The job change is a bizarre and calamity; the nation begs me to tone it down.

As Yamamoto Furukawa spoke, he became increasingly agitated, his white beard trembling.

"After that incident, it took the entire country of Sakura twenty years to recover. Twenty years! Do you think it's twenty days?!"

"Now you're telling me you've gone down the same path again?"

"Are you—crazy?!"

Faced with Yamamoto Furukawa's almost berserk rage.

Miyamoto Kenichi's reaction was strangely calm.

He neither defended himself nor got angry.

He simply sat there, waiting for Yamamoto Furukawa to finish venting his anger.

It was as if all of this was within his expectations.

When Yamamoto Furukawa roared until his throat was almost hoarse, his chest heaving violently, panting like an old ox that had just run sixty miles a day.

Miyamoto Kenichi then slowly raised one hand and made a downward pressing gesture.

"Don't rush to start cursing. Sit down and let me finish what I have to say."

"Baka!!!..."

"sit down."

Miyamoto Kenichi's tone suddenly changed.

Only two words.

But the oppressive feeling contained in those two words made Yamamoto Furukawa feel as if an invisible hand was pressing down on his shoulders.

It's not a physical suppression, but a crushing defeat at the level of life itself.

The natural deterrent effect of a Source-level being on a demigod was released so casually.

Just a trace.

Yamamoto Furukawa's knees involuntarily bent.

"..."

He did not sit down.

But he did stop talking.

It wasn't that he was too scared to speak, but rather that he realized that getting angry in front of a Source-level being would only raise his blood pressure and serve no practical purpose.

Seeing that he had quieted down, Miyamoto Kenichi nodded in satisfaction.

"Old Yamamoto, of course I remember what you said about Shima Castle. I was just a greenhorn back then, and I almost got caught up in it too."

Miyamoto Kenichi's tone became serious.

This might be the first time in all the years Yamamoto Furukawa has known him that he has seen this guy speak in such a serious manner.

"But have you ever thought about why you failed back then?"

Yamamoto Furukawa scoffed, "Isn't the reason obvious enough? Cooperating with alien races is suicide; does that even need analysis?"

"No."

Kenichi Miyamoto shook his head. "The reason for the failure back then wasn't the cooperation itself. It was because those people were too weak; they simply didn't have the qualifications to negotiate with the alien race. They were like a flock of sheep who ran up to a pack of wolves and said they wanted to make friends. Naturally, they were devoured."

Yamamoto Furukawa's brows furrowed even more.

"But if—"

Kenichi Miyamoto held up one finger. "Isn't the one standing across the negotiating table a wolf instead of a sheep?"

Yamamoto Furukawa didn't reply; he was waiting.

Once Miyamoto Kenichi reveals all his trump cards.

"This is a long story."

Miyamoto Kenichi leaned back, his gaze passing through the window to the distant, dark night sky.

"Do you know how many years I've guarded the town of Beido?"

"Twelve years."

Yamamoto Furukawa blurted out.

"Yes, twelve years."

Miyamoto Kenichi nodded. "For twelve years, I guarded that SSS-rank abyssal rift all by myself. Every day, I faced abyssal monsters crawling out of the rift. I killed wave after wave, but it was never-ending."

"During those twelve years, I understood the Abyss better than anyone else. I understood the habits and weaknesses of those monsters, and even—their social structure and power system."

Yamamoto Furukawa was slightly startled.

Power system?

Do other races also have power structures?

"You think the other side of the abyss is just chaos?"

Miyamoto Kenichi seemed to see through his thoughts and chuckled, "Old Yamamoto, you've been sitting in the country for too long. 'Sitting in a well and looking at the sky' doesn't even begin to describe your limited understanding."

"The world in the abyss is far more complex than you imagine. There are civilizations, races, nations, and wars within it. Some of these alien races are even more intelligent than humans."

Miyamoto Kenichi paused for a moment, then reached into his pocket and pulled something out.

Then he gently placed it on the floor in front of him.

It was a crystal the size of a fist.

The surface of the crystal was as black as ink, but inside, a chilling dark purple light constantly flowed.

Within the light, one could vaguely see some runes that Yamamoto Furukawa had never seen before, slowly moving about.

The aura emanating from those runes...

Yamamoto Furukawa's pupils contracted sharply again.

Because that aura was completely different from any alien energy he had ever felt in the abyss rifts in his life.

That is not a characteristic of the power of any particular abyssal race.

That's more like—the power of the abyss itself.

"What is this?"

Yamamoto Furukawa unconsciously lowered his voice a few decibels.

Miyamoto Kenichi looked at the crystal, a glint of something indescribable flashing in his eyes.

"This is what I'm about to tell you—the beginning of everything."

"Six months ago."

Miyamoto Kenichi's voice deepened, and his speech became much slower than before.

"Deep within the cracks of Beidao City, an unprecedented disturbance has occurred."

"The scale of that anomaly was so great that even I almost couldn't suppress it. The width of the crack tripled in just ten minutes, and the abyssal energy gushing out from it was more concentrated than ever before."

"I thought the crack was about to completely collapse, and I was prepared to go down with it."

As Miyamoto Kenichi finished speaking, a bitter smile appeared on his lips.

"But in the end... what emerged from the deepest part of the rift was not some apocalyptic abyssal monster."

"But he is a messenger."

"An envoy from the other side of the abyss, carrying some kind of proposal."

Yamamoto Furukawa's breathing suddenly stopped.

"That messenger told me a lot."

Miyamoto Kenichi's gaze fell on the dark purple crystal, as if he were looking through it into a distant, unknown world.

"The truth about the abyss, the secrets of our world, the limits we thought we could never cross—"

"And, about a completely new path."

Miyamoto Kenichi raised his head and met Yamamoto Furukawa's gaze.

"Old Yamamoto, are you willing to listen to this?"

The silence in the room lasted for a long time.

So long that Miyamoto Kenichi began to suspect that Yamamoto Furukawa might have fallen asleep standing up.

But Yamamoto Furukawa wasn't asleep. He was simply doing what all old foxes do when faced with a major decision—weighing options.

On one side of the scale in his mind was the ironclad rule that "cooperating with other races is tantamount to suicide." On the other side was the appalling mess that Japan was in.

There are fewer than ten saints.

The resource-rich secret realm is unguarded.

The abyss rift could burst at any moment.

Meanwhile, outside there is a prodigy named Gu Xu who is growing at a speed that defies the laws of physics.