As Lin Yi's figure, enveloped in blue light, passed through the portal, the chill of the metal control panel instantly seeped into his bones.

His boot soles slammed against the gleaming alloy floor, the echoes striking the semi-circular dome and startling the suspended stream of code, causing it to scatter like a school of frightened fish.

The Anchor of Time burned red marks on her palm, golden-red lines creeping up her arm and neck, each one searing memories—the last time Su Qing smiled as she handed him the hot cocoa, the condensation on the cup spreading from her fingertips; the bloodstains on her hair, dyed amber by the sunlight, as she knelt in the ruins of the newbie village bandaging injured players; and the day she stood before the spacetime rift, her data beginning to crumble, her eyes curving into crescents: "Ayi, go do what you need to do."

"Master!" Chu Yao's data stream suddenly exploded on his retina, a pale purple mist enveloping a warning code: [Core energy threshold 87%, forced restart requires 120% over-output!] Her voice, unusually trembling, trembled, "Your current vital signs..."

Lin Yi looked down at his wrist.

Golden-red veins pulsed beneath the skin, like ignited blood vessels.

He could clearly hear the faint cracking of his bones—the power of spacetime reshaping his body, and the price he paid. "I know," he said, a wisp of blood escaping his throat, but he laughed softly. "The last time Su Qing used her consciousness as a key, I didn't even hear her last words."

The last time, when Long Wu shielded me from the corrosive bullet, I couldn't even close his eyes. He raised his hand, his fingertips lightly touching the seven grooves in the center of the control panel. "This time, I will let all those who should live live, and those who should rest in peace..." His Adam's apple bobbed, "At least let them see the end."

The alarm suddenly pierced the air.

The moment the owl's black mist pierced through the portal, the entire control panel trembled.

Those eerie green tentacles that had once corroded half the city came piercingly with a shriek, and wherever they passed, the alloy ground hissed and steamed as if it had been doused with aqua regia.

Lin Yi did not dodge.

He spread his arms, letting the sharpest tentacle pierce his left shoulder—the excruciating pain surged through his body like an electric current, yet he laughed, his laughter mingling with blood and splattering onto the control panel: "Come on, unleash all your attacks!"

When the second tentacle pierced through the right rib, the golden-red light of the Anchor of Time surged.

As the third blade pierced the thigh, ripples suddenly appeared in the seven slots of the control panel, and six pale golden light spots broke through the air from different dimensions—those were the fragments of the Seven Keys of Creation scattered across various battlefields, being pushed back into place by the power of faith.

The owl's scream mingled with the distorted human face in the black mist: "You're insane!"

Excess energy will burn you to ashes!

"Then burn it." Lin Yi gritted his teeth and slammed the Anchor of Time into the groove.

The console was instantly engulfed by a golden-red and pale-gold light.

Lin Yi's consciousness was pulled into a pure white space, where countless points of light floated, each reflecting a face: the reddened eyes of a girl with a ponytail as she stuffed wild chrysanthemums into the body's pocket; the blood-stained dog tags of soldiers who used their bodies to make a hospital bed; the words "Xiao Xia" carved on the black buds growing backwards in the scorched earth... Finally, Su Qing's figure emerged from the light mist, still wearing the white dress from his memory, but her hair was adorned with stardust from the data collapse.

"You see," her voice was like the wind blowing through the morning mist, "they've never left."

A sharp pain exploded in my consciousness.

Lin Yi saw his body vaporizing, but the golden-red light burned brighter and brighter, melting all the light spots of the Seven Keys into the core of the control console.

The code flow surged wildly, and the red warning bar that originally represented "collapse" was being covered in gold. Lines of new instructions poured out from the depths of his consciousness. They were the "belief" shouted by all the job changers in their desperate situation, the "living" hidden in the smoke rising from the resettlement area, and the "growth" tenaciously sprouted from the scorched earth.

"Core reboot program...starting."

The console's main screen suddenly lit up with a blinding white light.

Meanwhile, on a battlefield thousands of miles away, the warriors who were fighting the invaders suddenly stopped.

They looked up at the sky and saw a golden-red ray of light piercing through the clouds like vines, with specks of light wrapped around each "vine"—these were the scratches on Long Wu's military badge, the copper weight in Uncle Lin's pharmacy, and the glass marbles that Xia always liked to hold in his hand.

A girl who was stopping the bleeding of an injured person suddenly let go of his hand.

She gazed at the blood on her fingertips, then at the golden-red sky, and whispered, "It's his light..."

This sentence is like a pebble thrown into a deep pool.

The next second, all the job changers who were still standing stopped moving.

The corrupted warrior tore off the tentacles from his body, the blood-soaked mage erected the last barrier, and even the seriously wounded who should have fallen into a coma struggled to sit up. They all looked in the same direction, their eyes shining brighter than any magic.

"It's our turn," someone whispered.

The first wisp of faith rose from the soldier's dog tag, the second from the mage's wand, and the third... from a black sprout growing against the scorched earth, wrapped with the words "Xia Xia," slowly ascended into the sky.

Inside the control panel, Lin Yi's vaporized body suddenly regained its temperature.

He gazed at the converging light and finally smiled—this time, he was no longer alone.

As the rays of faith intertwined into a net in the sky, Chu Yao's data stream suddenly exploded with a pale purple cheer on Lin Yi's retina: "Main Brain feedback!"

The bond of faith has broken through the critical threshold! Her voice, tinged with starlight, said, "Old Zhou from the Third War Zone crushed his ancestral jade thumb ring, saying he wanted to use it as 'fuel' for you; Xia, the beast tamer from the Southern Territory, is nurturing black buds whose roots are penetrating the earth's core, each leaf transmitting life energy—"

"That's enough." The blood foam that Lin Yi coughed up condensed into a golden-red mist in mid-air, but he smiled more easily than ever before.

He could feel those rays of light like warm vines, drilling into his body along his vaporized fingertips. His bones, scorched by the power of spacetime, were crackling, but the pain was wrapped in an unprecedented sense of fullness.

The last time he stood here, only Su Qing's fragmented consciousness accompanied him; the time before that, Long Wu's military badge was still burning hot on his waist—now it's different, the warmth of millions of people flows in his veins.

\"boom!\"

The metal control console suddenly began to vibrate violently.

The owl's black mist, shrouding a distorted human face, slammed into the protective barrier, its eerie green tentacles gnawing at the light membrane like a swarm of crazed snakes. "You ants!" the voice whirred like rusty gears grinding, "Even if you restart the core, the judgment of a higher civilization will crush your planet to dust—"

"Then crush the judgment as well."

The shadowy figure's voice was colder than the owl's scream.

He appeared at the edge of the control panel at some unknown time, his black robe billowing like an inky tide, and the silver chain he held in his left hand was oozing with the ripples characteristic of advanced civilizations.

Suddenly, countless beams of light burst forth from the end of the chains, precisely piercing the core of Night Owl's black mist—the energy supply he had forcibly severed using his authority. "I'll help you stabilize your core's operation," the shadowy figure said, turning to Lin Yi, his red eyes beneath the mask showing a rare warmth. "After all... you've shown me something more interesting than 'perfect data.'"

The moment the silver chains wrapped around the control panel, the Anchor of Time in Lin Yi's palm suddenly chimed.

The seven keys of creation in the seven slots were completely fused together, and golden-red light rushed into the main control computer like a living thing, turning the originally frantically jumping red alarm bar into a gilded gold color.

The code flow is no longer a chaotic mess, but begins to weave into a star-like pattern—that is, the faith of all job changers reshaping the rules.

"Core energy threshold 120%...150%...200%!" Chu Yao's voice was choked with sobs. "Master's cells are reorganizing!"

It was the power of faith that was healing his body!

Suddenly, a blinding white light exploded in the sky outside the control panel.

On the battlefield a thousand miles away, the warriors entangled with the tentacles felt a warm force surging into their limbs, and their corroded wounds scabbed over at a visible speed; the survivors hiding in the ruins looked up and saw golden-red light smoothing out the distorted space, and the black mist that had once covered the sky was shattering into pieces like ice being roasted by fire.

"That's... the light of the core reboot?" The girl who had stopped the bleeding for the wounded staggered to her feet, her blood-stained fingers pointing to the sky. "Xia's black buds are glowing!"

Old Zhou's jade thumb ring... has turned into a star!

The owl's black mist suddenly contracted violently.

He finally realized something was wrong, and his eerie green tentacles thrashed wildly in an attempt to escape, but the gravity of the control panel had already locked onto his core energy. "No!"

"I am the Lord's sharpest knife—" His scream was torn to shreds, "You will regret this!"

Advanced civilization... Ah!

A golden-red light, enveloped in black mist, swept into the core of the control console.

As the last wisp of black mist dissipated, only the lingering, unwilling roar of the owl remained in the air.

Inside the control panel, Lin Yi knelt on one knee, his hands supporting himself on the scorching metal surface.

He could hear the hum of the core reboot resonating in his veins, and he could see the code stream rewriting the rules of "Infinity": the corrupted city began to repair itself, the turbulence at the edge of the spacetime rift gradually subsided, and even his vaporized right leg grew flesh and blood again—although it was still stained with undried blood, it was the temperature of being alive.

"Su Qing." He looked up at the sky reflected in the dome of the control panel, his voice so soft it was as if he didn't want to wake anyone, "We did it." The wind swirled dust across his hair, but it couldn't take away the moisture in his eyes.

Su Qing's last smile suddenly became clearer in my mind, more vivid than any data file—it turns out that true memories never need to be stored.

\"bite.\"

A cold wave of consciousness suddenly pierced through his sea of ​​consciousness.

The feeling was like having your heart squeezed by an invisible hand. The pain wasn't intense, but it carried a chilling sense of unfamiliarity—it didn't belong to any known dimension, and it didn't even seem like the fluctuations that "life" should have.

Lin Yi suddenly looked up, his pupils contracting into thin slits.

He saw several streaks of ink twisting strangely in the code stream of the console, as if some being was trying to decipher the rules here.

"Chu Yao!" He wiped his mouth with his blood-stained sleeve, his voice suddenly becoming heavy, as if weighed down by lead. "Check the monitoring data of all dimensional channels."

"Scanning... The mainframe is alerting that an unknown signal source is approaching this galaxy." Chu Yao's data stream suddenly flashed a dark purple alert. "The characteristics don't match advanced civilizations, nor are they intruders... It seems..." She paused, "It seems... to be searching for something."

Lin Yi stood up, the golden-red light of the Anchor of Time flowing in his palm.

He gazed at the world gradually returning to order outside the control panel, listening to the cheers coming from afar, yet felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

They won the battle, but that unfamiliar fluctuation of consciousness...

"Master?" Chu Yao's light mist gently brushed against his wrist. "Should we notify the Time-Space Legion?"

"No need." Lin Yi looked down at his newly grown right hand, his fingertips lightly touching his chest—where the hot cocoa coaster Su Qing had given him was still, its edges slightly charred, but perfectly preserved by his time-space magic. "Let everyone rest first." He turned and walked towards the observation window of the control panel. Smoke was slowly rising from the ruins, and children's laughter drifted in through the wind. "There are some things... I need to figure them out myself first."

The setting sun stretched his shadow long.

The wind lifted the blood-stained corner of his clothes, revealing the Long Wu military tag hanging at his waist; the scratches on the tag gleamed a warm gold in the light.

In the unseen starry sky, a strange fluctuation of consciousness, shrouded in eerie darkness, was slowly approaching this blue planet that had just recovered from the flames of war.