Take Me With You!

The Firmament timeline.

Brilliant fireworks celebrating the founding bloomed tirelessly across the night sky.

Deafening cheers rose in wave after wave, lifting the entire holy city to the pinnacle of history.

[Clearance results finalized!]

[You led mortals to shatter ten thousand years of divine rule, pioneered the school of god-slaying through physics, and successfully founded the Martial Soul Federation. Final overall approval rating: 99.9%!]

[Your combined score for your first battle has surpassed the historical limit!]

[Calculating your final rewards...]

[Congratulations, host! You have earned the first dungeon's SSS-rank transcendent mythic rating!]

[Reward one: the All-Heavens Divine System Shop is officially unlocked!]

[Reward two: one divine guaranteed-draw voucher!]

[Reward three: 1,000,000 universal system points!!!]

"Holy shit!"

Lin Fan stared at that string of zeros and nearly lost control of his expression. Inside, he burst out laughing.

A million points?! This lousy system finally did something right! It actually gave me an SSS rank!

Lin Fan licked his lips. The rush of clearing the dungeon surged through him.

With a million points and a divine draw voucher, once he left this dungeon, he could take his pick of the outrageous items and heaven-defying skills in the system shop.

"All right, all right. Enough with the fireworks."

Lin Fan gave the system his final instruction in his mind:

"System, hurry up and pack up everything from this first-clear world! Start the clearance settlement and log me out! I can't wait to see who I'll play next!"

[Command confirmed.]

[Separating host consciousness... Severing the spacetime anchor between worlds...]

At the very instant Lin Fan gleefully pressed "Finalize Clearance" inside the Firmament—

Outside it, in the real world.

The Firmament had hung high in the heavens for dozens of days, bright as a second sun, bathing the mortal lands of the entire Douluo Continent in light.

Suddenly, it began to flicker violently!

"Bzzzt... bzzzt..."

An electrical rasp sounded, as though space itself were being torn apart by force.

Within the Firmament, the imposing, inviolable steel fortress, the enormous Blast Furnaces belching black smoke, the new army drawn up in straight ranks...

Even Lin Fan, standing on the platform—the man all humanity regarded as its faith and guiding light—

Began to fade from the edges, inch by inch, like a sand painting scattered by a gale!

The system's vast voice was no longer confined to Lin Fan's mind.

It became a god's final sigh to the mortal world, resounding in the depths of souls across the continent:

[The first dungeon has been cleared perfectly.]

[The energy sustaining the Firmament is nearly exhausted.]

[This world's timeline has been fully corrected. Intervention has ended.]

[The Sage's immortal godhead is about to depart...]

"No... don't!"

On the wasteland outside Tack Town in Fasinuo Province.

Hundreds of millions of commoners, slaves, and blacksmiths had just received knowledge of mechanical principles through the Heavenly Dao's blessing. They had just smashed the thousand-year chains around their necks.

They watched the screen of light slowly break apart in the sky. They watched the black-clad figure who had given them dignity, strength, and truth fade away bit by bit.

A cry of grief beyond words erupted across the wasteland!

"Sage! Sage, don't go!!!"

"What will we do when you're gone?! Who will show us the way through this endless night?"

Countless mortal rebels dropped their weapons in despair.

With heavy thuds, they fell to their knees, packed densely across the ground.

They kowtowed frantically to the sky, slamming their foreheads against hard granite and cold rails until flesh tore, skulls cracked, and blood stained the earth.

Tears streamed down their faces as they begged the mortal world's only guiding light, in voices hoarse to the point of breaking, not to abandon them.

And on the other side of that sea of commoners—

Those peerless experts who had once regarded mortals as ants were, at that moment, even more desperate than the slaves!

Chen Xin, a level ninety-six Peak Douluo and master of the sword.

His white robes were already stained with mud and blood.

He gripped the broken sword soul of his Seven Kill Sword, now split by a crack.

Chen Xin looked up, old tears streaming down his face, at the fading black-clad figure who truly deserved to be called the "Sage of Humanity."

All his life, he had pursued the ultimate attack.

He had believed his sword could sever every illusion in the world.

Only today did Chen Xin truly understand what the "Great Dao" meant!

What the purest truth in the universe meant!

"To hear the Dao in the morning and die by evening would be enough!!!"

Chen Xin drove his broken Seven Kill Sword deep into the earth and roared:

"Sage, please stay!!!"

"Please have mercy on us, Sage! Teach us ordinary mortals... the true sword path of god-slaying! Teach us... that supreme truth called physics!!!"

Beside Chen Xin.

Yu Yuanzhen, sect master of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Sect, stumbled back two steps in shock. He looked at the Firmament, then at Chen Xin kneeling on the ground. The mighty Thunder Douluo slumped beside the tracks like a lost child, tears streaming down his face.

They feared Lin Fan's machines.

But they feared something even more: that just as they had glimpsed the gateway to a higher truth, it would be shut forever without mercy!

Amid the continent-wide cries of despair, the most heartrending came from the supreme Papal Palace in Spirit City.

Qian Renxue had shed her disguise as the crown prince and returned to her true appearance.

Crystal tears covered her beautiful face as she looked at the man in the Firmament who had utterly crushed every despair and every remnant of the old divine rule.

And before her.

Pope Bibi Dong wore her magnificent white-and-gold papal robes, but now they were in disarray.

She stared at the figure slowly fading amid the light, about to ascend beyond this world.

The man who, within the Firmament, had slain her enemy for her with iron and fire and placed her on an empress's throne.

The only man who had entered her ice-sealed heart.

"Xiao Gang..."

Bibi Dong's voice was faint at first, little more than a murmur in a dream.

But the next instant, as great swathes of the Firmament's light began to collapse and that black-clad figure was about to vanish completely into the vortex of the void—

Bibi Dong felt as though an invisible claw had torn her heart apart!

At that moment, the level ninety-nine Peerless Douluo, the coldest empress in the real world, cast aside all her dignity and pretense.

Barefoot, she ran from the palace like a madwoman!

She clutched the Elder Token that represented their bond from long ago. Her nails scraped against the hard metal so fiercely they nearly ground it away, and blood dripped between her fingers.

Bibi Dong raced to the top of the white-jade steps and cried out in desolation to the heavens, which were about to sink into eternal night:

"Don't go!!!"

"...Don't leave me behind! You promised me! You gave me a world, but now you're cruel enough to take yourself away?!"

Bibi Dong's tears flew in the wind like pearls from a broken string.

She reached out with bloodstained hands, desperately trying to grasp that last glimmer in the void.

"No matter what time and world you're in... no matter where you're going... take me with you!!!"

"Take me with you!!!"

The long wind howled, its voice like a sob.

The Firmament's last trace of light, amid the weeping, kneeling pleas, and desperate cries of billions of experts and commoners across the continent—

Dwindled to a faint star, then finally went out altogether.

The sky went dark.

An era had turned its page.