After AFK for five years, I returned to be number one in the entire server.

The desk lamp cast a warm yellow glow.

Gu Qingxin's fingers lingered on the pages of the diary. This entry was written two years ago, the last time she met Mu Ye.

Diary entries:

Last night, after entering the Star Abyss, everything changed.

The sky was no longer a red moon; the entire canopy resembled a forcibly torn rag, revealing the bottomless, pitch-black void behind it.

In the distance, mountains collapsed, and those ancient behemoths that were once considered forbidden territory and would be devoured if anyone approached were suppressed by some more terrifying force, emitting painful wails.

The whole world seemed to have come to an end, and every inch of air was filled with a pressure that could crush a person into mincemeat.

Makino appeared before me and said, "I'm leaving."

I froze, staring at the world-destroying vortexes in the sky, my voice trembling as I asked him where he was going.

"Go up there." He looked up at the cracked sky. "If those things come down, the world will be finished. Right now, only I can stop them."

His voice wasn't loud, but it was heard exceptionally clearly amidst the rumbling thunder and the deafening roar of the collapsing world.

I asked him, "Why is it only you? Where is everyone else?"

"Maybe someone will be able to help me in the future," he said, turning his gaze away. "But right now, it's just me."

The intense sense of oppression made it almost impossible for me to breathe. The things in the sky were on a level we couldn't comprehend; it was the real apocalypse.

"Will you die?" I heard myself ask that question.

"No," he answered decisively.

"At most, I'll suffer some mental damage, but it'll only be in the Star Abyss anyway, so it shouldn't affect reality..."

He paused slightly, a rare hint of hesitation flashing in his eyes, and then, as if to comfort me or to convince himself, he added softly.

"Probably not."

After saying that, he turned around and walked step by step toward the crack in the sky, facing the terrifying aura that was descending from the sky.

He also told me that the rules of the Star Abyss are disordered, while reality is fixed, and the forces at both ends are not equal. Once the boundary is crossed, all extraordinary powers will collide with the omnipresent "reality damping" and be compressed into an extremely cramped shell by that invisible barrier.

……

……

Above an unnamed island.

A figure suddenly appeared in mid-air, hundreds of meters above the ground. He stood in mid-air as if he were standing on invisible stairs.

Luo Xiao, ranked seventeenth on the Heavenly Rank Ranking, codenamed "Owl Fox".

He looked down at the chaotic crowd below, his gaze as if he were looking at a swarm of crawling ants, his eyes filled with disgust.

"I knew these mercenaries were unreliable." Luo Xiao sneered. "Kidnapping Zhou Yanqing caused so much trouble, and in the end, I had to come and clean up the mess myself."

He raised his right hand, palm down, and spread out a magnetic field spanning two kilometers. A bloodthirsty glint flashed in his eyes: "Now that things have been exposed, then you can all die."

His tone was nonchalant, as if erasing the thousands of lives lost on the island was just a trivial matter.

A short period of time before that.

Lin stopped and said to Su Nian, "Follow the crowd deeper into the woods, try to avoid open areas. I have something to take care of."

Su Nian looked at Lin Ye, knowing that in such an extremely dangerous and unknown situation, she, an ordinary person without the ability to protect herself, would only become a burden if she stayed.

Without asking any further questions, she left with a "Be careful" and disappeared into the fleeing crowd.

Just as Luo Xiao was preparing to massacre the people on the island, the smile on his face froze.

An indescribable sense of terror instantly shot up his spine to the back of his head.

Someone was behind him.

Lin had somehow already hovered behind Luo Xiao, his right hand's five fingers slightly spread, reaching out to grab Luo Xiao's nape.

Luo Xiao's pupils suddenly shrank to the size of pinpoints. His survival instinct caused his body to twist strangely at the critical moment, and he slid out by brushing against Lin Ye's fingertips.

boom!

A muffled boom echoed in the air; this was the sonic boom produced when Luo Xiao forcibly broke free from the high-concentration magnetic field blockade.

Lin Ye hovered in place, looking at his empty hand, then at the other person, and murmured to himself, "Chen level."

He drew a conclusion based on information found online.

If the opponent is at or below the Yao level, he can crush them into a pile of mud with just his magnetic field.

There is only one explanation for being able to forcibly break free from his magnetic field suppression: the other party's existence has crossed a certain watershed.

Even a player at the Chen level, or even at the Yuan level, cannot immobilize or instantly kill their opponent using only a pure magnetic field.

Luo Xiao stared at the young figure not far away, the contempt and arrogance in his eyes completely gone.

He himself was at the Chen level, and he knew all too well what the Chen level represented.

But in front of this boy, his magnetic field was like hitting an endless cliff of mountains and seas, crushing his two-kilometer magnetic field domain to the point of almost collapsing.

"Who exactly are you..." Luo Xiao's Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty, his eyes filled with surprise and doubt. "This oppressive aura... Top-tier Chen-level? Or Yuan-level?"

Abyss level, that's the highest theoretical level, a term that only exists in legends and the most top-secret files.

Luo Xiao had never seen a true Abyss-level being before; his understanding was limited to the top-tier Chen-level. Therefore, he couldn't tell whether the young man before him was standing at the pinnacle of the Chen-level or had already stepped into that unfathomable abyss.

He was preparing to escape.

Once you reach the Chen level, the most significant sign is that you can teleport within your own magnetic field range.

However, this ability cannot be used when one's own magnetic field is interfered with by other magnetic fields of the same level or even higher strength.

Luo Xiao's body was like a raptor in the night, suddenly rising in altitude, tearing through the air, and flying away into the distance.

Lin Ye vanished from the spot in a flash.

A figure suddenly appeared in the void in front of Luo Xiao, and Lin Ye stood directly in front of him as he fled.

The other party still wanted to capture him, but Luo Xiao forcibly changed his center of gravity while flying at high speed, and his entire body moved incredibly half a meter to the left.

Lin Ye's fingers brushed very close to Luo Xiao's face, the resulting gust of wind stinging his cheek.

Lin disappeared again after his attack missed.

The next instant, he appeared in Luo Xiao's blind spot on the right and grabbed his shoulder.

Luo Xiao forcibly twisted his waist and abdomen in mid-air, using the momentum of his forward thrust to complete a difficult roll in the air, once again avoiding the attack.

In the night sky, two figures engaged in a peculiar chase.

Lin Ye was like a ghost, constantly teleporting and appearing above, below, left, and right of Luo Xiao, each time using the simplest method to reach out and capture his opponent.

Luo Xiao, on the other hand, seemed to be dancing on the edge of a knife, relying on the reflexes honed by years of walking on the edge of life and death to repeatedly slip through Lin Ye's fingers by the slightest margin.

After more than ten exchanges, Luo Xiao's breathing became heavy, but his eyes underwent a change.

What began as shock gradually evolved into a bewildered scrutiny.

He discovered an unbelievable fact: the boy's movements were incredibly rough.

There were no feints, no blocking of his movement, and no prediction of his escape route.

Each time he teleported, he would simply stretch out his hand and grab something, his posture resembling that of an ordinary person who had never been in a fight, clumsily swatting at a fly buzzing around.

To a seasoned mercenary and top assassin like Luo Xiao, this attack method was riddled with flaws and so crude as to be outrageous.

The opponent possesses such a powerful magnetic field, yet has absolutely no combat experience.