He is the leader of the Tantric sect in Chagdu.

Chapter 134 [Twilight]

The following time was still spent on topics that cats couldn't participate in. Compared to the information in the minds of those hooligans, Nuocheng, as a member of the upper echelons of the copper moss community, definitely knew more detailed things.

For example, the current structure of the bottom nest is more about the three major factions.

"The Southern Association, now the ruling power in the Southern Ruins—by size—is the only institution with actual political power. They are the legislator of the Deep Nest and the maintainer of the law."

Ms. White Rabbit — Actually, according to her age, she should be called Miss White Rabbit, she explained in a gentle and soft voice.

"Although the law is generally enforced only in the metropolis, it is practically a blank sheet of paper in the slightly lower jurisdictions. But at least they are still trying to establish basic order—and there are factions with similar self-interest, such as the Restorationists, who are trying to establish a communication network connecting the entire southern ruins in the bottom nest, but this is a very distant goal."

Aina nodded, and then Nuocheng took out his sidearm and showed it to her, the logo engraved on the surface—

It is an emblem composed of levers and gears; though it is an inanimate object, it appears solemn and sacred.

"Although the Holy Gear Orthodox Church presents itself as a religious organization, it is actually the core institution that controls industry—they built large boilers to supply heat and electricity to the bottom nest, which is the cornerstone of maintaining the bottom nest's operation."

"The artisans of the orthodox religion—are said to possess the divine power to communicate with machines, and among them, those known as the Grand Craftsmen, the highest-level researchers and technicians, are highly respected here—"

Hearing this, Aina glanced at Hugh sitting upright beside her. He looked well-behaved, but in reality, he was heartbroken.

The bird remembered what it had seen before.

Special powers refer to the ability to create a functional mechanical structure from a bunch of random materials.

"It sounds like the realm of the Fire Criterion."

She pondered, "Forging techniques can accomplish something similar—but it's a bit of a fantasy for a faction to have so many artisans who can accommodate the principles of fire."

—Hmm—there are no further clues.

As for the final mechanism of destruction.

White Rabbit smiled, then suddenly fell silent on the topic, and shook her head. "They—are the last of the rebels."

"Rebel?" Aina tilted her head. "Rebel against what?"

Nuocheng pointed to the ceiling, and the former quickly understood.

"Are they planning a counterattack against the upper echelons?"

Aina was a little excited, after all, a bloodbath would certainly be entertaining, and stirring up trouble was an excellent pleasure for the moths.

"I've hated those bastards up there for a long time; they deserve to be thoroughly defied!"

Ignoring the obviously excited bird, White Rabbit shook her head. "It's not that simple. That wall—it's an insurmountable barrier we haven't been able to cross yet. Ever since the blockade was established, apart from the annual 'promotion' quota set by the higher-ups, there has been no means or method to cross that dome."

"Although the Fallen Organization keeps saying that it will take back what was taken from us, at least at this stage, these slogans are not much different from empty talk." Nuocheng sighed.

But Aina noticed other details.

"You've mentioned 'us' several times" —

She stared into the white rabbit's eyes and said softly, "It seems you're quite used to living here? At least you've begun to see yourself as part of the bottom nest."

"No----"

The white rabbit explained softly.

"It's because I share some overlap with certain ideologies held by the Fallen Organization—in fact, as far as I know, the original Fallen Organization consisted of survivors who fled from the collapsed northern plateau to the southern ruins. In the catastrophe that caused the land to collapse there, they seemed to have found some new beliefs, including the deeper secrets of the land beneath our feet."

Miss White Rabbit took a deep breath and spoke slowly.

"Those survivors made many strange and bizarre statements, like—"

"Everything has passed away, everything is mired in death, everything has evolved to its end, everything has decayed."

—What does that mean?

Aina frowned, thinking the riddle-maker deserved to die.

"Never mind, you don't need to worry about these things."

Nuocheng quickly realized the new elder's dissatisfaction and naturally switched to a lighter tone, "At least for now, the main structure of the bottom nest is as I just described—and please forgive me for not being able to present the more detailed parts to you in a short time. If you need, I can find relevant information."

"Thank you for your help." Aina didn't stand on ceremony; this was something she was curious about all along.

On the other side, Hugh sat upright in his little wooden chair, with his respected godmother in front of him—so the cat's tail was numb from sitting on the unsuitable chair, and he didn't dare to move much.

It's obvious that the two are having an "adult conversation," which is quite a leap in perspective for a kitten that can't even be properly cared for by its family.

But Hugh still listened intently to the whole thing, and Aina and Nuocheng didn't notice his little actions, which made the cat a little dazed.

Thinking about the entire base of the nest from a bird's-eye view feels like participating in a truly remarkable operation—a feeling I've never experienced before.

Over the course of time, something discordant seemed to have crept into my hazy consciousness.

—Why does it sound like something broke?—

There was also crying. Where did the crying come from?

Hugh snapped out of his daze and stared blankly at the amber-colored long table in front of him. Strangely, Aina and Lady White Rabbit, who seemed to have been sitting at either end not long ago, were nowhere to be seen.

—Where did you go?

Cat raised his head blankly, and more sounds came through the empty manor, coming into his ears from outside the black walls.

—What————

A piercing roar—accompanied by hysterical cries and screams—spread throughout the slum, the town of Usa—and indeed the entire southern ruins.

"6

They rushed to the exit of the hall, where they were greeted by a sky full of flames pouring down, and a red bird and a white rabbit standing solemnly in the open space.

What pierced their eardrums were countless ferocious roars from the outside world: "The celestial orbit! The celestial orbit is shattered!"

Hugh stared blankly as those intricate, spiderweb-like "tracks" slowly dissipated in the air, truly like threads drifting in the wind.

Separated by an immeasurably long distance, this scene unfolded silently and serenely under Hugh's gaze, as ethereal as a dream—

But in reality, it would be a terrible disaster.

The collapsed track was the only public transportation for the bottom nest, and it was destroyed by intercepting fire from all directions during the fall—but some still managed to escape and fall from the sky, passing through numerous obstacles, and crashing to the ground.

A broken piece of rail crashed onto the desolate edge of the field of vision, raising a large cloud of gray-black dust in the rubble heap.

—But that's not the point.

"The Holy Ring—" Hugh murmured. Although he had an identity unknown to others, he was still just a child at heart, and he couldn't help but tremble in the face of such a disaster.

"It cracked—"

The collapse of those suspended tracks seemed to be just the prelude, and the moment the real curtain was lifted was when the entire bottom nest was like an eggshell being kneaded by a huge force, with an ominous cracking sound coming from the outer wall that was wrapped around it.

As the strange noises reached their limit, amidst the overwhelming lamentations that seemed to come from the other side of the world, a broken outline appeared faintly beneath the dome, gradually expanding to the limit of vision.

This was a disaster that occurred without any warning or revelation—the timing of which was like the shock and fear people felt when they looked up to wipe the sweat from their brows and saw the sky tilting downwards.

Aina squinted, looking towards the end of the Spiral City.

In the endless, almost boundless firelight—emerging from the gray-black darkness, is a huge ring.

It was a creation clinging to the walls of Antawn, enveloping the entire metropolis, a colossal ring-shaped structure stretching to the edge of the spiral city.

It is in poor condition now.

First, some ashes-like parts began to fall off from the edge of the ring and fall to the ground—the fragments trailed thick black smoke behind them, followed by countless terrifying tail flames that dyed the dome the color of dusk, like a tsunami.

These things, which appear incredibly tiny in our field of vision, become so enormous when they fall that they challenge the limits of our understanding.

It is sinking.

That massive, black structure, twisted like a giant steel python, was slowly falling from the horizon—in the piercing silence, it cracked open from its horizontal middle section, like glass whose critical structure had been broken, and in the next instant—from the point of fracture, countless black cracks burst outwards.

It was torn in two by forces erupting from within, and countless other pieces followed, completely disintegrating the moment they came into contact with the bloated urban cluster.

The shattered ring scattered into thousands of streaks of light across the sky. As it sank into the sky above the metropolis, it was as if something from the heavens had passed through the decaying branches of a giant, withered tree. The towering buildings and skyscrapers that stretched outwards were like "excessive branches and dense foliage," collapsing in an instant with a mournful cry.

—And all these disasters stopped only under the dome.

That wall—or rather, that dome: the Wall of Antarn—is a symbol of the “cutting” of the Deep Nest from the Hallownest of Lolanda, the supreme blockade established by the Dogma.

The towering flames and tremors were effortlessly blocked by that "wall," as solid as a sighing barrier, preventing any further aftershocks or impacts from escaping upwards.

Everyone could see this.

At the edge of that bloated world, in the area called the Metropolis, its summit had broken through the limits of vision, almost touching the base of the dome, reaching a height where even the eye could no longer grasp the entire panorama—

At this moment, it is burning in the flames.

But a few, like Aina, have a gaze that can penetrate the present world and see certain things hidden deeper and clearer:

At the edge of the "nest", grotesque structures resembling corpses and skeletons proliferate along the branches.

She held her breath.

—This colossal nest, stretching from heaven to earth, only appears truly "vast" when viewed from the perspective of a raging inferno—only after the towering, protruding structures that once perched in the air have been cleared away by the cascading debris do the upward views finally shed their "crowded" appearance.

Only now can people escape their previously cramped view and briefly see the bare core of this nest, stripped of its internal superfluous creatures—and its truly similar form:

The spiraling nests resembled a giant tree that had been burned to ashes, its base the stump, while the outer wall covering it curled up like dead wings.

It was an outline so thin yet so solid it defied comprehension—like the remains and skeleton of a colossal creature that had been dead for countless ages, now residing in the present world.

These are the materials used to build the "dome".

—【The Remains of the Dead Sky】

Amidst the shrieking sounds that seemed to tear the world apart, Aina watched this scene of destruction with an indescribable grace—the sky that seemed frozen in twilight: as ominous orange-red flames filled almost her entire field of vision, certain scenes once etched at the bottom of the pool flowed into her glass-like transparent vessel. In a moment of inspiration, she seemed to see something reappear: a magnificent tree, large enough to support the world, withered in the harsh winter, decayed in rot, and burned to charcoal in an inextinguishable flame.

That event—

【Grand Tour】

"But clearly————"

She remembered clearly that the death of the sacred tree was a withered state after its bark was peeled off and its abdominal fluids were drained, just as described in the "skinning feast".

—But what is this illusion before my eyes?

Why is there fire, and why is there light?

Fire and Light —

She murmured those two powerful words, and then couldn't help but drift into a daze.

Why does the "heart" ultimately go extinguished?

Why did the sacred tree perish?

Aina fell into deep thought at that moment, her golden-red pupils reflecting the flames filling the sky.

-noon.

The word flashed through her mind—the name of this era, which she chewed over lukewarmly.

It was a grand history of too many upheavals that almost reshaped the entire world, but it was impossible to trace back to the past—we could only glimpse a wisp of information flowing from behind the scenes through the projection of certain symbolic scenes, like trying to grasp the tail feathers of light.

Perhaps only by actually going there can we find the mystery behind that veil.

"Annoying!" she pouted.

—If the larger version were here, it might reveal more, but the scoundrel doesn't have those white-beaked eyes that remember and cherish everything.

But while Aina was feeling down about it, the disaster was far from over.

As the ring was torn into countless fragments and fell to the ground, flames instantly erupted between the spiraling cities, and one of the fragments screeched as it crashed onto the border of Usa town.

Extremely fortunate—the calamity from the heavens did not destroy this tiny settlement. Not far away, a tall and bright spire tilted in the bursting flames and then collapsed with a mournful cry.

"lighthouse----"

Xiu was far from having the vast amount of thought that Aina had generated in that instant. His still immature mind was filled with fear right now. He moved his lips and stretched out a trembling arm into the distance.

In the next instant, as the tower that bestowed its light collapsed, the already faint glow that lingered between the fading daylight and the waning darkness also went out in that instant.

The sky darkened.

—"Snap."

The faint noises emanating from the house behind seemed to pluck a string in the heart, throbbing amidst the increasingly heavy heartbeats—the strange sounds subtly spread throughout the entire town of Usa, even reaching the farthest reaches of the world, every deepest corner.

What was that source that was destroyed, causing the disconnection sound? For a nest, electricity is like blood flowing in the human body, but now it's all stagnant.

So all the lights that were originally on went out.

The earth was plunged into darkness.

Finally, when heavy, slow breathing came from the dome, like the last breath of an old man on his deathbed—the "internal circulation system," which should have been running forever, came to an end in a piercing wail.

The light representing "in operation" went out.

The world was pitch black. A wind of unknown origin swept up the dust on the ground, swirling and curling, growing colder and colder in the eerie silence—until the wind brushed against people's bare fingers and necks, cutting like a knife.

—Winter arrived a month early.

"Alas—" Miss White Rabbit sighed softly in the darkness, like falling snow, with no more sorrow to mourn.

"Just as we experience the glory and decline of the past in times of decline, just as we are born in the splendor of ice and fire, and trapped in the hardship of a harsh winter—after all is silent, we will eventually perish in the depths of our virtue."

"In the old days, people didn't have cold, mechanical bodies covered in armor, and there were no eternally burning boilers in the sky—if they only had thick furs and shirts, what would they have used, what would they have relied on—to survive the harsh winters that could freeze steel to pieces?"

Current temperature: -34°C

"Now you don't have to worry about moving."

In the silence, Aina's hazy voice rang out again, addressing Hugh. Unlike Nuocheng's hollow voice, there was no fear in her tone, nor any emotion that could be understood by others—it was as if she were watching a wonderful stage play from the perspective of an audience member.

"Now, everything here is the same—"

:

She couldn't help but laugh out loud, disregarding the occasion.

—The ruins after the fire, the approaching extreme cold.

It was as if my involvement had prematurely unveiled the curtain on this grand drama.

Although the cause of this sudden disaster is still unknown, she could join the chaotic opening ceremony in a more dignified way.

—Isn't this the stage built for me?

Aina turned her back to the crowd and raised her head, showing no fear or confusion whatsoever. Instead, a burning desire for exploration and ambition blazed within her beautiful golden-red eyes.

At the end of the year 2077 in the Primordial Calendar, at the bottom of the Nest, a sudden disaster struck, just like what had happened here before: the sinking of the North and the fall of the West.

This time it's the southern ruins.

It was as if some kind of hollow projection rising from the bottom of the pool—a re-enactment of past glory and decline—the echoes of the past tore out from the peaceful days, announcing a season of final demise.

Historically known as—【The Twilight of Shattered Rings】

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