurred, like old photographs left too long in the sun.
His cognition was disintegrating. Even the most basic concept of "who I am" began to waver, as if he were on the verge of vanishing from reality entirely.
The fighting bloodline within him roared in a frenzy, an indomitable will screaming a primal cry in an attempt to resist this erasure on a conceptual level.
But this was not a clash of strength; it was a crushing dominance of authority. Just as a mortal cannot defy an imperial decree, no matter how much his blood boiled, he could not override the "delete" command issued by the entire system of the divine realm.
Seeing Lin Qiye's agony, Ian didn't just stand by and watch. He reached out toward the pale, ghostly sun capable of erasing concepts and lightly closed his fingers into a fist.
In the next instant, Amaterasu's attack came to a screeching halt.
The pale sun let out a soul-piercing shriek of agony, and its dazzling light collapsed instantly, like a punctured balloon. A fragile figure, her divinity almost entirely dissipated, tumbled miserably from the wreckage of the light—it was Amaterasu.
The connection she shared with the divine realm had been brutally and forcibly severed by Ian in a manner she couldn't possibly comprehend.
Ian looked into her eyes, which were now wide with shock and despair, and flashed a "friendly" smile.
"Trying to play this game in front of me?"
"Your version is way too low."
As soon as the words left his lips, the terror on Amaterasu's face froze, just as it had for the goddesses before her. Under an irresistible law, her body rapidly shrank.
A moment later, an exquisite, palm-sized doll dressed in a twelve-layered robe settled quietly into Ian's hand.
"Main God-tier limited edition: Amaterasu. Acquired!"
Ian let out a satisfied whistle and casually tossed the freshly minted figure into a transparent collection cabinet that manifested out of thin air behind him.
With Amaterasu subdued, the divine realm of Takamagahara lost its core. Like a massive server with its power cord ripped out, it began an irreversible collapse. Palaces, mountains, and rivers—everything composed of "concepts"—began to revert into pure streams of information. They danced wildly in the air until Ian swept his hand, packing them all into a shimmering sphere of flashing code.
Just as the divine realm was about to vanish completely into nothingness, a terrifying aura—more ancient, more primitive, and more deathly than Amaterasu's—suddenly awakened from the deepest reaches of the Japanese islands.
The moment this aura surfaced, a bottomless, gargantuan rift tore open in the sky above the real-world Japanese archipelago.
Thick, suffocating miasma from the Yellow Springs surged forth like a bursting dam of black floodwaters. It was as if the gates of hell had been forced open from the inside.
A ghostly female voice, crossing the boundary between life and death, echoed directly in the minds of Lin Qiye and Ian.
"Finally... a fresh scent..."
The voice was saturated with an extreme hatred for life and an endless greed. With a single sentence, it felt as though Lin Qiye's very soul was being frozen.
The relaxed expression on Ian's face finally tightened, replaced by a flicker of curiosity and interest.
"Oh? There's another expert?"
"I guess this trip wasn't a waste after all."
As the gates of the Yellow Springs swung wide, a figure clad in decaying, luxurious robes slowly rose from the rift.
One half of her body was breathtakingly beautiful, seemingly the most perfect creation in existence. The other half was a rotting mess of maggots and decay, emitting a nauseating stench—the most visceral embodiment of death and despair.
This was the discarded creator goddess of the Yellow Springs—Izanami.
Her appearance caused the laws of reality across Japan to warp. Green vegetation withered instantly into black ash. Solid steel structures rusted and decayed at an accelerated pace. In the air, the breath of life vanished, and everything began to fester with death.
The essence of her power shared the same origin as the trace of "Chaos" the Emperor had previously sensed on Mount Olympus.
Strangely, Izanami did not attack Ian, despite the fact that he made her heart tremble. Instead, her eyes—one filled with malice, the other with madness—locked onto Lin Qiye with a disturbing mixture of maternal affection and greed.
"Good child..."
Her voice rang out again, carrying a spine-chilling tenderness.
"Your bloodline... it is so powerful... Come, return to your mother's embrace and become my most perfect child."
She extended a rotting arm, dripping with the fluids of the dead, toward Lin Qiye.
Suddenly, countless vengeful spirits and the dead shrieked as they crawled out of the rift. Using their own bleached bones, they rapidly constructed a pale bridge to hell beneath Lin Qiye's feet, inviting him into the realm of the Yellow Springs.
A powerful surge of rejection and alertness exploded in Lin Qiye's heart. Yet, in the depths of his soul, an uncontrollable attraction stirred. It was the instinctive fear of life facing the root of death, combined with a primal temptation to return to the "womb."
Ian stepped in front of Lin Qiye, frowning.
"Hey, hey, hey, old lady."
"Stealing my pre-ordered figure is one thing, but you actually want to touch the person I brought along?"
Izanami let out a shrill, piercing laugh that caused the entire Japanese archipelago to shudder violently.
"Outsider, you are nothing but a thief who steals rules!"
"I am the 'Root' of this land! Every life born here shall eventually return to me!"
As she spoke, an irresistible pulling force slammed into Lin Qiye, attempting to drag him forcibly into the kingdom of death.
"A mere wild god dares to call herself the 'Root'? You think you're fit to speak of creation?"
Ian's voice suddenly turned cold.
The sound was like a bolt of thunder piercing through heaven and earth, instantly severing Izanami's mental seduction and snapping Lin Qiye back to full consciousness.
Izanami let out a shriek of shock and rage.
She felt it—within Ian's voice resided a will that was the absolute opposite of her essence of death: a will that was pure and dominantly arrogant to the extreme. It was the power she loathed and feared most.
Realizing she was facing two incomprehensible, terrifying entities, Izanami didn't hesitate. Shrouding herself in the endless miasma of the Yellow Springs, she turned to plunge back into the rift, intending to slam the gates of the Yellow Springs shut.
Ian, however, smiled.
"The door is already open. Leaving without taking a tour would be far too impolite."
He grabbed Lin Qiye by the back of his collar and, ignoring the miasma that could corrode the divinity of all things, stepped firmly into the rift leading to hell.
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