Under the guidance of the reception envoy, a thousand young geniuses walked toward the grandest building in the center of Chaos City, its ancient, boundless aura stirring excitement and awe in their hearts—the City Lord Mansion.
The Outer Mansion was quite expansive, with people coming and going. Most had formidable auras and were at least World Lord or Immortal level. When they saw the young people led by the reception envoy, most gave them friendly looks or appraised them carefully. They clearly knew this was a new group of geniuses from the Virtual Universe Company.
The moment they stepped through the gate of the Outer Mansion, an invisible, vast will—as though it originated from the Universe Origin—silently swept over them all. The will was gentle and profound, carrying no sense of oppression, yet it seemed capable of seeing through every secret in the deepest part of one's soul. Only a handful of exceptionally perceptive geniuses, such as Qin Zhao and Lian Luo, vaguely sensed it. Most of the others noticed nothing at all.
Deep within the City Lord Mansion, in the Inner Mansion: the Chaos Ruins.
It was a boundless, ancient, shattered world. The ground was strewn with enormous corpses of all kinds, each exuding a chilling aura. Some resembled shattered mountain ranges, while others glimmered with the sheen of metal or crystal. They had all belonged to powerful beings from various races across the universe, fallen here and silently bearing witness to the brutal battles of the past.
At the center of this world, a towering figure sat cross-legged in the void, clad in ancient, dark red battle armor. A tail hung naturally behind him, and two crimson horns sprouted from his forehead. He seemed to be the beginning and end of all space and time. His mere presence