Glorious God Throne

One day earlier.

In the Yao Country, on the second floor of an apartment in Yuanyang City’s old district.

Golden sunlight flowed through the window, dripping like melted honey onto the soft black hair of the youth sitting by the window.

Bai Yi hummed softly as he lifted his pen to write the final paragraph.

[His first task in his determination to rebuild the Artists’ Association was to recover the Association’s lost items.]

[—Especially the “Sabbath” that had been lost to the outside world.]

Just then, a strong premonition struck him.

Since obtaining the “Heavenly Master of Divine Calculation” combination card, Bai Yi’s intuition and sudden insights had become incredibly accurate.

This sudden premonition was definitely not a false alarm.

An invisible ethereal card rose in midair, with a figure in formal robes and crown drawing hexagrams in the void, as if consulting the Big Dipper.

As the ethereal light dissipated, Bai Yi, seeming to have gotten his answer, blinked and suddenly opened his phone.

“…Ah, found it.”

“So someone is trying to ride on the popularity of the ‘Sabbath’?” Looking at the mystery exploration livestream program scheduled to begin in half an hour on the foreign website, along with its pre-released theme, Bai Yi could no longer contain himself as his smile grew wider and wider, “This is truly a stage delivered right to our doorstep!”

During the half hour before the program started, he skillfully logged onto his computer and went through everyone’s information, including both program team members and guests, whether it was public information or hidden content unknown to others—by the way, the internal network of the Extraordinary Forum, also known as the Shadow Forum, had already established quite a comprehensive database. Sometimes he didn’t even need to search himself, as he could easily find information about certain people in the Shadow Forum’s database.

In any case, when all the information about “Andre,” one of the four guests, appeared before Bai Yi’s eyes, he made his decision.

“…Since the stage has been set up by others, it wouldn’t be right for the main character not to make an appearance.”

At the distant end of the world, in the Green Autonomous Region.

A jeep slowly drove through the road carved out of ruins toward a castle at the end. The sunset glow had imperceptibly faded away, and dark clouds piled up layer by layer across the sky.

An ethereal scroll faintly appeared between heaven and earth.

Two figures opened their eyes in the depths of the castle.

—This was the beginning of everything.

After completing the Art Realm instance, Bai Yi had exchanged for a collection of artworks, including the Death Gallery and the “Sabbath.” During the time since then, he had invested quite a few points in exchanges to fill the non-existent Artists’ Association’s collection.

—Since Joey was playing the role of #The Last Spirit Forger#, #The Last Administrator of the Artists’ Association#, and #Just Awakened from Slumber to Recover the Association’s Lost Collections#, props serving as the association’s collections were indispensable.

But those exchanged artworks varied in strength, and Bai Yi had classified them according to his own ideas.

Special hazardous SSS-class items like the “Sabbath,” “The Last Supper,” and “Deity Beyond Dimensions”—if carelessly released, would undoubtedly cause unimaginable mental contamination to those who encountered them during their circulation.

Therefore, he only deployed artworks below A-class to various parts of the world in advance, letting Joey slowly recover them while building up his legend degree in the process of collecting art.

As for items ranked A-class and above, he would often deploy them just moments before Joey arrived promptly to recover them before they could cause major impacts, such as the statue of the nameless and faceless god, also known as #Deity Beyond Dimensions#.

The only exception among these was “The Last Supper.” Since this painting was created by “Joey” himself, he could choose to suppress the spirituality within the painting, allowing it to circulate outside as an ordinary artwork for some time before slowly recovering it.

Another special work was the “Sabbath.”

If “The Last Supper” reached SSS-class purely through Bai Yi’s manipulation of the painting’s spirit, then the “Sabbath” was undoubtedly an artwork that had spontaneously developed its own “spirit.”

As intelligent spirits, the “Sabbath” would certainly understand its own origins. Bai Yi’s fabricated script—about the rise and fall of Spirit Forgers, the frustrated Blue Star artist who turned to dark paths in the Age of the Decline of the Dharma to create the “Sabbath,” the talent-depleted Artists’ Association, and Joey who sealed himself in paintings to survive through the long Age of Decline before awakening in a new era—the spirits of the “Sabbath” would surely know these were all false.

Particularly regarding the origins of all artworks, which in Bai Yi’s fabricated background were all created by former Spirit Forgers. While this wasn’t an issue for other artworks since they couldn’t step forward to prove whether the background was true or false, the “Sabbath” was different.

Therefore, he either had to keep this painting permanently hidden, or prepare beforehand to ensure the spirits within the painting would cooperate with Bai Yi’s scripted background before releasing it.

This led to two choices.

Should he let the spirits know the truth that Bai Yi was manipulating everything behind the scenes, willingly cooperating in his performance to deceive the entire world together? Or treat them as NPCs in the script from start to finish, making them believe Bai Yi’s script was reality?

Bai Yi chose the second option without hesitation.

He could never expose his identity to anyone.

To deceive the spirits within the painting and make them believe the script was reality required tampering with their memories.

If they were real people, altering decades of memories would be extremely difficult, as the slightest oversight could leave holes in the details. Even with Joey’s card specializing in mental manipulation, Bai Yi didn’t believe he could completely replace two living people’s memories without leaving detectable flaws.

However, they were merely spirits born from a painting. After brief research, Bai Yi found a way to deal with them.

This is where nightmare crystals came into play.

—Nightmare crystals could transform illusory scenes into reality, which meant that for nightmare products, nightmare crystals functioned similarly to how legend degree affected character cards, both essentially turning fiction into reality. In other words, nightmare crystals were like materialized legend degree, and they seemed to work on all props brought out from nightmares.

Since the three ordinary cards [“Ghost in the Rainy Night,” “Painting Spirit,” and “Puppet Master”] could transform into extraordinary cards through legend degree’s process of turning fiction into reality, then if Bai Yi wrote false backgrounds for items from nightmares and consumed enough nightmare crystals, could they also become reality?

Bai Yi experimented, and the results satisfied him.

He easily modified the “Sabbath’s” background using nightmare crystals.

As a result, the spirits within the painting forgot their true origins. In their memories, the artist who created them was replaced by a struggling painter from Blue Star nearly a hundred years ago who, after inheriting his family’s Spirit Forger tradition, found himself restricted by the Age of Decline and unable to tap into his own spirituality. In pursuit of art, he went to extremes and sacrificed his wife and daughter, creating this painting infused with extremely distorted emotions.

In the spirits’ false memories, there were even dark memories of being locked in the Artists’ Association’s collection room for decades, blurry memories of sleeping within the painting after escaping the Artists’ Association, and memories of receiving Mr. Worsey’s unreserved sincere love and companionship after he purchased the painting…

Although all memories were hazy in the spirits’ impressions, they considered this normal. After all, they had spent most of their time sleeping due to the restrictions of the Age of Decline.

[…Perhaps due to the revival of spiritual energy loosening physical laws and supernatural elements beginning to flow again, the spirits within the painting, previously restricted and dormant, suddenly awakened on this day.]

[Upon awakening, they found themselves in an unknown castle, where a group of people entered, not only using their story as program background but also confidently claiming they would uncover the truth behind the cursed painting.]

[Unable to tolerate their beautiful past with Mr.Worsey being used as a program gimmick, and mistakenly believing themselves to be evil spirits sealed within the painting, they frantically resented all living beings.]

[They unfurled the ‘Sabbath’ scroll, luring everyone into an illusory painted world, attempting to devour their blood and souls to strengthen their paper and paint.]

[Their actions undoubtedly caused great panic in the outside world.]

[…Shortly after devouring the first person, the awakened Joey found them, intending to recover the lost collection piece.]

[Under Joey’s guidance, the painting spirits, now understanding their true identity, developed human hearts and were no longer driven by resentment and madness. Realizing they still had infinite potential for evolution, Joey ultimately abandoned the idea of taking the ‘Sabbath’ back, hoping to witness the ultimate radiance of art he pursued someday in the future.]

…

Joey walked out of the castle.

The dark sky, massive gathering clouds, and the large shadows enveloping the castle rapidly retreated into the distance the moment he opened the door, as if breaking the boundary between illusion and reality, or like a spread painting scroll being swiftly withdrawn.

Then the real, clear sky unfolded, brilliant sunlight pouring down, illuminating the young man.

His silk-like long hair gleamed like water.

Looking through the open door behind him, there were three unconscious people, and Andre, who appeared horrifying and completely lifeless.

Joey’s long eyelashes flickered, and an extremely faint smile flashed across his classically beautiful face.

“Perfect! Everything has been accomplished!”

Meanwhile, in the distant apartment, the youth who put down his pen snapped his fingers joyfully.

—When Andre’s information appeared on his computer screen, Bai Yi knew clearly that even though the painting spirits were dominated by resentment and hostility toward all living people, among a group of people, they would inevitably be most attracted to the most corrupted soul.

Therefore, he wasn’t worried about them harming innocents.

Because “Joey” would appear timely after they devoured the first soul, resolving their madness and chaos.

In this grand performance, he had merely utilized what should have been disposed of as trash, allowing the two intended protagonists to achieve a successful debut.

Surely the horror of the “Sabbath” would be deeply etched in people’s memories, while Joey’s unfathomable nature would leave an impressive mark.

Now, countless people were probably racking their brains, trying to comprehend deeply the script he had written.

While doing reading comprehension might be painful, having others do reading comprehension of one’s script was quite enjoyable.

The youth at the desk stood up, pushed open the window, and gazed into the distance.

“Come, set your clever minds in motion, thoroughly explore the truth of the world I’ve woven for you.”

“…Then, with the answers you understand, advance toward the direction I anticipate.”

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