Divine Flame Crystal

Chapter 616: The Plan of the God of Time and Space

The crystal held by Xingluo was one of them.

That is - the Divine Flame Crystal.

Each of these crystals contains fragments of a fallen god's soul, remnants of power, and even - an incomplete godhead.

Some crystals burn like flames, harboring the wrath of the God of Fire;

Some are frozen like frost, sealing the sorrow of the water god;

Some are completely transparent, yet faintly glowing, and are believed to be fragments of the spirits of the gods of the atmosphere;

There are even whispers, illusions, and images coming out of some crystals, with the characteristics of "time and space disturbance" - these crystals are the "core-level fragments" of the Divine Flame Crystal, which are extremely rare and extremely dangerous.

As the owner of the preserved fire in this overlapping space and time, Xingluo is naturally different from those ordinary fragments of gods. In order to defeat the gods in the final battle, the God of Time and Space formulated the Fire Plan, and the time for the implementation of this plan is naturally not the great magic era when the gods descended and the divine power dissipated, but the future when the gods fell. He also used his own power to leave the bodies of the gods in the main material plane, exposed the source of time and space in his body, and took the fragments of the gods away from that time point, allowing humans to breathe for a thousand years. Otherwise, if these fragments still stayed in the great magic era when the divine power dissipated, these gods would soon be resurrected, and the God of Light was fearless, so he dared to let the gods come down to fight humans head-on, but he did not expect that the perverted God of Time and Space would bring the broken fragments of gods to a thousand years later.

The divine flame crystal in Xingluo's body is not a pure "core of the godhead", but a fragment of the soul of the God of Time and Space, a top human magician who rebelled against the gods. He did not become a god, but surpassed the gods.

It is essentially a retrospective device that this great magician, facing failure, retained most of his power and teleported to the future a thousand years later. He used the power of time and space to refine his soul. But now, it has fallen into the hands of a human magician.

Xingluo saw the number 1342. He didn’t know what this number represented, but it was the number that kept jumping on the Divine Flame Crystal.

Xingluo remained silent for a long time after watching the projection.

He slowly stretched out his hand and touched the divine flame crystal in the star disk. At that moment, it seemed as if the entire space stopped.

Wisps of distorted echoes came from the depths of time and space:

"...What you see is not the truth, but the echo that the world is trying so hard to cover up..."

"...Gods aren't inherently invincible... They simply won... one... one... war..."

"...What you hold in your hands is not just power... but the opportunity to choose again..."

The divine flame crystal glowed faintly, and cracks appeared faintly, as if a deeper power was waiting to be released.

Xingluo knew that from this moment on, he was no longer just a magician who rebelled against the gods.

He had touched the echoes of a lost age—the true heights of magic, awakening from the dust of time and space.

This time, the gods will not face confused and blindly believing humans, but the human will that remembers being betrayed, resisting, and victorious.

When Xingluo learned all this in Meteoric Moon Castle, he was silent for a long time.

Xingluo came to Mo's side. Mo handed him the latest intelligence scroll and whispered, "You haven't even said anything yet, but you've already become their new belief."

Xingluo shook his head and muttered to himself:

"I don't want to be a religion...but if I remain silent, they will once again be driven by the whip of God."

He knew that the collapse of faith was not caused by him, but was the result of the gods themselves abusing their power excessively and disrespecting human will.

He was just the one who lit the fire.

And that first ray of fire, starting from Novian, had burned into the foundation of the temple.

The falling of stars becomes a belief without words.

Xingluo had no preachers or missionaries; he had no statues or temples. He never even shouted the name of "savior," nor did he encourage kneeling, sacrifice, or oaths. He was merely a magician, a mortal who defied the gods in blood and fire.

But it was this person whose name began to be sung after he defeated the vanguard of the Holy See of Light.

Not in the palace, not in the temple, but in the streets, in the taverns, in the blacksmith shops, in the marketplace. The bards used his battles as the theme and his victories as epic chapters. They called him:

"The Lord of Burning God."

A simple yet shocking title. It meant—he was the one who, with his mortal body, ignited the flames of anti-God.

They said that on the vast plain, he single-handedly bestowed divine flame upon five hundred people, turning their mortal bodies into the Burning God Army.

They said that at the moment when the raging fire and the holy light clashed, it was Xingluo who stood alone and refused to retreat, forcing the Army of Light to retreat ten miles.

He is not a god, they say, but "the burning will of man."

Initially, people just listened. But as the faith of the Church of Light wavered, the story of the fallen stars gradually became a kind of "emotional sustenance." A true desire from the deepest level of humanity:

——We don’t want to be controlled by God anymore.

——We can also defeat the gods.

In the tavern, a red-faced old blacksmith stood on a stool, raised his glass and shouted:

"I do not kneel before gods, nor seek grace. I use my will as my sword, and my heart as my fire!"

He drank it all in one gulp, and the whole audience was excited.

These were the earliest “prayers against God,” written not from codes, scrolls, or scholars, but from the simplest folk voices: poets and blacksmiths, soldiers, and widows.

Later, this sentence was copied and circulated throughout the northern border.

The full version is as follows:

"I do not kneel before gods, nor seek grace. I wield my will as a sword, my heart a blazing fire. The falling stars ignite my resolve, and I will rise for humanity."

At the Port of Auckland, a group of porters chanted this in unison before work, which was said to dispel the cold and refresh the spirits.

In wandering theatre companies in the East, this prayer was used as an opening line;

In the suicide note of an exiled nobleman, these words were used as a last wish: "After my death, I will not be buried in a temple, but only in sparks."

It is no longer poetry, but the spark of anti-God awakening.

What shocked the Holy See of Light even more was that as these "prayer words" spread, their magic began to become ineffective.

In Vatican archives, such areas are called "Spark Lands."

In the Land of Sparks, the failure rate of low-level divine spells is as high as 30%. For example:

The release of the Holy Word Healing spell failed, and the patient vomited blood instead;

The cleansing light can only illuminate a few feet, and even turns into a fiery red;

The messengers of God were unable to connect to the divine realm through meditation, and some even dreamed of Xingluo waving his hand to block the Sword of Light.

What’s more serious is:

Those priests whose faith was weak were attacked by the divine power when they tried to release their magic. Some suffered tinnitus, some went blind, and some fainted on the spot.

Divine magic is actually harmful to those who "think".

The news was strictly suppressed, but it soon leaked out. Clergymen everywhere were in a state of panic, with some even choosing to remain silent and suspend rituals to prevent divine punishment from being triggered by "thinking of the falling stars."

"We are no longer God's mouthpieces, but like puppets being pulled by strings," a priest secretly wrote. "If we waver, the divine arts will retaliate against us. Is this truly light?"

Xingluo remained silent on this matter. He did not want to see a new faith being born, even if it was centered around him.

"I am not a god, nor should I be treated as one," he whispered in a private meeting.

But a mystic who lives in seclusion came up with a surprising explanation:

"This is not 'believers creating God,' but the birth of conceptual divinity."

“When tens of thousands of people unite the concepts of ‘rejecting God’ and ‘burning themselves’ into a belief, they no longer need God to grant miracles – they themselves become part of the miracle.”

"And you, Xingluo, you have become the 'anchor' of this concept of faith."

Faith no longer comes from fear and worship, but from awakening and will.

When gods are stripped of their divinity, only oppression remains; and a mortal with a divine flame in his heart ignites the human soul. Then - who is worthy of trust?

This fire was not ignited in the temple, but in the streets and alleys.

In an abandoned mine, miners bury their dead companions with star-fallen prayers;

In the exiles' tent, a blind girl tells everyone the legend of the "Starfall Retreat Army";

In a village that was almost forgotten, an old man renovated his dilapidated temple into the "Sixing Hall" and inscribed on the wall:

“God does not keep us, but man himself keeps hope.”

More and more people stopped kneeling before the statue and instead lit candles, facing the direction of the Fallen God Empire and the direction of the falling stars, and whispered:

"Thank you."