This time I chose Paladin.

Chapter 264 The Day the Heavens Open
The barrier has closed.

There was no deafening roar, no earth-shattering impact, only a silent transition.

The darkness receded, and the scene that replaced it rendered any words pale and powerless.

Ping Xingdou's soul, and everyone on the ground who subconsciously looked up at the sky, were stunned at this moment.

It doesn't appear gradually, but rather suddenly fills everything. The moment people realize its existence, it has already taken over everything.

What first catches the eye is its immense size, which defies description. The vast gas giant resembles a giant eye, possessing strange, liquid-like textures.

Above it, bands of clouds flow, like an even more indifferent eye within an eye. The ever-present storms are its eternal breath. It does not reflect light, but devours it, transforming the light of distant stars into its own dark and ancient glow, a color between pale gold and white, belonging to an ancient behemoth.

Surrounding this giant eye is the renowned star ring, whose terror and magnificence can only be truly appreciated by witnessing it in person.

It is not the thin, delicate band of light depicted in movies and television shows. Viewed from this almost vertical angle, it is composed of countless broken ice crystals, rock fragments, and dust, a vast and boundless plain, a death whetstone spread out in the vacuum of space.

Sunlight reflects and refracts between the countless sharp edges of the fragments, creating a dizzying graveyard of light.

The ring was not stationary.

It revolves around the planet at an unimaginable speed, silent yet possessing the power to crush everything.

People can almost 'hear' that silent roar, the endless, cruel and precise dance of billions of tons of ice under the command of gravity.

Within the rings, there are clear gaps, one of which resembles a deep canyon, creating a frightening contrast with the brightness of the rings on either side.

The sense of proportion is completely lost here.

Any scale familiar to people—the height of a person, a building, a field, a mountain, the breadth of the ocean, or even the volume of an entire planet—is as insignificant as a breath before this creation that stretches across the void.

Humans are but a speck of dust, drifting by by chance before this magnificent mural, where they may be shattered at any moment by the tiny ice crystals escaping from the ring, or gently wiped away by the invisible gravity of the giant planet, leaving not a trace.

It's there.

It rotates silently.

It carries the coldness and heaviness accumulated over billions of years.

It doesn't care about people's arrival, doesn't pay attention to people's amazement, and ignores people's fear.

It simply exists, existing in a form that transcends good and evil, transcends life, and transcends all fleeting rise and fall of civilizations.

This very existence is the most thorough questioning of all life, and also the deepest, soul-freezing fear.

When people gaze at it, they see themselves, and how insignificant their persistent life is.

Cold, deathly silent, magnificent, cruel, suffocating—yet beautiful.

This is the real starry sky.

Cold, deathly silent, vast, filled with everything that sends chills down your spine.

Ping Xingdou's soul froze in mid-air, gazing up at the colossal planetary shadow that occupied the entire sky and all his senses.

His intense obsession seemed to shatter silently in the face of this cosmic reality that transcends comprehension.

He saw it.

He saw the planet, the water and mist between its rings… he saw the bright sunlight casting a shadow upon it.
The temperature suddenly fluctuated. It was as if an invisible giant hand had instantly sucked away most of the heat from the air. The once sweltering night briefly returned to autumn. People's breath condensed into white mist.

“...It’s Saturn,” the person said.

However, this is only one side of the planet's landscape.

On the side of the planet that is directly opposite Saturn and experiencing daylight, the view is equally unimaginable, but it goes to the other extreme—

light.

An endless sea of ​​light.

The sky was no longer the familiar blue, but was completely engulfed by an incomparably intense radiance. Even though the light was still filtered by the planetary barrier, blocking most of the energy and radiation so that people wouldn't go blind, the heat still suddenly intensified.

The light did not come from a clear, circular source, but filled every inch of space, without shadows or layers, only endless light and heat.

In the center of this ocean of light was an unbelievably vast halo. Its edges were blurred, burning and pulsating intensely, occupying a large portion of the sky.

That was the sun—but certainly not the star we remember, gently filtered through the atmosphere, the one that gives life to all things.

It is a dying star that has expanded to its limit, a harbinger of a red giant entering its twilight years, or perhaps it already is. Its size is so terrifying, as if it will engulf the entire inner solar system at any moment. Just how big is it now? Nobody knows. Just as nobody knows why it became like this.

But that endless light and heat is not a hymn to life, but a declaration of destruction, the most cruel splendor of a star's funeral.

Humanity, along with the planet, precariously maintains its orbit at the edge of its terrifying gravity, which emanates a power that silences all things and halts thought.

Any life that dares to look directly at it will be deprived of its sight in an instant, and its soul may even be burned by the terrifying energy it contains.

Half of the planet, plunged into a bone-chilling cold under Saturn's icy shadow.

The other half of the planet is being scorched in the sea of ​​light of the dying sun.

Without the protective barriers left by previous civilizations, the only habitable place would probably be the ring between these two.

This is the truth beyond the barrier.

There is no gentle cradle, no beacon of hope. Only a vast and indifferent cosmic body, and a dying star that will eventually devour everything.

The last bit of strength supporting Ping Xingdou's soul seemed to have quietly dissipated.

But he did not sigh; he simply smiled again, and felt content with it. The outline of his soul began to blur, then he became transparent again, and finally, as if diluted by the endless universe, he transformed into tiny specks of light, silently flowing into the sea of ​​the human mind, disappearing without a trace.

The curious one was ultimately consumed by the truth he sought, nearly flying into Saturn before merging into the collective power of humanity.

Nie Weiyang's phantom walked through the darkness, his form gradually solidifying. He stopped between Han Jiangxue and Yi Jian; they had naturally reserved a place for him from the very beginning.

Han Jiangxue looked up at him, crunching a piece of candy in her mouth. "So we're on Titan," she said.

Yi Jian was practically frozen in place. His eyes were vacant as he murmured, "Brother Nie, what we're facing... might be a bit invincible."

Nie Weiyang smiled, music still playing in his headphones. He pulled out two blankets and draped them over the two men, then sat down between them and looked up at the magnificent new world.

"I understand," he said.

(End of this chapter)