The night was as dark as ink, and the moment the full moon broke free from the clouds, all living beings across the globe held their breath, captivated by the anomaly in the sky.
The moon's surface had, at some unknown time, been covered in a layer of frost. Words carved from ice crystals shone like diamonds, casting their pure light upon the earth.
Each character was hundreds of kilometers long, as if a god had etched a decree into the firmament with moonlight.
"All surviving free humans, come to the location of the Temple. I will recreate the world, eliminating all zombies. You will have seven days!"
"Countdown: Seven days!"
Li Yu setting the deadline at seven days was not arbitrary.
Whether it was God's creation of the world in the Bible or the legend of Nüwa molding humans from clay in ancient Chinese mythology, both took seven days.
The number seven held the hidden laws of heaven and earth.
Seven days was an opportunity for the zombie civilization to struggle desperately, and also a test for human civilization.
Even if Li Yu could destroy the zombie civilization by himself, humanity still needed the will to save itself.
In this world completely ruled by zombies, if there were still free humans bravely surviving, Li Yu was willing to give them seven days.
As long as someone arrived at the Temple within seven days, he would carve out a path to survival for human civilization!
...A group of zombie priests, who were enjoying a human flesh feast under the moon, suddenly froze. They looked up towards the east.
There, the clouds had dispersed, and the words on the moon burst into their vision in an almost overbearing manner.
"What is that? Who could have done this?"
The roars in the zombies' throats caught midway, and for the first time, an emotion called fear appeared in their decaying eye sockets.
The zombies performing a sacrificial ritual under the moon looked up at the sky, at the words formed by frost. Black sweat seeped from their withered skin.
"Words of creation? Has the authority of Arthur God-King been challenged by a human?"
The oldest zombie priest slammed his scepter down heavily.
"Notify all tribes, send out all warriors to the Temple. This is no joke!"
In the palace, Prince Born's mangled body had just been reassembled by priests using a regeneration virus.
When he looked up and saw the words on the moon, his newly acquired body suddenly twitched violently.
"It's him! It must be that person!"
"He wants to overthrow the God Race! He's forcing our hand!"
At the same time, in a free human tribe hidden deep within the Amazon rainforest, a young man clad in animal skins suddenly pointed at the sky, his voice distorted by excitement.
"Look! What is that?"
The tribespeople emerged from their tree hollows, looking up at the bright moonlight piercing through the rainforest.
Upon seeing the words, the tribal leader, who had once been part of the resistance, suddenly fell to his knees, tears welling up in his cloudy eyes.
"It's... it's a miracle! Humanity's God has finally appeared!"
In a London Underground shelter, a black man was observing his surroundings with a telescope. When he saw the words "Seven Days of Creation" on the moon, his telescope clattered to the ground.
He stumbled back into the shelter.
"Father's words have come true, a God has really appeared!"
The people in the shelter instantly rushed to the surface. When they clearly saw the words spanning the moon, some knelt and kissed the railway tracks, while others wept uncontrollably, holding their children.
"Robert didn't lie to us!"
A white-haired old woman caressed a photo on the wall: a black man with a dog facing countless zombies.
That was Robert Neville before he died in battle.
The woman still remembered Robert's last words.
"Hold on. I believe hope will always emerge for humanity."
A look of relief appeared on her old, haggard face.
"Robert Neville, do you see? I held on until the end, and just as you said, a miracle truly appeared!"
...Three days later, the God-King Palace Square had become a slaughterhouse.
Li Yu sat cross-legged, suspended in the center of the square, surrounded by a surging golden electrical field.
Lightning, like a swimming dragon, coiled around him, and each bolt that struck the ground blasted charred, deep pits into the white jade surface.
Around the Temple, corpses piled up like mountains. The alloy armor of high-level zombies was intertwined with the decaying bones of ordinary zombies, and at the very top, half of a divine dragon's torso was even impaled.
The divine dragon Prince Born spoke of was merely a giant earthworm infected by a virus. Now, it had been frozen into ice shards, impaled on the pile of corpses, towering into the clouds.
For these three days, zombie armies from all over the world had surged in without cease.
Some rode mutated hyenas, some launched surprise attacks from underground, and some priests even sacrificed their vital essence to summon divine power.
But these attacks were like child's play in front of Li Yu.
Under the immense power of lightning and frost, no zombie could approach within a hundred meters of him.
The Temple had now become a forbidden zone; no living creature dared to approach within several miles, only the wind, carrying a scorched stench, whirled across the square.
Hearing steady, rhythmic footsteps, Li Yu halted his lightning and frost domain.
He slowly opened his eyes, and soon, a group of primitive people clad in animal skins and leaves appeared before him.
Their skin was tanned bronze, their hands held rusty axes and spears, and their eyes held no fear, only an almost pious reverence.
Upon seeing the electric light flowing around Li Yu and the mountains of zombie remains piled up around him, these people uniformly knelt to the ground, their foreheads pressed against the cold earth, chanting ancient, wordless rhythms!
A few hours later, the roar of an engine echoed from the sky. A rusty passenger plane, swaying precariously, swept over the top of the Temple.
The plane's fuel was almost depleted, and the fuselage violently bucked in the airflow, clearly out of control.
Inside the cabin, children peered out the portholes. When they saw the figure surrounded by lightning in the center of the square, and the humans who had arrived earlier, smiles appeared on their young faces.
"Mommy, look! It's a God!"
A little girl with pigtails pointed at the ground, her voice as clear as a wind chime.
Her mother held her tightly, looking at the golden figure through the broken porthole, her vision blurred with tears.
"Yes, humanity also has a God now. Even if... even if we are going to heaven, we can leave with a smile."
The passenger plane, trailing black smoke, plunged towards the ground, seemingly about to crash headfirst into it.
Li Yu raised his hand and conjured a runway of frost, gently catching the falling passenger plane. The plane slowly glided along the runway, finally coming to a steady stop.
The moment the cabin door opened, the survivors stumbled out. As their feet touched the ground, they looked at Li Yu in the center of the square and suddenly all knelt!
...At the last second of the seventh day, the giant bronze bell in the Temple Square emitted a dull roar. The sound waves struck the broken walls and ruins, stirring up fine dust.
Li Yu slowly opened his eyes, looking at the surging crowd within the Temple.
The surviving humans in the world were far more numerous than Li Yu had imagined; in just seven days, tens of thousands of people from all over the globe had gathered within the Temple.
Li Yu took a deep breath. The air around him suddenly dropped in temperature, and moisture condensed into tiny ice crystals within the Temple.
Without any visible action from Li Yu, a visible chill erupted from around the Temple, climbing up its walls and weaving into a massive ice canopy at the dome.
Crack! Crack!
The transparent ice shield expanded at an astonishing speed, like a crystal flower blooming in an instant.
The ice wall was smooth as a mirror, reflecting the astonished faces of tens of thousands of people, completely isolating humanity from the corpses and scorched earth outside.
Sharp ice prisms formed at the top of the ice shield, refracting the rising sun and casting mottled bands of light onto the ground, as if building a translucent Noah's Ark for humanity.
"Stay inside, don't come out!"
Li Yu shot straight into the clouds.
He retrieved the sagittarius gold cloth from his personal space.
The Cloth box automatically opened in the sunlight, and the twelve Cloth parts floated in mid-air. The stardust patterns on their surface lit up as Li Yu's Cosmo burned.
The sagittarius gold cloth, sensing Li Yu's fiercely burning Cosmo, instantly disintegrated and reassembled itself onto him.
The Sagittarius totem on the breastplate emitted a dazzling golden light, and the golden wings on his back spread open.
Every golden feather condensed the power of the stars. The helmet's faceguard dropped, covering half of his face, revealing only his indifferent eyes burning with the light of his Cosmo.
The Gold Cloth resonated perfectly with his Cosmo. Li Yu seemed to hear the sigh of the previous Sagittarius Saint, Aiolos.
"This sinful world, it should end."
Li Yu raised his hands above his head, his Cosmo burning wildly within him!
Beneath his feet, the tropospheric moisture instantly froze, forming a crystal cloud spanning the sky. The volume of this crystal cloud stretched across the entire planet.
All the zombies had a sense of impending doom.
Li Yu's voice resonated through the clouds, carrying an authority capable of shaking the planet:
"Perish!"
"Aquarius's strongest ultimate technique, Aurora Execution!"