William Brooks sealed off this world, withdrew the new species he had introduced, and let these four kinds of beings continue to live in comfort without competition. He had completely lost hope in these creatures.

Morality is the highest embodiment of rules, the ultimate standard, but a world of absolute morality cannot survive.

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Chronicles of the Underworld—

Before William Brooks extracted the Zhou Earth world from the flow of time, human lifespans were infinite. No one would die of old age, nor would anyone fall ill. Even the most severe injuries could be healed by magic.

At that time, William Brooks believed that the root of human chaos was their possession of great power.

He sealed away all beings with great power, and also withdrew the powers inherited from Shang from humanity. Deprived of these mighty forces, human lifespans became short, and they began to suffer from disease, injury, aging, and disability.

The wise among humans could no longer find solutions to these hardships from inheritance or history, for inheritance had been severed and history had become fragmented and incomplete. They could only struggle to think for themselves.

In different places, different nations, and different races, sages who inherited various faiths emerged one after another. They all believed their own methods could elevate the human soul, make people forget their suffering, and even regain immortality.

As these beliefs spread, humanity once again mastered the power of immortality. However, the wise could not solve the fundamental problem: humans could only achieve immortality in soul, not in body.

Immortal souls without physical vessels faced countless problems. Without bodies, they lost the pleasures brought by ritual and music, could not enjoy physical delights, and lost human kinship and emotion. They could only fall into endless suffering, enduring limitless loneliness.

The immortal souls degenerated into evil gods, wantonly manipulating the fate of mortals, altering the course of the world, and creating chaos, slaughter, plague, and war.

Those sages who spread faith never imagined that, in trying to solve human suffering, they had created the greatest chaos. They could only gather followers to resist these evil gods who had mastered soul immortality. This battle lasted for centuries, nearly destroying humanity’s faith.

William Brooks finally improved the situation in the Qiantian world and turned his attention back to the main world, only to find it even more chaotic.

He had no better solution, so he extracted these immortal souls, the sages who spread faith, the fallen evil gods, and this chaotic period of history and time, and once again separated them, turning them into the fifth legendary world—the Underworld.

The Underworld accommodates only immortal souls. According to their different beliefs, these souls established different realms. Some immortal realms do not interfere with each other, while others wage eternal wars.

The realms established by these immortal souls include the Netherworld, Hell, Heaven, the Pure Land, Reincarnation, the Yellow Springs, the Yin Realm, Purgatory...

Although there are still backlashes that affect the main world, this threat has been reduced to the minimum.

After William Brooks created the Underworld, humanity finally moved in a new direction. No longer did they explore the secrets of the body or the mysteries of the soul. Instead, they began to establish science, using tools, and thus countless forms of knowledge were born.

In just a few centuries, humanity developed to the peak of another kind of civilization.

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The First Mechanical Civilization—

In just a few hundred years, humanity evolved from the era of cold weapons to the nuclear age, even harnessing the endless energy of the sun, so that they were no longer bound or limited.

They mined all the minerals, used all resources to manufacture things, and even created artificial intelligence smarter than themselves. They could transform themselves into beings comparable to gods, with half-mechanical, half-biological bodies, able to instantly learn all knowledge and possess the long lifespans of the mythic age.

Humans also created countless tools, invented the most powerful weapons, built spaceships capable of traversing the stars, and even launched entire cities into space, establishing bases in the universe where millions could live, shining like stars.

At the same time, humanity produced endless technological waste, polluting the atmosphere until it could no longer support breathing, rendering the earth unable to grow food, drying up rivers, and leaving no drinkable water. Tens of thousands died, city after city on earth fell into death, and one by one, cities in space went dark.

In a war, a war-maniac launched enough nuclear weapons to destroy all humanity. This destruction encompassed not only humans, but also the earth they lived on, and even the entire solar system.

William Brooks could only once again extract these centuries of time and cast them into the torrent of time, letting them perish on their own.

This technological world exiled by William Brooks was later called the First Mechanical Era. Occasionally, humans in the main world would discover artifacts from this era and marvel at them.

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The Second Spiritual Civilization—