Extraterrestrial demons invaded; I laid the groundwork eight years in advance.

Five o'clock in the morning, at a mine in the western suburbs of Shanghai.

The crack slowly closed, and the last ray of dark red light began to converge inward, as if the last embers had been drawn away, before disappearing completely.

The wind blew from the open fields, carrying the smells of lime, rust, and burning, and a very faint gray-white hue was spreading along the distant mountain ridge.

Dozens of monster corpses were scattered on the ground, and the ground around the mine was pitted and riddled with deep knife marks.

Liu Feng sat on a piece of rubble in front of the crevice. The power he had been empowered with had dissipated, but the blood and qi fluctuations of the second-level first stage still lingered on his body.

He had a recovery potion in his mouth, his combat uniform was tattered, and a wound ran diagonally from his left shoulder to his right waist, with the flesh turned outward and the blood congealed into a dark brown crust.

His battle sword was stuck in front of him, cracked and covered with dried black blood.

He put the empty medicine bottle in his mouth aside, raised his hand and moved it a little. The wound was still pulling and stinging a little, but it no longer affected his movement.

It has been almost three hours since the crack opened.

As the rift tore open, Liu Feng led the two groups present to form an encirclement. Waves of monsters surged out, and they intercepted them one by one; not a single one escaped their grasp. Even a level 2, first-tier monster was annihilated by their combined efforts, and the entire process resulted in no casualties.

He also crossed that threshold in the battle—transforming blood and qi into true qi, successfully entering the acquired realm.

Until the second hour.

A second-tier, sixth-level demonic creature emerged from the depths of the rift.

The moment it burst out of the crevice, it tore through the encirclement. To prevent the entire battle line from collapsing, Liu Feng led it alone to the east side of the mine.

The wound on his chest was left from that time; the monster's claws touched his bones, causing a slight vibration, and almost cleaved him in two.

  

If he hadn't retreated in time, he would probably be lying on the ground now.

Just when he was in grave danger and about to give up, a warm current flowed into his body, and his cultivation level rose layer by layer with each breath, leaping to the sixth level of the second stage.

In just ten minutes, he successfully dealt with the monster.

After that, only low-level monsters emerged from the rift, and there were no more accidents. Only after the rift closed and all the remaining monsters were cleared away did he have time to sit down and recover.

At the mine entrance in the distance, hundreds of emergency response team members were tidying up equipment and transferring debris. Their movements were swift and efficient, but the sense of urgency from just a few hours earlier was gone.

Liu Feng glanced over there and then looked away.

The tension between his brows eased slightly; he knew that the crisis was over, and humanity had gained another buffer period.

He sat there on the gravel, quietly waiting for dawn.

In the same city, the morning light at six o'clock washes over the Huangpu River.

Su Wan was awakened by the light coming from outside the window.

She opened her eyes. The curtains weren't fully drawn, and a warm ray of light shone through the gap, falling on the blankets at the foot of the bed and turning the white blankets into a soft, warm color.

She sat up, picked up her phone, and glanced at the time—6:03. The message she sent to Shen Bai last night was still unread.

She stared at her phone for two seconds, her finger hovering over the screen for a moment, but ultimately didn't muster the courage to send anything more. She locked the screen, got out of bed, and washed up.

As she reached the bedroom door, she heard her father's voice from outside.

Su Zhenguo was on the phone, speaking very quickly, making it difficult to hear clearly, but his tone didn't sound like his usual business dealings.

She stopped inside the door and didn't go out immediately. Instead, she waited until the call ended before pushing the door open and walking out.

Su Zhenguo sat on the sofa, still holding his phone in his hand, looking somewhat tired.

"Dad, what's wrong? Didn't you sleep well last night?"

Su Zhenguo looked up at his daughter and smiled, "I'm getting old, I don't need much sleep. Why are you up so early?"

"I was woken up by the sunlight." Su Wan sat down opposite him and poured herself a glass of water. "Whose phone call was that just now?"

Su Zhenguo hesitated for a moment, put his phone on the coffee table, picked up his teacup and took a sip; it was already cold.

"A friend," he said, "works in a government department, and he told me something."

"What did you say?"

Su Zhenguo was silent for a moment, then lowered his voice: "Last night, large-scale rifts appeared in many places, accompanied by many demonic creatures. However, they were all dealt with by the Extraordinary Management Bureau and the Dawn Organization. Things should be peaceful for a while, but you still need to be careful when you go out."

Su Wan's fingers gently caressed the rim of the glass.

She recalled the faint alarms that had sounded in the early hours of the morning. At the time, she was half asleep and thought it was a thunderstorm, but now she thought it might not be.

"Isn't there any way to deal with those rifts and monsters?"

Su Zhenguo's hand paused in mid-air for a moment before he put down the teacup.

"I don't know either. If the sky falls, there are tall people to hold it up. All we can do is take care of ourselves in these chaotic times. When dawn breaks, life goes on."

Su Wan did not respond.

She looked down at the water glass in her hand, but her thoughts drifted elsewhere—Shen Bai worked at the Dawn Group, and she knew something about the connection between Dawn and the dawn.

Shen Bai didn't reply to her messages last night. Could it be related to this?

Thinking of this, Su Wan tightened her grip on the water glass, her knuckles turning slightly white.

Seven o'clock in the morning, Xiaoqingshan Villa.

Morning light streamed into the study through the window, and a pale golden streak flashed across the center of the room before Shen Bai's figure appeared out of thin air.

His combat uniform was stained with dried black blood, and his expression showed exhaustion from a sleepless night, along with a slight dizziness.

After withdrawing from the battlefield in Hecheng last night, he acted like a firefighter, using his teleportation ability to rush to dozens of other critical battlefields.

They only stayed at each battlefield for a few minutes, and after dealing with the high-level monsters, they immediately teleported away to the next location.

Overnight, during his third teleportation, he discovered that teleporting creatures would put a burden on both the physical and mental body.

This was after he broke through to the second tier. If he were a first-tier cultivator, he probably wouldn't last more than five times before he would be kneeling on the ground.

But the result was good in the end.

Compared to the tens of thousands of fissures worldwide, the battlefield he personally dealt with was insignificant.

He killed dozens of second-tier monsters one by one—this number was not large compared to the total number, but it prevented the worst situation from happening, and no front collapsed due to the loss of control of high-tier monsters.

He walked to the window and looked at the city at the foot of the mountain.

Pedestrians were already on the streets, and steam rose from breakfast stalls in the morning light.

Someone rode an electric bike along the path outside the bamboo grove, a bag of fried dough sticks on the handlebars. In the distance, a cruise ship was setting sail on the Huangpu River, the water trail at its stern illuminated by the sun.

The raven had woken up sometime earlier, glanced at him, then lowered its head and buried its beak back in its wing.

He stretched his hand out the window, the morning breeze slipped through his fingers, and sunlight fell on the back of his hand, bringing a touch of warmth.

He stood there for a while, then closed the window.

A click sounded.

Its daybreak.