In the underwater city, the Atabians had all transformed into handsome Sea Giants the size of mite behemoths, fully multicellur lifeforms.

  Not only had the human pilots grown rger, but the Fish they piloted had also expanded, now resembling ant-sized super fry swimming through the artificial ocean depths. The rgest of these Fish had reached the size of small tadpoles.

  This civilization no longer required microscopic observation. With slightly improved vision, the entire kingdom could be seen with the naked eye.

  Li Qing found it utterly astonishing.

  Single-celled organisms → Fish → Merfolk Sea Race.

  This evolutionary path had been forcibly forged by an intelligent species civilization in the harsh environment of the Alcohol Sea and ultraviolet light. Their diminutive size was due to the boratory's limited resources.

  "I wonder how my vanguard team is faring inside," he muttered. "The true solution lies in internal power struggles and coups within the civilization." He crouched down, pulled out his phone, and snapped a photo through the gss with the fsh on.

  Click!

  He opened his photo album and zoomed in on the image with two fingers to examine it closely.

  "This underwater kingdom... it's practically ready to be filmed as an epic mythological movie in high definition!"

  Li Qing began considering installing surveilnce cameras throughout the boratory. The microbial civilizations in the culture dishes had completely transcended their single-celled origins, evolving to the point where they were visible to the naked eye.

  At that very moment, the Atabians, who called themselves the Oceanic Divine Race, had invented the Divine Tree. These trees possessed the ability to absorb ultraviolet radiation and perform a unique form of photosynthesis.

  "We conquered the Great Flood and fed its waters to the fish!"

  "We conquered the Violet Heaven Divine Thunder and fed the Death Ray to the Divine Trees!"

  The Atabians roared in defiance.

  Driven by a thirst for Truth and knowledge of the world, they had evolved from humble fish into Submarine Humans, Submarine Divine Trees, and vast coral reef civilizations.

  Their pride prevented them from submitting to the Heavenly God. After days of brutal warfare, their popution had plummeted from six trillion to a mere seven hundred billion—a testament to the extreme devastation. In this protracted war between mortals and gods, the Atabian popution had dwindled to just a hundred times the current human popution of Earth.

  Yet now, due to their increased size, averaging the size of mites, they had formed a colossal civilization of unprecedented brilliance, visible to the naked eye.

  Furthermore, they dared to transform into Giants, growing even rger, determined to challenge the gods with mortal bodies!

  But their Wise Ones had made a horrifying discovery: increasing their cell count would destabilize their entire structure, condemning them to a return to their short lifespans.

  It's crucial to understand that they had achieved immortality long ago. Bacteria were immortal from the very beginning. After all, single-celled organisms have simple structures, making repairs effortless. Cellur senescence? Telomere damage? What were those concepts?

  With such a simple structure, repairs were effortless.

  But when life grew complex, with countless cells, chaos reigned. Individual repairs became impossible, and the delicate ecosystem within a massive, intricate body could no longer be fully controlled. This was the root of aging.

  "We cannot grow any rger," Emperor Atabia decred. "Our current mite-sized form is the absolute limit. We cannot maintain structural stability as rge, multicellur beings."

  The visionary emperor, now a minuscule mite-human, redirected his people's hatred, uniting them against a common enemy: the Evil Gods. Framing these deities, he procimed:

  "This must be the Evil Gods' curse! The moment we aspire to become truly colossal beings, our lifespans will shatter, and we will wither into dust. But one day, we will break this curse!"

  With imperial grandeur, Emperor Atabia swore before all his subjects:

  "This time, the Atabian people will retaliate against the Evil Gods from Beyond the Heavens! We will forge weapons to sy the Gods themselves!"

  A colossal tower rose from the heart of the ocean—the majestic Tower of Babel, a towering structure firmly rooted on the seabed.

  King Atabia commanded the seven hundred billion Sea-Folk Fish-Men across the world to unite in constructing this colossal edifice, raising its spire until it scraped the heavens. The Atabians intended to anchor the tower's foundation deep within the earth's chest, its spire piercing the clouds, ready to welcome the Giant God.

  Meanwhile, Li Qing's expedition had secretly established a foothold.

  In the shadows, within the dim and gloomy Undersea Church Pace:

  "Humanity's arrogance and self-righteousness surpass any cruelty described in written records—it is the Original Sin of greed, deeply rooted in their souls."

  In the Church of Light, the Pope knelt before a divine statue, leading newly recruited believers in reciting from the Holy Scripture:

  "God, witnessing humanity's overwhelming sin and their bsphemy against their Creator, unleashed the Great Flood to cleanse the world, yet granted them a sliver of hope by commanding Noah to build the Ark."

  "Even after the Flood, humanity remained unrepentant, prompting God to unleash divine lightning to purge the earth of its Original Sin."

  "But now, Emperor Atabia's ambition swells beyond measure, reaching for the Outer Heaven itself!"

  "And so," the Pope decred, "this cruel and merciless Tyrant Emperor built the Tower of Babel. God, enraged by this act of defiance, sent us to this world to raise voices of reason and prevent the completion of this sinful tower."

  "True God, forgive the people of this nd!" the congregation chanted.

  "Merciful Lord, I have sinned!" another cried out.

  "Prayer and repentance—this is the path to the Holy Sanctuary!"

  The Church members hummed in unison, their conviction unwavering: Emperor Atabia's arrogance and ambition would ultimately provoke God's full wrath! The Atabians would be destroyed, and their tyrant would lead them to their doom!

  The only hope for salvation y in their cndestine infiltration, sabotage, and assassinations to obstruct the construction of the Tower of Babel and summon the full glory of the Heavenly God to descend upon this world and reign supreme over the earth.

  The entire Atabia Kingdom was already seething with hidden currents.

  Click.

  Li Qing snapped a photo, the fsh startling all the Atabians.

  The third generation of Atabians had long since transformed into the Sea Race. In the gss walls of their underwater city, they had built small observation posts specifically to observe the world beyond the World Crystal Wall.

  A guard, brandishing a bone-spiked trident, suddenly shouted, "The Evil God is coming! The Evil God is coming again!"

  A handsome, tall Atabian official emerged from a nearby building, holding a transparent, rectangur Cell Stone Tablet filled with rows of gene script.

  The Historian gazed at the hazy, colossal Evil God looming beyond the World Crystal Wall, both thrilled and terrified, as he scribbled furiously:

  "After the Great Flood, the Purple Firmament's World-Destroying Camity descended. The Gods from Beyond the Heavens, seeing that humanity still survived, discovered the great Emperor of the Kingdom of Babylonya leading mortals in constructing the Tower of Babel. God was both astonished and enraged!"

  Li Qing: "......"

  Where was this God, supposedly both astonished and enraged? While history might be written by the victors, was it really acceptable to fabricate it so brazenly from the outset? He gnced south across the kingdom at a white tower base, no thicker than an ordinary water pipe and barely five or six centimeters tall, standing stark against the earth.

  Countless engineers bored day and night, driving back Sea Giants while constructing this white tower, exhausting the kingdom's resources.

  Was this the Tower of Babel, the weapon the Atabians intended to use to sy a Deity?

  What was its underlying principle? What were they pnning to do?

  "They're becoming more proactive, even attempting a counterattack," Li Qing murmured, standing silently outside the gss window of the watchtower.

  Inside the tower, a Historian excimed with fervent excitement: "Just as we predicted! The Evil God is too powerful to easily descend into our world!"

  "Evil God! We've long recognized your wickedness!"

  "Unable to manifest directly, you vile entity can only dispatch cultists to our realm to sow discord, assassinate our glorious Emperor, and obstruct the construction of the Tower of Babel!"

  So, my Church has been exposed and is now wanted throughout the Kingdom, Li Qing thought.

  "Behold! Trapped beyond the World Crystal Wall, within the primordial chaos, that monstrous, indescribable form gazes upon us with malevolent eyes!"

  "His colossal, bloated body is riddled with abyssal pits, each oozing rivers of putrid slime. Within these festering craters rise towers of bck, velvety fur, like grotesque forests."

  Pits and slime?

  Li Qing, still drenched in sweat from his workout, couldn't help but feel a chill.

  Once again, he marveled at the astonishing sophistication of their civilization's nguage and conceptual realm.

  Li Qing felt no fear or awe. As casually as if he were at home, he removed his sweatshirt, revealing his sculpted upper body. He pulled up a chair and sat facing the gss, gazing at the entities on the other side.

  Undeterred by the danger, a schor stood tall, risking his life to record this historical account: "It sheds its vile outer skin, revealing a body covered in swirling oceanic currents that wash over countless wriggling, tiny inhabitants clinging to its surface."

  "Though separated by the World Crystal Wall, when I gaze upon It, It seems to gaze back at me from beyond the veil. It defies description, its voice unbearable—the sheer violence of its consciousness could drive us to madness. From its colossal maw erupts a cosmic resonance that shakes the heavens!"

  Li Qing frowned slightly.

  Before he could react, a group of fanatical cultists had secretly breached the Empire's border defenses in a distant corner of the massive gss wall, infiltrating beyond the barrier. Reeking of their Familiar's presence, they shouted at him: "God has descended! We pray to you, reveal to the Atabian people the sins and depths of their depravity!"

  Well, there's the traitor.

  Li Qing's expression twisted strangely as he peered through the gss.

  The massive gss wall stretched endlessly across the vast border. Despite the Empire's deployment of troops to guard the entire frontier, the Church had still managed to breach their defenses.

  In the distance, an Imperial Border Guard unit raced toward them, led by the Imperial Hero Herodotus. Riding atop the shoulders of an Ocean Giant, he charged into battle with thunderous speed.

  "Hurry! Stop those followers of the Evil Gods!" Herodotus roared.

  "They've been seduced by the Evil Gods' sinister whispers! They're betraying the Atabian people by leaking our Empire's internal secrets beyond the World Crystal Wall!"

  "Arrest them immediately!"

  The Empire's elite forces surged forward.

  Li Qing frowned slightly. The Empire's strategic analysts truly had some tricks up their sleeves.

  Confident that this Outer God could not descend upon their world, they dared to attack his messengers right before his very eyes?

  Thump!

  He lightly tapped the gss with his fingernail.

  The entire Imperial unit scaling the opposite side of the gss wall, hot on the heels of their prey, suddenly felt as if they'd been struck by a magnitude 7 earthquake. The violent vibrations shook the massive pane, sending the ant-like figures plummeting to the ground.

  The entire Imperial Royal Guard plunged into the ocean like dumplings.

  "Hail the great Eternal God! The true God who created this world! The Lord of the Atabians!"

  The Pope, having successfully breached the border, shouted ecstatically. He and his fanatical followers immediately knelt, gazing upon the colossal Giant God looming in the Outer Heaven, a supreme divine-demonic figure of unimaginable majesty.

  How immeasurable its power!

  How magnificent its presence!

  The believers grew even more frenzied.

  The God, operating from beyond the World Crystal Wall without needing to physically enter, unleashed a Divine Art that shook the very fabric of reality. In an instant, it annihited the Empire's most elite Guardian Corps.

  If they could welcome Him to personally shatter the barrier and descend upon this world, no power could withstand such divine might!

  God would descend, bringing the Day of Judgment.

  God would cleanse the Atabians of their Original Sin once more.

  "Tell me," the supreme True God said from beyond the world, His voice both majestic and gently curious. "What exactly is this Tower of Babel that the people of Earth have toiled day and night to build together?"