I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

Dawn at the New Chang'an City Central Square.

The entire city resembled a steel behemoth awakening, with a peculiar acrid smell in the air, a mixture of high-density spiritual energy and plasma engines.

"Buzz—"

The sky suddenly darkened. Millions of spectators in the square simultaneously looked up, erupting in a thunderous roar of amazement.

Above the clouds, a black pillar as thick as a mountain is piercing straight down from the depths of the sky towards the ground with an extremely violent momentum. That is the main shaft of the carbon nanotube space elevator, stretching 36,000 kilometers!

As the main axis approached, the gravitational field and air pressure of the entire new Chang'an City began to fluctuate violently. A strong wind suddenly arose, the gravel at the edge of the square moved without wind, and even the breathing of the people on the outskirts became extremely difficult.

At that very moment, a premeditated riot broke out in the crowd.

"The sky is falling! Run!"

A dozen or so members of the "pure human" outer circle, hidden in the crowd, suddenly screamed at the top of their lungs and led the way in a frantic shoving. The ordinary people, already on edge due to the strange celestial phenomenon, were instantly infected by panic, and their formation collapsed.

In the chaos, several heavy, discarded boxes containing metal parts and insulating shells were forcefully thrown into the inner circle by the outer members, taking advantage of the strong winds!

"Bang! Crash—"

The debris crashed heavily onto the ground less than fifteen meters from the white jade base, scattering everywhere.

"Clear the anchor points! Don't let any metal debris get caught in the docking force field!" the military commander roared through the communicator, his eyes bloodshot.

At this moment, the high-level cultivators in mid-air were fully engaged in fighting the spiritual energy storm brought by the space axis, and had no time to clean up the few pieces of broken copper and scrap iron on the ground. If they used brute force to bombard it, they were afraid of damaging the fragile base formation.

"Have the sanitation worker on the outer perimeter, the one without any spiritual energy fluctuations, go and sweep it up! Quickly!"

The instruction has been issued.

At this moment when security was at its tightest, the defenses were breached by a carefully planned chaos.

Li Jianguo, who was in charge of cleaning the perimeter, thus legitimately lowered his head, held a pure wooden broom in both hands, and quickly crossed the red line that was originally absolutely insurmountable.

He was as safe as a transparent stone. Because he possessed no spiritual energy whatsoever, he was a complete "mortal." In the world of cultivators, arrogance and disdain became his perfect camouflage.

"boom!"

Without warning, an overwhelming and terrifying pressure swept across space from the direction of Kunlun and crashed down on the center of the square.

Gu Qing appeared out of thin air at the very core of the docking base. He was still wearing that simple blue robe, his feet hovering three inches above the ground.

"Welcome, Lord Kunlun!"

Amidst the deafening roar, Li Jianguo, his back slightly hunched, swept the debris across the ground with his broom, his movements erratic. He was less than fifteen meters behind Gu Qing.

"Start the connection." Gu Qing didn't turn around, but simply uttered four words.

Nine heavens above, the suspended main axis crashed down and precisely locked into the giant locking base in the center of the square.

"Click-click-click—"

A piercing sound of metal tearing apart echoed through the heavens! It was the immense force of the universe's rotation colliding fatally with the 36,000-kilometer-long main axis. Visibly, the seemingly indestructible main axis began to twist violently laterally, and the entire ground of the new Chang'an City began to tremble wildly.

At this critical moment, Gu Qing made a move.

He slowly closed his eyes and slightly spread his arms. In an instant, an indescribable, vast divine consciousness, centered on him, surged upwards like a supernova explosion, soaring straight into the sky along the main axis!

The violently twisting cable abruptly stopped vibrating the moment it came into contact with this divine sense.

At the same time, the protective aura around Gu Qing dimmed to its lowest point. All his senses and all his power seemed to be pulled tens of thousands of kilometers into the sky to forcibly suppress the earth-shattering natural force.

One minute.

Qiao Yuan's calculations were correct; he was now in a state of absolute paralysis.

Ten meters away.

Li Jianguo threw away the solid wood broom in his hand.

He slowly straightened up, his weathered face devoid of hatred, only displaying a chilling calm reminiscent of a martyr.

He lifted his large sanitation worker's coat and pulled out a crudely made double-barreled gun—codenamed "Mountain"—covered in black duct tape and extremely ugly in appearance.

The surrounding military police and high-level cultivators were all staring intently at the miraculous connection in the sky. No one turned around, and no one could have imagined that while an "immortal" was suppressing heaven and earth, a mortal was behind him holding up a pile of broken copper and scrap iron.

Li Jianguo picked up the heavy gun, and the rough muzzle steadily aimed at Gu Qing's unsuspecting back and heart.

His finger was on the first trigger.

"The glory of pure humanity will live on forever," he murmured in an extremely weak voice.

"Click".

The first muffled thud. There was no fire, no deafening roar.

Only one extremely high-frequency pulse, invisible to the naked eye, was emitted in an instant!

"Sizzle—"

The barely perceptible protective aura behind Gu Qing was punctured by this targeted frequency resonance, creating a palm-sized, absolute vacuum hole that lasted for 0.1 seconds.

A sharp glint flashed in Li Jianguo's bloodshot eyes, and his finger pulled the second trigger without hesitation.

"boom--!!!"

A terrifying sonic boom, overwhelming all the noise in the square, exploded in everyone's ears like a thunderclap from the heavens!

That was the ultimate explosion of mortal technology. A depleted uranium armor-piercing bullet, accelerated to Mach 8 by electromagnetic orbit, transformed into a dazzling dark red meteor the moment it left the barrel due to violent friction with the air.

too fast.

When all the cultivators were jolted back to their senses by the sudden sonic boom, the bullet, carrying the obsession and madness of dozens of elites from the old era, had already pierced through the gap in the protective energy and was firmly pressed against Gu Qing's back.

One shot breaks through the defense, one shot delivers the final blow.

In the basement, Qiao Yuan and the others, who were watching this scene through a retinal camera, almost simultaneously stood up excitedly, their eyes bloodshot.

They calculated every variable perfectly, they deceived all the cultivators, and they even took advantage of the defensive vacuum created by the power of heaven and earth!

however.

The blinding dark red meteor made contact with Gu Qingqing's light blue robe the instant...

stopped.

There was no earth-shattering explosion, no scene of flying blood and flesh.

That ultimate weapon, with enough kinetic energy to penetrate the armor of a heavy tank, seemed to have been paused, hovering silently in the air less than half a millimeter away from the fabric on Gu Qing's back.

The intense red heat generated by the rapid friction was still swirling around the warhead, but it simply couldn't move forward even a fraction of an inch.

The surrounding air began to distort eerily. It wasn't because of the high temperature, but because the "space" in this area was being stretched infinitely. This half-millimeter distance was more insurmountable than a thousand miles in the face of some indescribable force.

"Clatter."

Having lost all kinetic energy, the armor-piercing projectile fell helplessly onto the white marble floor tiles like an ordinary iron peanut, making a crisp sound.

The terrifying recoil from the miniature barrel exploding sent Li Jianguo flying. He crashed to the ground, coughing up mouthfuls of blood, staring intently at the bullet lying on the ground, his eyes filled with incomprehensible collapse and despair.

How could that be...?

He clearly didn't use any spiritual power; he was clearly completely distracted by this extraordinary phenomenon! How could such speed, such an ultimate weapon, possibly fail?!

The main shaft of the space elevator has been completely stabilized.

Gu Qing slowly opened her eyes.

He ignored the soldiers, police, and monks around him who had gone completely mad, drawing their swords and surrounding Li Jianguo, wanting to tear him to pieces.

He simply turned around slowly, his deep gaze piercing through Li Jianguo, who was slumped on the ground, through the underground city of New Chang'an, and even following the extremely weak signal source, he directly "saw" the ashen-faced elites of the old era in front of the air-raid shelter's large screen.

Gu Qing leaned down slightly, looking at the black duct tape homemade gun emitting blue smoke on the ground, and a cold smile curled at the corner of his mouth.

He showed no anger, no sense of offended authority. It was a pure, high-dimensional observation, like watching a paramecium in a petri dish suddenly learn to roll.

"A very ingenious mechanism, a very clever timing. In the realm of common sense, you have truly achieved the ultimate."

Gu Qing's cold voice clearly reached the ears of everyone in the square, and also resounded in the minds of all the "pure humans" in the underground meeting place through the internet.

"But who told you...?"

Gu Qing lifted his foot and gently ground it over the depleted uranium armor-piercing projectile.

The seemingly indestructible alloy was instantly annihilated into nothingness by this casual kick, leaving not even a trace of dust behind.

"Will I still be bound by the common sense of this world?"