The transport ship "Rustbucket" shuddered through the warped space-time channel, its hull screeching as it grated against nano-dust. Li Tianming huddled in the darkest corner of the cargo hold, a tattered cloak wrapped tightly around him, his palm clenched around a bloodstained police badge.
"Seventh standard hour since the Purification Protocol initiated," he counted silently, feeling the faint ember of divinity that was all that remained within him. The ancient god who once commanded the authority of three realms now possessed less than one ten-thousandth of his former power, barely enough to maintain his physical form.
"Brother..."
A weak fluctuation emerged from the badge,a fragment of his sister's shattered divinity flickering in his consciousness. He had sacrificed half his cultivation to preserve this last shard of hope before his own divinity was stripped away.
"Don't be afraid," he responded mentally, his fingers tracing the deep crack on the badge. "The more the System tries to erase us, the closer we are to the truth."
The cargo hold door burst open violently, revealing three figures clad in the standard combat armor of the Divine Realm Peacekeeping Bureau. The leader raised an arrest warrant glowing with red light:
"Li Tianming!You are under universal arrest. Surrender immediately!"
His pupils contracted. The "Golden Cicada" gambit should have bought him at least three divine days—this pursuit was far too swift.
"Something's wrong..." He keenly noticed the spreading nanoscale rust stains on the fake peacekeepers' armor. "You're not from the Bureau."
The impostors suddenly attacked, familiar dark golden divine light—the exact energy signature of his sister's killer—erupting from the seams of their armor!
Li Tianming threw himself backward as the dark golden edge grazed his throat. In that critical moment, he crushed a Rust Sea crystal hidden in his sleeve, instantly flooding the cargo hold with emerald-green nano-mist.
"He's onto us!" the fake peacekeeper roared, his limbs contorting into a non-human combat form.
Retreating through the godhood-corroding mist by memory of the cargo hold's layout, every breath brought agony as nanomachines tore at his lungs, yet this awakened a long-dormant combat instinct deep in his genes.
After seven steps, he crashed through the emergency hatch, and the Rust Sea's characteristic crimson light poured in. Below surged a sea of death composed of self-replicating nanomachines, its rust-colored waves occasionally revealing the wreckage of devoured starships.
His pursuers were closing in. Li Tianming glanced back at the approaching dark golden blades, then down at the Rust Sea beneath him—a forbidden zone even gods feared.
Without hesitation.
He plunged into the all-devouring,rust-colored waves.
---
Consciousness floated amidst the nano-storm. When Li Tianming opened his eyes again, he found himself lying on a floating island made of piled-up discarded servers. A girl in patched-up protective suit was checking his vitals with rudimentary equipment.
"You're awake?" The girl noticed him stirring, smiling with rust-flecked teeth. "I'm Lia, medic of the Rust Sea Scavengers, 47th Division."
Li Tianming keenly noticed the faint serial number branded on the back of her neck—the mark of an artificial lifeform commonly used in Divine Realm laboratories.
"Why save me?"
"Everyone who falls into the Rust Sea has a story,"Lia blinked. "And the divine wavelength you emitted when you fell... was special."
She handed him half a purified nutrient paste bar, suddenly lowering her voice: "You're being hunted by 'them,' aren't you?"
Li Tianming gazed into the girl's clear eyes, seeing a familiar light within those supposedly manufactured orbs—the same light his sister had when she vowed to change the world.
He gently grasped the police badge at his waist, feeling its faint resonance.
Perhaps in this God-forsaken Rust Sea,he had found a new ally.
"Yes," he finally spoke, his voice hoarse from nano-corrosion. "But I'm not the only one being hunted."
On the distant rust-colored horizon, dozens of patrol boats flying Peacekeeping Bureau flags were approaching. And deeper beneath the waves, something ancient was stirring—a secret belonging to the Rust Sea itself, unrecorded even in the Divine Realm's annals.
Li Tianming stood up, his remaining divine power coalescing into a dim blade in his palm.
His path to godhood would inevitably begin anew from this Rust Sea that had entombed countless deities.