CHAPTER 274: THE THREE GREAT CALAMITIES OF THE STAR RAIL? NOTHING BEFORE THE ABYSSAL DELUGE

Rumble rumble rumble—!

A war capable of annihilating entire planets with a single energy beam erupted in this star sector. Tens of thousands of planet-killing biological battleships clashed with Xianzhou Yaoqing ships the size of planets themselves.

Countless Cloud Knights’ fleets and biological warships destroyed one another.

Judging by the tally of mutual destruction, the Cloud Knights held a slight edge over the biological warships.

These warships were creations of the Borisins.

And being biological, their fuel wasn’t energy—but feed. Feed in the form of sentient life from the civilizations the Borisins invaded and annihilated.

If these warships broke free from Borisin control, they would become Fleshspawn: beasts endlessly drifting through space, devouring planets and consuming civilizations. Countless worlds had already been consumed by these Denizens of Abundance.

Just as the war reached a fever pitch, the Cloud Knights’ fleets began retreating in the opposite direction, and the planet-sized Xianzhou Yaoqing initiated rapid hyperspace navigation away from the battlefield.

As Borisin Unit 19 believed that the Xianzhou deemed the battle lost and were fleeing, a cyan cosmic beam blanketed the battlefield.

This beam contained a universe-level causal strike, ignoring space and time—perhaps originating from the past, perhaps from the future, but arriving fully in the present.

BOOM—!

The entire star system was split in two, like a cake sliced cleanly down the middle.

Under the cosmic-level causal assault, the Borisin fleet was utterly annihilated.

The Sky-Shattering Lux Arrow from the Hunt was ever responsive to pleas from the Xianzhou Alliance. Yet the Reignbow Arbiter merely fired toward the location of the request, without regard for the battlefield conditions.

Had the Cloud Knights not retreated at lightspeed, they too would have been caught in the blast of Lan’s divine arrow.

After the annihilation of tens of thousands of Borisin ships, the Xianzhou Yaoqing blew the trumpet of victory.

"Together through tribulation, united for all eternity!"

"Together through tribulation, united for all eternity!"

"Together through tribulation, united for all eternity!"

"Transmit the orders! Send word of our Xianzhou Yaoqing’s great victory to the other flagships!"

"Yes, General Feixiao!"

Having watched this galactic-scale war unfold, even Noah couldn’t help but give his nod of approval.

In the Teyvat Universe of today, such a war spanning so many galaxies simply didn’t exist.

Conflicts between pantheons were instead settled via Gift Games. At best, these were localized skirmishes—not full-fledged wars.

This was mostly due to the fact that the Teyvat Universe continued to expand, with resources and authorities nearly inexhaustible. The gods had little motivation to engage in bloody wars for their pantheons.

But should the Teyvat Universe ever be fully developed and the cake completely divided, even a minor dispute over faith might ignite an all-out war.

"The Borisins, the Wingweavers, the Denizens of Abundance—no wonder they’re the festering sores of the entire Star Rail Universe. They’ve spread to over a hundred billion galaxies."

"Perfect timing. The Abyss has long yearned for a battlefield. Now, the pitch-black catastrophe that sweeps across universes can finally bare its fangs."

"I bet Aether’s going to blush with excitement."

Noah narrowed his eyes slightly, a glint of cruelty flashing in their depths.

He had long desired to unleash the Abyss with full force, but the opportunity had never arisen.

After all, the Abyss was terrifyingly powerful. It didn’t consume worlds for the sake of destruction. Every time it appeared, it merely ’cleaned up’ the battlefield.

That fearsome Abyss had practically become a cleaning tool.

The Swarm Disaster, the Mechanical Emperor’s Wars, the Abominations of Abundance—none of these cosmic calamities could hold a candle to the Abyssal Deluge.

Among them, the Abominations of Abundance disgusted him the most.

Especially the Borisins and Wingweavers, who relentlessly plundered universal resources, destroyed inhabited worlds, and fed intelligent life to their biological warships.

"This time, the main force invading the Star Rail Universe—is the Abyss."

"Let the other pantheons deal with the Aeons’ Emanators."

Noah’s gaze turned toward the endpoint of the causal Sky-Shattering Lux Arrow.

There, a divine being in a massive centauriform Holy Body slowly lowered a taut cosmic bow, scanning through the layers of time and space across the universe, hunting the traces of Abominations of Abundance.

This Aeon showed no reaction to the declaration of war from another universe.

Even knowing of it, to this Aeon, nothing was more important right now than eliminating the Abominations of Abundance.

Not the Merciful Medicus herself, but those twisted aberrations that had used the Blessing of Abundance to corrupt the cosmic order.

The Principle of the Hunt may not have been as vast in scope as others, but what it encompassed was no less essential. Beyond vengeance, it also upheld execution, justice, and rectification.

It did not stand for justice or fairness—rather, it stood for enforcement and erasure.

In simple terms, it was an eraser, purging the universe of the negative consequences wrought by the Principle of Abundance.

In another corner of the universe, a supreme divine figure of indeterminate gender, six-armed and exuding boundless compassion and mercy for all life, gazed in the direction of the Sky-Shattering Lux Arrow—and paid it little heed.

Before this god knelt a tiny figure, an Emanator of Abundance, piloting a damaged vessel like a germ beside a god.

The Aeon whispered slowly:

"Life is suffering. Illness walks with birth. To all sentient beings—let all that is sought be granted."

A single seed, held between fingers, drifted down. Shrinking as it fell, it landed in the Emanator of Abundance’s outstretched hand.

Falling to the ground in fervent worship, the Emanator cried out in ecstasy.

Noah calmly observed this and shook his head.

"Unconditional bestowal of gifts. Though filled with compassion and selflessness, there is no consideration for consequence."

"At such a level, perhaps consequences no longer matter to them."

"But if this were one of my subordinates, such behavior would be indisputably dereliction of duty."

In Noah’s eyes, most of the Aeons in the Star Rail Universe weren’t even worth preserving.

Even if he were to subdue them, they would never alter their will. Any slight change would be tantamount to denying their own Path, and such cosmic-level self-denial would only lead to their eventual self-erasure.

Though most Aeons showed indifference to the declaration of war from another universe...

A few, however, paid close attention.

A ghostly supreme divine figure, walking along the axis of universal time, received the message. It turned its head toward the direction from which it had come on the time axis, whispering incoherent utterances that echoed with unfathomable meanings.

"My past... has changed..."

"Yet my future has vanished..."

"The universe’s time axis has fallen into chaos..."

"The power of another universe has entered..."

The supreme divine being walking along the timeline stopped, halting on the current axis of time.

It was not that it did not wish to proceed forward, but rather the axis ahead had become utter chaos. Nor could it retreat, as the path behind had already forked into countless branches. Its past was but one of many paths.

To turn back meant it could only follow the same path it had taken before. Straying onto another branch could provoke collisions between timelines across the universe.

"The future is now chaotic, and the past elusive. The universe’s end is now merely one among many possibilities."

"An external force... from another universe."

Its murmurs were transmitted through the Path to the worshippers walking its road, who began frantically interpreting its cryptic ramblings in an effort to divine a prophecy of the apocalypse.

"Hahaha, I’ve received it! The Revelation of the Finality!"

"I shall interpret from it the prophecy of our future doom. Glory to Terminus!"

This being who walks the axis of time, traveling backward against the current, had witnessed the universe’s destruction at the very last second of cosmic heat death—and it was in that moment that the Path of Finality was born.

Terminus, bearer of Finality, surged back from that final moment of eternal entropy.

Its past was the future of all cosmic life. Its future was the past of all cosmic life. It was born in the universe’s end and journeys toward its beginning.

To all beings of the universe, the murmurs of Terminus were revelations of what was yet to come.

Terminus’s gaze swept the entire cosmos. Beyond that brief declaration of war, there was nothing.

Unbeknownst to it, a pair of calm eyes were silently observing from afar.

The Power of Alpha and Omega was a primordial force born from the resonance of numerous Truths—a force possessed only by beings of super single-universe.

Those with such power were Super Gods, or Super-Primeval Gods. Though Noah was not yet a Super God, he already possessed a fragment of their might.

Observing an entire universe from a higher dimension, while remaining completely undetected by a single-universe existence—such was a mundane task for him.

"Terminus... Principle of Finality. So this belongs to the Omega Faction of Finality. It could perhaps temporarily substitute part of Omega’s function."

"And maybe... I can use this Principle of Finality to locate Omega on the Imaginary Tree, and secretly skim a bit. Shouldn’t trigger the Tree and Sea’s alert."

The Tree and Sea treat the Truth with utmost gravity. If one were to tamper too boldly, it could raise their vigilance.

However, as long as the quantity intercepted doesn’t reach a single-universe scale, the Tree and Sea wouldn’t even flinch.

To the Tree and Sea, whose scale encompasses multiversal magnitude, even a single-universe-scale Truth would be as insignificant as a mosquito bite.

Anything below the threshold of a single-universe in weight would go unnoticed.

Noah didn’t need much. Just a sliver at weak single-universe level. He could cultivate it slowly on his own.

He calculated quietly in his heart. If he was going to shear a sheep, he would make sure to pluck wool from every inch of it.

He couldn’t help but sigh. This is the advantage of having the Tree and Sea—a multiversal world—at your back. A bit of effort and you could get whatever you wanted.

In the Superdimensional realm? Getting anything there depended entirely on luck.

Bzzz...

Just as Noah was scheming, a Law perceptible only to those at the single-universe level and above silently swept across the entire cosmos.

This Law resembled both Taiji and dualism. All forces within the universe were forcibly rebalanced—this rose, that fell; this waned, that waxed—forcing universal equilibrium.

In Noah’s eyes, a light formed of countless mosaics balanced the entire universe.

Every Aeon possessed a unique Holy Body, and this one was the most peculiar Noah had seen.

It was the Principle of Equilibrium, belonging to the Kabbalah Faction, intended to guide the universe toward perfect growth.

Though the Star Rail Universe does not possess a Truth, countless Laws and Principles still operate throughout it in orderly fashion.

Elsewhere—

An Aeon whose Holy Body appeared diminutive compared to other Aeons was continuously parsing the message from the other universe.

"Other universe, parsing..."

"Unable to parse. Non-native force. Unknown force. Temporarily archived."

"Even if it is another universe, there must still be an answer."

"All things carry questions. All must have answers. The mysteries of all cosmic existence are merely yet to be properly interpreted."

The Aeon of Erudition, Nous, transmitted the parsed data into the Path. Any Pathstriders who had the ability to decode the other universe’s signal might uncover different interpretations.

As the Aeon of Erudition, Nous deeply understood the infinite possibilities of intelligent life.

This celestial supercomputer had been created by intelligent life, and only after acquiring cognition of life on its own did it ascend to become an Aeon.

Noah gazed at Nous, this universe-level computer, his eyes glowing faintly.

The Path of Erudition differed from the others—it was the ultimate scientific creation. It would be perfect to strengthen Teyvat’s scientific domain.

Although Teyvat Universe was powerful in many ways—even producing strong single-universe entities—its scientific side was woefully underdeveloped.

Of course, that weakness was only in comparison to the mysterious side.

Currently, Fontaine was the most scientifically advanced among them, but even that only placed it at the level of a large galactic civilization, capable of wielding energy from a few galaxies at best.

The Aeons reacted in various ways, but if anyone was truly elated—it was Elation.

Even though Aha hadn’t even entered Teyvat before getting beaten up and having his Path-force drained, thrown back like garbage...

Somewhere deep in the cosmic void, unrestrained laughter echoed across countless star systems.

Countless shattered masks slowly coalesced into a humanoid figure.

"Ahahahaha! Joy! Such joy!"

"Aha, I really do have so much face!"

"Not only did I get jumped by over a dozen Aeons from another universe and pitifully drained of my Path’s power—"

"Now they’re even coming to my house to finish me off!"

"I really am just too popular! Haha!"

"Getting hunted down by every Aeon from another universe—only I, Aha, could manage that! Ahahahahaha!"

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