This time I chose Paladin.

Chapter 249 The Second Administrator is on his way.
The deathly silence on the Gobi Desert lasted for less than a minute.

Just as the soldiers were still reeling from the sheer shock of witnessing Administrator Number Two's appearance and departure, a pile of rubble suddenly slid across the edge of the newly formed obsidian basin. Immediately afterward, a slightly disheveled but still swift figure crawled out.

It's Nie Weiyang!

His paladin armor was covered in dust, and his face had some scratches, but his scarlet eyes were still bright, even carrying a hint of relieved smile.

He patted the dirt off his clothes and looked up to see the patrol soldiers standing stiffly not far away.

"Hey everyone! Are you alright?" Nie Weiyang waved with a smile, his voice cheerful, a stark contrast to the devastating scene and terrifying figure just moments before. "There was quite a commotion earlier; that guy didn't hold back. Are you all okay?"

The captain and the soldiers looked at each other, unsure of how to react.

Nie Weiyang... he's still alive? And he seems to be in pretty good condition?

And 'that guy'? So, Administrator Number Two knows him? How is that possible?

"...Mr. Nie?" the captain asked tentatively. "Are you alright? What was that just now...?"

"Oh, you mean that one?" Nie Weiyang pointed to the sky, his tone as casual as if he were discussing the weather. "The second administrator happened to pass by and took care of that troublesome BOSS, and also helped us clear the area. I guess I escaped with my life."

He spoke with conviction, even a hint of relief, but when the soldiers looked at his smiling face and recalled the indifferent, terrifying, seemingly all-powerful black figure from before, they felt something was amiss.

Was that world-destroying power merely 'passing by' and 'incidentally'?
But Nie Weiyang clearly didn't intend to explain further. He strode towards the patrol team, quickly checked everyone's condition, and after confirming that there were no injured people, said, "It's not safe to stay here for long. Although the BOSS is gone, there's no guarantee that there won't be other dangers."

"You all need to evacuate as soon as possible and report the situation here to headquarters. I have urgent business to attend to and must leave first."

After saying that, without waiting for the captain to ask any more questions, he flashed away and sped off in the direction where the second administrator had left, quickly disappearing into the undulating Gobi Desert.

The soldiers looked in the direction he had left, then at the cliff basin whose terrain had been completely altered, and the intact pre-civilization facilities... their hearts were filled with countless questions.

However, what they didn't know was that after Nie Weiyang had been out of their sight for several miles, his figure began to become blurry and transparent, eventually disappearing into the air like a bubble.

What they were talking to was simply a vivid illusion.

……

The real Nie Weiyang is currently in an extremely delicate state.

He did indeed return to 'Administrator Number Two' status, but he wasn't omnipotent. For example, he couldn't fly.

For beings in the new world at this stage, flight is an extremely high barrier to entry. At this moment, he is standing on a rough stone slab about the size of a door panel, leaning forward as if 'flying'. Beneath this slab, there are two shimmering crystal fragments—fragments of the Mind Prism are converting his mental energy into powerful kinetic energy, supporting the slab and himself as they fly at high speed.

A sophisticated optical illusion perfectly concealed the wooden planks and prism fragments, making him appear from the outside as if he were walking through the air with his hands behind his back and his cloak fluttering, like a god or demon...

……cough.

Thankfully, no one knows, otherwise the image of the second administrator would have been completely ruined.

……

Liang Zhenduan knelt on the ground, coughing violently, a trickle of blood spilling from the corner of his mouth. There was a terrible burn on his chest, the flesh charred and rolled back, a 'gift' left by Hao Yao before he fled.

He still couldn't catch that cunning beast. After all, he was busy with work every day and his own level wasn't high. His imposing aura just now seemed fierce, but it was just a temporary state created by stacking props. It was fine to repel enemies, but it was unlikely to be able to chase them down.

Hao Yao was also a capable man. Despite being severely injured several times, he was still able to unleash a strange speed, transforming into a streak of starlight and escaping. Before leaving, he delivered a backhand strike that nearly killed Hao Yao.

To make matters worse, during the chase, he was blasted into the range of the 'Ascension of the Star Worshippers' instance by the aftershocks of that force.

At this moment, the scene before Liang Zhenduan was bizarre and surreal. It was no longer the familiar prison corridor, but a crumbling ruin of a star temple.

His ears were filled with incomprehensible, noisy echoes.

"Mayor Liang! Over here!" A clear but anxious female voice called out.

Liang Zhenduan looked up and saw a figure waving at him in the distance. It was a young woman with beautiful features, and behind her ear grew a few soft feathers like those of a lark—it was You Yan, a singer with lark lineage who could imitate the voice of a lark. Beside her was a lithe man with rhythmic movements, a dancer by training.

Liang Zhenduan knew them; they had dealt with Nie Weiyang some time ago, and later worked diligently and conscientiously, occasionally singing and dancing for everyone, so they were considered unofficial members of the cultural troupe.

They were clearly also unlucky enough to be caught up in the dungeon, but they seemed to be adapting a little better than Liang Zhenduan.

Despite the excruciating pain, Liang Zhenduan struggled to his feet and staggered toward the two of them. "You're badly injured!" You Yan gasped when she saw the wound on his chest and quickly helped him up, one on each side, along with the dancer.

"It's alright... I won't die."

Liang Zhenduan gritted his teeth, his gaze sweeping over the eerie ruins.

"We must find a way out... or find the core of this instance..."

Before he could finish speaking, the entire ruins suddenly began to shake violently! In the distance, a massive meteorite, trailing a long, fiery tail, was hurtling towards their location!

The memories of destruction are being repeated.

You Yan's face turned deathly pale, but she took a deep breath, and the feathers by her ears trembled slightly.

A melodious, ethereal, and soul-soothing voice flowed from her throat, attempting to counter the overwhelming aura of destruction. The dancer, meanwhile, assumed a peculiar starting stance, the air around him swirling with his movements, seemingly brewing some kind of power.

Liang Zhenduan also gripped the sickle tightly in his hand.

Despite his serious injuries and the countless times he had thought of giving up, he would never sit idly by and wait for death.

But the scene before them was like a shattered kaleidoscope, forcibly compressing a tragic end to civilization and stuffing it into the minds of Liang Zhenduan and the other two.

This is not a simple replay of images, but a forced "experience" of the destruction of a certain humanoid civilization.

There were no earth-shattering explosions, no fleets blotting out the sky. Destruction arrived in a cold, icy manner.

They "saw" that the once prosperous civilization, whose social structure was built on the religious worship of the stars, was later gradually dominated by an extreme capitalist logic.

Everything can be quantified, everything can be traded. The value of life, the value of emotions, even the value of the planet itself, and even faith and believers themselves, are all simplified into numbers jumping on a control panel.

Huge interstellar corporations partnered with them, and that specter of greed seeped into every capillary of society…

Then, the 'Border Wars' began.

It is not a traditional armed conflict, but a war about 'definition'. Civilization has struggled with it for thousands of years, but still cannot escape the fate of alienation.

Society was fragmented, definitions were distorted, and contradictions and disputes were ultimately dissolved in sophistry about labels and meanings. Soon, interstellar giants completely dismantled this civilization, and in order to compete for some ultimate 'right of interpretation' and 'ownership', they used incomprehensible technologies.

The shift in defining boundaries has been accelerated—social consensus has been systematically polluted, distorted, and destroyed. Even the connotations of basic concepts such as 'life,' 'self,' 'happiness,' and 'morality' have been drastically modified in just a few generations to adapt to the ultimate needs of the proliferation of interstellar giants.

The ideological foundation of civilization has been shaken, and the conflicts are endless, like wars from outer space.

What followed was a harvest.

A colossal interstellar corporation, hidden deep within the cosmos, viewed the entire universe as its pasture. When the time was ripe, it unleashed its final 'weapon'.

It wasn't some kind of bomb, but a sophisticated parasite.

Liang Zhenduan and his two companions witnessed the process of the virus outbreak: it did not directly kill living things, but rather distorted their instincts.

Plants cease photosynthesis and instead secrete a toxin that attracts insects; insects lose their pollination instincts and begin to fly erratically, frantically devouring their own kind; the birth rate of mammals, including humans, plummets, and newborns experience large-scale, irregular gene mutations... The food chain begins to collapse from its smallest links, like toppled dominoes, leading to utter chaos and exhaustion.

The sky was no longer blue, but shrouded in a sickly gray-yellow; the rivers were murky, emitting a cloying stench of decay. The city remained brightly lit, and advertisements continued to play on the automatically maintained holographic billboards, but the creatures walking on the streets had vacant eyes and behaved strangely, like puppets programmed with instructions.

Social order slowly crumbled in an eerie calm; there were no riots, no shouts, only a silent demise.

This is a civilization that has been fragmented by multiple forces and precisely 'harvested' by predators.

The parasite that caused it to vanish possessed an extremely wicked medium: a dazzling golden tower, a spire that conformed to all the definitions of 'sacred'...

Now, the destruction has reached its final stage; the tower, once the ground, now lies upside down at the zenith. Deep, eerie visions flicker around it, meteorites fall, and life hangs in the balance.

Liang Zhenduan swallowed slowly, his Adam's apple bobbing.
He suddenly realized that he had entered a graveyard of civilization. No, rather, humanity had entered a graveyard of civilization.

When people passed through that aurora, they did not realize that the future would be endless darkness.

(End of this chapter)