After the Cataclysm

Hot-air balloons would inexplicably burst apart halfway through the atmosphere.

Armored airships carrying more than forty-eight of the most powerful Crystal Engines would also suffer all manner of bizarre engine failures at the same altitude, leaving them underpowered and forcing them back to the ground. Otherwise, they would risk every engine exploding at once.

Even peerless experts like "Martial God" Lei Zongchao, who stirred their Life Magnetic Fields and operated Magnetic Levitation to fly above the atmosphere, would encounter incomparably violent astral winds.

Mixed within those astral winds were utterly chaotic Spiritual Energy currents, capable of shredding a human's Life Magnetic Field to pieces in an instant.

Even a God Realm Expert's Spirit Energy Shield could not stop the astral winds from penetrating deep into the bones, cells, and even the Gene Chain.

Lei Zongchao had once told Meng Chao that the sensation was like an ordinary person suffering nuclear radiation, their Gene Chains all being snapped apart.

Thus, not even the strongest among the Earthlings had managed to break through the Otherworld's atmosphere and behold the cosmic vista beyond this planet.

It was as though some unfathomable force had completely locked down this planet.

This was a planet that... allowed entry but forbade exit.

Any Carbon-Based Intelligent Life that crossed into the Otherworld would never be able to escape again.

"Why was it like this?

"Who, exactly, had locked down the Otherworld?

"Did the synchronized orbital network that had once spread across the entire planet's outskirts, along with the crystalline, resplendent Starry Sky City, still exist after hundreds of millions of years?

"Were there still 'ancients' inside Starry Sky City, looking down from on high and silently watching the events unfolding in the lower world, as well as... the impending Another World War?"

Countless questions burst from the depths