A strong wind swept across the fields, swirling the withered wheat seedlings. The mud and dust from the fields were carried into the sky by the wind and then settled in a dilapidated village.
Some small pebbles fell from the sky and hit a thin child who was lying at the entrance of the village, holding a sharp pebble and trying to dig and search for something.
"oops!"
The boy, who had been hit on the forehead by a small pebble, cried out, rubbed his forehead at the spot where he had been hit, and then nonchalantly continued digging in a dark, damp patch of soil.
"Found it!"
Suddenly, the little boy let out a joyful exclamation, and then pulled a skinny gray field mouse out of a slightly damp mud hole.
He held the field mouse in his hand, and a genuine smile immediately spread across his head, which appeared quite large compared to his body, as if he had dug up not a field mouse, but the most precious thing in the world.
"mother!"
Like a little boy who has found a treasure, he stood up and ran excitedly towards the silent, desolate village, stumbling into a half-collapsed thatched hut.
Beneath the only section of the thatched hut's roof that hadn't collapsed, on a wooden plank bed covered with straw, lay a withered woman dressed in tattered rags of indistinguishable color, an indescribable odor permeating the air.
The little boy, dragging the field mouse that weighed very little, walked to the wooden bed. He reached out and nudged the woman lying on it, trying to wake her and show her the meat he had painstakingly dug up all day.
"Mother, wake up!"
No matter how many times the little boy pushed, the woman's body swayed with his force. When the little boy raised his hand, the figure on the bed remained motionless, her chest not rising or falling at all.
"Mom, you're sleeping in again."
The little boy complained, then looked at the field mouse he had just crushed to death in his hand, and licked his dry lips.
"If you don't get up, I'll eat all the meat and leave you nothing."
The dilapidated thatched hut remained silent. After a moment, the sound of teeth tearing flesh was heard, followed by the sound of bones being crushed.
"Mother, this blood tastes so good, you should try some!"
Crimson blood dripped onto the dry lips, then down the withered face onto the straw, making the smell in the dilapidated thatched hut even more bizarre.
The child paid no attention. Seeing that his mother on the bed was still motionless, he lowered his head and carefully tore at the bloody rat meat in his hand, completely ignoring the bloody smell that filled his nostrils, trying his best to eat every bit of the emaciated field mouse.
This strange atmosphere lasted for a long time, until the children had almost finished eating the field mice, which were about the size of their palms, leaving not even the bone fragments. Just then, outside the village, as yellow sand swirled, a series of rapid hoofbeats rang out.
Then, a series of curses and swears rang out at the village entrance.
"Damn, another deserted village. We've traveled over a hundred miles and haven't seen a soul in sight!"
"You idiot, are you starving? Look closely at the ground, there should be food in this village!"
"There are footprints, but they're so shallow, it must be a child's!"
"It's still alive."
"After eating rotten flesh for seven or eight days, we can finally have something fresh. We brothers are really lucky today. It's a pity we're not very old, so we'll probably only get one meal!"
The cursing gradually turned into joy, but the underlying meaning was chilling. The child, who had just finished gnawing on the rat meat in the thatched hut, heard the commotion outside and immediately huddled in the corner of the room like a frightened quail, not knowing what to do.
In the past, when such things happened, his mother would always take him to hide. But now his mother is lying in bed and not moving. She has been ignoring him and won't even eat meat or drink blood. It seems to have started yesterday, though he can't quite remember. It seems to have started this morning when she stopped talking to him.
"Big brother, here's a little lamb that can still breathe!"
The little boy, huddled in the corner of the thatched hut, saw a man standing outside the hut, dressed in rags, his face covered in dust so that his features were unrecognizable. His eyes, reflecting a ghostly green light in the dim sunlight, looked like a hungry wolf eyeing a delicious lamb.
"Haha, after so many days, we can finally have a good meal!"
Several men dressed almost identically gathered in front of a thatched hut whose roof had collapsed in one section. They were not tall or imposing, and the green light reflected in their eyes and their tattered clothes made it believable that they were mountain demons that had sprung out of the mountains.
"Get the fire going, second brother, go tear down the house!"
Three beasts with gleaming eyes stared at the child huddled in the corner, his mouth still stained with fresh blood, their expressions filled with excitement and undisguised hunger.
"Wait a minute, there's another one lying in bed!"
A bandit outside the thatched hut noticed the lifeless figure lying on the bed. He took a few steps forward, fiddled with the body a couple of times, and spoke with a tone full of regret.
"He's already dead, and he hasn't been dead for long. What a pity! If we had arrived two days earlier, we might have had a better time!"
"What's so great about being happy? What's going on in your head? Wouldn't it be better to use that energy to hold out a little longer?"
"After we've had our fun, let's kill it and eat it. It's been sitting here for two days, it's starting to rot."
The bandits chatted casually, completely ignoring the child whose expression had changed from fear to anger. He was just a two-legged sheep; what was there to care about?
"Even if it rots, it's still edible. This time we don't need to hold back. We can eat our fill. There are two sheep, one big and one small, enough for us to eat for a day. We can rest here for the night and leave tomorrow after we've eaten our fill."
"Okay! Let's do it this way!"
The three bandits sharpened their knives, ready to slaughter the sheep for meat, but when they were about to drag the lifeless woman off the wooden plank bed...
The child, huddled in the corner, pounced like a wild beast that had been completely enraged, biting hard into the wrist of a bandit with his bloodstained teeth.
"ah--"
The bandit suddenly let out a scream, then raised his wrist, lifted the small child, and slammed him hard into the corner of the hut.
"You little bastard! I'll grant you transcendence right now!"
The bandit, his wrist bleeding, pulled a large, chipped sword from his waist. It looked shabby, but it was enough to take the life of a starving, emaciated child.
"Second brother, let me do this good deed. Your knife isn't good enough!"
A bandit with a broad frame but flesh almost touching his bones stepped forward. He drew a gleaming curved knife from his waist, and although it was a joking remark, it sounded quite serious.
Heaven has given these ants no way to survive. Drought, earthquakes, acid rain, locust plagues... one disaster after another has caused crop failures. It has been almost nonstop for years. This world is like a purgatory. The living are barely clinging to life, no longer even resembling human beings.
"Boss, you're too kind-hearted. If you ask me, we should make fun of him."
"If you're so interested, you might as well save your energy and chop more firewood."
The bandit leader raised his knife, ready to end the life of the child who was barely surviving in the isolated village, and send him away from this world that was like purgatory.
Boom—
A sound far more explosive than thunder suddenly rang out. The enormous roar and the resulting commotion instantly stunned the four remaining survivors below. Their ears rang, their minds went blank, and they felt dizzy and disoriented.
When the bandit leader regained consciousness, he looked up at the sky in horror. The hole exposed by the collapsed hut allowed him to see the strange changes in the sky high above.
A dazzling rosy glow filled the sky, completely suppressing the already dim light. The gloomy atmosphere that filled the world was swept away under the shroud of the celestial glow, and auspicious energy rose, with a golden rainbow hanging in the sky.
The magnificent sight left the three bandits speechless, while the child, who had been like a small beast that had been thoroughly enraged and was ready to fight to the death, also looked up at the sky, bewildered. He did not understand what it meant, but he only felt that the sky was really beautiful now, more beautiful than he could remember.
"An immortal!"
Suddenly, the bandit holding a shard full of chips and broken knives trembled as he raised his head. His tone was a mix of surprise and fear. He looked up at a pavilion that appeared leisurely in the sky, slowly bent his knees, and then knelt down.
He couldn't see anything with his eyesight, but he could sense a gaze silently watching him from the celestial pavilion that had suddenly appeared in the sky.
He and his companions felt the same way. Under that gaze, they had no thoughts left in their minds. They could only tremble and kneel on the ground, waiting for the owner of that gaze to judge their actions over the years.
"..."
Above the sky, in the Floating Light Pavilion, Feng Bingwen silently gazed at this vast expanse of land, unsure of what expression to make.
The latest line in the Heavenly Book of Good Deeds records makes the meaning all too clear: the 560,000 good deeds he expended in exchange for this incomplete world of the end times.
He had no objection to the vastness of this incomplete world, but apart from its expansiveness, he could not find any other advantages.
The spiritual energy was thin, almost nonexistent; the earth's veins were depleted; life was extinguished. As far as the eye could see, the ground was covered in yellowish-brown, with only a few bright spots, but they were like candles in the wind, ready to be extinguished at any moment.
This situation was vastly different from what he had obtained in the past, making Feng Bingwen wonder for a moment whether he had consumed good or bad deeds in making this wish, and how could he have obtained such a broken and incomplete little world that could collapse and be destroyed at any moment?
"Heavenly Book, can I change my wish?"
Feng Bingwen silently asked in his heart, but the Heavenly Book remained silent, clearly too lazy to pay attention to him—once a prayer is completed, it cannot be returned or exchanged.
A thousand thoughts and ten thousand ideas ultimately converged into two words in Feng Bingwen's heart.
Huge loss!
But this was a wish he had made, and even if it meant huge losses, he could only swallow his tears and bear it; he would never give it up.
No matter what, this is still a small world. Although the spiritual energy is about to be exhausted, the earth veins are broken, life is about to be completely extinguished, and all things will come to an end, there is still hope for salvation.
"Hmm, it should be salvageable," Feng Bingwen thought uncertainly, gazing at the Mountain-Moving Cauldron bobbing in his dantian.
But regardless of whether his idea could be implemented, he had to give it a try. Otherwise, would he just watch this degenerate world head towards destruction? Wouldn't all the good deeds he had painstakingly accumulated go to waste?
"Gather!"
Feng Bingwen made a hand seal, and all the thousands of auspicious rays and myriad beams of light surging in the sky were instantly drawn into the Floating Light Pavilion. This was all spiritual energy, and every wisp used was one less wisp used.
If they were scattered throughout this desolate little world, it would take an unknown amount of effort to retrieve them.
The strange phenomena that appeared when he descended into this world immediately disappeared. Feng Bingwen put away the Floating Light Pavilion and landed in the nearest tattered village below, where living beings existed.
"Greetings, Immortal!"
Upon seeing Feng Bingwen, dressed in brocade robes and adorned with feathered crowns, descend before them with an ethereal and graceful bearing, the three bandits dared not be negligent and immediately knelt on the ground to pay their respects.
Whether this person is a true immortal or a demon in disguise, they are someone they cannot afford to offend.
However, Feng Bingwen's discerning eye saw that the four people in front of him were nothing more than ordinary mortals. Everything about them, inside and out, including even their thoughts, was revealed in his eyes.
Feng Bingwen finally understood what it felt like for someone at a higher realm to look down on someone at a lower realm. This made him feel quite horrified. When facing someone at a higher realm, if you don't have any means, what you expose is more thorough than if you were naked.
"well!"
The three bandits, kneeling on the ground, waited anxiously for the immortal to speak. They only heard a faint sigh, and then everything went black before their eyes. They lost all consciousness and their minds were plunged into darkness.
"In this degenerate age, beasts roam the land!"
Feng Bingwen withdrew his sword finger and sighed sincerely.
When survival itself becomes a problem, the constraints of law vanish, order is trampled, and the beasts restrained by morality are unleashed, making cannibalism an extremely common phenomenon.
He could understand why this situation occurred, and he could sympathize with those who chose to become beasts, but he could not accept it, nor could he tolerate it.
"How did their heads fall off?"
A curious voice rang out. Apart from Feng Bingwen, the only living being in the area asked curiously. He picked up a head that had rolled to his feet, its body covered in blood. He actually put the head back on the still bleeding wound, as if he wanted to put it back together.
"..."
Feng Bingwen stared at the absurd, bizarre, and terrifying scene before him, and once again fell silent.
Emaciated from prolonged hunger, the child, with a large head and a small body, clutched a filthy head, trying to attach it to a headless corpse—he was too young to understand the meaning of death.
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