Super God Academy: Kabuto

The Shenhe Civilization Ruins are silent, devoid of light, only an eternal stillness, as if even time itself has died. Huge, unrecognizable architectural ruins, like the skeletons of colossal beasts, float in the cold, dusty void, telling the story of how a once glorious civilization abruptly came to an end.

Lin Yu and Tsukasa Kadoya emerged from a magenta halo and landed on a relatively flat, massive platform made of some unknown alloy. Instead of a sense of solidity, they felt a fragility as if it might crumble into cosmic dust at any moment.

Looking around at the dilapidated yet still magnificent ruins, Lin Yu asked, "Did you see 'space' last time you came?"

"Space?" Tsukasa Kadoya, who was examining a giant, half-melted pillar covered in runes in the distance with great interest, turned around upon hearing this. "Who's that?"

"The Space Principal, a top scholar of the Divine River Civilization, one of the founders of the Super God Academy, is also... an ancient god," Lin Yu explained.

"Oh, that sounds amazing." Tsukasa Kadoya suddenly realized, pointing to the seemingly empty space above his head that actually contained some kind of regular energy residue. "I saw it last time. It was a nebula-like thing that looked pretty big and could change shape, 'watching' me from above. I... had a friendly exchange with it. I don't know if it was him."

"Exchange? What did they talk about?"

Tsukasa Kadoya rubbed his nose, seemingly finding it a bit boring: "It's nothing, just probing each other. It asked me where I came from and what I wanted; I asked it if guarding this wretched place was tiring. Oh, right," he changed the subject, his tone becoming more serious, "it did explicitly mention that there's a 'seal' at the core of this ruin, a very powerful one, blocking a 'rift' connecting to other worlds."

"A rift? Leading to the void?" Lin Yu's eyes narrowed.

"Probably, anyway, it doesn't smell like a good place." Tsukasa Kadoya shrugged. "I tried to use the Aurora Veil to go through and take a look, but I was bounced back. The rules of that seal are very special, extremely targeted, and it just won't let you 'cross the line'."

"Take me to see it."

Without another word, the two figures flashed a few times and crossed the long stretch of ruins, arriving at the core of the Divine River Ruins, the area with the most bizarre residual energy and the most unstable spatial structure.

This place seemed to have witnessed an indescribable collapse of the laws of nature. The space itself possessed a texture like shattered glass, with a massive, slowly rotating vortex composed of countless dim runes at its center. The depths of the vortex were pitch black, emanating an aura that made even the soul feel oppressed and repulsed. Above the vortex, a thin yet resilient membrane of light, woven like a nebula, could be faintly seen—that was the seal.

Lin Yu looked up at the seal, his brows furrowed. "It is indeed a powerful seal, but its power... is constantly dissipating and becoming thinner." He tried to mobilize his power, drawing up an aurora curtain with crimson and silver light flowing around him, attempting to penetrate space directly and peer over the seal to see the other side.

However, just as the curtain touched the invisible boundary of the seal, a vast, ancient, and repulsive force rebounded violently! It was not the seal itself that blocked it, but rather some kind of collective will or final defense mechanism remaining in the entire Divine River Ruins, rejecting any form of "crossing over"!

Lin Yu was jolted back half a step, and the curtain instantly shattered. He stared at the seemingly calm core of the seal, a look of surprise and doubt flashing in his eyes: "There's another force blocking it... not the seal itself, but something more ancient, more... sorrowful. Could it be that besides Kieran, before the Divine River Civilization perished, other powerful beings left behind a contingency plan?"

"Want to know the answer? It's simple." Tsukasa Kadoya leaned casually against a twisted piece of metal wreckage, a magenta Rider card appearing in his hand, twirling nimbly between his fingers. He raised his head, his gaze seemingly piercing through nothingness, locking onto a hidden entity, and spoke in a clear voice:

"Kieran, I know you're watching this place. Come out and talk. It's not proper to keep hiding behind Nebula and spying on us."

His voice echoed through the deathly silent ruins, carrying a strange penetrating power.

A few seconds, or perhaps longer, passed, and a long, heavy sigh, as if carrying the dust of countless eras, echoed from all directions, from every molecule of the ruins:

"You...you still came."

The void above began to shift, with countless tiny stardust particles appearing out of thin air, converging and rotating, eventually forming a dreamlike, slowly flowing, magnificent nebula—a manifestation of the will of the Time God Kilan.

"You knew we were coming?" Lin Yu stared directly at the nebula.

"In the ripples of time, many blurry shadows can be seen." Kieran's voice resounded directly in their consciousness, aged and weary. "But now is not the time for our formal meeting. Please return. When the time is right, I will... seek you out."

Lin Yu remained unmoved and held up two fingers: "Two questions. Answer them, and we'll leave immediately."

The nebula remained silent for a moment, its starlight flickering within, as if weighing its options. Finally, the aged voice rang out again, tinged with a hint of helplessness: "...Speak."

Lin Yu took a deep breath and asked the question that had puzzled the top sages of the known universe for tens of thousands of years:

"First, why did the once-prosperous Divine River civilization collapse so quickly and completely? Second, what exactly is the 'Void' on the other side of the rift? What exactly happened to you?"

The nebula seemed to pause for a moment, and the surrounding ruins seemed to emit a silent lament.

After a long silence, Kieran's voice finally broke through the silence, this time filled with heavy memories and a chilling coldness:

"Back then... we were not born here. Our ancestors discovered an 'anomaly' in the depths of the universe—an energy fluctuation and spatial distortion that were beyond the understanding of the time. Driven by the pursuit of knowledge and truth, the entire civilization migrated here and established a new home."

"Later, my close friend Ding Gehei and I, through in-depth research, discovered a 'crack' hidden at the very bottom of this spatial structure. It's like a tiny scar on perfect skin, leading to a dimension that we can't understand at all, a dimension where our data models are completely blank."

"We were fascinated, we poured all our energy into studying it, trying to understand its nature. However..." Kieran's voice suddenly became hoarse, "During one of our high-energy collaborative probes, the rift... opened on its own without warning."

"The first to surge forth were a tidal wave of ferocious insectoids resembling giant mantises. They were frenzied and bloodthirsty, with no intention of communication, only pure destruction. Following closely behind were creatures with even more bizarre forms, seemingly composed of negative emotions and twisted rules. Their power system was completely different from ours, with extremely high resistance to conventional energy attacks, and an instinctive desire to devour the life forms of the Divine River Body... It was a sudden, unequal massacre."

"Dinghei and I gathered the full power of civilization and paid an unimaginable price to barely force those pioneering monsters back to the vicinity of the rift. Just when we thought we had temporarily halted the invasion and were preparing to activate the ultimate weapon to completely seal the rift..."

Kieran's narrative pauses here, the nebula's light fluctuating violently, showing that even after tens of thousands of years, that sense of fear and powerlessness remains deeply ingrained.

"A hand... a huge, boundless 'hand,' seemingly formed from the deepest darkness and chaos, emerged from the other side of the crack."

"It just tapped down gently."

"There was no grand display, no complex dissipation of energy."

"Like a mischievous child casually smashing a sandcastle."

"Then... apart from Ding Gehei and me, who were lucky enough to escape being directly hit because we were directly above the rift and at some kind of energy singularity... the entire main star of the Divine River Civilization, along with hundreds of millions of beings on it, our most magnificent creations, and the knowledge base accumulated over tens of thousands of years... were turned into the dust you see now under that palm strike."

"After the 'hand' struck down, it seemed to be strongly repelled by some fundamental rule of this universe, instantly retracting into the rift and ceasing its attack. The rift also temporarily returned to calm, and no more monsters emerged."

"After surviving the catastrophe, Ding Gehei and I realized, amidst immense grief and fear, that we had to seal this place off at all costs. I used my own resonance with a portion of the laws of the universe as a guide to extract the 'cosmic power' from this star field and weave it into the seal you see here. As for Ding Gehei... he made an even more resolute choice."

Kieran's voice lowered, filled with regret: "He designed and launched a crazy plan—to compress and modify a aging star to the extreme, attempting to use it as a 'plug' to physically seal the crack. However, at the last moment, an irresistible suction force came from within the crack... Dinghei, along with his unfinished 'star plug,' was sucked in."

"The last message he left me before he completely disappeared was: 'Kieran...seal it...wait...wait for this universe to give birth to a power strong enough...to contend with 'over there'...'"

The nebula's light dimmed, and Kieran seemed to have exhausted all his strength.

"As for the Void... my understanding of them is limited to that brief, devastating encounter. They are bizarre and powerful, and the source of their power seems to be completely different from the physical rules, dark energy, and even the concepts themselves that we know. They are full of the characteristics of 'negation' and 'devouring'."

"If you want to know more about 'over there'..." Kieran's thoughts seemed to be directed at Lin Yu, "Perhaps you can ask 'him'. 'He'... should know something."

Lin Yu's pupils contracted slightly. "He"... refers to his future self, or rather, the Lin Yu in black.

Silence spread through the ruins. The truth behind the annihilation of the Divine River Civilization was so cruel and direct, far exceeding imagination. That seemingly casual yet devastating blow that wiped out a top-tier civilization brought a shock and chill far greater than any exaggerated description.

"I understand." Lin Yu finally nodded, his voice steady. "Thank you for your explanation. We'll leave now."

He didn't ask any more questions and turned to signal to Tsukasa Kadoya.

Tsukasa Kadoya also dropped his nonchalant demeanor, took a deep look at the dim nebula and the slowly rotating Death Seal below, and raised his hand to pull back the Aurora Curtain.

The two stepped into the curtain, one after the other, and disappeared into the ancient ruins that buried glory and despair.

Only the nebula manifested by Kieran remained, continuing its lonely and long vigil in the endless silence and void. And the darkness deep within the rift seemed to stir slightly again in a corner unnoticed by anyone.