The Second Round Begins!

The troubles ahead could wait until later.

For now, the top priority was preparing for what was about to come—

As the final fifteen minutes in reality—equivalent to an hour in the Main God Platform—passed both slowly and swiftly, the three of them finally gave up on waiting after confirming that Wang Yawen, the last woman among those they had met during the previous Newcomer Trial, had yet to appear on the platform.

He Qiu knew this was probably a sign that they were going their separate ways, but he said nothing more.

Everyone had their own choices. They were all adults; no one should be responsible for someone else's decisions.

What concerned him more was something else—

At that moment, as figures on the platform grew increasingly dense, the crowd had spontaneously gathered around the light sphere at the center. Intentionally or otherwise, they formed something of an encirclement around the so-called "official group" in the middle—a group so large that it stood out conspicuously among everyone else, who usually gathered in groups of only a few or a dozen at most.

Clearly, even a blind man could see that the people in the "official group" were fundamentally just another bunch of stragglers. Still, there was no denying that numbers came with obvious advantages.

Without question, everyone had felt, to varying degrees, the threat posed by this massive "cluster," especially now that it had taken the position closest to the Main God Light Sphere...

The tree that rose above the forest would be the first to face the wind.

But in truth, with the theoretical seven-day "cooldown period" about to end, virtually no one wanted to stir up unnecessary trouble and take needless risks.

The users whispered among themselves, sizing one another up, yet all of them kept watching the halo high above, as though trying to make flowers bloom from it.

He Qiu also silently watched the illusory countdown on the light screen before him while peering through its translucent surface at the enormous sphere in the sky.

Very soon, the final ten seconds arrived!

...Five... four... three... two... one...

As time finally reached zero.

In that instant, as though some immense invisible heartbeat pulsed through the void, everyone's hearts seemed to jolt at once!

—[User No. 0104971, your mission interval has reached zero. If you wish, you may now choose one of the following five random mission worlds to enter—]

[Jurassic Park (Difficulty: One Star/Low)]

[Imperial Tomb (Difficulty: Two Stars/Low)]

[City That Never Sleeps (Difficulty: One Star/Medium)]

...

The familiar series of notifications at his ears was automatically ignored. Before he even had time to react, He Qiu could only stare blankly upward at the Main God Light Sphere, whose dimness had briefly faded as a soft radiance began to glow from within and spread across its entire surface!

At the same time, vast streams of light burst forth from the azure platform beneath his feet, which had suddenly lit up with a halo and seemed to turn illusory for an instant!

No, not just the platform... the boundless azure land itself!

Vaguely, some people finally understood the truth of where they were. During those few breathtaking moments, countless "lights" shot up before them, scattering, crossing, drifting, and wheeling through the air like schools of nimble fish sweeping across the darkness!

Even those who instinctively reached out to catch them grasped only empty air!

Their flickering lasted but an instant.

With no intention of lingering, those countless "light fish," trailing long tails behind them, swam upstream in graceful schools before everyone's eyes. As though summoned by some invisible pull, they headed straight for the river of stars stretching across the heavens!

At that moment, the endless dimness before them, which seemed as if it would never change, was quietly illuminated by countless lights racing toward the sky!

Almost everyone was stunned by the sight...

And at the same time, an invisible will looked coldly upon the scene—

"Two hundred and forty thousand people? Not bad..."

"...Then, Main God, I'll go in first."

With that thought, it too turned into an ordinary-looking "light fish," shooting out from the depths of the azure earth. It then rose into the sky with the boundless stream of light and fell toward the vast heavens.

Yet unlike the other "light fish," which were fundamentally devoid of consciousness, as it traveled upstream, endless phantoms of bizarre splendor brushed past this light—

...At the instant the thick dust haze of nuclear winter was savagely torn apart by a hurricane, survivors emerged from underground shelters and saw six suns hanging in the sky at once...

...Beneath the blood-red atmospheric glow of a dying planet, a mobile suit with boundless blazing wings leaped alone into deep space, flying toward the iron death star in the distance that shone with an ominous crimson light...

...A divine tree that reached from earth to heaven toppled over, the heavenly court shattered, and figures fell like rain from the sky into the depths of the Nine Netherworlds...

...A pitch-black abyss appeared beneath fractured polar ice. An expedition team attempted to descend and investigate, but none survived. In the final surveillance transmission, the brief reflection on a geologist's helmet revealed only a tentacle covered in star-shaped pupils...

...The bones of colossal beasts rose and fell like pale mountain ranges. A shaman clad in animal hides stood atop a towering peak formed from a skull, face smeared with blood as the firelight illuminated features carved with scars...

...An ancient well appeared amid the static on television screens. The residents of a small town gradually began obsessively pursuing spiral patterns. An old man in town left behind a note before killing himself. Only one sentence remained on the half-burned paper: "Run! The door has been opened!"...

...The planet's surface had been covered by writhing biological matter, like a beating heart. The screeching, grinding roar of billions of creatures followed the will of that greedy tyrant as it plunged toward a nova...

Passing flashes.

Too many traces surfaced in great swathes deep within its perception. The will vaguely sensed nearly endless halos opening and dying amid layers of overlapping yet isolated dimensions, cycling over and over, brilliance intertwined with ashes.

Extinction, sublimation, evolution, beginnings and endings reversed...

Naturally, it did not linger on those blazing lights that separated at a touch, whose radiance seemed capable of burning even that sliver of probing consciousness into nothingness.

That was clearly not a level the current Visitors should be exposed to.

Very soon, this "light fish" followed that illusory sense into the depths of the river of stars, toward a speck of stardust that was drawing this visitor in...

A faint tremor came through.

It was like plunging headfirst from an utterly silent vacuum into a noisy, clamorous physical world.

The tangible pull of gravity immediately seized this new prey, mercilessly tugging at every joint, every inch of bone and muscle. His limbs were compressed, and his skin felt the solid contact of the ground beneath him.

Damp and rough.

Someone quietly "opened" this body's eyes.

His vision was blurry at first, then quickly cleared.

What came into view was a sky that already carried a hint of brokenness.

It was a gloomy gray-white vault, as though it had shattered and then been crudely stitched back together. Deep in the clouds, long, narrow "cracks" wound in every direction, and faint black glows could be seen seeping from within...

One look was enough to make it feel stifling.

Honestly, it was difficult to imagine the scale of such long "wounds," visible so clearly from the ground with the naked eye.

Li Yun did not understand, nor did he want to.

At that moment, cold raindrops, carrying a gritty sensation of rust and dust, struck his cheeks sparsely and irregularly, their faint stings bringing him awake.

An extreme numbness and "weakness" spread silently through his limbs and bones, so intense that it instinctively made him unwilling to move.

Li Yun knew that was the natural "illusion" caused by abruptly losing part of his strength.

—This illusory body had indeed been modeled after his own, but its physical capabilities had been directly weakened by at least seventy percent...

With a single thought, he understood the cause.

Clearly, the Main God operated according to principles of relative fairness. And due to someone's requirement to arrange a "personal identity," it had not chosen to reproduce his true condition in full. Instead, it had given this "stat monster," who was indeed somewhat excessively overpowered, a surprise that only became apparent after landing!

Having grasped the situation, Li Yun braced himself against the ground and barely sat upright, allowing the astonishing numbness throughout his body to gradually fade. He casually adjusted the glasses that had slipped halfway crooked on his face.

He let out a long breath.

For some reason, not a single raindrop had stuck to the lenses.

At a glance, over a dozen people lay sprawled around him in various postures, like broken dolls swept in by a strong wind.

Men and women, young and old, of every age and skin color.

Not far from him lay an elderly white man in a thick mountaineering suit, so close that he was nearly pressing down on Li Yun's arm. The man lay to Li Yun's left.

His eyes were shut tight, his complexion gray. Muddy water had already soaked into his bushy white beard, and he was obviously not in good condition.

Ahead of him, right beside the old man, was a young Asian woman with a pale face. She was curled up, allowing her wet long hair to tangle around her cheeks like seaweed, as if she had just been fished from the water.

Farther away, a Black man in a traditional African robe lay face-down in a shallow puddle, completely motionless. Only the tightly curled hair at the back of his head and his broad, powerful shoulders were visible.

There was also a young blonde, blue-eyed girl with freckles all over her face; a bald, obese middle-aged man whose breathing gave off an obvious wheeze; and a dark-skinned worker with rough, callused fingers, who had likely done manual labor for years...

Different skin colors, faces, body types, and clothing. These dozen or so people clearly came from all over the world, yet they now had no choice but to share this silence and confusion, like dolls casually scattered across the rubble-strewn street.

...It really did have the feel of a black comedy mime act.

Li Yun shook his head.

He stood up, grabbed the Black man whose face was submerged in the puddle and whose mouth was releasing rings of bubbles, then dragged him out by the leg like a piece of wood and tossed him aside.

The man twitched and coughed violently, spitting out several mouthfuls of water through his nose and mouth. Yet this man, whose dark skin was rich with melanin, still showed no signs of waking.

Without paying much more attention to these other Visitors who had arrived with him, Li Yun carefully observed the surrounding area.

Amid the drifting rain, he stood in the middle of a fairly wide street. The pavement had long since cracked, its crisscrossing fissures of varying thickness resembling the parched bed of a dried-up river. Yet with stubborn persistence, yellowed weeds as tall as half a person had even sprouted from many of the gaps.

All one could say was that life had its own persistence and struggle, no matter how difficult the circumstances.

On both sides of the street stood what had once been imposing high-rises. Now, they looked like cheap toys mauled by a child. With large areas of glass shattered, the remaining window openings resembled hollowed-out eye sockets, dark and impossible to see into.

Only the dusty fragments still clinging to the edges reflected a little of the bleak daylight as Li Yun turned his gaze.

The walls across the area showed varying degrees of collapse, exposing twisted steel reinforcement within. Some buildings had completely fallen apart, becoming mountains of broken concrete.

Broken remnants of furniture and appliances were often mixed in with the debris, yet there was not a single person in sight.

From the ground to the exterior walls of the buildings, everything was covered with mosses of varying shades, along with strange stains that looked slick and slimy.

Although a long time had likely passed, the area clearly still bore unnatural traces left behind by some visibly destructive force.

Judging solely by the extent of the damage... the affected range did not seem especially large. It was probably somewhere between a firefight involving heavy weapons and the explosion of hazardous materials.

His gaze swept rapidly across the partially collapsed buildings, roughly examining the damage to those broken walls and ruins.

After reaching a general conclusion, Li Yun did not rush into any major action. He merely flicked several pebbles from beside his feet with the tips of his shoes, striking a series of relatively conspicuous cracks from the nearby ground to the collapsed buildings.

One pebble after another accurately vanished into the darkness, producing crisp, popping echoes.

But aside from several startled rats darting out at high speed, nothing else crawled out from those gaps, which clearly contained some internal space.

He listened carefully.

At present, there was no sound besides the low whistling of wind through certain holes, raindrops tapping against the ground, the Black man's unconscious choking coughs, and even the snores of some newcomers still asleep.

Although the Main God's initial placement locations were theoretically usually relatively "safe," caution never hurt.

After waiting a while and finding no danger that took the initiative to show itself, Li Yun carefully avoided the large building ruins. He then picked up several suitably shaped pebbles and hard fragments of rock nearby and tucked them into his sleeves.

He also picked up a piece of rebar no longer than his arm from the foundation of a collapsed house nearby, casually scraped the rust off against the roadside, and made a preliminary assessment of its degree of oxidation.

Under the Main God's "special care," even though his current physical condition was still somewhat stronger than that of an ordinary person, it was indeed only slightly stronger.

Since things had come to this, he should first find something useful to wield.