The acrid smell of metal ruins still lingered in his nostrils. Lin Yi knelt on one knee before the core remains of the Mother Nest, the metal surface beneath his fingertips trembling at an extremely subtle frequency.
The tremor was like spider silk brushing against nerve endings—as the master of spacetime, he was all too familiar with this kind of fluctuation; it was the mournful sound emitted by the dimensional membrane when a spacetime rift was violently torn open.
"Chu Yao, scan the spatial stability within a five-kilometer radius." His voice was low, and a thin layer of sweat appeared on his palm from the hilt of the Boundary-Breaking Blade.
"Analyzing... Main world space index 97.3, down 0.8 from three minutes ago." Chu Yao's voice carried the soft sound of data flow. "Twelve micro-space folds detected, concentrated 3.7 meters below your feet."
Lin Yi's pupils contracted slightly.
He suddenly raised his hand and pressed it against the charred metal, and the power of faith seeped into the cracks as if it were alive.
The next second, his temples throbbed—deep in his consciousness, a blurred image, washed away by time, was emerging.
"Time rewind, three seconds." He closed his eyes, and the spacetime emblem on his back glowed with a faint light.
The river of time flows backward through his fingertips.
The scene from three seconds ago replayed on my retina: the instant Xuanmingzi vanished, his right hand under the gray robe quickly formed an obscure hand seal, and a dark purple stream of light entered the core of the mother nest from his fingertip.
Now, the stream of light is following the metal's texture, drilling deeper into the lava layer.
"Grab it." Lin Yi shouted in a low voice, spreading his faith power like a net.
When that ray of light was forcibly pulled into his sea of consciousness, cold sweat beaded on his forehead—it wasn't energy, but a compressed fragment of consciousness.
"Order is just another cycle."
A hoarse voice exploded in his mind, followed by a series of constantly flashing coordinates, like an ancient book riddled with wormholes, where every three numbers would twist into gibberish.
Lin Yi suddenly opened his eyes. In his palm lay a purple ball of light the size of a pigeon egg, its surface covered with star-like patterns.
"Su Qing, analyze this." He tossed the ball of light into the air, and the girl in the form of a data entity immediately materialized from the void. As her fingertips brushed across the ball of light, the blue light at the tips of her hair suddenly surged.
"This is not the encoding method for the current dimension." Su Qing frowned slightly, and the data chains in her hair slithered into the ball of light like snakes. "The structure is similar to... the memory carrier of an advanced civilization?"
But the information layers within had been repeatedly overwritten, and a remnant remained at the very bottom—"She suddenly paused, cracks appearing in the blue light at her fingertips," "It's an implanted marker."
"Implanted?" Lin Yi's fingers unconsciously traced the star patterns on the Boundary-Breaking Blade. "Who implanted it?"
"Unable to locate the source point." Su Qing shook her head, the blue light at the tips of her hair turning dark red. "But it can be confirmed that this information was not left by Xuan Mingzi on his own initiative."
More like... fragments accidentally left behind when his memories were altered by some being.
Before the words were finished, a metallic twisting sound came from deep within the ruins.
Long Wu's molten gold gauntlets were already ruined. He was currently prying open half of the collapsed mech with his bare hands when he heard the noise and suddenly looked up: "Brother Lin, something's happened over there!"
As Lin Yi turned his head, he caught a glimpse of darkness out of the corner of his eye.
Fine black mist is seeping from the surface of the collapsed core remnant of the mother nest. Unlike the previous corrosive energy, the black mist seems to be alive, intertwining with each other to form blurry human face outlines.
"Night Owl?" Chu Yao's voice suddenly rose, "His consciousness hasn't completely disappeared!"
"The Hōgyoku is resonating." Aizen had appeared beside Lin Yi at some point, the Hōgyoku at his waist humming, its dark blue spiritual pressure spreading like a tide. "This black mist has an unusual attraction to it." He raised his hand and pressed it against the Hōgyoku, his knuckles turning white from the pressure. "It might be trying to reconstruct its consciousness network."
Lin Yi's gaze swept between the black mist and Aizen, and he suddenly noticed that Su Qing was still in the analysis state—the data chain in her hair was flashing wildly, as if she was fighting for control with some higher-dimensional being.
"Su Qing, step back!" He strode up to the data-body girl, his faith power enveloping her wrist.
Su Qing's body suddenly became transparent, and voices surged from all directions: "Coordinates...complete!"
It's...it's the old name for the Land of Fallen Gods!
The moment the last word vanished, the ball of light exploded with a "bang," and purple fragments sank into Lin Yi's brow.
Countless images flashed before his eyes: shattered starships, burning divine thrones, and Xuanmingzi's face when he was young—at that time, there was no struggle in his eyes, only an almost fanatical devotion.
"Brother Lin!" Long Wu's roar pulled him back to reality.
At this moment, the black mist had condensed into a semi-transparent humanoid shape, and the night owl's signature shriek echoed from the dome: "Foolish ants... thinking that destroying the mother nest will stop me?"
This consciousness has long since merged with your dimension...
"Old Zhou, keep a close eye on Little Sugar Bean!"
"Grandma Wang, protect the east side!" Long Wu grabbed half a piece of mecha wreckage and smashed it down, blood seeping from between his fists. "Brother Lin, I'll hold this bastard off!"
Lin Yi pressed his fingers to his temples, the information he had just received churning in his mind.
He looked at the Night Owl that was coalescing, then at Su Qing who was still analyzing the data, and finally his gaze fell on the trembling Hogyoku at Aizen's waist—all the clues were tangled together like a mess of yarn, but one thread was burning hot in his palm: the "price" that Xuanmingzi spoke of, the "implanted memories" that Su Qing spoke of, the Night Owl's unwilling consciousness to perish...
"Aizen, control the Hogyoku." He suddenly spoke, and the star pattern on the Hōkaijō (a type of weapon) lit up again. "Su Qing, continue analyzing. I need to know where these coordinates point to."
Long Wu, don't kill him—leave him alive.
Long Wu paused for a moment, then grinned, revealing his white teeth: "Alright!"
"I'm itching to punch this bastard, I'll play with him a little longer!" He wiped the blood from his face and picked up the mecha fragments with even more ferocity.
The owl formed from black mist let out a piercing laugh, but suddenly dispersed when it came into contact with Long Wu's attack.
Lin Yi stared at the re-emerging black mist, his gaze so deep it seemed to drip water.
He could sense that a larger game was unfolding—and he had only just touched the edge of the board.
"Chu Yao, locate all microscopic spatial folds." He turned to Su Qing, his faith power condensing into golden light patterns beneath his feet. "Long Wu, collect samples of the black mist while clearing out the remaining enemies."
Long Wu responded and turned around to wave to the team members not far away: "Did you all hear what Brother Lin said?"
"Sweep all this black slag clean, leaving not a single hair behind!" His voice, mixed with the crisp sound of metal clashing, echoed through the ruins.
In the shadows unseen by everyone, the fragment of consciousness that once belonged to Xuan Mingzi was quietly merging into the depths of Lin Yi's soul, following the purple light between his brows.
Long Wu's combat boots rolled over a charred circuit board. The molten gold gauntlets had long been melted into scrap metal by Night Owl's corrosive energy. The scabs on his knuckles mixed with oil stains, leaving dark red marks on the metal ruins.
"Old Zhang, lift that roof panel off!" He shouted to his team members not far away, and with a burst of strength, he flung half of the deformed mechanical arm aside.
Amidst the grating sound of metal scraping together, a beam of eerie blue light suddenly peeked out from the depths of the ruins.
Long Wu's movements suddenly stopped, and his pupils shrank to pinpoints beneath his sweat-dampened bangs—it was a palm-sized rhomboid module with data flowing like water ripples on its surface, maintaining a stable energy output even in the completely paralyzed core of the mother nest.
"Brother Lin! There are live ones here!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, the stinging pain from his wound reopening as he bent over being overshadowed by his excitement.
Just as the gloved fingers were about to touch the module, they abruptly pulled back—the runes on the module's surface suddenly lit up, like an activated star map.
"Chu Yao, connect to my terminal." Long Wu took out a tactical tablet and pointed the module at the camera.
Almost simultaneously, everyone heard the soft sound of Chu Yao reciting data—that was the special frequency of the AI assistant's emotional fluctuations.
"Detected... civilization database?" Chu Yao's voice trembled unusually. "The main world's historical fault line, details of the sinking of Atlantis, mysterious signals on the far side of the moon in 2027... the timestamps of these materials span from 3000 BC to 2077."
Lin Yi suddenly stopped in his tracks.
He was standing beside Su Qing, whose hair was still entangled with the broken purple light cluster. When she turned her head upon hearing this, the spacetime emblem in her eyes flashed with a faint light: "Future prediction?"
“It’s not just a deduction.” Chu Yao’s projection appeared in the void, the blue light at the tips of her hair almost solidifying into a tangible form. “Look at this—” She pointed her finger at Long Wu’s tablet, and the holographic projection instantly unfolded: In the image, in the Pacific Ocean in 2045, twelve giant spatial rifts simultaneously tore open; in 2050, the first eco-city established by the United Human Government on Mars suddenly annihilated; the last frame showed him standing in front of a burning starship, his Boundary-Breaking Blade piercing through some kind of translucent, membrane-like creature.
“This is impossible.” Su Qing’s voice suddenly became erratic, and the data link in her hair suddenly broke into fragments. “The encoding method of these images… is the same as that fragment of consciousness from before.”
Buzz—
Lin Yi's temples suddenly throbbed with pain.
That hoarse voice echoed in his mind again, clearer than before, carrying a weariness etched into his very bones: "What you see is only the surface... The real enemy has never arrived."
Everyone froze in their tracks.
Long Wu's hand hovered above the module, and Chu Yao's projection briefly showed snowflakes. Suddenly, the Hogyoku at Lan Ran's waist burst out with a dazzling blue light. Five meters in front of Lin Yi, the air twisted like crumpled tin foil, and a dark blue spatial rift slowly opened, with tiny starlight floating inside, resembling the prototype of a spacetime rift, but with an added touch of unreal haziness.
“That is…” Su Qing’s figure suddenly froze. She stared at the crack, the data in her eyes surging wildly. “A layer between dimensional membranes? A mirror space between reality and virtuality?”
"Brother Lin!" Long Wu grabbed the module and ran over, his combat boots clattering on the ruins. "The fluctuations in this crack are different from what Night Owl did before, it's more like..."
“Like a portal to an advanced civilization,” Aizen suddenly interjected.
His fingers were still pressed on the Hōgyoku, his knuckles turning white. "The Hōgyoku is resisting. This spatial structure reminds me of the boundary between Soul Society and Hueco Mundo."
Before the words were finished, a soft rustling sound of fabric rubbing came from the shadows.
Everyone turned their heads at the same time and saw a figure wrapped in a black cloak standing by the crack. The hood was pulled low, revealing only half of his pale face.
His voice, like the turning of rusty gears, carried a deliberately suppressed urgency: "Don't go in... that's the 'Observer's' trap."
Lin Yi's pupils suddenly contracted.
He had seen too many characters hidden in the shadows, but the aura of this shadowy figure... reminded him of the gaze that had been watching him from the depths of his consciousness when he first awakened as the master of time and space.
"The Observer?" He gripped the Boundary-Breaking Blade tighter, the star patterns burning in his palm. "Related to the advanced civilization of the 'Infinite' game?"
The shadowy figure did not answer.
His gaze swept over the purple spot between Lin Yi's eyebrows, then fell on the spatial rift. His Adam's apple bobbed, as if he wanted to say something, but in the end he only repeated: "Those who went in never came back."
Long Wu tucked the module into his coat pocket, his other hand already resting on the tactical pistol at his waist: "Old Black, who are you? What brings you here all of a sudden?"
The shadowy figure's cloak moved without wind.
He took a half step back, disappearing into the deeper shadows, but his voice drifted out clearly: "You think you've won by defeating Night Owl? No..." His gaze swept over the crowd, finally landing on Lin Yi, "The real game has only just begun."
Before he finished speaking, his figure vanished completely, like smoke blown away by the wind.
Lin Yi stared at the empty shadows, his fingers unconsciously stroking the hilt of the Breaking Boundary Blade.
Chu Yao's spatial scan, Su Qing's analytical data, Xuan Mingzi's warning, the shadowy figure's reminder... all the clues intertwined in her mind, forming a large net, and at the center of the net was the spatial rift that was still slowly rotating.
"Brother Lin?" Long Wu leaned closer, the module's eerie blue light reflecting on his face. "This crack..."
"Su Qing, analyze the spatial coordinates of the rift." Lin Yi interrupted him, his gaze never leaving the dark blue vortex.
He could feel the fluctuations coming from the crack like some kind of summons, familiar yet dangerous—just like the tremors of the spacetime master when he first touched the dimensional membrane upon awakening.
Su Qing pressed her fingertips to her temples, and the data link in her hair lit up again: "Coordinates locked... It's a mirror image of the Fallen Godsland." She suddenly looked up, a hint of panic flashing in the blue light in her eyes, "But according to historical backups, the Fallen Godsland was erased from all physical traces by an advanced civilization three thousand years ago, this mirror space..."
“It’s residue,” Lin Yi said in a low voice.
He took half a step forward, and starlight suddenly surged out from the crack, condensing into tiny specks of light at his feet.
A burning emotion surged in my chest—not fear, but excitement, the scorching heat of finally touching the edge of the truth.
Long Wu reached out to stop him, but Lin Yi turned around and smiled at him.
That smile carried a familiar decisiveness, much like the one he had when he first tore open the spacetime rift in the starting village.
"Keep an eye on the module." Lin Yi slung the Boundary-Breaking Blade over his shoulder. "If I'm not back in half an hour..."
"Don't give me that!" Long Wu shouted, but didn't move again.
He knew that some paths were for Lin Yi to walk alone.
The eerie blue light from the spatial rift unfolded behind Lin Yi, casting a long shadow of him.
The moment he lifted his foot and stepped into the starlight, Chu Yao's urgent warning rang in his ears: "Spatial stability has dropped to 89.7%! Mr. Lin, this is dangerous—"
But the sound was quickly swallowed up by the wind.
Lin Yi felt as if he had been thrown into a glowing river, and the scenery around him began to distort and recombine.
Before he completely lost consciousness, he saw a line of golden text floating in the void, like an ancient prophecy of some civilization:
"When the dancer of time and space steps into the mirror, he will see that all the threads of fate are tied to the same knot."
In the ruins of reality, the spatial rift suddenly shrank into a point of light. In the last moment before disappearing, Xuan Mingzi's sigh could be faintly heard: "Remember... what you are fighting against is never a particular enemy, but the rules of the entire Observer."
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