Within the Origin Realm.
The sealed entrance had remained closed for nearly an hour.
Yun Huang had just slain a seventh-tier Origin creature.
In the next instant, her soul sea erupted into violent turbulence, alarms blaring in her mind.
A bone-chilling dread crawled up her spine—some terrifying presence was rapidly closing in, suffocating her with overwhelming pressure.
Another enemy?
The thought barely crossed her mind when—
BOOM—!
A chain of explosions tore through distant mountain ranges, the deafening roar shaking the earth.
The ground trembled violently, loose stones cascading like rain.
Yun Huang’s instincts sharpened. She activated two defensive cards in quick succession, encasing herself in protective light.
Yet, the unease only intensified.
Before she could summon a third card, sheer survival instinct—honed through countless life-or-death battles—forced her body into a desperate twist. She lunged forward, rolling across the ground.
WHOOSH!
A razor-thin blade of condensed frost grazed past her face, missing by a hair’s breadth.
Where she had stood moments ago, the earth split open like paper, cleaved by a gaping chasm.
Then, with another thunderous explosion, shattered rock and choking dust rained down.
A piercing sonic boom followed, assaulting her eardrums.
Only then did the belated official warning crackle through:
"Emergency alert! All examinees, attention! All examinees, attention!"
"This Origin Realm is undergoing structural collapse, forcibly merging with an unknown realm…"
"All examinees, locate the nearest proctor immediately! Repeat, locate the nearest proctor!"
"Temporary shelters will be marked by signal flares at one-minute intervals!"
Yun Huang frowned as fragmented memories surfaced.
"A realm within a realm?"
Such disasters had been reported before.
She recalled an Origin Realm obliterated during a similar fusion—thousands of stationed officials and the realm itself vanishing without a trace, erased from existence.
Before she could dwell further—
The thick clouds above were violently ripped apart by an unseen force.
What followed was true apocalypse.
Countless massive meteors, wreathed in flames, streaked across the sky, blanketing every corner of the realm in fiery devastation.
The midday sky darkened into twilight, an ominous shroud spreading overhead.
The aura radiating from that shroud…
Ancient. Boundless. Annihilating.
It pressed down like a weight, demanding submission.
"What tier of Origin Realm is this?"
Yun Huang hesitated no longer.
A genius was only called a genius because they hadn’t yet become a true powerhouse.
And Yun Huang was no genius.
Seeking the proctors’ protection was her only real option.
Wind howled past her ears as her surroundings blurred.
Behind her, vast swaths of land crumbled and split.
Without warning, the ground yawned open, revealing a barren wasteland reeking of sulfur and blood—rising, suspended midair.
No…
Not land…
A city, wreathed in scorching heat, stood inverted in the sky!
Yun Huang’s heart sank.
And worse—
In the distance, shadowy figures loomed.
One ‘person’ locked eyes with her.
Even across the vast expanse, the killing intent radiating from it was palpable.
‘He’ gazed down at the realm now reduced to smoldering ruins.
Only now did Yun Huang grasp—just faintly, yet enough to freeze her blood—what the ‘Abyss’ had been sealing away.
The so-called ‘Origin creatures’ were mere vermin in this realm.
These… were the true enemies.
……
Surveillance room.
Chen Yuan watched the realm’s transformation.
Cold sweat dripped from his brow.
He’d seen it all—or so he thought.
But this? This was beyond insanity. "Has Guardian Jiang been contacted? The situation’s spiraling out of control!"
A subordinate stammered, "No response. Guardian Jiang hasn’t returned, and with the realm sealed, he might not get in."
Chen Yuan pressed, "Then what’s our available combat strength?"
"One ninth-tier, eleven eighth-tier, one hundred seventy-six seventh-tiers," the subordinate reported.
Chen Yuan strategized instantly. "Dispatch the strongest eighth-tier with Teams One and Two to the southeast. Su Muxue takes Team Three northwest. Evacuate examinees at all costs!"
The subordinate hesitated—
"Move! Every second counts!"
"Teams Four and Five, cover the evacuation routes!"
"Medical units, advance to the safe perimeter and prepare for casualties!"
"Engineering, stabilize the realm’s network. Maintain communications!"
Orders flew from his lips. The surveillance room buzzed with urgency—keyboard clatter, radio chatter, status updates—chaos held at bay by discipline.
"But, Chen Yuan… you’re the strongest eighth-tier here…"
Chen Yuan fell silent.
On-screen, young examinees fled in panic while rescue teams charged toward the carnage.
"Oh."
His voice was eerily calm. "Then have my deputy assist Team One."
"I can’t go. I must hold command here—thousands of lives depend on it."
He resumed directing. "Southeast A-3, examinee unconscious. Coordinates—"
"Southeast B-5, requesting backup!"
"Alert! High-tier entity accelerating toward B-7!"
Bad news flooded in like a tide.
Chen Yuan’s fists clenched, nails biting into his palms.
Less than three hours had passed since the martial exam began.
Yet these three hours held more peril than his past three years combined.
His untouched coffee sat cold, the silver spoon abandoned in the cup.
His communicator vibrated again.
The moment the anomaly began, the realm’s sensors had redlined.
Now, preliminary scans were in.
A dynamic map unfolded before Chen Yuan—a digital rendering of the Origin Realm.
It was a nightmare.
Red markers blighted the display, each a newly fused zone actively consuming the realm.
Fifteen in total.
The landscape was hell incarnate.
Entire regions lay in smoldering ruins, energy storms raging through shattered structures.
The stench of charred debris choked the air.
His voice, amplified and laced with steel, boomed across all official channels:
"This is a war of worlds! A clash of civilizations!"
"We fight to the last!"
"Annihilate them, or be annihilated!"
"Every citizen of Great Xia will stand their ground!"
"This is law!"
"Deserters will be executed on sight!"
Then—amidst the horror—the inverted city began to fall.
It plummeted toward the realm, dragging the sky itself downward.
An ocean of fire, pure destruction made manifest, rolled across the heavens.
Blackened spatial fissures spiderwebbed outward from the descending city, fracturing the realm.
The Origin Realm teetered on the brink of annihilation.
uld barely embark on the path to immortality. Just as he was on the verge of death, his golden finger awakened. No matter whether it was poison, drained blood and vital energy, diminished lifespan, or any other physical debuff caused by paying a price—once midnight passed, everything would be refreshed. From then on, whenever someone asked what kind of person Chu Ran was, the answer was simple: Forbidden arts that other cultivators dared not learn? Chu Ran would learn them. Prices that even demonic cultivators dared not pay? Chu Ran would pay them. Lifespan that even righteous cultivators dared not burn? Chu Ran would burn it. All the blood essence in his body? Take it. Want both his hands and feet? He would cut them off and send them to you. You say he’s finished? He wasn’t built to sit idle. You think he’s gone mad? No—he was simply waiting for midnight. From that day onward, Chu Ran would respect neither Heaven nor Earth, bow to neither gods nor ghosts. He had only one wish: For midnight to arrive a little sooner.
ions, keeping it grounded and realistic】 After quitting his job, office worker Su Yang accidentally binds with the "Enjoy Life System." As the name suggests, simply by indulging in life's pleasures, he can earn random rewards from the system—no need to spend money on beautiful women or grovel before anyone. Just enjoy, and the money follows, making it all about effortless fun. The system comes with a scanning feature, allowing him to establish a favorability bond with women rated 85 points or above. Every 20-point increase in favorability unlocks additional rewards. After suffering through over twenty years of hardship, Su Yang trembles with excitement, his dull eyes suddenly gleaming with newfound hope. "Enjoy life? How hard could that be?"
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
world slacker. But a genius female disciple just had to get clingy, insisting that he take her as a disciple. Not only that, she was always making advances on him, thoroughly disrupting his peaceful slacker life...
