The crowd knelt prostrate on the ground, voices still ringing out as they expressed gratitude to the Divine Lady for saving their lives. The very next second, the ground shook violently—an earthquake struck without the slightest warning, just like the flood that had come before it.
A dull, rumbling roar rolled up from the depths of the earth.
The soil on the muddy ground, which had only just been loosened by the flood, instantly split open into jagged, menacing cracks. The fissures spread rapidly, and the pitch-black gorges looked just like the gaping maws of giant beasts.
"This... this is the earth dragon turning over!"
A sharp scream shattered the quiet that had settled after the narrow escape from disaster.
Shen Jue looked up, his face etched with shock.
He saw that the sections of the city wall on the eastern side of Wuling City that had not yet collapsed crumbled entirely under the force of this tremor. Countless shards of brick came tumbling down, sending a thick cloud of dust billowing high into the air.
Yun Shu lowered her gaze slightly, looking out over Wuling City. A faint, obscure flicker passed through her cool, clear eyes.
The Lord God had indeed pulled this trick.
The flood had barely receded, and now an earthquake had arrived, as if it wanted to etch the words "the heavens are set on destroying you" into every single person's heart.
"Run, head north! The ground over there hasn't split yet!" The crowd stumbled and staggered across the swaying earth, trying to move away.
Some people fell over, their knees scraping against the broken stones, but they did not stop to tend to the pain. They scrambled forward on their hands and knees.
Others dragged their limping companions along, staggering to squeeze into the stream of people surging north.
Shen Jue spotted a seven or eight-year-old child, so terrified by the sudden strange upheaval that he was wailing loudly on the ground, right next to a crack that looked ready to swallow him up at any moment.
Without a second thought, he lunged over, lifted the child up with one hand from the edge of the fissure, and ran toward the north.
"Divine Lady... Divine Lady..." The child, held in Shen Jue's arms, looked up through tear-blurred eyes at the snow-white figure in the sky, his small hands stretching out desperately.
His tiny fingers curled and uncurled in the empty air, as if trying to grasp a ray of light that was far out of his reach.
Yun Shu hovered in mid-air, her sleeves and the hem of her skirt billowing in the wind. The faint glow at the bottom of her dress flickered on and off, cast by the dust swirling up from the ground below.
She slowly extended her hand, spreading her five fingers to reveal a palm-sized bell resting in her palm.
The bell was pure silver all over. When she shook it gently, it gave off an extremely soft chime, just like the sound of melting snow dripping into a clear spring high up on a distant mountain.
At the sound of that single bell chime,
the whole world fell completely silent.
The people who had just a moment before been crying, screaming and fleeing were now lying scattered all over the place, collapsed on the muddy ground and beside piles of rocks. Every one of them had a relaxed expression, breathing evenly and peacefully.
Yun Shu pulled her hand back, and the Dream-Inducing Bell flew back to her palm, turning into a streak of silver light that slipped into her sleeve.
Her gaze swept over the slumbering crowd covering the ground below, pausing for a brief moment before she lifted her head to look up at the sky, which was once again darkening with thick, gathering storm clouds.
"Lord God," she said. Her voice was not loud, but it cut clearly through the layers of clouds, reaching straight to the highest heavens. "I know you can hear me. Can we talk?"
Up above in the sky, the lead-gray clouds began to churn and roil, as if responding to her words.
Yun Shu noticed that the ground beneath her feet was gradually steadying itself at that moment, and the cracks were no longer spreading. Her heart filled with certainty, and her demeanor grew even more composed. "Our goals are the same. We both want to turn this fictional world from a book into a real, living place. There is no need for you to target me like this."
"Besides, if you push me too far, I will kill the male protagonist right now, and you will get nothing," her tone remained unhurried and calm the entire time. "Turning a book world into something real can't be an easy task, can it? You've already gotten halfway to success. Wouldn't it be such a pity to throw all that away for nothing?"
"Of course, if you want to test me, to see if I really dare to kill the male protagonist, go right ahead."
After a long, drawn-out silence,
the cracks in the ground suddenly closed up.
Seeing this, Yun Shu knew clearly that the Lord God had temporarily given up on his plan to use natural disasters to force her to surrender and submit.
She had Little Fox to thank for this, who had told her before that the Lord God could not enter this book world. If that were not the case, her move of holding the male protagonist hostage to negotiate with the Lord God would most likely never have worked.
But this trick would not work for much longer.
She still had to seize every moment to reclaim the southern territories, unify the entire Central Plains, then bring out all the preparations she had made to push the world to develop faster, so that its people would gain the ability to fend off all kinds of natural disasters, and no longer be so helpless and passive.
*
The next morning, at dawn.
The first ray of morning light slanted in through the gap in the broken eastern city wall, falling across the people sleeping on the ground.
Among the huddled crowd of people lying scattered by the city gate, a man's eyelid twitched, and he slowly opened his eyes.
The first to wake up was a soldier in his early twenties. He propped his upper body up with his hands, looking around in a daze.
His mind felt as if it were filled with thick paste, and the events of the previous day were blurry, hard to recall clearly.
"How did I end up sleeping here?"
He mumbled to himself.
Shen Jue, right beside him, also woke up. When he opened his eyes, he was still holding the child tightly in his arms.
The child was lying on his chest, his small hands clutching at the front of his tunic, his cheeks flushed pink from deep sleep.
He glanced down, stunned for a moment.
Then he gently set the child down, and sat up straight carefully, making as little noise as possible.
The people around him woke up one after another. They gathered together, chattering and talking over each other about what had happened the day before.
"I clearly remember the ground shaking terribly. I fell over, and then I knew nothing more."
Someone slapped his thigh, suddenly remembering something. "Before I fell asleep, I thought I heard the Divine Lady speaking. She said she was going to go back to the Heavenly Palace with someone for something..."
"The Heavenly Venerable?"
"That's right! It sounded like the Heavenly Venerable! The Divine Lady told him not to torment these mortals any more, to direct all his anger at her instead. That's all I could make out through the fog."
"Yes, yes! I heard that too! The Divine Lady sacrificed herself to protect us, and went back to the Heavenly Palace with the Heavenly Venerable!"
The more the people talked, the more they were convinced that this was exactly what had happened. They all nodded in agreement, and their eyes turned red.
"Will the Divine Lady be alright?"
"Don't say such nonsense! The Divine Lady has such great divine powers, she will definitely be fine, she has to be fine..."
The man's voice trailed off into quiet sobs.
Shen Jue walked over, his fist clenched tight. "What good does it do to cry?! The Divine Lady went to such lengths to protect us all. We can't let her efforts be for nothing! The city walls fell down, so we will build them back up! The roads broke, so we will repair them!"
"Yes! We will rebuild everything!"
"Wuling City can't just vanish like this!" The people scrambled to their feet, brushing the mud and dust off their clothes.
Some went to carry the broken planks and beams scattered across the ground, some cleared the roads blocked by piles of shattered bricks, and some helped the injured over to clean, dry spots to sit down...
Everyone was doing what they could to pitch in.
Pei Du watched the scene unfold, his heart heavy with mixed feelings. "General Shen, right now even the Northern Town Army doesn't have enough rations to eat. How are we supposed to provide for so many disaster victims?"
Shen Jue fell silent for a moment before he spoke. "We will find General Feng and the others first, then we will decide what to do next."
