Nightmare Light

Chapter 234 Once Upon a Time
After the commotion, the platform quieted down.

With a small fish in her mouth and a cheerful expression, Qianlan walked to the middle of the platform.

"Move aside, I'm retiring now."

Lin Wang pulled the cat girl to the edge of the platform and stared intently at Qian Lan.

Then, he saw Qianlan slowly open her arms, revealing an extremely serious expression.

She spoke, and declared loudly into the void before her:

"Well, I've retired."

"...And then?" Lin Wang's lips twitched.

"What? And then? That's it." Qianlan said matter-of-factly.

"...You've gone through all that trouble, making us both push back as far as we can, and all you've said lately is this?"

"Yup!"

"Then why did you make it so complicated just now?!"

"That would make me look awesome."

"..."

The thought processes of gods are truly bizarre.

The same applies to retirees.

Lin Wang felt a deep sense of exhaustion.

The next second, a sudden gust of wind swept across the platform.

Lin Wang suddenly looked up.

He saw a gust of wind appear out of nowhere and surround Qianlan, whose hair and skirt fluttered in the wind.

When the wind stopped, Lin Wang found that the tall woman with a graceful figure and a long dress was still in front of him.

But the omnipresent sense of mystery and profundity about her had vanished without a trace.

The stars on her dress no longer shimmered; it looked like just an ordinary, pretty piece of fabric. But in her eyes, there were endless, deep stars...

Unless you look closely, you can no longer see them; all you can see are a pair of bright, curious eyes, brimming with a natural liveliness and joy, looking at the world before them.

"Alright, I've successfully retired!"

She even spun around smugly.

Lin Wang nodded: "I'll go find you a place to stay under the tree..."

"Under the tree? Retired deities all live in trees; that's the rule."

Lin Wang was taken aback: "There's such a rule?"

"What do you think the tree fern is?" Qian Lan gently tapped Lin Wang's forehead with her finger. "The World Tree! It controls everything in the mortal world! Including the gods!"

She looked up at the still desolate and lifeless tree fern in front of her and sighed, "Back then... this tree was lush and verdant, and countless gods lived here... what a prosperous time it was."

She then added with a sigh, "The days when I could easily trick a dozen or so deities with a single prank... are gone forever."

"..." Lin Wang's face twitched, a thought flashing through his mind: "And then? What happened?"

Qianlan raised her hand and said to the tree fern with great familiarity, "Visitor application, generate a set of tables and chairs, user number... Ah, I guess all the records I saved back then are gone, just generate any set."

[Command accepted, please wait.]

A few seconds later, vines descended from the sky and formed a table and chairs in front of the three people.

"Please sit down, what follows is a long story."

After Qianlan finished speaking, she saw Lin Wang call the vines down again.

"Make a note: the backs of the outdoor tables and chairs should be larger, and they shouldn't be round tables, but rather long square tables. Also..."

She asked Lin Wang curiously, "Why did you make such a demand on the tree fern?" "Because the one just now wasn't pretty," Lin Wang said seriously. "It should be prettier."

Qianlan blinked and then laughed: "You... are truly an interesting mortal."

The white cat next to her suddenly looked up and said to Qianlan, "Then I'll give you some small fish too."

Qianlan smiled and took the dried fish: "I just thought about it, and now that things have come to this, I can tell you a little about what happened back then."

Lin Wang sat up straight.

He knew that, through his tireless efforts, this strange world had finally begun to reveal a sliver of the truth to him.

"The world wasn't actually like this back then... In short, it wasn't like this at the beginning."

Qianlan struggled to find the right words, and Lin Wang knew that she was trying to circumvent the "taboos of the gods" and tell him some information that she could say.

“In the beginning, the world was vast and abundant. Human civilization developed healthily under the glory of the gods, and the immortal gods each occupied their positions and performed their duties.”

"...The tree fern is lush and leafy, with its branches and roots spread all over the planet."

Lin Wang noticed that when Qian Lan mentioned "tree fern", she paused for a moment, but he knew that this was also a "censored word", so there was no point in asking and he let her continue.

"We believe that this planet and the civilization on it will gradually develop and thrive under the watchful eyes of the gods, and then leave the planet and venture into the stars..."

"But then one day, war broke out on the level of the gods."

As she spoke, her whole body trembled, as if she were recalling something extremely terrifying.

This was the first time Lin Wang had ever seen a god, or even a top-tier god of the monarch level, display such emotions.

“That day… among us, there was a great lord, a top deity on par with a goddess, who suddenly went mad and rebelled, launching a war against all the gods on the tree fern.”

"We were forced to fight, and caught off guard, we suffered heavy casualties. Under the leadership of the goddess, we paid a great price to try to stabilize the situation."

"But that was a great lord, and a mad one at that. During the attack, ordinary immortals... would be infected by Him and go mad."

Lin Wang frowned as he recalled everything that had happened along the way.

The Mad God, the corrupting and maddening power, and the enormous corpse seen in the sky...

"Does that mean you are completely helpless against this power?"

The former Lord of the Mountains gave Lin Wang a bitter smile: "No, there is still a way."

Lin Wang took a breath, silently looked at Qian Lan, and waited for the latter to say the answer he had already vaguely guessed.

"We... may not be able to defeat corruption, but we can defeat ourselves."

She smiled, raised her hand, and pointed to herself with her fair fingers: "Later, all the immortals and gods in the mortal world made the same choice."

"After realizing that we could not stop the corruption, we went to find an opponent of equal caliber under the command of the Mad God and perished together with Him."

She smiled and calmly recounted a huge and tragic story:

“We are the gods. Gods love the world, and even if they die, they will die before the world.”

"This is why the world has become the way it is—"

Qianlan remained silent for a long time before slowly uttering those words.

"Because when all the gods and immortals make the same choice, the world loses the fulcrum of all authority."

In just a few minutes, Qianlan told Lin Wang a story that he had vaguely suspected, but never expected the truth to be so huge and astonishing.

A tremendous and tragic aura swept over them, and even someone as mentally strong as Lin Wang couldn't help but feel a sense of suffocation.

He asked Qianlan, "Then... what happened to that madman later?"

“When I died, He was still alive, but I think that since this mortal world has existed for so many years, He must be dead,” Qianlan said.

"Then... what about the goddess?" Lin Wang asked the question that interested him the most.

“…How would I know?” Qianlan turned her face away.

(End of this chapter)