The ancient return was exposed by his sister's live stream.

He didn't look inside the passage. There was no need to. His perception of the laws of space told him that two life forms were moving slowly and steadily within the passage.

There was no deviation from the path. No void fragments touched the edge. Safe.

He closed his eyes.

The laws of space surged from the Dao Foundation, flowing through the law loop at the bottom of the archway into the palms.

The framework forged by the power of the Five Elements is being continuously depleted; every quarter of an hour, the light on the framework dims a little.

He needs to constantly replenish the spatial laws to maintain the stability of the framework and prevent the path from collapsing.

How long will this process take?

Three years.

Even after the folding of space, the distance from Earth to another world remains unimaginably far.

The framework created by the power of the Five Elements is merely the skeleton; the continuous input of spatial laws is the lifeblood.

If the blood supply is cut off, the bones will dry out and crumble.

Three years. More than a thousand days and nights. He had to sit here non-stop, maintaining the output of the laws.

It cannot be interrupted in the middle.

Even a moment's interruption will cause the passage to tremble. A quarter of an hour's interruption will allow void fragments to re-enter the safe path. An hour's interruption...

He won't let it break.

The wind swept across the mountaintop. His white hair was scattered in the wind; his transformation techniques were overwhelmed when the laws were being unleashed at full power, revealing his true appearance.

His face was pale, his eyes were sunken, and the veins on his thin fingers were bulging.

His lifespan was still slipping away. The holes left by the Five Elements Great Dao on his Dao Foundation had not healed, like five wounds that would never heal, constantly oozing blood.

But that's enough.

He only needs to hold on for three years.

Sunrise and sunset.

Chen Hao couldn't feel it. The light was already dim, and the difference between day and night was becoming smaller and smaller.

He could only sense the flow of the laws. An invisible thread was drawn from his foundation, passed through his palm, and flowed into the archway. From there, it entered the long path inside the passageway.

Stable. Smooth. Continuous.

The first month has passed.

The third month.

The sixth month.

The snow on the mountaintop was two feet thick. It covered the law runes on the edge of the platform, the grooves at the base of the archway, and even Chen Hao's shoulders and knees.

He didn't move.

The snow melted. Then it piled up again. Then it melted again.

the first year.

The black tide advanced to the inner orbit of Saturn. The red dot on Mars disappeared, swallowed up. The Human Union's astronomical monitoring station issued its final report: "Saturn signal permanently lost."

Chen Hao didn't know. He sat atop Mount Kunlun, completely unaware of anything.

All he knew was that the two energies within the passage were still moving. Very slowly. But they were moving.

the second year.

His white hair had grown to his waist. His fingernails had grown long and curved, and no one trimmed them for him.

The clothes were covered in dust and dried snow stains, and the fabric was frayed from the wind.

The speed at which the law outputs remains unchanged. As always, it's as stable as a machine that never stops.

But his body is getting old.

The art of transformation could no longer be maintained. If someone stood before him now, they would see an old man over seventy years old—thin, hunched, and withered.

Only his cross-legged posture remained upright, his back supported, like a withered tree that refused to break.

The third year.

The two auras within the passage... have arrived.

Chen Hao sensed that they had passed through the end of the passage, broken away from the folded path of space, and entered another system of laws.

Another world.

They arrived.

Chen Hao opened his eyes.

The eyelids, untouched for three years, opened, revealing a pair of pupils that had become much more cloudy. But there was a light in those eyes. A very faint light.

His lips twitched slightly.

It looked like he wanted to laugh. But his facial muscles had been stiff for too long, so he only managed to pull out a barely noticeable curve.

He stopped inputting the rules.

The palms moved away from the path of law at the bottom of the arch.

The light within the archway quickly dimmed. The framework forged from the power of the Five Elements, deprived of its nourishment, faded away inch by inch.

A few breaths later, the archway returned to its original state... an empty stone doorway, with nothing inside.

Chen Hao pushed himself up from the ground.

His joints cracked a few times. His knees were a little stiff. He held onto the edge of the archway and slowly straightened up.

The wind from the mountaintop seeped into his thin clothes.

He glanced in the direction the passage disappeared.

Nothing could be seen. Only the hazy sky shone through from the other side of the archway.

But he knew.

In that far, far away place, there are people living.

Chen Hao turned around and left the summit of Kunlun Mountain.

Baotian City.

When Chen Hao pushed open the door, the house was pitch black.

There were no lights... It wasn't a power outage, but a broken light bulb that no one had replaced. A layer of fine dust covered the entire corridor, and his footprints were clearly imprinted on it.

living room.

The sofa is still in its old spot. The teapot on the tea table is still there, its spout pointing towards the window.

The Biluochun tea he brewed three years ago has long since dried up, leaving a ring of dark brown tea stains at the bottom of the pot.

Most of it is gone.

The bookshelves were empty. The cabinets were empty. The spice jars in the kitchen, the food in the refrigerator, the group photo hanging on the wall—everything was taken away.

Chen Siyao cleaned up very thoroughly.

Only a few things remained.

On the small coffee table next to the sofa was a glass water glass. It was the one Yang Wanqing often used, with a cartoon Shiba Inu pattern printed on it. He probably forgot to put it away in his haste to leave.

On the TV cabinet sat a well-worn notebook. It was Chen Siyao's organic chemistry notebook from her undergraduate years. The date was written on the title page; she was a sophomore at the time.

Xiaoyue and Sanqingniao are not at home; we don't know where they went.

Chen Hao stood in the center of the living room, looking at each item one by one.

He went out onto the balcony.

When I pushed open the glass door, a blast of cold air rushed in.

The skyline of Shenzhen is darker than it was three years ago. Not just "a little darker," but completely dark. The sun is still hanging somewhere in the sky, but its light can no longer penetrate the barrier of the black tide.

Blue Star entered eternal night.

The streets were deserted. A few lights shone from a few buildings in the distance, indicating that people were still alive, maintaining only minimal lighting thanks to stored energy.

Even the streetlights went out. The entire city was shrouded in a heavy, bottomless darkness.

The SUPP government's broadcasting system had been silent for a long time. Chen Hao couldn't remember when the last announcement was issued; it was probably during the time he was in seclusion maintaining communication channels.

How many people are left on Earth?

do not know.

How much time is left?

He closed his eyes and sensed the location of the black tide.

It's very close.

He could still perceive the sun's light at the level of laws, but the outer layers of that star were already being eroded. The plasma was being peeled away layer by layer at the edge of the black tide, like fruit being peeled.

The moon is still there. Earth is still there.

But only these two are left.

The entire solar system is now reduced to just the Sun, the Moon, and Earth.

The rest were all swallowed up.

Chen Hao stood on the balcony for a long time.

The night wind seeped through the cracks in the city, carrying a dry, cold scent devoid of any life.