The Minister Intervenes

The central plaza of Cuifeng City had fallen into complete chaos.

The Flying Pie God floated in mid-air, radiating a thick aroma of food and an endless, holy white light.

Under the collective assault of the headquarters high-levels, the Flying Pie God began to falter.

Yet, it continued to put up a desperate struggle.

Its divine face, resembling a giant pie, twisted within the white light.

The God spoke: "Blasphemers shall be digested."

Below, the area that had been transformed into food began to boil.

The crispy pie crust ground rose up, forming several giant mouths.

Viscous tentacles reached out from the cheese, lashing out indiscriminately at the surroundings.

The Silent Silhouette's body began to fluctuate, with scorched, curled signs appearing at its edges.

The fujoshi had run far away long ago; her ability was not suited for combat.

Fortunately, she had already finished clearing the area, and all the irrelevant bystanders had been driven out.

Standing in the distance, the fujoshi’s fingers slid even faster across her phone screen as she attempted to compile a ridiculous crossover fanfiction of "Food x Romance."

Though it wasn't of much use, it allowed for private fandom enjoyment and self-entertainment.

The Flying Pie God was outnumbered, but it still held its ground; it wouldn't be taken down easily in a short time.

The battle fell into a stalemate.

Just then, a strange sensation descended silently.

There was no sound, no light, no shadow.

Only a singular sense of wrongness.

It was as if someone had lightly swept an eraser across the entire battlefield.

Sound was distorting, becoming muffled and losing its texture, as if it were coming from a great distance.

Colors were fading; the holy white light of the Flying Pie God was covered by a layer of haze, no longer so dazzling.

The mouth-watering aroma became bland.

The most obvious change was among the followers whom the fujoshi had already driven from the core battlefield.

The Bishop and the high-ranking clergy froze in unison, their eyes growing vacant.

They seemed to have suddenly forgotten something extremely important, looks of bewilderment and confusion surfacing on their faces.

"Why am I here?"

"Oh, what the hell is that giant pie in the sky?"

"This isn't right!"

The believers' faith in the Flying Pie God seemed to vanish in an instant.

A figure quietly appeared on the altar at the highest point of the plaza at some unknown moment.

It was a man who looked quite elderly, with white hair and beard and a serious temperament.

He wore a dark grey administrative uniform and stood there as if he were a random passerby.

However, a careful observation would reveal that the edges of his figure were constantly shrouded in a hazy dotted line.

Behind him, an unspeakable, massive presence stood silently.

The Minister of the Bureau, the "Oblivion Walker" who wielded the authority of [Oblivion], had personally intervened.

He did not look at the Flying Pie God or his headquarters colleagues engaged in battle.

Instead, he cast his gaze into the distance, seemingly overlooking the entire Cuifeng City.

"Ignorance is bliss."

"Painful memories, fanatical paranoia, and hollow hope... these are all the burdens and fractures of civilization."

He whispered to himself, slowly raising his right hand.

A strange ripple centered on him and rapidly spread outward.

The Minister's core ability: Oblivion.

It could erase an individual's memories or interfere with collective memory.

「Finger of Amnesia」: Designates a target to precisely delete memories of a specific period or strip away all memories related to a specific event or person.

「Memories Like Smoke」: Causes the targets within range to have their memories of a certain matter blur rapidly until only a hazy impression remains; as long as it isn't actively mentioned, they will never think of it again.

The Minister's abilities seemed to lack powerful offensive capabilities, but in reality, they were the stabilizing anchor of the entire society!

The core manifestation of his power was activated after a disaster or a large-scale supernatural incident.

He could rewrite the memories of the general public on a massive scale, causing them to forget the disaster and allowing society to return to normal in an extremely short time.

He could also construct invisible barriers around specific areas, causing ordinary people to subconsciously ignore the area, unable to generate any desire to explore it or remember it.

The Minister's philosophy was "ignorance is bliss." Only by making the masses forget the heaviest terrors could civilization avoid self-collapse from collective trauma and continue to maintain stability.

Oblivion was his means of maintaining social order.

He eliminated the collective despair and post-traumatic stress disorder caused by supernatural disasters within all cities.

He ensured that those who had experienced disasters and survived would not suffer mental breakdowns and turn to extremes.

At the same time, he also made the public forget many hardships.

Only in this way could the birth rate be maintained in this era of terror.

Otherwise, in an era where ordinary people saw no hope at all, who would work properly? Who would be willing to marry and have children?

Beyond that, the Minister also made many secrets and many infamous criminals forgotten by the world.

Overall, this approach had been very effective, allowing human civilization to barely continue.

At this moment, everyone in Cuifeng City roughly forgot everything regarding the divine descent ceremony and their faith in the god.

Even the most devout believers no longer remembered the existence of their god in the depths of their minds.

Then, even the act of forgetting itself was forgotten.

The absurd divine descent ceremony vanished from their memories.

Under the gaze of the Silent Silhouette, the Flying Pie God gradually turned into an irrelevant background decoration.

The connection of faith was completely severed.

"Agh!!"

The Flying Pie God let out an angry roar.

Its massive body dimmed completely, and the holy white light vanished.

The giant pie developed scorched black cracks as if it had been burnt, and the fillings lost their luster, resembling leftovers that had been sitting out for too long.

The Silent Silhouette continued to watch it, accelerating the process of the Flying Pie God's Backgrounding.

The fujoshi recorded her inspiration nearby and began drawing a fanfiction manga, 《Food Gijinka Romance Drama》.

The battle was decided.

The Minister no longer paid attention to the now-useless Flying Pie God; someone would come to contain it shortly.

The Minister lowered his head slightly, his gaze sweeping over the city as his brow furrowed slightly.

Although the headquarters had eliminated the god worshipped by the Radiant Church with thunderous methods, the Minister still had doubts in his heart.

Could the god worshipped by a serious religious organization like the Radiant Church truly be this bizarre-looking giant flying pie?

While the Flying Pie God's power was formidable and strange, its overall characteristics were severely inconsistent with certain qualities the church had previously displayed, such as holy light, purification, and order.

Could it be that this Flying Pie God had stolen the faith of the Radiant Church and replaced their original god, responding to the call of the divine descent ceremony?

"Whatever. We’ve captured this strange god anyway."

The Minister temporarily set these questions aside.

What was more important now was cleaning up the scene and controlling the situation.

Through encrypted communication, he issued clear instructions to the headquarters special operations units that had already been deployed outside Cuifeng City.

"Perform a sanitize and sweep of Cuifeng City."

"Target: all religious personnel associated with the Radiant Church, especially the core believers who participated in this divine descent ceremony."

"Arrest them all. If they resist, kill them on the spot—especially those of the alien races!"

Following the order, Cuifeng City transitioned from an absurd farce into an efficient and cold purge.

Piercing sirens rang out from all directions of the city.

Countless headquarters investigators in specialized combat gear swarmed like a tide, accurately striking the pre-locked target locations.

Churches, meeting points, believer residences, and the local investigation bureau were all key points of the encirclement.

The entire process was efficient and orderly.

Most ordinary believers didn't even possess supernatural powers; they had no resistance against the headquarters' purge.

Even the powerful believers gradually fell under this sudden and unexpected encirclement.

Ordinary citizens had long since hidden in their homes, throwing away everything related to the church.

There were also those who weren't afraid of death, secretly filming and uploading the events to the internet.

At this moment, the Flying Pie God let out a wail as its massive body began to disintegrate and collapse.

After confirming the Flying Pie God no longer possessed any lethality, the headquarters containment unit immediately stepped forward and placed it into a specialized containment vessel.

Having contained a divine ghost, the headquarters members involved in the operation were overjoyed.

The Minister remained standing on the high altar, overlooking the city being sanitized.

The cold wind was still biting.

"No, this isn't real!"

When the Bishop of the Radiant Church regained his senses, this was the tragic scene he witnessed.

The god he worshipped had been replaced by some inexplicably humorous demon.

The church's followers were being crushed and dismantled by the headquarters.

His life's work was completely destroyed!

"You butchers! Barbarians!"

"I curse you! You will not come to a good end!"

"You destroyed our civilization back then and enslaved our people. We will never stop resisting!"

"Our will is immortal. God will lead us..."

"Shut up, you dead pig!" the Minister interrupted the Bishop's nonsense impatiently.

"The fact that our predecessors didn't completely wipe you out was a historical mistake."

"I will rectify that mistake and bring about the total extermination of races!"

Hearing this, the Bishop's throat seemed to be choked with paper as his eyes widened in terror.

Feeling somewhat irritable, the Minister walked down from the altar, then cast a spell to forget his own irritation.

Speaking of which, this matter was indeed a historical legacy from the previous era.

After the supernatural descended, transcendents appeared among the human population.

The development of transcendents was too rapid, and transcendents from various countries joined forces to overthrow the ruling regimes of ordinary humans.

Transcendents became the new ruling class, and then internal conflicts erupted.

The predecessors on the land of the Jinlong Continent were a cut above the rest, achieving final victory in the transcendent civil war.

Not long after, the highest authority of that time proposed a bold plan.

This plan could be called the most evil, most malicious, most inhumane, and yet most enticing plan in the history of human civilization.

—The extermination of races.

A dual approach of "purge and elimination" and "assimilation and absorption" was used to completely eliminate other races and civilizations!

And they succeeded.

Using supernatural powers for killing was more efficient than conventional weapons and didn't cause as much contamination or destruction to the ecological environment.

Once, there were people with very white skin, people with very black skin, people who liked to bow and apologize, people who liked to have sex with lizards...

They had all become dust in the long river of history.

Only a very small portion remained.

They had forgotten their civilizations, forgotten their surnames, and forgotten where they came from.

The reason they hadn't been completely wiped out was that a group of slaves was needed.

Besides the Jinlong Continent, there were other continents in the world.

However, due to the wars of those years and the lack of governance leading to rampant supernatural activity, many of those continents were no longer suitable for human habitation.

But as basic industrial bases for agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishing—industries closely related to the bottom tier of society—they were barely adequate.

The residual alien races were all excellent workers who didn't even require wages.

Give them a bit of food, and they would keep working.

They produced a large amount of living resources, ensuring that the humans of the Jinlong Continent could maintain their standard of living.

They didn't have to live as if it were the end of the world, unable to even afford instant noodles.

Otherwise, with today's social structure, where would all the fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, and milk come from?

When the Minister was young, he also felt that this action was too cruel and anti-human.

But as he grew older and more experienced, he gradually came to accept it.

This wasn't a massacre, nor was it a lack of humanity.

This was clearly human civilization encountering a great catastrophe and being on the verge of destruction.

At the critical moment, the transcendent predecessors of the Jinlong Continent had seized a glimmer of hope, preserving a small number of humans as sparks to continue human civilization.

They had ensured the survival of the human race.

For an educated person, eliminating other races and civilizations did indeed carry a certain psychological burden.

But this wasn't any one person's fault; it was a difficult choice that the development of human civilization was destined to experience.

It was a winding path forward and a necessary sacrifice.

At the cost of ninety percent of the alien races' lives, preserving the comfortable lives of the locals on the Jinlong Continent was clearly worth it.

Thinking of this, the Minister sighed. His sense of morality was still too high, actually feeling pained over these historical issues.

It couldn't be helped; after all, he was also an old-timer from another era.

A relic who survived from the old era, he had received a higher education and possessed rich emotions, occasionally feeling sentimental or melancholic.

Most young people born in this era were emotionally cold and lacked such strong empathy.

This wasn't their fault, but the result of natural selection.

After the supernatural descended, the bleeding hearts, the fake bleeding hearts, the emotionally abundant, and the overly clever or foolish gradually disappeared.

Those with good brains and firm wills who could resist the power of oblivion generally wouldn't marry and leave descendants.

What remained were the modern humans.

The farce of Cuifeng City drew to a close.

The local bureau director was dragged out; he was an impostor who had replaced the real one.

He and the Bishop of the Radiant Church were arrested, but they weren't killed on the spot.

They were high-level transcendents, after all; they could be taken back to serve as experimental materials.

The Radiant Church was composed of alien races; they were ghosts of revenge, still retaining some fragments of their destroyed civilizations.

But unfortunately, their every move was under the surveillance of the headquarters.

They were leeks; they didn't even need fertilizer or water to grow strong on their own.

If the Radiant Church hadn't tried to pull off some divine descent ceremony to bring their god into the real world, the headquarters would have continued to tolerate them.

Periodic harvesting would have been enough.

What a pity they had a death wish.