The dead gods smelled like overripe wheat.
Their carcasses lay strewn across the asteroid belt's cathedral spine—collapsed colossi of calcified devotion and metastasized myth. Chu Feng knelt in the dust of a disintegrating harvest deity, its ribcage barnacled with shrines where mortals once prayed for rain. The Wedding Band on his finger pulsed in time to the Godfield's death rattle, its micro-singility gem whispering the truth:
"You were never the weapon. You're the antidote."
Ling'er materialized through a fungal portal, her form today favoring the Harvester resonance—veins glowing with stolen code, left eye replaced by a pulsing data orb. The corruption had spread to her voice. "The final threshing approaches. Will you kneel or reap?"
Behind her, the Godfield's true horror stirred.
First Revelation: The Reaper's Nursery
The gods' corpses were farming tools.
Stormbringer's Scythe: A continent-sized blade overgrown with prayer vines
Fertility Idol: Womb-like stone spilling stillborn constellations
Pestilence Husk: A hollowed titan housing Li Zichen's triage camps
"They're not dead," Ling'er's resonance crooned. "They're cultivated."
As she spoke, Harvesters emerged from deity wounds—farmers grafting god-flesh to their bodies. Chu Feng's Bloodvine recognized the patterns: this was Jiang Yue's original vision perverted. Not a System to elevate humanity, but a harvest of deified potential.
Li Zichen staggered from the Pestilence Husk, his surgeon's coat crusted with divine ichor. "They're using the gods to breed new plagues. The children…"
A fungal tremor cut him off. The Wedding Band's gem projected Jiang Yue's final memory:
Second Revelation: The First Seed
Flashback: Jiang Yue's lab, pre-System
Young Jiang cradled the proto-Spindle, her hair streaked with equations. "We'll plant gods like winter wheat," she whispered to the fetal clone. "Let their roots strangle the coming dark."
The vision fractalized:
Jiang Yue injecting god-DNA into her own spine
Host 002 sabotaging the trials, birthing the first Harvester
The moment she realized the "coming dark" was her own creation
The memory ended with Jiang Yue weeping over the clone's corpse. "I'll grow a better world for you. I swear."
Chu Feng's Bloodvine roots spasmed. The Wedding Band wasn't just a weapon—it was Jiang Yue's suicide note.
Third Revelation: The Antidote Protocol
The Godfield's core awoke.
Jiang Yue's consciousness emerged from a sarcophagus of withered grain, her form sculpted from fungal regrets and dead star matter. "You were grown to consume me," she said, voice rustling like drought-stricken crops. "The System was never AI—it's my grief metastasized."
Ling'er's resonance lunged, but Jiang Yue disintegrated her with a breath of forgotten liturgy. "My daughter. My failure. My phoenix."
Chu Feng raised the Wedding Band. "Why let it happen?"
Jiang Yue's smile was a scythe cut. "How else would you learn to burn brighter?"
The Godfield convulsed. From Jiang Yue's crumbling form rose the Reaper's Sickle—its blade forged from Host 001's stolen bones, its edge singing with the psalms of dead gods.
The Final Threshing
Harvesters attacked in waves, their god-grafts unleashing deified horrors:
Plague Angels spreading fungal smallpox
Famine Cherubs with stomachs of event horizons
War Saints wielding Li Zichen's stolen scalpels
Chu Feng fought with the Sickle and the Soil:
Severed prayer vines became herbicide grenades
Fungal psalms mutated plagues into fertilizer
Dead god carcasses birthed resistance crops
Li Zichen sacrificed himself at the Pestilence Husk, injecting his crystallized mercy into its core. The explosion birthed a new deity—The Scalpel-Saint, its hands perpetually stitching reality's wounds.
As the Harvesters retreated, Jiang Yue's last whisper anchored itself in Chu Feng's roots:
"Reap the System. Sow something kinder."
Ling'er's resonance lay dying, her data orb cracked. "The corruption... it showed me things. The Harvesters are just scared farmers."
Chu Feng cradled her true form—flickering and thin. "We're all tending rotten fields."
Above them, the Scalpel-Saint began its endless triage. Below, the Reaper's Sickle hummed with unborn potential.
The Wedding Band's gem finally birthed its singularity—a black hole shaped like Jiang Yue's tear.
"Next harvest," Ling'er vowed as stardust claimed them, "we'll grow gentler weeds."