The Seven-Day Countdown to Doomsday

"Ugh."

Lin Yi's eyes snapped open.

Veins bulged across his forehead. His vision was a blur, and every nerve in his body seemed to be screaming.

As a Star Vortex Rank powerhouse, his iron will allowed him to suppress his body's pain. But the violent shock of his soul origin returning to its place still left him deeply uncomfortable.

"Haah... haah..."

Lin Yi gasped for breath.

After a while, as his soul gradually adjusted, his vision began to clear.

The first thing he saw was a ceiling painted a faded, off-white.

A lone incandescent bulb hung from its center.

Outside the window, the brilliant sunshine of a summer afternoon streamed through gaps in the curtains, patterned with tiny pale-blue flowers, and cast bright patches of light across the floor.

Cicadas chirped louder and louder, their incessant racket grating on the ears.

For a moment, Lin Yi was stunned.

"W-wasn't I dead?"

He instinctively tried to draw on his Source Energy.

But at the mere thought, he found nothing inside him.

Lin Yi's heart sank.

Then he took a deep breath and slowly surveyed the surroundings, which somehow felt familiar.

After that, Lin Yi rose in silence and slowly walked toward the full-length mirror in the corner.

A youthful, somewhat green face stared back at him.

"I..."

Looking at his young self in the mirror, Lin Yi couldn't help but feel dazed.

"I'm alive again?"

The more you knew, the more you understood the need for awe.

When the Blue Star Civilization passed the Civilization Promotion Assessment and entered the ranks of interstellar civilizations, Lin Yi was one of the few Star Core Level powerhouses. He earned the qualification to become an outer member of the Universal Mercenary Alliance and joined the then relatively weak "Reliate" mercenary group.

After more than six thousand years of trials through blood and fire, he had struggled his way to the ninth tier of Star Core Level. With the care and guidance of the group leader, Lelina, who had already broken through to Star Domain Rank, he had been fortunate enough to advance to Star Vortex Rank.

Yet while traveling to Zichen Star, capital of the Purple Gold Star Alliance, which held jurisdiction over Blue Star, to undergo an in-person rank certification and apply to upgrade Blue Star from a lowly "resource planet" to an "administrative planet" eligible for normal development,

he had merely chanced upon the Zilies Family of the Purple Gold Star Alliance hunting the rare beast known as the "Caslo Horned Beast." For that, an elder of the family at Star Domain Rank had crushed him like an ant.

Lin Yi still remembered the helpless despair.

His body, which he had believed to be mighty, had been erased at the level of every fundamental particle that made up matter, disintegrating without a sound.

And his consciousness, like a candle guttering in the wind, had been gently snuffed out by an irresistible force of rules.

But at the very moment Lin Yi thought he could only sink into the abyss of death, carrying his despair and unwillingness with him, he suddenly felt an irresistible, overwhelming force—as if the universe itself had reached out a giant hand—and seized his crumbling soul origin from the brink of annihilation.

Then he seemed to be forcibly stuffed into a fragile, shoddy vessel, every cell's awakening accompanied by a tearing protest.

Only then did Lin Yi realize that he had come back to life.

He had returned to a place both familiar and strange.

Lin Yi lowered his head and looked at his hands.

They were the hands of a boy, with long fingers and healthy-looking skin.

There were no marks from years of gripping weapons, only slight calluses from holding a pen.

After a moment's silence, Lin Yi slowly raised his head and once again examined his surroundings, carefully and in detail.

The room was small. A single bed stood against the wall, and a worn desk with peeling paint was cluttered with books and test papers. In the corner sat a basketball whose surface was beginning to peel.

A few outdated posters of famous basketball players hung on the wall, along with a glass-framed photograph of a family of three.

Lin Yi fixed his gaze on the photograph.

It showed his parents, much younger than he remembered, and a boy in a high school uniform, smiling with the awkwardness of youth.

Lin Yi remained silent for a long while, then let out a long breath.

Then he slowly walked to the window and pulled the curtains open.

The dazzling sunlight poured in, making him squint.

Several old apartment buildings enclosed a small courtyard, where a few lush plane trees grew.

Several old bicycles and electric scooters stood beneath the shade. A few children in tank tops and shorts chased one another past the building below, leaving behind a string of carefree laughter.

And, of course, there was the infuriating plane-tree fluff.

In the distance, the city's uneven skyline stretched beneath the sun, and the glass curtain walls of several newly built high-rises glinted in the light.

There were no gigantic construction machines roaring day and night, nor were there Star Core energy pumps driven from above the Star Ring, their shafts thrust one after another into Blue Star's crust.

Everything overlapped with that distant, hazy summer afternoon from the depths of his memory.

That powerful Star Vortex Rank soul origin now felt as if it had been thrown into a boiling furnace.

Countless scenes, blurred by the passage of time, surged forth like floodwaters bursting through a dam.

Lin Yi now knew exactly where he was.

This was Blue Star, seven thousand years in the past.

It was... his home.

Lin Yi took two slow steps back and leaned against the wall.

The chill seeped through his thin T-shirt, but it couldn't calm the thoughts roiling inside him.

The relief of finishing the college entrance exams. The joy of receiving his acceptance letter from Qingteng University. His parents' happy chatter, tinged with worry over tuition and living expenses.

And then... then there was that thing.

His hand instinctively moved to his chest.

His fingertips touched a hard shape beneath his clothes.

Lin Yi's heart gave a sudden leap.

He lowered his head and, with trembling fingers, drew it out.

It was a jade pendant a little larger than a coin, a deep green so warm and understated it resembled a frozen river of stars.

The jade itself wasn't translucent. Instead, it had a weighty, settled quality, as though it had gathered unfathomably ancient years within it. It hung from a dark-red cord, resting quietly against his chest.

The family heirloom, the Ancient Jade!

Lin Yi's soul origin, tempered and refined over countless years as a Star Vortex Rank powerhouse, sprang to life. Like an exquisitely precise instrument, it began rapidly searching and pinpointing the answer.

Seven thousand years of the Long River of time, and memories of endless battles and wandering, compressed into a bolt of lightning that tore through space-time and locked precisely onto this moment.

"This jade..."

Lin Yi murmured to himself. He remembered now. It was today that he had received the long-awaited acceptance letter from Qingteng University.

And it was also today that his mother, Zhou Jinghua, had handed him the Lin family's heirloom Ancient Jade.

After giving him the Ancient Jade, his mother had been about to head out. He had only just put the pendant around his neck and planned to take an afternoon nap.

At first, he hadn't noticed anything special about the jade.

It wasn't until he reached Star Core Level and gained far greater control over his body that he discovered it could make his thoughts run just a tiny bit faster than usual. It offered a minuscule but genuine boost to learning and understanding complex things.

Lin Yi hadn't thought much of it at the time, believing it to be an ordinary treasure.

It wasn't until he was badly wounded in a fight with a powerful enemy that he realized that even his protective battle armor had been ripped to shreds, yet the Ancient Jade remained completely unharmed.

After that, Lin Yi had tried every method he could think of to uncover its secrets, even attempting to destroy it.

Every attempt failed. The jade was beyond imagination in its durability.

Lin Yi knew it had to be an exceedingly precious treasure, and didn't dare show it to anyone.

Yet none of the methods he tried revealed its purpose.

As time went by, he could only regard it as a strange relic with an unknown use, a reminder of his hometown. He kept it close at all times, hoping that one day, when fate allowed, he might discover what it could do.

But now, after the elder of the Zilies Family had seemingly erased him with the power of a Rule Domain, Lin Yi had somehow been reborn seven thousand years in the past.

Lin Yi knew his place. Given the enormous population of the interstellar Human Race, there were plenty of Star Vortex Rank powerhouses, and even Star Domain Rank ones were hardly rare. What made him worthy of coming back from the dead?

And why had he returned to the very moment he'd put on the Ancient Jade?

As he thought, his fingertips habitually rubbed the jade.

It was a habit Lin Yi had cultivated over many years.

Whenever he needed to comprehend the rules of the universe, or faced a problem that required quiet reflection, he would rub the Ancient Jade.

Partly because it gave his insight a slight boost, but more importantly, because it made him feel not so far from home.

But in an instant, something unexpected happened.

The Ancient Jade, which had accompanied him through so many long years and remained indestructible, trembled faintly in his palm without warning.

Then came the faintest sound of a crack.

"Crack."

The sound was so soft it might have been his imagination.

Lin Yi's expression darkened. He opened his palm and stared intently.

A hair-thin crack was silently spreading across the surface of the deep-green Ancient Jade.

This wasn't an ordinary physical fracture. It was more like some structure inside the jade, one that had endured for who knew how many ages, had finally reached its end.

The crack spread faster than he could have imagined. In an instant, it webbed across the entire piece of jade.

The next moment—

Poof!

A barely audible, muffled sound.

Before Lin Yi's steady gaze, the Ancient Jade—unscathed even by his full strength—silently crumbled in his open palm into a small pile of incredibly fine green powder.

The dust was fine as ash, shimmering with a restrained, profound light, as if it held fragments of stars.

The old dark-red cord snapped apart, strand by strand, and fell away.

It all happened so quickly, so completely, that Lin Yi's palm hadn't even had time to feel the slightest change in temperature before the Ancient Jade, which had existed for who knew how long, had turned entirely to dust.

Only a small pile of powder remained in his palm, carrying a strange, icy sensation.

Then even the powder slowly vanished, as if the Ancient Jade had never existed at all.

Time seemed to freeze.

Lin Yi stood dazed for a moment, then sighed inwardly.

"Was it you... who saved me and brought me back?"

Then he looked down at his now-empty hands. After a few seconds of silence, he suddenly raised his head.

His gaze seemed to pierce through the wall, as if he were looking toward some distant place.

In the end, though, Lin Yi's eyes settled on the old electronic clock in the corner of the desk.

Its LCD screen glowed faintly.

[July 16, 2027, Friday, 13:27]

"At this point in time..."

Lin Yi silently compared it with his memories for a moment, his expression grave.

"Seven days!"

"Only seven days remain before the Civilization Promotion Assessment that will decide our fate."