Second Round, Begin!

The trouble ahead could wait.

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

As the last fifteen minutes in reality—equivalent to an hour in the Main God Platform—passed both slowly and swiftly, the three of them gave up their pointless wait after confirming that Wang Yawen, the last woman among those they had met during the Newcomer Trial, had still not appeared on the platform.

He Qiu knew this was most likely 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 anyone else's decisions.

He was more concerned about something else—

At this moment, as the figures on the platform grew increasingly dense, the crowd had spontaneously gathered around the light sphere at the center. Intentionally or not, they formed a loose 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.

Obviously, even a casual observer could see that the people in the "official group" were essentially just another band of stragglers. Still, it had to be admitted that sheer numbers brought clear advantages.

Without question, everyone had more or less sensed the threat posed by this enormous "cluster," especially since it had taken the position closest to the [Main God Light Sphere]...

A tree that stood above the forest would be toppled by the wind.

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

The users whispered among themselves and sized each other up, yet all of them kept watching the halo high above, as if trying to make flowers bloom from it.

He Qiu, too, quietly watched the illusory countdown on the light screen before him while staring carefully through the translucent display at the Great Light Ball in the sky.

Soon, the final ten seconds arrived!

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

As time finally reached zero.

In that instant, it was as though some immense, invisible heartbeat pulsed through the void, making everyone's hearts jolt along with it!

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

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

[Imperial Tomb (Difficulty: Two-Star/Low)]

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

...

The familiar string of notifications at his ears was automatically ignored. Before he could even react, He Qiu could only stare blankly at the [Main God Light Sphere] in the sky as its dimness briefly faded and a soft radiance began to spread from within, enveloping its entire body!

Along with vast streams of light, it burst forth from the azure platform beneath his feet, which had abruptly begun to glow as though it had turned unreal for an instant!

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

Vaguely, some people finally understood the truth of where they stood. During those few stunning breaths, countless "lights" shot upward before them, scattering, weaving, drifting, and wheeling through the darkness with the nimble grace of schools of fish!

Even those who instinctively reached out to grab them caught nothing but air!

They flickered in and out of existence in an instant.

With no intention of lingering, those countless "Light Fish," trailing long tails behind them, swam upstream in graceful schools beneath everyone's gaze. As though summoned by some invisible force, they headed straight toward the river of stars stretching across the high heavens!

At that moment, the endless dimness before them, which had seemed forever unchanging, was quietly illuminated by innumerable lights racing toward the sky!

Almost everyone was stunned by the sight...

And at the same time, an invisible will gazed coldly upon it all—

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

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

With a single thought, it too transformed into an ordinary-looking "Light Fish," shooting up from the depths of the azure earth. It then rose with the boundless current of light and fell toward the vast heavens.

But unlike the other "Light Fish," which were essentially devoid of sensation, as it swam upstream, endless phantasmal visions of extraordinary strangeness brushed past this streak of light—

...At the instant hurricane winds violently tore apart the thick dust haze of a nuclear winter, survivors poked their heads out from underground shelters and beheld six suns hanging in the sky at once...

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

...A divine tree that reached from heaven to earth toppled. The Heavenly Court shattered, and rain-like figures fell with it from the sky into the depths of the Nine Netherworlds...

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

...The bones of gigantic beasts rose and fell like pale mountain ranges. A shaman clad in animal hides stood amid a towering peak formed from a skull, blood smeared across his face 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 madly pursuing spiral patterns. An elderly resident left behind a note before taking his own life. Only one sentence remained on the half-burned slip of paper: "Run. The door has been opened"...

...The planet's surface had been covered by writhing biological matter, like a beating heart. The shrieking, grinding clamor of hundreds of millions of creatures followed the will of that greedy tyrant as it descended toward a nova...

Glimpses flashed past.

Too many traces emerged in swathes within the depths of perception. The will vaguely sensed nearly endless halos opening and dying away through layers of overlapping yet separated dimensions, cycling again and again, brilliance and ashes intertwined within them.

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

Naturally, it paid no attention to those blazing splendors that vanished at a touch, almost burning even the sliver of consciousness that had extended toward them into nothingness.

That was clearly not a level the "tourists" of this moment should have come into contact with.

Soon, this "Light Fish" followed that faint, illusory sensation into the depths of the river of stars, falling into a speck of stardust that was drawing this visitor in...

A faint tremor came through.

It felt like plunging headfirst out of an utterly silent vacuum and into a clamorous, tangible world.

The sensation of gravity immediately seized this new prey, mercilessly tugging at every inch of bone, muscle, and flesh. His limbs were pressed down, while his skin felt the solid touch of the ground beneath him.

Wet and rough.

Someone quietly "opened" this body's eyes.

His vision was blurred at first, then swiftly became clear.

What entered his sight was a sky that already carried a fractured quality.

It was an oppressive gray-white vault, as if it had shattered and then been crudely stitched back together. Deep within the clouds, long, thin "cracks" ran in every direction, and faint black radiance seeped from within them...

The sight alone was suffocating.

Honestly, it was hard to say just how large those long "scars" had to be for them to be so clearly visible to the naked eye from the ground.

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

At that moment, cold raindrops, carrying the gritty sensation of rust and dust, struck his cheeks in sparse, scattered bursts, bringing him clarity amid pinpricks of pain.

An extreme numbness and "weakness," so severe that it instinctively made him unwilling to move, silently spread through every limb and bone.

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

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

With a thought, he understood the crux of the matter.

Clearly, following relatively fair operating principles—and due to someone's requirement to arrange a "personal identity"—the Main God had not chosen to fully replicate his true state. Instead, it had given this "stat monster," whose attributes were indeed somewhat excessive, a surprise he could only discover after landing!

Once he understood his situation, Li Yun braced a hand against the ground and barely sat upright, letting the astonishing numbness throughout his body gradually fade. He casually adjusted the glasses that had slipped crooked on his face.

He let out a long breath of turbid air.

For some reason, not a single trace of rain had touched the lenses.

At a glance, more than a dozen people lay sprawled around him in all sorts of positions, like broken dolls swept in by a gale.

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

Not far from him, an elderly white man in a heavy mountaineering outfit lay to Li Yun's left, so close that he looked about to press down on Li Yun's arm.

The man's eyes were shut, his face ashen, and his bushy white beard was already soaked with mud. He was obviously not in good shape.

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

Farther away, a Black man wearing a traditional African robe was lying face-down in a shallow puddle without moving. Only the dense curls on the back of his head and his broad, powerful shoulders were exposed.

There was also a young girl with blond hair, blue eyes, and a face full of freckles; a balding, obese middle-aged man whose breathing produced a distinct wheeze; a dark-skinned worker with rough, callused fingers who had likely spent years doing physical labor...

They differed in skin color, facial features, builds, and clothing. Clearly, they were more than a dozen people from all over the world, yet now they 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.

Li Yun shook his head.

He got to his feet, grabbed the Black man in the puddle by one leg, and dragged him out like a log before tossing him aside.

The man kept convulsing and coughing, spurting several mouthfuls of water from his nose and mouth. Yet despite the obvious melanin in his skin, he still showed no signs of waking.

Without paying further attention to the other "tourists" who had arrived with him, Li Yun carefully examined the surrounding area.

In the drifting drizzle, he stood in the middle of a fairly wide street. The road had long since cracked apart, its crisscrossing fissures varying in width and size, almost resembling the cracked bed of a dried-up river. Yet with stubborn persistence, withered yellow weeds as tall as half a person had even pushed up through many of the gaps.

It could only be said that no matter how difficult the circumstances, life always had its own persistence and struggle.

On both sides of the street stood what had once been towering buildings. Now, however, they looked like cheap toys mauled by children. Their windows had shattered across broad areas, and the surviving openings resembled hollowed-out eye sockets, pitch-black and impossible to see into.

Only the dusty fragments clinging to corners that had not yet completely fallen away reflected a little of the bleak daylight as Li Yun shifted his gaze.

The walls showed varying degrees of peeling, exposing twisted steel reinforcement beneath. Some buildings had even completely collapsed, turning into mountains of broken concrete.

The wreckage often contained the remains of shattered furniture and appliances, but not a single person was in sight.

From the ground to the outer walls of the buildings, moss of varying shades covered everything, along with strange stains that had a broad, slick texture.

Although a long time had likely passed, obvious unnatural traces remained in the area—left behind by some force with direct destructive power.

Judging from the extent of the damage... the range did not seem particularly large. It should have been somewhere between an exchange of fire with thermal weapons and a hazardous-material explosion.

His gaze quickly swept over the partially collapsed buildings, roughly assessing the patterns of damage across their ruined walls.

After reaching a general conclusion, Li Yun did not immediately make any major move. Instead, he casually kicked up several stones near his feet and sent them, one after another, into conspicuous cracks ranging from the nearby ground to the collapsed buildings.

The pebbles disappeared precisely into the darkness one after another, producing crisp, banging echoes.

But apart from several startled rats that darted out at high speed, nothing else crawled from those gaps, which clearly had some interior space.

He listened closely.

At present, aside from the low moaning of wind through certain holes, the patter of rain striking the ground, the Black man's instinctive choking coughs, and even the snores of some sleeping newcomers, there were no other sounds.

Though the Main God's initial drop-off locations were theoretically usually relatively "safe," caution never hurt.

After waiting a little while and confirming that no danger was taking the initiative to show itself, Li Yun carefully avoided the larger building ruins. He picked up some suitably shaped pebbles and hard fragments of rock from nearby and slipped them into his sleeves.

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

With the Main God's "special attention," even though his current physical condition remained somewhat stronger than an ordinary person's, the difference was indeed limited.

At this point, he should first find himself something handy to use.