Chapter 980: Chapter 980: Another Version of the War of the Gods
I find it hard to explain why, when Xiao Xue suddenly sat on my lap, my first reaction wasn’t to shove her aside but to reach out and pat her head; even if you use familial closeness to understand it, it seems a bit out of the ordinary.
Of course, Xiao Xue is my daughter, and unlike my current other daughters, she is someone with whom I share a hundred-percent blood relation, a daughter truly raised by me (of course, the future me) from an infant into a young girl and then into a loli and finally a teenager. Although I can’t possibly have those memories, the miraculous sixth, seventh, and eighth sense still gave me an inexplicable sense of kinship with Xiao Xue. However, that shouldn’t be a reason for her to sit on my lap without hesitation — she’s seventeen or eighteen years old!
Could a seventeen or eighteen-year-old girl still squeeze into her dad’s lap so effortlessly? Although I find this quite comforting…
Perhaps I should lament a bit, in this crazy era, kids are getting more and more out of hand. Naughty kids start having rebellious tendencies towards their parents at ten, plan to run away from home and rule the world at eleven, twelve-year-old girls know more than you did at eighteen, and after thirteen, even if you’re her dad, you can’t expect to kiss them — this is a sad reality, but nowadays naughty kids are becoming more precocious and outrageous. Xiao Xue is a typical naughty kid; she’s the Imperial Princess but was raised by the most unreliable and mischievous members of the Royal Family across the Multi-universe. She should be receiving royal education, yet it turns out her language lessons were taught by the gym teacher. She should know all court etiquettes, including twenty ways to open wine, but future Bingdisi only taught her how to crack open a skull from three angles with a brick. As a princess, she skips classes, writes crooked poems, fights with teachers, terrorizes kindergarteners, conspired with her sister to trick a Fallen Apostle from another timeline, and even tore open a rift large enough for herself to descend through Void — an impressive feat. But how does a naughty kid like this still cling to her dad at seventeen and a half?
Hasn’t she realized she’s already a young lady…
A seventeen-year-old girl squirming on my lap should be quite pleasant, but I just feel awkward. I’m not going to have any inappropriate thoughts about this girl – I have that shred of decency – but the familiar light fragrance from her body keeps entering my nostrils. Another delicate face begins to emerge in my mind — ah, it’s Lin Xue. I am surprised to discover that Xiao Xue has the same sweet, lily-like fragrance as Lin Xue, only fainter and intermittent, suggesting that it might not be the scent of a perfume…
Alright, a surprising fact: Lin Xue has a body fragrance, something I hadn’t realized, and it was my daughter who reminded me of this. Should I lament over this troublesome revelation?
At this moment, Xiao Xue is looking rather embarrassed at the Father God, with an expression that’s three parts ingratiating and seven parts mischievous: “Um, uncle, if I say I opened a hole in the Void, you won’t scold me, right?”
The Father God looked at Xiao Xue, probably already having a rough idea about this girl’s origins from various channels and his own conjectures, and just gave a gentle smile: “Then in your memory, did I frequently hit you? Because I’m quite the irritable elder.”
“Not really, but you never stopped my mom and dad from hitting me,” Xiao Xue pouted, “Well, I’ll tell you then, but please don’t get mad. Even though it sounds like a big deal, it’s perfectly safe. Xiao Qian and I simulated it over two hundred times in the lab, really, the histories on either side of the node won’t interact. In fact, what you’re seeing now is an information aggregate; my dad says I’m equivalent to two…”
Xiao Xue seriously repeated the explanation she had given us to the Father God. Throughout this process, the Father God always maintained a focused expression, occasionally showing a sign of contemplation, and then nodding ever so slightly. I sighed a bit; being another Void Creature, perhaps, as someone who just recently survived childhood, I can’t compare to Father God, this ancient senior. Back then, it took me a long time to understand Xiao Xue’s words, and in the end, I only understood a third of it, while the Father God listened and reflected, making it apparent that for him, these weren’t that difficult to comprehend, although he still needed to consider the impact of this matter on the Void.
When Xiao Xue finished speaking, the Father God looked at us and surprisingly said, “What? I didn’t catch that, does anyone know what’s going on?”
Everyone: “…”
“Just kidding,” the Father God said with a grin, waving a hand, causing us all to roll our eyes, “Relax, you need to relax. I already understand what this child did. To be honest, this is a bold plan. When guiding such a massive amount of information, even a slight mistake can result in an outcome you don’t want, and it could cause substantial problems in our timeline. However, with the Void Cataclysm existing, I suppose many significantly deviated events will be buffered by the Void’s mechanism. Child, no need to worry, I really don’t hit people.”
“Oh,” Xiao Xue stuck out her tongue and finally hopped off her dad’s lap. “That’s good, I told you, there’s no danger, we experimented more than twenty times…”
Sandora had been watching Xiao Xue with a peculiar expression and couldn’t help but mutter: “Wasn’t it over two hundred times?”
Xiao Xue: “… Just grasp the essence.”
“So does this mean that the Void Cataclysm ultimately occurred.”
The Father God nodded with a serious expression. A super catastrophe erasing countless worlds in silence, even though we cannot witness it firsthand, is already enough to be termed an unprecedented tragedy. Perhaps he is pondering how to find the source of this cataclysm; after all, that’s the first thought that comes to my mind. However, this isn’t something that can be resolved shortly, so he turns to Xiao Xue: “On your timeline, is this matter still a mystery, isn’t it?”
“Not entirely a mystery, you and my dad seemed to have found some clues, but it’s still far from explaining the whole catastrophe. However, maybe the situation will be different this time around. In any case, the cataclysm has severed all information. The two history lanes progress, iterating between reality and fantasy. It’s not impossible for you to find the reason for the catastrophe in this timeline – at that time on my timeline, the situation might follow, or it might not differ at all. Then, I could possibly have two memories or two lives preserved simultaneously. This matter is quite fascinating, and that’s why I am here.”
“The crucial question is, why would the Void allow such a thing to happen,” the Father God focused on thinking without entertaining the whimsical ideas of the naughty kid, “As a Void Creature, I can confirm that the Void itself doesn’t possess any proactive tendencies; on a whole, it remains in an extremely inert state and doesn’t decisively pursue any action — moreover, it’d better not keep me in the dark since, in a sense, Void Creatures and the Void are the same thing.”
“Maybe it’s having its time of the month.” Xiao Xue bluntly threw out this comment, causing everyone to be shocked.
Nearly weeping, I grabbed this girl’s clothes and said, “Neither your dad nor your uncle is capable of having a time of the month — back to your room now!”
Father God looked amused, observing the still-wavering basket beside the sofa: “This child is quite interesting too; she appears to be the Priest of Dingdang, isn’t she?”
I maintained a grin with at least eight teeth exposed: “I wouldn’t look forward to that day happening, really; don’t you think that would be a disaster?”
“More than a disaster, I find it a prospect,” Father God replied, ever smiling. “Compared to a disaster, I’d say there’s something to learn here. These children of yours have given their group a name that carries significant meaning: The Void’s Answer. While I don’t believe the Void has any so-called “answer,” they might be right in that regard: when viewing the Void as a heap of countless pieces of information, perhaps, in a particular era, these pieces could indeed evolve into something exceptional. The outcome of the previous iteration was beings like you and me. However, I don’t think that these children have any predisposition towards patricide; it’s only that they possibly understand part of it better than we do.”
Hearing this, Lilina hurriedly took a big book out of her Personal Space and flipped through it: “Well, then… Godly succession, Cronos overthrew his father, Zeus overthrew his father, Kratos overthrew his father… It’s a basic method of divine succession to overthrow your father, isn’t it? Your girl now has a tendency to rebel against her dad! Aah—” The world went silent, and the Father God looked with amusement at the girl rocking the basket beside the sofa: “Isn’t this kid interesting too? Doesn’t it seem like she’s the Priest of Dingdang?”
Lilina quickly poked most of her head out of the basket: “Oh my, Father God, you still recognize me?”
“I’ve seen your resume, Ding Lili Na Dang, this name is quite memorable, and you’re the only one sitting on a chair in the personal image section of all the Priest records.” “…If I couldn’t reach, the photo taken would just have a small part of my head.”
Me: “…Are we not getting off-topic?”
“It’s alright, it’s alright, there was never a theme to start with,” Father God always handled everything calmly, never changing the expression on his face, “I might stay here for a few days, would that be troublesome?”
We all quickly shook our heads: “Not troublesome at all.”
After nodding, I realized: Wait a second! Father God is going to stay here?!
Alright, entertaining such a high-ranking visitor certainly made Anwina quite nervous; she’s completely curled up in her nest and won’t come out. Everyone else was also quite surprised; after all, Father God should be considered the most prestigious visitor for anyone, and I really wasn’t sure what standards to use for the hospitality. I’ve seen the Father God Temple, should I prepare a guest room with an area toppling that of three palaces for him?
Bingdisi, with her penchant for chaos, even remarked sarcastically: “Oh dear, I’m used to living in my own temple. Here, waking up every day to find the ceiling less than four meters away makes me feel like I’m exiled from the world…” I was almost tempted to throw her into the Ghost Energy Obelisk to stay there: the lowest floor of that has a ceiling more than twenty meters high.
But Father God himself seemed to have no particular demands. After we spent half the day deliberating, he made his first request for staying at my place: “I heard Bingdisi mention that little dead soul girl Anwina is good at making egg-filled pancakes with spicy soup, can we have that for dinner?”
…And then I was sure, maybe we could entertain Father God following the standards of a high school dormitory party.
Father God was busy with his affairs. Of course, he hadn’t come over just for a casual visit. From the perspective of a Void Creature, his visit might seem like a get-together with old friends, but his main purpose was to clarify some matters related to Xiao Xue. I remembered Xiao Xue mentioning it when she came by, that Father God had vague speculations about the entire incident before the Void catastrophe. And now, it seemed he was here to confirm his conjectures. After dinner, he asked Sandora for a bunch of things I’d never heard of, including the energy core that had dried up after the Ghost Energy Reactor, research reports on that Abyss Deep-diving Ship, and the conclusions of the study on those spaceship wrecks extracted from the Divine Realm Abyss Gate (later named Debris No. 1). Only Xyrin Scientists could handle such things. Father God asked for a lot of such data and started researching right in the living room.
“I have some understanding of your technological processes. Translating these things isn’t difficult. I’m just looking for certain key points,” Father God said without looking up as he flipped through the Voyage Log of the Abyss Deep-diving Ship, “The Divine Realm has already started comparing lots of ancient data, recorded by Void Nodes located in the deepest parts of the Void. We have always been monitoring a large number of very ancient Abyss Gates. Their information changes are the best way to understand the self-decay method of the Abyss, but this is a time-consuming task.”
“If you need information, we can just send a copy over,” although I couldn’t understand those chaotic symbols, I still sat opposite Father God fiddling with an information terminal, “The information sharing channel between the Star Domain and the Empire seems to be operating normally, right?”
“Of course, that’s very time-saving, but I’m hiding from a crazy girl,” Father God said with a half-smile, lifting his head, “You guessed right, it’s that girl, another of our kind, the Huron God King.”
Me: “…” I felt like a historic moment was about to happen. Was it just my illusion?
“She never does anything decent. Every time she comes over, she causes all kinds of trouble. A few days ago, I heard she was coming, so I came here to hide. She’s the kind of person with no patience; if she can’t find someone in three days, she’d probably leave.”
I suddenly found it both amusing and somewhat expectant: “Well, what if she finds her way here?”
Though Father God always described the Huron God King as a crazy girl, I was indeed very curious about a third Void Creature apart from myself and Father God. In my impression, the Huron Divine Race had always been like a background setting, as ancient and powerful as the Star Domain Divine Race, but far apart from each other, each ruling their own territories and almost never engaging in large-scale exchanges. Within the Void Quadrant where the Empire lay, I had never seen the presence of the Huron Divine Race, and I was always intrigued by everything about them. Now to hear that their supreme ruler is coming—well, according to Father God, just whimsically coming to make trouble, but I still hoped to see her.
“I desperately hope she doesn’t find this place,” Father God looked at me earnestly, “Outside the Divine Realm, your Shadow Space has the highest encryption level in the Void.”
I looked at him curiously: “What’s the beef between you two—um, I know that originally the Huron and the Star Domain fought a war, but I don’t know the details afterward.”
“It’s a complicated story. It was long, long ago when the Divine Realm organized an expedition to the Abyss Gate clusters deep in the Void,” Father God showed a reminiscing expression, “It was the first time we ventured so far. It was an unfamiliar world that could make even the Divine City lose its way. Shortly after entering the Abyss Domain, my children reported encountering another group of equally powerful beings. That was the first contact between the Star Domain Divine Race and Huron Divine Race, and very suddenly, both sides never expected there to be other gods in the Void. Later, the war that ensued was entirely a misunderstanding—the place of first contact was a chaotic zone densely packed with Abyss Gates. Thousands of worlds destroyed by the Abyss had gathered there, forming huge Abyssal Aggregations. At that time, the Huron and Star Domain armies each advanced from one side of this aggregation. When they encountered each other, the overwhelming force faced was the super strong Abyss Power—we mistook each other for the Abyss’s minions. In fact, many soldiers were indeed infected to different degrees, which, although self-cleansable for the Divine Race, was enough to mistake each other for minions.”
“This… this story is really dramatic,” I mused, “Goodness, so it turns out the territory between the Star Domain and Huron was actually the Abyss’s nest?”
“Even more frustrating, we actually fought for over a million years,” Father God said with regret, “You don’t know in the deepest parts of the Void, uncharted lands where neither Divine Race had ever set foot, the Abyss’s power was immense. The expeditionary forces on both sides, crossing through polluted zones made up of the remnants of thousands of worlds, were practically half Abyss Creatures when they encountered each other. All the warriors believed they had finally broken through the Abyss Gate’s defenses, reaching the real mastermind. With the will to fight, misunderstandings, and the influence of Abyss Power on their minds, the war was in full swing from the start.”
“How did you eventually cease fire?” I asked puzzledly. In such an environment, if both sides couldn’t communicate and all they displayed was Abyss pollution, I saw no possibility of a ceasefire. I knew the code for fighting the Abyss Creatures: Don’t trust anything unusual you see, don’t trust any command source other than your combat target and the Supreme Commander, eliminate any target with an Abyss reaction immediately, otherwise, pollution would quickly escalate to an unmanageable level. That’s how the Xyrin Apostle handled it.
“The power of a god is immense,” Father God hesitated for a moment, “Later we fought so fiercely… every Abyss Gate in that area was wiped clean. Now, the border area between Huron and Star Domain is the cleanest area in the entire Void…”
Me: “…”
“Then it took a long time for Huron and Star Domain to completely reconcile. I’m very grateful that both the Huron God King and I were on the front lines at that time. As creators, we served as the backbone; a considerable number of soldiers who died managed to retain their souls, which became an important bargaining chip in resolving hostilities later. Afterward, I was basically entangled by that crazy girl from the opposite side.” (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, you’re welcome to vote for it on Qidian () with recommendation and monthly votes. Your support is my greatest motivation.)