"The month when God is watching?"
Ren Yi pondered briefly.
This world didn't seem to have a unified faith, so whether this "God" actually existed or what it even was, he had no way of knowing.
However, from the orbital trajectory and the lunar phase changes of this satellite, a question arose that left Ren Yi—who possessed knowledge of modern geography—completely baffled.
That is, the celestial mechanics of this object seemed somewhat irrational.
Normally, if this planet were a sphere...
Then when the rupture on the moon faced a specific region directly, people in different regions should see the moon differently due to the variance in latitude and longitude.
For example, one group of people should be able to see the massive rupture, while another group should not.
Yet, according to all the records of the Sky Eye Organization, within the known regions of this world, everyone who looked up on the same day saw lunar phases that were nearly identical!
What did this mean?
It meant that this entire vast region surrounded by the "Black Forest," where humanity lived, seemed to be situated on an almost entirely "flat" surface on the macro scale of the planet.
"So... is the volume of this planet so unimaginably large?"
"To the point that this inhabited area is just a tiny, insignificant speck on its surface, barely spanning any latitude or longitude?"
Ren Yi frowned, but he quickly dismissed this hypothesis.
If the planet were truly that large, according to the law of universal gravitation, the gravity here should be immense enough to instantly crush all human internal organs.
While the gravity here was slightly unusual, it was still within the tolerable range for normal organisms.
Could it be that this planet was flat, or perhaps square?
Ren Yi's strange imagination stopped there.
Before reclaiming the base and reconnecting with the Alliance, searching for the macro-physical shape of this world was nothing more than looking for trouble. It wasn't something he should be concerned with.
He quickly focused his mind and turned his gaze back toward the massive riverbed below.
A sense of dissonance abruptly rose from the center of the deathly silent riverbed.
S-099 below seemed to have stopped moving.
Beneath the feet of the countless escapees, amidst the ruins of the land ship's chassis...
S-099, which should have been whipping up a monstrous wave of flesh to consume everything within a several-kilometer radius, had suddenly and extremely abruptly lost all its vitality.
The clumps of flesh within the tide shriveled and liquefied in an incredibly short amount of time.
It gradually turned back into pure black, slowly flowing and pooling along the cracked decks of the hull.
Eventually, in the central depression of the ancient riverbed, it turned into a stagnant black pond about the size of several football fields.
Viewed from above, it was as silent as a massive, fallen black tombstone.
This was too bizarre.
Ren Yi hovered in the void, a ripple of doubt spreading through the edges of his mist form.
Granted, just a moment before being swallowed inside the land ship, he had detonated the fragments he had buried deep within the behemoth's cells.
That piece of "true art" had indeed been earth-shattering; even he felt his own body was somewhat unstable and disoriented right now.
However, he didn't believe that a single explosion could directly kill a monster like S-099, which completely defied the laws of physics.
If this colossus, classified as extremely dangerous by the Sky Eye Organization, were truly that easy to eliminate...
The mad Lord of the City and Dr. Cyril wouldn't have gone to such lengths, even sacrificing an entire land ship to serve as a cage.
Moreover, never mind S-099—there were still quite a few survivors down there.
Ren Yi spread his perception into countless fine threads, reaching downward.
Between the snapped steel keels and the armored ruins still crackling with electrical sparks, many "Consumables" and low-level staff members were coughing as they crawled out of the mud.
By the cold moonlight cast by the dead star in the sky, Ren Yi could vaguely see some familiar faces.
For instance, those few low-level staff members who had appeared within his perception range in the medical pod earlier, and... the old Tribal Chief of the Red Ring Tribe.
That old man, who usually lacked any energy, was now covered in viscous black-red flesh, yet he moved through the gaps in the massive wreckage as nimbly as an old monkey.
He was spitting out dust and sand while searching left and right for something.
In contrast to their vitality was that gradually settling black tide.
"This thing looks so terrifying and sanity-draining..."
"But it's actually this fragile?"
This eerie silence didn't last long, because outside of it, another kind of noise could no longer be contained.
On a high embankment nearest to the ruins, Wu Erhun, the leader of the Black Tooth Tribe, remained frozen in his wind-swept posture.
He was like a stone statue, staring fixedly at the smoking black pond below.
His brain was currently in a state of shutdown, his large, bell-like eyes filled with pure confusion.
"It... it really blew up?"
Wu Erhun's cracked lips trembled as he muttered to himself.
He swore he had really just been cursing casually earlier.
Lately, he had been muttering "hope that hunk of junk blows up soon" in his sleep every day. Who could have thought the heavens would be so responsive today?
Before he could recover from the shock of "holy crap, I'm actually a prophet of doom"...
A tribal priest beside him, wrapped in yellowed bandages and exuding the aura of a charlatan, suddenly shuddered violently.
As if struck by high-voltage electricity, his eyes snapped upward.
"Ohhhh—! A miracle! This is a supreme miracle!"
The priest scrambled to Wu Erhun's feet, frantically smashing his head against the hard rock while screaming at the top of his lungs in a raspy voice:
"Kneel! Everyone kneel!"
"Our leader! The great Wu Erhun! His wish has received the blessing of the heavens! His will is the mandate of God!"
"The leader told it to blow up, so it had to blow up!"
This high-pitched shriek instantly spread through the night.
The Black Tooth Tribe warriors on the heights, who had been shivering and at a loss for what to do, felt their gazes shift from confusion to shock upon hearing these words.
"This..." Wu Erhun's eyelids twitched, and the muscles on his scarred face shuddered violently.
Before he could utter a word, a tribal lackey nearby who had long been unable to contain himself leaped up with a face full of fanaticism.
"Destiny's Mandate! This is the true Mandate of Heaven!"
The lackey grabbed a crude, homemade shotgun welded from thick iron pipes, spitting with excitement.
"Leader! It turns out you are the hidden Son of God of the Wilderness!"
"The 'People on the Lake' are nothing! With one word from the leader, their ship and their people were wiped out on the spot!"
"Brothers, we are the tribe with the Mandate of Heaven! The Wilderness belongs to our Black Tooth Tribe from now on!"
The surrounding warriors were instantly ignited by this fanaticism, raising their weapons one after another and howling like wolves.
"Destiny's Mandate! Destiny's Mandate!"
Wu Erhun's ears rang from the overwhelming wall of sound.
He looked at his calloused palms, then at the land ship in the distance that had been blown to pieces.
Although he felt something wasn't quite right, and although his mind was still a complete blank...
As he looked at the group of wolves around him who had completely lost their minds and were ready to follow him to plunder the spoils, his greedy nature, tempered by decades in the Wilderness, instantly triumphed over his reason.
Who cares who blew it up? It's being credited to me now anyway!
"Ah... right! Yes, yes, yes! I am the one with Destiny's Mandate!"
A sense of holiness, laced with absurdity, was forced onto Wu Erhun's trembling, fleshy face.
Thank the gods!
In the air, Ren Yi suddenly felt a surge of positive emotion, instantly refilling his energy.
Wait, what's going on?
Rate on N.U.
