I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

At an altitude of 36,000 kilometers, there is no concept of day and night.

Inside the core observation cabin of the space station, Gu Qing stood alone with his hands behind his back, quietly gazing at the enormous panoramic porthole. Beneath his feet, the azure planet slowly rotated against the dark backdrop of space, a massive white cyclone stretching into a beautiful spiral above the Pacific Ocean.

This place is a place of absolute silence in a physical sense. But in Gu Qing's mind, it is a deafening carnival at this moment.

That was a data frenzy belonging to the system.

[Ding—The global causal cleansing operation has been completely completed.]

[This operation eliminated 8767 rebel targets. Vital signs were forcibly reduced to zero, and their physical carriers were simultaneously vaporized.]

[System Assessment: The host has abandoned inefficient emotions such as 'anger' and 'revenge,' adopting absolute annihilation—the method most aligned with the 'Laws of Heaven.' Humanity's perception of 'gods' has evolved from awe to absolute fear and submission.]

[High-purity faith is being poured into the Faith Pool... Current reserves have surpassed historical peaks!]

Accompanied by the system's unusually excited announcement, the progress bar of faith power in the lower right corner of Gu Qing's vision gradually compressed and settled due to the injection of high-purity "fear," completely transforming into a dark gold color exuding endless majesty.

"Let's settle the rewards," Gu Qing thought to himself.

He showed no elation at the sheer power that could crush Starfleet. His tone was as calm as a programmer who had worked three sleepless nights, calmly pressing Enter after running a lengthy piece of code and asking to see the output logs.

[Rewards being processed...]

[Congratulations, host. Your behavior is highly consistent with the characteristics of higher-dimensional life forms. You have unlocked the third-tier Creator's permission branch: 'Soul and the Laws of Yin and Yang' (Beginner).]

You will gain the authority to see through the boundaries of life and death, analyze spiritual wavebands, and establish basic rules for the transformation of Yin and Yang.

[Warning: The system has detected that the host's thought process is rapidly converging towards the Heavenly Dao's operational model. As the price for accepting these laws, the system will enforce the principle of equivalent exchange.]

[Humanity stripped away +5%.]

As the last line of blood-red text faded from his retina, Gu Qing felt a silent avalanche. It wasn't physical pain, but a "forced formatting" occurring deep within his cerebral cortex, even at the very bottom of his subconscious.

He lowered his head, looking at his hands. His once fair skin now had a translucent quality, like the finest mutton-fat jade. This mortal, carbon-based body was irreversibly transforming into an energy body and a polymer of rules.

He tried closing his eyes to try and evoke his emotions.

I recalled the anxiety I felt when I fabricated lies to survive; I recalled the joy of being reborn.

No. Nothing at all.

The memories are stored perfectly intact, the images are crystal clear in 4K quality. But... the "emotional labels" that came with those memories seem to have been deleted.

It was like watching a movie where all the background music had been forcibly removed. He could understand the fear and ecstasy of the people on screen, but he himself could no longer feel even the slightest bit of empathy.

"This feeling..." Gu Qing murmured to himself.

He felt no sorrow for losing human emotions; the only thing he could feel was an "ultimate efficiency" and a "cold comfort."

Freed from moral constraints and the pull of pity, his mind worked several times faster than a computer. Everything became data whose probabilities could be calculated and whose value could be measured.

"System, was my emotions module forcibly deleted by you?"

[Answer to the host: It's not deletion, but rather 'dimensionality reduction and compression.' The Way of Heaven is impartial and supremely detached from emotion. When your perspective expands to the birth and death of cosmic eras, the joys and sorrows based on the 'individual' will become redundant data influencing your optimal judgment. You haven't lost them; you simply no longer need this low-level information processing method.]

Gu Qing nodded slightly, surprisingly agreeing with this cold explanation.

Indeed, if he had still possessed human emotions while in the sedan chair, he might have hesitated in the purge of over eight thousand people. But if he had hesitated, the resulting war triggered by the collapse of faith would have killed hundreds or thousands of times more people. Absolute, emotionless rationality is the "god" this world needs most right now.

Gu Qing turned around, and the newly unlocked [Soul and Yin-Yang Laws] caused a subtle change in his eyes. Deep within his pupils, two slowly rotating black and white Tai Chi diagrams faintly appeared.

When he looked down at the Earth through the porthole again, the view was completely different.

At this moment, a chilling layer of "gray smog" is floating inside the atmosphere—especially in the European, American, and Asian regions that have just undergone a major cleansing.

"What is that?" Gu Qing frowned slightly.

The moment the words left his mouth, the system panel flashed a blinding red light, and error logs filled his retina:

[System High-Risk Warning: A serious logical conflict has been detected in the planetary-level underlying architecture!]

[Warning: Memory leaks are escalating exponentially!]

A large amount of unprocessed "ownerless data fragments" are accumulating in the troposphere and are expected to break through physical boundaries within a month, causing serious interference to bio-electromagnetic wave frequencies!

Upon seeing the red warning, a sharp glint of a seasoned architect flashed in Gu Qing's otherwise emotionless eyes.

"Memory leak... ownerless data fragmentation..."

Through the perspective of the Yin-Yang principle, passing through the clouds, he finally saw clearly what that layer of "gray haze" really was.

That's... a soul!

Countless translucent, distorted-faced remnant souls, wandering aimlessly in a state of unconsciousness!

Above the city of New Chang'an alone, tens of thousands of remnant souls floated. The most conspicuous were Li Jianguo and Qiao Yuan, who had just been vaporized, as well as the core members of those "pure humans"! Their faces appeared and disappeared in the gray mist, emitting silent wails and resentment.

Not only them, but also ordinary people around the world who die every moment from aging and disease, and even mutated wild beasts that die fighting in the deep mountains. Their bodies die, but their "souls" stubbornly linger in mid-air.

"System, explain immediately. Why is this happening?" Gu Qing's voice turned colder.

[Answer to the host: This is an inevitable side effect of your forceful implementation of the 'Spiritual Energy Revival'.]

[In the era before magic, the human soul was extremely weak, disintegrating into microscopic particles within seconds of physical death. But now, the global concentration of spiritual energy has increased hundreds of times. Spiritual energy is not merely energy, but a carrier of spiritual energy from an extremely high dimension.]

When a living being dies, the spiritual energy they absorbed during their lifetime acts like a 'preservative,' forcibly encasing the fragments of their consciousness.

The physical body dies, but the soul remains. Because this world originally lacked a mechanism to handle "extraordinary spirits," they became "cache garbage" lingering on Earth.

Gu Qing's pupils contracted slightly, and she immediately understood the seriousness of the situation.

He knew all too well what would happen to a server if it only generated data like crazy without implementing a proper garbage collection mechanism—a crash, a complete breakdown.

"What would happen if these souls were allowed to linger in the mortal realm?"

[System simulation in progress...]

[Phase One: Soul fragments absorb negative energy, forming mutated 'vengeful ghosts.' Global paranormal events erupt, and mortals will never have peace.]

[Phase Two: The gathering of ghosts causes localized disruption of physical laws, resulting in spatial distortions such as "ghost walls" and "ghost soldiers using the passageway." Contact with living people will lead to mental pollution and widespread madness.]

[Phase Three: The balance of Yin and Yang completely collapses, and the living space is squeezed out by the dead. Earth's carrying capacity reaches its limit, the era of cultivation ends, and Earth becomes a desolate planet of the dead.]

Gu Qing looked down at the increasingly thick gray smog below, tapped her fingertips lightly on the jade armrest, and let out a cold sneer.

What a great irony.

He devoted himself to defending against the monstrous void beasts from beyond the stars, elevating Earth to the level of a cultivation civilization. However, before the aliens even attacked, Earth's interior, due to a poorly written "recycling program," was on the verge of being overwhelmed by the ghosts of the dead.

Life and death are the most fundamental logic of the universe. He only focused on adding special effects to "life," but forgot to build a recycling bin for "death."

"System, can you use your privileges to directly erase these souls?"

[Yes. The host can consume a large amount of Faith Power to activate 'Annihilation of Form and Soul' to forcibly shatter all remaining souls. However, this system strongly discourages this operation.]

The soul is the distillation of a sentient being's life experiences, a carrier of information of extremely high purity. Directly destroying it is tantamount to burning precious memory data; in the evolution of the universe, this is a severe waste of resources, akin to killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

"Don't burn it..." Gu Qing narrowed his eyes, the Tai Chi diagram in his pupils spinning faster and faster.

He glanced at the [Basic Permission to Soul and Yin-Yang Laws] he had just unlocked. It all seemed preordained, or perhaps the system was subtly forcing him to perfect this absurd worldview.

"Now that Kunlun already exists in the sky..."

A vast divine consciousness, following the main axis of the space elevator, pierced into the unfathomable, dark core of the Earth.

"The living have their own rules, and the dead should naturally have their own place to go as well."

"System, bring up the new script page."

[Command accepted. A new blank script has been generated. Please name it.]

A chilling madness flashed in Gu Qing's eyes. On the enormous draft paper in his mind, he used his consciousness to write several large characters that would inspire both awe and despair in countless beings throughout history:

[Script Title: The Underworld]

[Project Goal: To establish a super "recycling station" system at the very bottom of Earth's folded space, independent of the mortal realm and capable of accommodating trillions of souls.]

[Core Operating Principle: Good and evil are rewarded accordingly; the cycle of reincarnation exists in the six realms.]

"Since those mortals are so fond of fighting for power and so afraid of death..." Gu Qing's lips curled into a cold smile that even made the system shudder. "Then I'll show them that death, in this new era, is not the end."

"Death is just moving to another place to continue working for me."

As Gu Qing's humanity gradually diminishes, at this moment, he officially extends the invisible hand that manipulates fate toward the ultimate destination of all life—death and reincarnation.