Ten days had passed since Yuan Zuozhi arrived in the Coalition.
The Church of the Earth Mother had quietly begun proselytizing within the borders of the Coalition, absorbing a large number of impoverished people and ordinary folk who yearned to become supernatural beings.
These believers had no established churches. When offering their faith, they could only pray to small stone statues of the Earth Mother, carved from rock and measuring just over ten centimeters.
Under such dispersed and secretive conditions, even as the Church of the Earth Mother expanded to hundreds of thousands of members within the Coalition, the authorities remained completely oblivious.
On that same day, in the depths of outer space, on the far side of the Moon.
Facing away from the Sun, this entire side was plunged in perpetual darkness.
Within this profound darkness, a mass of black mist materialized out of thin air.
A consciousness emerged within the dark current. The surrounding darkness grew unsettling, and at that moment, the entire shadow began to churn on a different plane.
A dark consciousness was being born.
A dozen kilometers away, Zhao Jin's figure materialized on the Moon.
He looked toward the expanding current in the distance. Choosing to be born on the Moon? There are no living organisms here to host your consciousness.
The birth of every consciousness was unique. Zhao Jin simply stood there, watching the shifting darkness. He wanted to see what kind of monster would emerge without a physical body to sustain it.
Thrum!
A silent tremor rippled across the far side of the Moon, as if it could not bear the terrifying existence about to manifest.
From within the dark current, a four-meter-tall figure emerged.
The body of the figure was pitch-black, but its long limbs were composed of white bone. Shockingly, human skulls protruded from its shoulders and knees.
Its head was a mask crafted from pure white bone. On the entire mask, there were only two circular holes for eyes, through which a deep, swirling darkness could be seen flowing.
The moment Darkness appeared, it stood quietly in place, then slowly turned its head toward Zhao Jin's position.
This individual possessed a very familiar aura, one that seemed to have lingered around it since the very first spark of its consciousness had formed.
Kind... red? The white mask stared at Zhao Jin without a shred of emotion.
Its thought process was incredibly primitive.
Zhao Jin locked eyes with Darkness for a moment, a faint smile gracing his face before his figure began to fade. "Darkness, you are truly peculiar. Do not disappoint me with what comes next."
Under Darkness's gaze, the familiar aura vanished.
It stared at the spot where Zhao Jin had disappeared for a long time before finally raising its head to look at the starry sky.
The entire universe was enveloped in darkness, with only a small portion illuminated by the light of distant stars.
Darkness stood silently on the ground, as still as a boulder.
It remained there until the Moon's rotation brought its side to face the blue planet.
Darkness gazed at the blue planet, sensing the presence of living beings upon it.
Darkness... fear... Instinct urged Darkness to devour those creatures.
The fear that living beings harbored toward the dark caused a ripple in its otherwise emotionless state. Only by making these creatures fear the dark could it grow stronger—this was an instinctual pursuit.
As its instinct grew more intense, Darkness moved.
Moving with it was a massive shroud of darkness that spanned dozens of kilometers.
The vast expanse of darkness flew toward the blue planet, and the side facing the Moon was none other than the Western Continent, where the Coalition was located.
Floating between the blue planet and the Moon was the Coalition's space station, which was the first to detect the anomaly.
"My God, what on earth is that?!" an exclamation rang out inside the space station.
Taylor stood in horror before a thick observation window, staring at the massive shroud of blackness approaching from the Moon.
"Taylor, what are you shouting about?" His voice alerted the others in the space station, and they hurried over.
Aside from Taylor, there were three other astronauts.
They gathered beside Taylor, and as they looked out the observation window, their expressions instantly shifted.
"Quick, notify ground control! Something abnormal is approaching the planet!" a middle-aged man shouted.
Before they could even act, the darkness outside closed in.
Thrum!
The entire space station was instantly plunged into darkness, and every light source vanished.
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