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

"Luo Xiao is dead."

In a room at the Tianjie Canglu branch, a Jin Kingdom citizen was holding a remote control, and a projector on the wall was projecting a slightly shaky image.

This was filmed by mercenaries on the nameless island. The camera is pointed at the night sky, and you can barely see a small black dot floating there.

Immediately afterwards, a jet-black beam of light, hundreds of meters in diameter, carrying violent black lightning, like a waterfall cascading down from the heavens, completely engulfed the black dot.

The Japanese man, Kamiya Suke, leaned back on the sofa and asked, "Who is this? I've never seen this kind of ability before."

Cui Haozhen paused the video and turned to his companion: "There are quite a few Chen-level beings in the world who deliberately hide their strength and never reveal their abilities. I'm not sure of his true identity either, but there's a certain probability that he's Mu Ye, the one who suddenly appeared at the top of the rankings a few months ago in Xia Shang."

Kamiya didn't seem to react much to the name "Makino": "Luo Xiao's abilities weren't particularly strong to begin with. He was only suitable for sneak attacks and assassinations. In a fight between people of the same level, if someone discovered him in advance and used a magnetic field to lock him in place so he couldn't teleport, his abilities would be mostly wasted."

In Kamiya's view, once the assassins were drawn into the main battlefield, the outcome was already predetermined.

He turned his gaze back to the frozen screen: "The person in the video possesses an extremely rare energy-output ability, and the methods of destruction are incredibly violent. We also have a madman in our Heavenly Rank who purely focuses on energy output; I wonder which is stronger, his 'Solar Power' or this person's?"

Choi Ho-jin offered a fair assessment: "It's difficult to make an accurate judgment based solely on a blurry video. However, from a purely visual perspective, the person in the video seems to have a stronger visual impact."

Kamiya smirked, "Superficial."

……

……

On the nameless island, waves surged onto the beach one after another, smoothing the sand and mud along the edges.

Su Nian quickly ran to Lin Ye's side and knelt down on the damp sand.

"Wake up."

She reached out and nudged Lin Ye's shoulder, but there was no response.

Lin Ye's eyes were closed, and most of his body was submerged in the shallow water, his clothes soaked through with seawater.

Su Nian's heart clenched. She placed her finger under Lin Ye's nose and felt his breath, which was so faint that it seemed as if it might stop at any moment.

Drowning.

The judgment immediately popped into Su Nian's mind. She forced herself to suppress the panicked thoughts in her head and, relying on the first aid knowledge she had learned at school, pulled down the zipper of his coat collar a little to keep his breathing unobstructed.

Next, she pinched Lin Ye's nose with her left hand, placed her right hand behind his neck, and gently lifted his chin upwards to open his airway.

Looking at the face so close to hers, Su Nian finally took a deep breath of the slightly cold air, then leaned down and moved closer to Lin Ye's lips.

Just as the distance between them reached zero, and their lips touched, in that instant when warmth and softness intertwined with coolness.

Lin Ye's eyelashes fluttered slightly, and then he opened his eyes.

Eyes facing each other.

They were so close that they could clearly see their reflections in each other's pupils.

The sound of the receding waves seemed to be infinitely distant at that moment.

Su Nian suddenly leaned her upper body back, widening the distance between the two.

Perhaps she was driven by some unspeakable panic, or perhaps she was trying to cover up this action that broke the boundaries she had always strictly controlled.

Her right hand, which had been supporting Lin Ye's chin, almost instinctively moved upwards and patted Lin Ye's cheek.

"Smack."

A soft sound, not very loud, but very clear on the quiet beach.

Lin Ye had just regained consciousness when he opened his eyes and saw Su Nian standing right in front of him, which made him a little slow to react. Then he was hit on the face again.

He looked at Su Nian, who sat on the beach looking down at him, with a somewhat blank gaze.

"what?"

She avoided Lin Ye's questioning gaze and stood up from the beach.

Lin also propped himself up on the wet sand, not too concerned about what had just happened.

He didn't know when it started, but he found himself becoming indifferent to many things, and very few things could truly affect his emotions.

Except for a very few important people, or some special events.

However, that close proximity, where we could almost smell each other's breath, might have been a little awkward.

He brushed the sand off his clothes, expanded the magnetic field, and sensed the situation on the island.

On the tilting Jinlan, Pei Xiao sat in front of the metal bulkhead, breathing heavily.

Less than two meters away from him, the mercenary leader wearing sunglasses had stopped moving.

The opponent was also a Moon-level player, whose ability was a high-pressure air shield that could circulate around his body, which negated most of the destructive power of the Collapse Elephant.

The opponent was very skilled in combat, especially fond of fighting to the death. Pei Xiao almost exhausted all his strength to barely kill the opponent.

After a short rest, Pei Xiao, enduring the soreness, contacted several Tian Shu Ying-level players among the passengers through west Wangmu.

He eliminated the most skilled mercenaries immediately, leaving the rest as no threat to the Tian Shu players.

Official players began their operation, and approximately two hours later, all the militants were eliminated.

The scattered passengers were safely found and gathered together on a wide beach on the leeward side of the island.

A dozen bonfires were lit on the beach, and the passengers, still shaken, gathered around them. Some shivered in their soaked clothes, while others buried their faces in their knees and sobbed softly.

The official players, along with their healthy passengers, retrieved supplies from the ship or shallow waters and distributed them to everyone. Most of these supplies consisted of well-sealed compressed dry rations and bottled drinking water.

Lin Ye and Su Nian sat by a small campfire some distance from the crowd. The flames were low and occasionally crackled as dry branches snapped from the heat.

A series of slightly heavy footsteps approached, and Pei Xiao walked over from the direction of the crowd in the distance.

He didn't look well; his once crisp clothes were torn in several places, with dried bloodstains along the edges.

He sat down on the other side of the fire: "The Queen Mother of the West has sent a rescue ship, which will probably arrive in two days. Thank you for the theater and the evacuation arrangements. It was originally my temporary task, but I've dragged you into it."

Lin didn't say anything.

Pei Xiao didn't mince words on the topic, and his expression immediately turned serious: "Did you see that black pillar of light clearly on the beach just now? That level of destructive power doesn't seem like a conventional weapon, nor is it something that any Yao-level player I know could create."

"I don't know," Lin replied.

Pei Xiao didn't plan to linger, and before leaving, her gaze shifted back and forth between Su Nian and Lin Ye.

"Excuse me, what's your relationship with me?"