Chapter 913: The Origin of the World

Zhou Huai found a wide chair and sat down in a domineering manner.

The Dawnbreaker Guild elites kneeling on the ground watched him walk and stop by turns, sneering and pondering alternately, making their scalps tingle with numbness.

"I have been thinking."

Zhou Huai leaned against the back of the chair and said slowly in his mind.

"In your game of chess against Mr. Duan, I am nothing more than a tool in your hand to play against him."

"Mr. Duan wants to overthrow you and establish a new era. Meanwhile, you want to obliterate him to maintain your rule."

"No matter which of you two wins."

"It seems to do me no good at all."

"If Mr. Duan wins, the current world will be destroyed, and I will die."

"If you win and Mr. Duan dies, who can guarantee that you, this cold Heavenly Dao System, won't wipe me out afterward as an uncontrollable variable?"

Zhou Huai narrowed his eyes.

"Therefore, I have actually been waiting for an opportunity."

"An opportunity to sit at the table and negotiate with you."

"Now, I feel like it's time."

"What do you think?"

On the obsidian square of the underground base, thousands of elites from the Dawnbreaker Guild were still prostrating on the ground.

Zhou Huai leaned against the back of the chair, tapping his fingers on the armrest, quietly waiting for the reply from that existence in his mind.

Since he had made his words clear, he was no longer in a hurry.

The one who should be anxious now was that self-directed Heavenly Dao.

Time passed.

Finally, a sigh came from the depths of his mind.

"Sigh…"

Chun's voice was no longer cold and hurried, revealing a hint of exhaustion.

"Actually, you don't need to harbor such deep hostility toward me."

Hearing this, Zhou Huai directly rejected in his mind.

"I have no hostility toward anyone."

"But whether it's you or Mr. Duan, it doesn't matter to me who is right or wrong, who is righteous or evil, or even if you fight to the death."

Zhou Huai's gaze grew cold.

"Yet you both want to shake up my life and my family. Now you even want to treat the entire world as a chessboard for your game, ready to destroy it at any time."

"I don't have such a grandiose savior complex."

"I just want to protect myself. Whoever doesn't let me live, I'll overturn their table."

In his mind, Chun fell into a brief silence.

After a long time, her voice sounded again with a calm tone.

"In that case, let me tell you a story."

As soon as the voice fell, Zhou Huai felt his mind shake.

The gloomy underground base and the prostrating thugs around him quickly faded from his perception.

His consciousness was pulled into a grand mental projection.

Greeting his eyes was nothingness, with no light, no sound, and no concept of space.

"The Origin of the world is not the First World you know."

Chun's voice echoed in the nothingness.

"At that time, there was nothing in the world, no heaven and earth, no Law."

"Only a tree."

As the narration proceeded, a glaze-colored light bloomed in the center of the nothingness.

That was a towering giant tree. Its roots plunged into the nothingness, its canopy propped open the Chaos, and primitive inscriptions flowed across its leaves.

That was the origin sacred tree.

"I don't know how many years have passed."

"On this tree, the first fruit finally grew."

Zhou Huai saw that on a thick branch of the origin sacred tree hung a fruit emitting green light.

"That fruit was me."

"At that time, I accompanied the origin sacred tree and spent countless more years in this nothingness where there was nothing."

"Time had no meaning here, and the long years made me develop an emotion called 'boredom'."

"So, I tried to start creating the world."

"This was also the prototype of the First World."

In the image, the green fruit emitted the power of Origin.

The nothingness was split open, the earth condensed, mountains rose abruptly from the ground, and lakes and seas filled the ravines.

"I created all kinds of exotic beasts, forests, lakes, and oceans, allowing them to swim freely in this world. Watching them multiply and thrive, I felt the joy of creation for the first time."

Zhou Huai looked at the colossal ancient exotic beasts running and roaring between heaven and earth in the picture, feeling a sense of awe in his heart.

"And right around that time…"

"The origin sacred tree bore a second fruit."

In the picture, on another branch of the origin sacred tree, a fruit emitting a black halo slowly took shape.

Zhou Huai's heart shook, and he instinctively interjected: "Mr. Duan?!"

"That's right, it is indeed Duan."

Chun's voice carried complexity.

"In the beginning, I was very joyful. In this endless loneliness, I finally had a companion who could communicate and accompany me."

"Duan showed extreme intelligence from the very beginning; he didn't like creating beasts that only followed instincts like I did."

"He always sat under the sacred tree and thought, sitting for hundreds or thousands of years at a time."

In the picture, the black fruit transformed into a blurry human figure, sitting cross-legged at the tree roots and looking up at the firmament.

"Later, he said he wanted to create an intelligent creature that was much smarter than those exotic beasts that only knew how to kill."

"Thus, humans gradually came into being under his hands."

Hearing these words, waves stirred in Zhou Huai's heart.

Mr. Duan turned out to be the ancestor of the Human Race.

That Transcendent who had always wanted to destroy the current world turned out to be the Creator who personally fashioned humans.

This subverted his cognition.

Chun ignored Zhou Huai's shock and continued to speak.

"Although humans possessed intelligence and knew how to make fire, create tools, and build crude houses."

"But they were made of mortal flesh and blood, with weak strength, and ultimately were no match for those powerful exotic beasts."

The scene shifted; cruel slaughter was being staged on the land of the First World.

Human tools were like paper in front of the colossal exotic beasts, and settlements were trampled flat.

"Soon, those Human Race members brought about a devastating blow. Under the sharp claws and fangs of the exotic beasts, only a small portion of the Human Race survived by lingering on, hiding in dark caves and shivering."

"This incident dealt a heavy blow to Duan."

"He returned beneath the giant tree and thought for a very, very long time."

"In the end, he thought of a way to enhance human strength."

Chun's voice became solemn.

"Mr. Duan called it — Attributes."

Zhou Huai's mind went blank.

Attributes?

Strength, agility, stamina, Mental Energy… The things that constituted the underlying logic of the Professionals in the current world were actually invented by Mr. Duan?

"With the blessing of attributes, humans indeed began to grow stronger gradually. They could smash boulders with a single punch, move as fast as lightning, and manipulate elements."

"He even gradually evolved various professions based on the different weapons humans used."

"Warriors, mages, assassins…"

The class transfer system of the current world and the digitized panels of the Professionals were actually all created by Mr. Duan back then to save humanity.

He was not only the ancestor of humanity, but also the creator of the profession system.

Chun's voice continued to echo.

"After nearly a thousand years like this, relying on the blessing of attributes and professions, the exotic beasts I created gradually disappeared from the world, slaughtered to extinction."

"Figures of the Human Race were everywhere; they occupied the entire world."

"At that time, I gradually felt that something was wrong."