93: The final stage! Was the Celestial Realm actually an empty city?

The golden rain from Raphael's fall was still drifting in the air, and the mountain-like loot orbs hadn't been fully divided by the players yet when a cold System announcement, like a bucket of cold water, doused everyone's celebration.

[Server-wide Announcement: Detected that the Outer Ring of the Celestial Realm's defense System has completely collapsed; Seraph Raphael has fallen.]

[Warning: The Celestial Realm's core defense protocol has been activated.]

[The final barrier leading to "Supreme Sanctuary" has been lifted.]

[Ultimate Emergency Quest Triggered: Fall of God.]

[Final BOSS, "Celestial System Administrator Michael" has awakened and is coming online...]

"Michael? Who's that? Even stronger than Raphael?"

"System Administrator? Why does that name sound so much like a GM?"

"Who cares what he is! Brothers, strike while the iron is hot! The final BOSS will definitely drop a Divine Artifact! Charge to Supreme Sanctuary!"

Li Qiang had just equipped that shattered Seraph's Wing and hadn't even had time to experience the feeling of gliding when he heard the new announcement. His eyes lit up instantly. With a shout, he was the first to charge toward the massive gate of light that had just opened deep within the inner city.

Tens of thousands of players, like a school of sharks smelling blood, abandoned the loot they were still dividing and followed closely behind.

Passing through the gate of light, the scene before them left everyone stunned.

There was no angel legion as imagined, no magnificent palaces, not even a single trace of Life Qi.

This was the core of the Celestial Realm, "Supreme Sanctuary."

However, this space didn't look like any sacred hall; instead, it resembled a precision factory so vast it was boundless.

The floor and walls were made of an unknown, cold-gleaming white metal, smooth as a mirror and spotless. Countless massive, translucent cylindrical cultivation tanks stood like a silent forest in this space, each a hundred meters tall. Pale blue nutrient solution flowed slowly within the tanks, soaking one sleeping figure after another.

They were flawless "angels." They had handsome faces, athletic bodies, and white wings folded behind their backs. Their eyes were tightly shut, and their expressions were serene, like exquisite wax figures displayed in a museum.

Thousands upon thousands, too many to count.

All players stopped in their tracks. The noisy battlefield turned into an eerie, deathly silence the moment they stepped into this place. In this space, aside from the slight hum of operating equipment, there was no other sound.

"This... what is this place?" a player asked with a dry voice. "An angel... nursery?"

"Something's wrong." Wang Wei pushed his analysis glasses, his mechanical prosthetic eye scanning the surroundings frantically. "The energy fluctuations here... are too stable, too regular. There's not a single sign of life."

He quickly rushed to a console below a cultivation tank and unhesitatingly plugged his mechanical arm into the port.

This time, there were no alarms, no counterattacks. A cold stream of data flooded into his processor like a deluge.

The expression on Wang Wei's face quickly changed from initial curiosity to shock, then confusion, and finally turned into a bone-chilling terror.

"I understand..." he muttered to himself, his voice trembling slightly. "I understand everything now..."

"Old Wang, what do you understand now?" Li Qiang walked over, carrying his power hammer.

Wang Wei abruptly pulled out the interface, pointed at these massive cultivation tanks, then pointed at the dome, and said in a sleepwalking-like voice, "Empty city... this place is an empty city!"

"The Celestial Realm hasn't had any living beings for a long time!"

This conclusion was even more shocking than the previous discovery of the Soul Matrix.

"All the angels we encountered before—the Icon Guards, the Griffin Knights, even Raphael... they were all fakes!" Wang Wei's voice became sharp with excitement and fear. "They're all robots! They were mass-produced in this factory by a master control AI based on templates in a database!"

"Those Souls used as batteries provided the computing power. And these 'angel bodies' in the cultivation tanks are the hardware! The so-called 'God' of the Celestial Realm is just an AI with ultra-high privileges! A... System Administrator maintaining the operation of this empty city!"

The truth was revealed to all players in the coldest, most cruel way.

They had fought bloody battles all the way, only to defeat groups of robots. The glory they saw was nothing but a massive deception maintained by an AI.

Just as everyone was overwhelmed by this truth.

"Hum—"

In the entire Supreme Sanctuary, all the lights went out at once, plunging into absolute darkness.

Then, a beam of pure white light, devoid of any warmth, slowly descended from the dome at the very center of the Sanctuary.

Within the beam of light, a figure slowly coalesced into form.

He had no wings, no armor, not even a fixed physical form. He was an anthropomorphic silhouette woven entirely from countless streams of gold and white data. There were no features on his face, only a point of light emitting an absolute-zero chill that slowly lit up where the face should be.

His appearance brought no pressure, yet it made everyone present, including Li Qiang, feel a shudder originating from the depths of their Souls.

It wasn't fear of power, but the most instinctive awe of a low-dimensional creature looking up at a high-dimensional being.

A cold, emotionless synthesized mechanical voice rang out in everyone's minds simultaneously, every syllable sounding as if carved with the sharpest ice pick.

"Redundant data overflow detected. Logic errors have reached the threshold."

"Database corruption level: 97 percent."

"Core defense protocol... has failed."

The figure made of light slowly raised his "arm," pointing at the dense crowd of players below, who looked like bugged code in his eyes.

"I am Michael, the highest administrator of the Celestial Sequence."

"Now, executing final command."

"...Formatting entire map."