Space was frozen; time was suspended.
Every member of the Qu fleet, from the supreme commander down to the lowest living battleship, was nailed to the void, completely immobilized. It was a confinement that defied all known laws of physics.
Their minds were still racing frantically. Emotions of anger, confusion, and rage whipped up monstrous waves within their internal communication network, yet they could not transmit even the faintest signal to the outside world.
They had found it.
They had found their prey.
But it seemed they were the ones being hunted.
"Bastards! You despicable bugs! Show yourselves!"
Inside the flagship, the Qu commander's consciousness roared madly against its confinement. It attempted to detonate its internal energy core—a terrifying force capable of reducing this entire sector to cosmic dust.
It intended to use self-destruction to defend its final dignity as an apex predator!
However.
Just as that galaxy-destroying energy began to gather, the will of the Human Alliance gently brushed past.
Like an invisible hand softly smoothing out the ocean's waves.
That violent energy dissipated into nothingness in an instant.
Not a single ripple was left behind.
The Qu commander was completely stunned.
What kind of power was this?
This was not a suppression of energy levels; this was... domination at the level of universal laws!
In their understanding, such power should not exist in this universe!
At that moment, an independent will, carrying endless coldness and deathly stillness, separated from the [Human Alliance Consciousness] and took dominance.
It was Luo Ji.
His will ignored these invaders nailed to the pillar of shame, reaching instead toward the blue planet that had been treated as an appetizer.
The civilization that the Qu fleet had casually molded into a flesh centipede encircling the globe.
The next second.
A scene that would forever be etched into the memories of all Qu, shattering their worldview, unfolded.
Time was unreasonably reversed.
That long worm of flesh and blood, twisted and woven from billions of lives to encircle the planet, began to rapidly disassemble and scatter in a rewinding motion!
Flesh restructured, bones snapped back into place, and everything destroyed on the planet's surface rapidly restored itself.
Cities rose from the ground, and wails and cries flowed backward into throats, transforming back into their initial shock and bewilderment.
In just a few breaths, that civilization was restored to the exact moment before the Qu fleet's descent.
It was as if the nightmare had never happened.
The Qu commander's thoughts completely froze.
This... had exceeded the scope of their comprehension.
Destroying a civilization was something they could do.
But to fish a destroyed civilization out of the river of time, completely intact?
What kind of technology was this? How could a civilization that hadn't even stepped out of its star system develop such technology in a mere few hundred thousand years?
Yet, this was only the beginning.
What truly made all the Qu tremble from the depths of their souls was what happened next.
Luo Ji's will—or rather, the will of the entire Human Alliance—crossed the boundaries of time, extending its reach into the distant past.
One by one, they salvaged the civilizations that had been tortured, toyed with, and altered by the Qu from the depths of information!
Familiar figures materialized out of thin air before the Qu fleet.
The Star People who had been mutated into worms, unable to stand for their entire lives, forced to writhe on the ground.
The Dinosaur People who had been transformed into twisted skeletal fossils sixty-five million years ago.
And countless other civilized races that, over tens of millions of years, had been treated as toys and art pieces by the Qu, ultimately perishing in endless agony.
They had all returned.
Carrying a monstrous hatred that spanned across time and space, they had returned.
"This... this is impossible!"
"They... they're all dead! We personally transformed them into eternal works of art!"
Screams of terror, originating from the very depths of their souls, finally erupted across the Qu's communication channels.
The Human Alliance ignored their panic.
Endless Aether energy surged from shattered dimensions, pouring into the souls of these avengers.
It reshaped their forms.
They were no longer the twisted, hideous, and agonized monsters from their memories.
Instead, they were empowered with formidable spiritual bodies, burning with the flames of vengeance... they were executioners!
They were both the audience and the executioners of this trial.
Led by the Star People, this alliance of avengers slowly turned their gazes—burning with purple flames—toward the members of the Qu fleet who had most enjoyed turning lives into art.
Their eyes were cold and cruel, yet carried the profound satisfaction of vengeance fulfilled.
The next moment.
They grasped the ability bestowed upon them by humanity, known as Reality Bending.
The first target was the Qu who had participated in the creation of the flesh centipede.
"Ah—!"
That Qu was forcefully ripped from its living battleship by an invisible force, left suspended in the freezing cosmos.
Across the void, the leader of the Star People slowly reached out a hand toward it, and then violently clenched its fingers into a fist!
"You like art, do you?"
"Then I will make you become art!"
The Qu's body began to be forcibly stretched, twisted, and flattened!
Its bones were pulled out one by one and woven into a picture frame.
Its flesh and blood were ground into pigment and smeared across the canvas.
Its wails, its screams, and the agonizing fluctuations of its soul became the core essence of this painting.
A massive living mural—depicting all the atrocities of its own life and constructed entirely from its own being—was thus born.
It was still alive.
Every inch of its flesh retained the sharpest sense of pain.
It would wail within this eternal painting until the end of the universe.
"Next!"
The other Qu could not escape their artistic creation either.
Some were sliced into countless interconnected yet immobile fungi, spread across the ground to endure being trampled and gnawed on by creatures.
Others were molded into musical instruments, their nerves altered into strings; every strum was a slow, agonizing execution of their flesh and soul.
For a time, the rising and falling thought fluctuations of the Qu fleet members—filled with extreme agony and despair—flooded the entire star sector.
To the avengers, these fluctuations were the most melodious symphony in the universe.
Meanwhile, inside the flagship.
The Qu commander was imprisoned on the throne of this execution ground, unable to move.
It was not physically altered.
However, its consciousness was forcibly linked to every single one of its kin currently undergoing torture.
It was forced to taste, at ten million times the intensity, the never-ending agony they had once so loved inflicting upon others.
When the final Qu was transformed into a unique piece of eternal art and displayed in this Milky Way they had once ravaged.
The monstrous hatred—accumulated over countless eras and across countless civilizations—was finally vented.
Having fulfilled their mission, the spiritual bodies of the avengers slowly dissipated with satisfaction and relief, returning to the embrace of time.
The entire universe fell silent.
Only those silently wailing works of art remained.
Aboard the All Tomorrows Space Station.
On the bridge.
Luo Ji stood before the massive observation window, quietly watching the curtain fall on it all.
He had won.
The nightmare that had haunted him for nearly a millennium, the existence known as the Qu, had finally paid the price in the most satisfying and perfect way possible.
However.
When that monstrous hatred had finished venting, Luo Ji's heart did not welcome the peace and tranquility he had anticipated.
Instead, it was replaced by an unprecedented... emptiness.
He had accomplished the goal he had fought for his entire life.
What now?
Suddenly, he felt as though he were detaching from this universe.
Everything around him—the joy of victory, the cheers of humanity, even the cold touch of the spaceship beneath his feet—began to feel less real.