The earth split apart, the sky changed violently, and skyscrapers collapsed. People fled in panic, only to realize there was nowhere to run—no matter where they looked, there was no safe place.
Civilians dropped to their knees, crying out desperately to the heavens.
“My God, please save Your people.”
——At the Federal Presidential Palace, guards rushed inside.
“Madam President, the helicopter has arrived. You must leave now.”
The president knelt beside the window, clutching a ring engraved with a sun, and shook her head.
“The satellite images have already come through. There’s no escape. You should all go. Don’t worry about me—go back to your families. Stay with the people you love.”
The captain of the guard gritted his teeth. “What about you, Madam President?”
The president tightened her grip on the ring.
“I will pray to our God. I pray that our God will protect the people of Blue Sea.”
She bowed toward the enormous stone statue outside the presidential palace. Her forehead struck the cold floor again and again. Even when blood began to flow, she did not stop.
“My God, President Qin Zhi of Blue Sea begs You—please help Your people. Please save Blue Sea, save Your children!”
——At the Marshal’s residence, Marshal Alice Reina had also chosen not to flee. The satellite images were already perfectly clear: their planet was hurtling irreversibly toward destruction. No matter where they ran, death was inevitable.
The military had already been deployed for rescue operations, but only those in the upper ranks knew it was all futile.
She looked at her partner, whose hair had turned completely white, and gave a faint smile through tear-filled eyes.
“So… this is the end for us.”
Her partner was crying as well. “I’m not afraid to die. But… but our children are still so young…”
The marshal laughed bitterly. “Our God favors the young. Perhaps… perhaps our two grandchildren will be spared.”
She and her partner stepped outside and looked up at the crimson sky. Touching the moon-shaped necklace around her neck, she murmured:
“My God… all these years, have I done well? Have I failed to live up to Your expectations?”
——In the temple, the Pope never stopped praying, even as the buildings outside collapsed one after another and cracks in the earth had already spread beneath his feet.
“Most holy, most exalted, most glorious—”
“Like light, like wind, like clouds—”
“Great Lord of the Star Sea—”
“Supreme Creator God—”
“Your majesty overturns Blue Sea—”
“Your mercy saves all things—”
“Your compassion illuminates eternity—”
Someone ran past the collapsing doorway, spotted the Pope and the others, then hurried back to warn them:
“Your Holiness, the temple is collapsing! You must leave!”
The Pope’s young, pale, delicate face remained utterly calm. He lowered his gaze, still holding his prayer posture, his long black hair trailing across the ground.
“All things in this world are born and perish according to the will of our God.”
“If our God wishes Blue Sea to be destroyed today, then we should die with gratitude.”
He closed his eyes and continued praying with those behind him.
Thousands of voices merged into one—loud, orderly, solemn, and fanatical. They even drew many fleeing civilians to join them in prayer.
“Most holy, most exalted, most glorious—”
“Like light, like wind, like clouds—”
“Great Lord of the Star Sea—”
“Supreme Creator God—”
——Cheng Qisheng watched the scene unfold.
“Even if I really am the Creator God, I still think these people are a little too extreme.”
“Hmm… but if these fanatical believers knew their Creator God was going to die with them, would that make them feel better?”
Of course, Cheng Qisheng could only think these words. She could no longer speak at all.
Cheng Qisheng, twenty-five years old, had been suffering from ALS for three years.
As everyone knew, ALS was an incurable disease, often described as leaving a person like “a conscious vegetable.” The mind remained clear, but the body gradually ceased to obey, with the constant possibility of sudden death.
Three years earlier, Cheng Qisheng had only just been diagnosed. While she was drowning in despair, a miniature planet suddenly appeared in her home.
At the time, there was not a single living creature on it. Only Cheng Qisheng could see the planet. It contained a ruined city, and time flowed there at an unimaginably accelerated rate.
Cheng Qisheng quickly realized that, to this planet, she was essentially a god—capable of observing and interacting with anything on it.
Then an idea struck her: she could take advantage of the planet’s accelerated flow of time to create life and cultivate a human civilization.
That way, only a few months might pass in the real world, while on the miniature planet, humanity could advance into an interstellar civilization thanks to the extreme acceleration of time.
A high-tech interstellar civilization… surely it would be able to cure ALS, right?
Once the civilization on this planet developed a treatment for her illness, she could simply use it herself.
A perfect plan.
Cheng Qisheng immediately found hope again and devoted herself completely to managing the planet.
If it lacked light, she bought a lighting system. If it lacked a moon, she broke off a fragment of planetary debris and used it as one. If it lacked water, she sprayed it with a bottle.
The planet, which she named Dark Star, did not disappoint. It developed at an astonishing rate.
Bacteria and cyanobacteria. Multicellular organisms. Trilobites. Arthropods. Plants. Insects. Fish. Amphibians. Reptiles. Small mammals…
Finally, the first ape raised its head toward the sky and began to think.
At that moment, Cheng Qisheng was overwhelmed with excitement, convinced that hope was finally within reach.
The apes gradually evolved into primitive humans, then formed tribes and entered the Stone Age.
The first time, just as they were about to enter an agricultural society—she went to the living room to get some water.
During that brief moment, a rogue celestial body slammed into Dark Star.
The entire planet instantly became a sea of fire. Not even a single strand of primitive human hair remained.
Cheng Qisheng, returning with her glass of water: “……”
Nothing had happened for all those days, yet the instant she went to take a sip of water, everything was gone.
She finished drinking, gritted her teeth, and started over.
The second time, Cheng Qisheng became extraordinarily careful.
She ate only takeout, drank bottled mineral water, and even timed her bathroom breaks precisely. Whenever a celestial body approached Dark Star, she hurriedly pushed it away.
Under her painstaking care, humanity on the miniature planet successfully advanced into the modern era.
Just as victory seemed within reach—and modern civilization was no longer helpless before natural or man-made disasters, even possessing early-warning systems for approaching celestial bodies—she finally relaxed a little.
She went to sleep.
When she woke up, humanity had begun destroying itself in her absence.
Countries fought over territory and launched nuclear missiles at one another. By the time Cheng Qisheng opened her eyes again, almost no one remained alive on Dark Star.
Cheng Qisheng: Heh.
Again!
The third time, bacteria spiraled out of control. Nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide were consumed in excessive amounts, the atmosphere disappeared, and every living thing suffocated.
The fourth time, humanity died out due to internal conflict.
The fifth time, humanity died out due to internal conflict.
The sixth time, humanity destroyed the environment. The ozone layer vanished, and although they struggled to survive for a while, they still ultimately failed.
The seventh time, Cheng Qisheng used the remnants of previous human civilizations to create “miracles” and assumed the title of Creator God. Under her guidance and protection, humanity still engaged in minor conflicts, but none severe enough to damage the planet or its environment. Technology advanced steadily, genius after genius emerged, and their technological tree climbed all the way into the interstellar age. They had even begun researching a cure for ALS.
At last, hope was within sight, and Cheng Qisheng was overjoyed.
But as her illness worsened, she grew weaker and weaker, making it impossible to continuously monitor the interstellar civilization. Meanwhile, the civilization itself—like a child who had grown up and wanted to leave its parents—no longer wished to remain under the rule of a Creator God standing above them.
They decided to search for a new home far beyond their own star system, to move to an entirely new planet without a Creator God and, from then on, let humanity determine its own fate.
Even after more than a hundred years, they still had not developed a cure for ALS. Then the exploration team secretly dispatched by the interstellar civilization to search for a new home encountered a deadly virus beyond their world—and brought that virus back to their home planet.
Humanity was wiped out yet again.
Cheng Qisheng had nothing left to say.
This time, she reflected deeply on what she had done.
Humans were exactly the sort of species capable of destroying themselves.
She could not give them complete freedom!
Gritting her teeth, she activated the gene bank left behind by the interstellar civilization. Without eating, drinking, or sleeping, she forced herself to endure, cultivating generation after generation of humans until she successfully imprinted absolute loyalty to herself as a “mental seal” into their genes.
From then on, that imprint of loyalty was passed down from generation to generation.
—Thus, the new humans—the Blue Sea civilization—were born.
Cheng Qisheng devoted more effort to this completely loyal new humanity than she had to all seven previous civilizations combined.
The Blue Sea civilization developed rapidly. Whenever disaster struck and she happened to be awake, she would intervene as the Creator God to save people from afar, sometimes even deliberately answering the prayers of her believers.
For example, if a believer wished to become rich, she would casually dig up some gold for them.
If a believer fell ill and prayed for health, she would find the appropriate medicine or injection among the remnants of the interstellar civilization and cure them.
Even the ruined city that had existed on the planet from the very beginning proved useful. Previous civilizations had tried to demolish and rebuild it, but even technology from the interstellar age had been unable to move it.
Not even a single brick could be shifted, much less destroyed.
So Cheng Qisheng simply declared that the city was a temple—a divine structure that could never be destroyed.
It was extremely convincing.
The city occasionally blocked incoming celestial impacts, and Cheng Qisheng would also punish those she deemed evil. Whenever technological progress stagnated, she would release relics left behind by the interstellar civilization.
Every member of the Blue Sea civilization knew one thing:
The Creator God truly existed.
These people were neither the smartest nor the most brilliant of all the humans Cheng Qisheng had ever cultivated. In fact, they especially loved fighting among themselves.
But they were the most devoted to her, the most obedient—and the ones into whom she had poured the greatest amount of effort.
Unfortunately, they had been born too late.
Even with the legacy of the interstellar age, and even with medical teams tirelessly conducting research under the will of their god, there was simply no way to create a cure for ALS in such a short period when even the interstellar civilization had failed after a hundred years of effort.
Dark Star had passed through cycle after cycle of death and rebirth. By rough calculation, hundreds of billions of years had elapsed there.
For Cheng Qisheng, however, only three years had passed.
Her ALS had already spread throughout her entire body. Now, even the slightest movement was extraordinarily difficult.
And at that exact moment, a wandering black hole passed by Dark Star.
Within ten days, it would tear the entire planet apart.
Cheng Qisheng could hear the prayers of the Blue Sea civilization—but there was nothing she could do.
At her current speed, by the time she managed to lift even a single finger, Dark Star would already be gone.
This time, she could not even protect the planet.
—God herself was powerless to save anything.
Unwilling…
She was so unwilling.
Cheng Qisheng closed her eyes. In her ears, she could still hear the Pope leading the believers in synchronized prayer.
“Most holy, most exalted, most glorious—”
“Like light, like wind, like clouds—”
[Detected disaster environment—]
[Detected civilization present on current planet—]
“Great Lord of the Star Sea—”
“Supreme Creator God—”
Huh?
Something strange had just slipped in.
Cheng Qisheng’s eyes, which had only just closed, snapped open.
A clear mechanical voice echoed distinctly:
[Detected population exceeding 1,000—]
[Binding Safe City to host—]
[Safe City binding successful—]
[Safe City system activated. Please, Host, receive survivors for refuge—]
[When the number of Safe City residents reaches 50,000, they may leave the dying planet and search for a place where civilization can continue—]
Cheng Qisheng’s mind raced furiously, but that did not stop her from immediately sending a message to her fanatical believers.
Whatever this thing was, it didn’t matter. If she did nothing, she was going to die anyway—so she might as well act first!!
It was only after becoming a “god” that she discovered that, as long as she had enough fanatical believers, she really could issue commands to them directly through her mind.
Aside from that ability, however, she had never noticed any other benefits.
Back then, she had even been full of expectations—perhaps she really could ascend to godhood on the spot?
Wasn’t there supposed to be something like becoming a god through faith?
In the end, she had never felt anything resembling so-called “divine power.” All she could do was transmit messages to her believers. If someone was particularly devout, she could even send them images.
But even those images were usually blurry and were easily misinterpreted in absurdly profound ways.
A hundred years earlier, she had once sent a message to the Pope of that era, telling him that there was an exceptionally intelligent child in a certain place who should be sent to a good school and properly educated.
The Pope interpreted it as:
“The Saint has descended, blessed by our God. She will surely bring glory to Blue Sea in the future!”
Fortunately, the “Saint” still ended up going to school and eventually became one of the greatest scientists of her generation.
At the time, Cheng Qisheng could only watch with complicated feelings as the great scientist entered the research institute, where everyone respectfully bowed their heads and addressed her as “Her Holiness the Saint.”
The disconnect was ridiculous, okay?!
Although her “message transmission ability” was frequently embellished by her believers, at a moment like this, whether they overinterpreted her words no longer mattered.
Cheng Qisheng closed her eyes and sent a message to all her believers at once.
Dark Star—
Everyone who had been despairing, weeping, or standing completely lost suddenly sensed a faint, indistinct message appearing in their minds.
“It is our God!!”
“Our God has shown mercy! She is telling us to go to the temple! The temple is safe!”
“Great!! I knew it!! The great Lord of the Star Sea would never abandon Her people!!”
“Thus speaks the divine oracle!! The old world shall be cleansed by flame, but our God will create a new world to shelter us!!”
“Our God! We thank You for Your mercy!”