Chen Guan stood before a mural. The paintings were very old, so old it felt like they belonged to a time before the figures became legends, back when they still lived as ordinary people.
At the end of the stone steps was a circular hall.
The view suddenly opened up.
The hall was astonishingly tall; the dome was hidden in darkness, its end invisible.
The floor was paved with black-and-white stone tiles, and at the center lay a dry, circular pool.
Every wall was covered in murals, each one massive, and each one contained the Lord of Nothingness.
But here, the face of the Lord of Nothingness was no longer left blank. Instead, it was covered in deep scratches carved by later visitors with sharp tools, the features completely gouged out.
Those scratches were chaotic and interlaced, pressed into the stone wall.
Chen Guan moved closer to one of the murals.
In the painting, the Lord of Nothingness stood with a child on a mountaintop. In the distance, a city burned. The child clutched a book, and the Lord of Nothingness looked down at him.
His face was destroyed, leaving only his robes and posture to reveal his identity.
Chen Guan walked to the next mural.
The two sat by a river. The child washed his hands in the water, while the Lord of Nothingness sat nearby, holding a branch and writing something on the ground.
Next mural.
The child had grown a little taller. He no longer always hid behind the Lord of Nothingness; now he walked shoulder to shoulder with him.
They crossed icy plains, walked the ocean floor, and climbed barren mountains hung with bones.
Every mural was quiet.
No worshipers.
No war.
No throne.
Just two figures moving forward endlessly.
Guan Jinyue stood beside Chen Guan, her gaze sweeping over the murals.
“This doesn’t feel like a god’s biography,” she said.
Chen Guan looked up at the scratches on the wall.
“It feels more like someone remembering another person.”
Guan Jinyue said nothing. She saw the final ring of murals, where the scratches were densest.
The figure of the Lord of Nothingness grew fainter in each painting, while the child’s figure became clearer.
The second-to-last mural:
The Lord of Nothingness stood before a door. Beyond the door was a vast blankness.
The child stood behind him, gripping the hem of his robe with both hands.
The Lord of Nothingness bent down, his posture as if he were speaking to the child.
The last mural:
The Lord of Nothingness had vanished.
Before the empty door knelt the child, now half-grown.
He covered his face with both hands, his shoulders and back slumped down.
No one else was around. Only the door stood open, with nothing behind it.
Chen Guan stood before the last mural, unmoving for a long time.
Baal finally won the Black House game; his voice rang out: “Kid.”
“What?”
Baal’s tone turned serious.
“This isn’t the story after he became a god.”
Chen Guan stared at the half-grown child in the mural. “I know.”
“This is the story of when he was still human,” Baal said, then paused, his tone growing uncertain. “But who is this kid? I’ve never seen…”
Before he could finish, the dry circular pool at the center of the hall suddenly lit up with a faint silver-blue glow.
Chen Guan spun around. The dust at the bottom of the pool parted on its own, revealing a line of ancient characters buried for a long time.
Guan Jinyue stepped closer, her gaze lowering to examine them. She frowned. “What kind of script is this?”
Even the local know-it-all didn’t recognize it. As an outsider, Chen Guan certainly didn’t.
He took out his phone, planning to snap a photo to show Su Yuehe, who had been studying ancient scripts recently.
And that turtle—he couldn’t forget that, either.
There was no signal here, but taking a photo was still fine.
Chen Guan pressed the shutter. Click. On the screen, the ancient characters were frozen in the frame.
The next moment, the screen went dark.
The screen was pitch black, but silver-blue lines crept inward from the edges, like living veins, crawling along the lens and burrowing into the device’s body.
Chen Guan looked down at his phone. Guan Jinyue looked too.
“Broken?”
“Looks like it, for now.”
Chen Guan flipped the phone over. The metal backplate had already formed a thin layer of frost.
He didn’t bother pressing the power button again. He simply tossed the phone into his storage ring.
Now the phone was a brick, completely dead.
After Chen Guan tossed the phone into the storage ring, the silver-blue ancient characters at the bottom of the pool didn’t disappear.
Gray-white dust was pushed aside by an invisible force, sweeping smoothly across the pool floor.
The characters, which had only been half exposed, slowly revealed themselves in full. Silver-blue threads crawled out from the subtle grooves, spreading up the dry basin walls.
The lingering cold mist at the edges of Chen Guan’s robe flowed toward the pool.
Guan Jinyue stepped back half a pace. Silver light flickered from her sleeve, only to be suppressed again by the rules of the surroundings.
Her gaze shifted from the pool to the murals around them.
The Lord of Nothingness, his face scratched away, stood on the walls, his long robes falling, his posture peaceful. But the defaced visages, slashed by sharp tools, stood out harshly in the ghostly blue light.
Guan Jinyue said quietly, “This place is different from outside. Be careful.”
Chen Guan raised his right hand. The black imprint on his palm felt cold and hard, radiating no heat. His mind was filled with fragmented static—Baal, never reliable, seemed to have disconnected again.
The silver-blue patterns on the basin walls climbed halfway up, then stopped. All the light focused on Chen Guan, hanging there in stillness, disturbingly eerie.
Chen Guan tried moving closer to the pool from the side. Guan Jinyue stayed half a step beside him.
The closer he got to the pool, the quieter the murals seemed.
The mutilated faces on the walls appeared to lower slightly, watching everything.
Chen Guan stood at the edge of the pool. The silver-blue ancient characters came into full view.
He still couldn’t read them.
But, the next moment.
Chen Guan saw a snowfield.
White snow covered his ankles, and the world was reduced to gray and white.
A child in a tattered cloak walked ahead, gripping a corner of a robe in his hand.
The robe belonged to a faceless, long-robed figure.
The figure walked slowly, pausing every few steps to wait for the child.
On the child’s back was a pack larger than his own body. The straps cut into his shoulders, but he didn’t let go.
At the edge of the snowfield stood a row of black tree shadows.
The child suddenly turned back. His face was blurry, features indistinguishable.
Yet Chen Guan inexplicably felt the child was looking at him.
Not at someone in the mural—but at him.
His gaze seemed to pierce through the wind and snow in front of him, locking onto Chen Guan, this outsider.
The stone tiles beneath Chen Guan’s feet had completely vanished.
Yet he was oblivious, standing in the snow. The cold crept up his shins. In the distance, the long robe’s hem slipped from the child’s grip.
The child opened his mouth.
Chen Guan heard no sound and couldn’t read the lip movement.
He tried to take a step forward, to get closer.
Just then, his wrist was suddenly seized, followed by a powerful wrench.
Guan Jinyue yanked him back to her side.
The wind and snow vanished instantly. The stone tiles reappeared beneath his feet.
The circular hall pressed back into view: the dim blue stone lamps, the dry circular pool, the murals with their defaced faces—all returned.
Chen Guan looked down at the ground. The footprints still on the floor already told the story: he had just been half a step from the bottom of the pool.
One more step and he would have stepped into the center of those silver-blue patterns.
Only now did a belated wave of fear rise within him.
or! A blessing for those who struggle with love, a guidebook for dating novices. Quickly match with your dream goddess! Complete walkthroughs earn rewards, and perfect walkthroughs unlock limited achievements!】 Shen Yi, an ordinary office worker, accidentally downloads a mini-game called Dating Simulator. The mini-game is simple: randomly search for dating targets, simulate dates, and receive rewards upon successful confession. Rewards include but are not limited to money, attributes, and skills. The higher the evaluation, the better the rewards, with perfect ratings unlocking mysterious achievements. Shen Yi plans to use this mysterious mini-game to continuously pursue targets and improve himself, making his life better and better. ...... However, after several successful walkthroughs, Shen Yi suddenly notices something strange - the targets he previously simulated dating seem to be searching for him in real life?
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
for mindless slaughter, this isn't for you.] My name is Ye Shu, and I'm a transmigrator. It seems I'm supposed to be the protagonist, but that feels pretty unlikely. This world has been invaded by a system. The antagonists on the other side have suddenly become pure, flawless saints. The female leads have been force-fed the so-called "original plot," making them think they've been reborn. Now, everyone thinks I'm scum. Including the old lady in my ring. And here I am, in the Monster Beast Mountain Range, braising pork. To put my situation in perspective— It's as if, the moment Xiao Yan stepped into the Monster Beast Mountain Range, the Soul Emperor already knew he would become the Flame Emperor, and Yao Lao had been turned to the enemy's side. I have nothing right now. Oh wait, that's not true. I do have a white-haired loli child-bride who's the Heavenly Dao, and her only skill is acting cute. So, tell me guys... what are my chances of making it to the end?
