"Do you think I’m a qualified Emperor or not?"

I curiously looked at Orelia’s blurred face and suddenly wanted to know what kind of image I, an unprecedented special Monarch, had in the mind of this Imperial Commander who still maintained a hundred percent of the old Apostle thoughts.

"As a subordinate, I am not supposed to evaluate the Monarch," Orelia said without hesitation, saying nothing unexpected to me, "Questioning a Monarch’s actions or command qualifications is the greatest taboo, which would seriously weaken the Empire’s cohesion and leave hidden dangers."

"Don’t be so formal, you need to get used to the new Empire’s atmosphere," I laughed, leaning against the railing on the balcony, absentmindedly grooming Alaya’s feathers, "From an outsider’s perspective, how do you think I’m doing as an Emperor? You also know what I’ve been doing these past few years."

Orelia genuinely thought for a moment before responding seriously: "From the habits of a Xyrin Apostle, many of your decisions have deviated from the old Imperial system, sometimes even completely departed from it, but judging from the outcome and the current situation, almost all of your decisions have ultimately proven effective and resulted in significant benefits. You govern the Empire with a mindset unique to Void Creatures, greatly influencing all the Xyrin Apostles, and now I can’t determine whether these changes are good or bad, but the influence of the Void Creatures is certainly unavoidable. I can only be optimistic about the changes you’ve brought us based on the Empire’s current state."

I shrugged and laughed: "Still speaking so formally, I really miss the days when you were a kite; you were much more interesting back then. I understand what you mean, it’s like saying that no matter what, the Emperor has already been decided, so since there’s nothing more to be said about it, we might as well be optimistic. And besides, look, I don’t mess things up, I can even lead the Empire to become divine..."

"Yes, therefore I think perhaps you are a Monarch that could reshape the entire Empire. Although it will take me some time to adapt to this Monarch in every aspect," Orelia floated in mid-air, bowing slightly to me, "Additionally, although I don’t mind being referred to as a kite, I still hope you wouldn’t bring up this topic in front of Lord Alaya, it’s quite embarrassing for me."

I: "...Uh, alright."

All the data simulations and integrations took a whole day, yet the final merging of two worlds and the restructuring of the worldview took only a moment. Now it is the evening of the second day after the world fusion began, 6:15 PM. With the observation and confirmation from the Leaving World Courtyard System, the "New Xiang" world has successfully combined with Shadow Space, just like the Avalon World, becoming one of the several independent "zones" of the Imperial Capital. After all the Xyrin Hosts involved in the calculations completed their assigned portions of data comparison, it was confirmed that the data deviation of this "integration" was within 0.035 parts per ten thousand—I don’t know how this value was determined; anyway, according to the experts, a data deviation of 0.035 parts per ten thousand is the most ideal situation.

This grand project was finally completed, we prepared so much in advance and finally got the return we deserved, everything went as smoothly as planned.

The Shadow City side has already begun dismantling the host arrays, and those mixed-type Xyrin Apostles involved in the "unlocking" process have also withdrawn from deep database extraction. The latter’s efforts were no less than those of the Xyrin Hosts who led the calculations throughout: because it wasn’t possible to pull all of the mixed-type Xyrin Apostles out for deep extraction, this process actually used "sampling," which means selecting a portion from the entire mixed-type Xyrin Apostles to serve as the data source. Presumably, everyone still remembers the unique preservation method of Xyrin Apostles for their civilization, that is dividing all the Empire’s knowledge into data packets. After the birth of each new Apostle, they would store a certain amount of related information in their deep database according to their profession and abilities. The sampling we conducted was based on this data preservation method, the mixed-type Apostles selected for deep extraction could precisely form a complete memory library; when pieced together, they served as the complete key to lifting the conceptual schism, all of which had been arranged in advance by the Emperor of the Fifteenth Day Zone under the Prophet’s guidance years ago—she also prepared a large number of backup Xyrin Apostles in both worlds (of which all the backups in the New Xiang world have been confirmed lost in the cataclysm that destroyed the world) to prevent the plan from failing due to unexpected deaths of those "key fragments." Fortunately, we didn’t have to use those backups.

This allows one to imagine the scale of data import and export operations that the Imperial Officers responsible for the data source roles had to endure within twenty-four hours, and consequently the system pressure they faced: they are not Xyrin Hosts, performing such operations far exceeds the working intensity of their Memory Cores. It’s said that nearly two-thirds of mixed-type Xyrin Apostles involved in the mission applied for major repairs afterwards, all feeling there must be something wrong with their brains; Kaos even suspected he’d gone mad: because he found that at some point, he unknowingly downloaded at least two hundred Korean dramas and had watched them all after going offline...

"Searching my memory bank and finding myself watching two Earthlings getting killed by cars or cancer in various postures and expressions two hundred times, it’s truly a form of torture." — Kaos said.

Well, those are digressions, the main point is, we can finally go home—uh, no, we’ve finally arrived home, because the entire "New Xiang" world has been grandly dragged into the Imperial Capital, and now this spot where we stand... this counts as Shadow City Suburb! It means opening a door here directly leads into our own living room — I was suddenly stunned by this fact while waiting in the Xyrin Nest in the Forgotten Garden for Bubbles to come out: the previous ways of going home were all weak!

"Pure logic mode deactivated, default state reactivated—oh dear, I’ve missed you so much!"

My daydreaming was interrupted by the sudden voice of Bubbles in the Crystal Hall, the seamless transition from inorganic to organic tones of this girl made me pause for a moment, and then I saw a white shadow fly by in front of me, Bubbles already pounced over in a parabola in the air and accurately hung onto my neck: "Come, dear, give me a loving kiss..."

"I... wow, you’re scorching!" I was about to ask this crazy person to calm down, just when I suddenly felt the human-shaped heat generator hanging on my neck was remarkably hot, so I quickly picked Bubbles off and held her in front of me, watching wisps of white smoke quietly rise from her, I felt as if holding a nuclear reactor core close to a critical point, "Jeez, are you overloaded?"

"Nah, small machines dissipate heat slowly, normal phenomenon, a couple of laps around here will do me good." Bubbles, unconcerned, jumped down from my hand, walking back and forth with smoke rising all over her body, creating a rolling heat wave. Seeing this scene, the naughty kid Xiaoxue quickly pulled out two eggs from her pocket, cracked them on Bubbles’ face while the latter hadn’t reacted, and after two sizzling sounds, she and Lin Xue divided and devoured the half-cooked fried eggs, leaving Little Crow nearby to cry out promptly upon witnessing the cruel scene—it has always perceived others eating any kind of eggs as watching a horror movie.

Bubbles, reacting a beat slowly, blinked and only showed a pouty expression on her face after watching Xiaoxue wobble away, then touched her face herself: "The temperature is indeed a bit high, I should’ve released some redundant data earlier, dear, what are you looking at me for?"

I: "...You wouldn’t have broken down, would you?"

Bubbles tilted her head at me as if not understanding what others were saying, I realized she was thinking very slowly now and often made no sense, promptly feeling a bit anxious, but before I could speak up, this girl suddenly closed her eyes, some unknown part of her emitted a series of erratic beeps, and after a few seconds, she opened her eyes again, exhaling a puff of white air from her mouth: "Phew... done."

"What happened to you? Are you alright?" I asked concernedly, touching her forehead with a hand, "Seems like you’ve got a fever, at least a few hundred degrees... oh, this isn’t a fever..."

Bubbles rubbed her head against my hand, "It’s fine, just rebooted, got a process stuck."

I: "..." This too works?! I have come to yet another profound realization of the strange creatures around me.

It seems the anomaly with Bubbles earlier was a false alarm, perhaps just some after-effects from the high-intensity operations she was running for the past twenty-four hours. However, for the Xyrin Host, temporary system errors are minor issues as their self-repair capabilities are quite high. And not long after, Little Baobao popped out of her crystal prism, happily running around the adults. I noticed one thing: despite operating together for twenty-four hours, Little Baobao showed no signs of overload. Though she was warm to the touch, she only seemed to have been running at full power for a short while. The little kiddo was even more energetic than usual. I immediately understood what was going on with Bubbles: she likely took on a higher load herself. It makes one sigh that indeed, parents’ hearts are always caring. Even those who seem scatterbrained are concerned about their daughters like all mothers. But Bubbles was embarrassed to admit it. After Lin Xue casually revealed the truth, she awkwardly explained, "There’s no choice, the child is too young to understand anything, and if a system error occurs, she might not even react. So I handled all high-risk operations myself..."

As Bubbles explained more, it became clearer, and the more she explained, the more transparent it became. It was obvious that when the topic of her darling daughter came up, Bubbles, this normally all-poisoned fellow, suddenly showed flaws all over — providing great amusement for those who had just been relieved from a tense situation...

The transmission channels from the Mother Continent to various Lost Worlds have been reopened, and now the explorers on the Mother Continent can continue their work. The long-standing society on the Mother Continent has safely navigated this world transformation. Of course, they have to adapt to a new order of life: everyone can use magic energy, and at least two-thirds of the population can now be called "Mages." Meanwhile, the Empire relics guarded by Ancient Guardians have completely vanished into the Lost Worlds, leaving only fragmented lands with remnants of foundations. Many scholars who used to study these ancient relics may have to change professions. Lastly, they must endure an upheaval in the religious world. Previously independent or even conflicting churches and sects now must accept a new religious concept: that all "Gods" actually belong to the same camp, even being quite familiar friends. The doctrines they upheld for millennia were torn apart by their own Gods, as those teachings were just the followers’ imagination. Their self-constructed relationships and appellations among the gods made the newly awakened 300 of the Mysterious Side both amused and exasperated, with some even suffering gender swaps. Naturally, the involved Imperial Officers could only personally (well, not literally, since they used their ancient spirit incarnations) explain things clearly. I’ve heard of an incident: in the western region of the continent, there were originally two opposing churches, one worshiping the Mountain Forest Goddess and the other the River Spirit. Each believed that their God was the ruler of that territory, and thus they couldn’t see eye to eye (although not to the point of war. In this world, people don’t start wars lightly over religious differences — there are just too many religions to manage). Yet just a few days ago, the Gods they worshiped suddenly manifested and, in front of all believers, exuded romantic tension — turns out they were sisters from the same production line.

I hadn’t paid much attention to these matters, only knowing that after the awakening of the 300 from the Mysterious Side, declarations were indeed issued to make their "followers" heed the Empire’s orders. The specific details of the situation were recounted to me only after Shajina and Sona came over — we were about to leave, and the two half-dragon girls, along with Vanilla, came to bid us farewell. They hadn’t yet grasped the concept of the merging of the two worlds and initially thought we were going somewhere far away. So I explained the current relationship between the two worlds, which they didn’t quite understand but were quite happy about: at least they understood they’d easily meet often.

The Dragon God Sect and the Crow God Sect have become widely known and, almost overnight, accepted as the highest orthodoxy of the continent. This is hardly surprising: almost every religion in the world believes in the Ancient Spirits, and almost all Ancient Spirits are Imperial Officers. With over two hundred Gods personally standing up to jointly affirm the authority of the Crow God and Dragon God, who would doubt?

However, of the two sects, only the Crow God Sect is open to all mortals. It allows any qualified mortal to receive its baptism, whereas the Dragon God Sect is more mysterious. The Dragon God only permits mortals with Giant Dragon bloodlines to receive baptism. To put it simply, on the Mother Continent, only the half-dragon people are followers of this sect, which can be foreseen to become the national religion of the future Half-Dragon Empire.

Shajina recounted all sorts of events on the Mother Continent recently and mentioned one final detail: "Now, some religious scholars have proposed a new term, ’Truth Day.’ They believe the recent events on the Mother Continent hold historical significance. It’s a day when the Gods themselves appeared to reveal many truths to their followers. From this day forward, teachings and truths are no longer fabricated by mortals but come directly from the mouths of True Gods, thus named ’Truth Day.’ However, the specific date of this day hasn’t been fixed yet because no one can determine when the ’Return of the Divine Country’ event truly settles down."

"Just decide it yourselves," I casually remarked, causing Shajina to be momentarily bewildered, "Huh?"

"Girls, you need to adapt to your new identities," Lilina patted Shajina’s belly and glanced at Vanilla. "And you too, Vanilla. Don’t forget, the followers of the Dragon God and Crow God are now the orthodoxy of world religions. The Dragon God’s audience might be small, that’s fine. Put that aside. But the Crow God Sect is set to become the leader of the religious world. I’ve heard the concept of ’Truth Day’ once, and I think the specific date and ceremonial practices should be decided by you all — this is the best opportunity to solidify your religious orthodox status." After saying this, she looked up at the sky with an air of seniority, slowly speaking as if assigning last wishes, "Vanilla, what I worry about most is you. Now, the great Pope Ding Lili Na Dang is about to leave this world. You will be the successor left in the Mortal World, as the Empire will set up a Department of Religious Affairs on the Mother Continent, with you as the highest official..."

Vanilla looked particularly nervous, fiddling with her fingers, and spoke with her head down, "But... but there are still many things I haven’t learned, I can’t even read all the words yet..."

"Well, you’ll have to get used to it," Lilina responded. "Even if you’re just starting, you must say that it’s by divine command. For instance, if you sneeze in front of a king and splatter him, you should claim it’s God’s order for you to do so, and proceed from there." Vanilla nodded with a clueless expression, saying, "Okay..."

Shajina and Sona looked towards Lin, seeking advice as well. Recognizing their need, Lin nodded affirmatively. With plenty to do, the three novice religious leaders, Shajina, Sona, and Vanilla, joined by Vanilla to bid us farewell, as they hadn’t grasped the concept of the two worlds merging. Initially, they even thought we were going far away, so I explained the current relationship between the two worlds. They didn’t fully get it but were nonetheless quite upbeat about the ability to easily visit often.

The Dragon God Sect and the Crow God Sect have already gained fame and almost overnight became the predominant religions on the continent. This is hardly surprising, given that almost every God that appears confirms the authority of the Crow God and the Dragon God, directly proving with over two hundred Gods as witnesses. Who would dare question them?

However, only the Crow God Sect is open to all mortals, allowing any qualified mortal to undergo a baptism, whereas the Dragon God Sect maintains more mystery, permitting only mortals with Giant Dragon bloodlines to undergo baptism. It’s likely that this will be the national religion of the forthcoming Half-Dragon Empire.

Shajina recounted the various happenings on the Mother Continent over the past days, and finally mentioned one thing: "Truth Day," a new term proposed by religious scholars, they regard the recent events on the Mother Continent as of historical significance. It is a day when the Gods personally appeared to reveal many truths to believers themselves. However, no specific date has been set for this day yet because no one can determine exactly when the ’Return of the Divine Country’ event is considered concluded."

"You guys decide," I said offhandedly, to which Shajina responded with confusion, "What?"

"Girls, you need to adapt to the new position you’re in," Lilina said, patting Shajina maternally. "Remember, the followers of the Dragon God and Crow God are now the mainstream of world religions. The Dragon God has a smaller audience — we can put that aside. But the Crow God Sect will become a leader in religious circles, and this idea of ’Truth Day’ is something I’ve heard once, so I think you should set the specific date and commemoration ceremonies — this is your best chance to solidify your religious authority." Then she gazed upward sagely and said, "Ladies, young women, you need to embrace your new roles. Now, with the departure of Ding Lili Na Dang from this world, you, Vanilla, shall be the successor in the Mortal World. The Empire plans to establish a Department of Religious Affairs on the Mother Continent, and Vanilla, you are to be the head of this department..."

Vanilla, looking particularly nervous, fidgeted with her hands and lowered her head, "But... but there are many things I haven’t learned yet, I haven’t even learned all the words..."

"Well, welcome to the role," replied Lilina, eliciting a puzzled expression from Shajina. "Huh?"

Shajina, Sona, and Vanilla, the three rookies who were haphazardly appointed as religious leaders, had plenty to learn, so after figuring out how to use the transmission devices for inter-world teleportation and promising to visit the Shadow City in a while, they returned to the Mother Continent. Meanwhile, Orelia led the mysterious side’s three hundred Commanders to continue their repairs in the Heavenly Realm City, as we eagerly teleported back home.

Our familiar living room, familiar furniture, the long sofa where Sandora and Qianqian could roll around, and the playful little ghost maid who cheerfully greeted us by coming through the wall — entering home, we immediately saw all these familiar sights, and a chorus of cheers erupted from young and old alike as they pounced toward their respective territories.

Anwina, smiling, joined me in watching it all, then elegantly lifted her skirt and curtsied. "Welcome home, master. There’s been no trouble while you were away."

"Everything okay at home?" I asked, smiling.

With a face lit up in delight, Anwina replied, "All’s well, master. Only a week ago Lord Lin Feng and Lord Ding Ling came over, but that’s all."

Startled, Lin Xue shot up from the couch, leaving an echo of a shocked shriek in the air: "Oh my god! I’m going to have to make amends at home!"

She vanished in a flurry but returned in seconds to hand me a piece of paper before rushing out again, shouting all the while. I stared dumbfoundedly at it, seeing it was a paper that said, "Will: In the event of anything happening to me, I donate Chen Xiaoxue to the International Red Cross as revenge on society. Signed: Lin Xue."

Me: "..." (To Be Continued)