I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

"Sizzle—"

380,000 kilometers away, on the far side of the moon, lies the Guanghan Base, the No. 3 Deep Space Early Warning Radar Station.

The chubby operator slammed the cup of synthetic coffee he was holding onto the metal control panel, splashing a few drops of brown liquid. He irritably tugged at his collar, his fingers pounding away on the holographic keyboard.

"Station Chief, the gravitational wave radar is still completely bald. We've scanned the entire frequency band seven times, and there's nothing there." The fat man turned his head to look at Station Chief Old Li, who was leaning against the hatch smoking. "Not only have we not seen any void monsters, but even the most basic cosmic microwave background radiation is gone. Was this damn radar frozen by the magnetic field of the Taiyin Locking Spirit Array?"

Old Li ignored him, only taking a deep drag on his cigarette, the glow of the cheap tobacco flickering in the dim cabin.

He walked to the huge bulletproof porthole and gazed at the extremely deep universe outside. In the past, this area was always filled with spatial ripples of all sizes, and those void parasites were like rats in the sewers, constantly squeezing out from the gaps in dark matter.

But now, it's so clean it's creepy.

"The radar isn't broken." Old Li exhaled a puff of smoke, which hit the glass and dispersed. "Can't you smell it? The air filter in the air circulation system hasn't been clearing out any polluting dust for three hours."

The fat man paused for a moment, then subconsciously sniffed. Indeed, the faint, nauseating fishy smell that had permeated the lunar base was gone.

"Isn't that a good thing?" The fat man scratched his head, picked up his coffee and took a sip. "Now that all the cannon fodder is dead, we can apply to be transferred back to Earth and take a vacation at the foot of the Kunlun Mountains..."

"Click".

Before the fat man could finish speaking, the main screen on the radar station's control console suddenly emitted an extremely piercing short-circuit sound.

Immediately afterwards, the green indicator lights that had been constantly lit, which originally indicated a safe state, all went out without warning.

"Holy crap? The power's out? Where's the backup power?!" The fat man was so startled that he threw down his coffee cup and scrambled to the manual control lever.

"It's not a power outage."

The cigarette butt in Old Li's mouth fell onto the metal deck with a "thud." He pressed himself tightly against the porthole glass, his pupils shrinking to the size of pinpoints.

"Fatty... come and see." Old Li's voice trembled, filled with unprecedented shock, "The stars... are disappearing."

The fat man stumbled and staggered to the porthole.

The next second, he felt his breath being squeezed tightly by a large, cold hand.

At the edge of sight, in deep space, the once dazzling Milky Way was not obscured by any substantial clouds or fleets. Instead, it was "extinguishing" in vast swathes in an extremely eerie way!

It's as if an invisible, giant eraser is slowly and steadily wiping away the light of the stars on the canvas of the universe.

……

Earth. 700 meters underground in Kyoto, in the joint control room.

"Bang!"

The heavy blast-proof door was violently kicked open, and the chief academician of the National Astronomical Observatories even lost a shoe in the process. He stumbled into the hall, clutching several sheets of photographic paper that still smelled of developing solution.

"Professor Wang! Something terrible has happened! The electronic data is completely messed up, and these are the original film negatives developed using an optical telescope!"

The old academician, panting heavily, slammed the photographic paper hard onto the holographic sand table in front of Wang Mingyuan.

"What's all the noise about!" Wang Mingyuan, who was checking the blueprints of the starship with the engineering department, frowned and picked up the photographic papers with displeasure.

Old Li, who was holding a teacup nearby, also came over. After just one glance, Old Li's expression changed instantly.

The photographic paper shows a deep-space observation image of the edge of the solar system, on the outer edge of the Oort cloud.

But in the very center of the photo, there appears an extremely large, pure "black spot".

This dark spot is not a black hole, because its edge has no physical characteristics of accretion disks that distort light; nor is it a dark nebula, because its outline is too regular, so regular that it is eerie.

"What is this? What are the results of celestial ranging?" Wang Mingyuan suddenly raised his head, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the old academician.

"It cannot measure distance! Or rather, existing physical constants become invalid in its presence!"

The elderly academician was so anxious that he slapped his thigh repeatedly, spitting as he spoke. "It has no mass, no gravitational waves, but it has indeed blocked the starlight from thousands of light-years away! Moreover, this 'dark spot' is deforming..."

The old academician, with trembling hands, arranged the other two photographs in order on the table.

The first image shows an irregularly shaped oval black spot.

In the second image, the upper and lower edges of the black spot begin to show extremely sharp curves.

The third photo, taken just ten minutes ago, shows the massive dark spot, large enough to engulf millions of solar systems, suddenly split open with a narrow slit. From within the slit, an indescribable, grayish-white luster shines through.

The photographic paper in Wang Mingyuan's hand slipped to the ground with a "whoosh".

He felt as if his heart had been submerged in ice water, and an absurd yet incredibly real sense of fear gripped his entire body instantly.

That's not a celestial phenomenon at all.

That was an eye.

An eye that spans galaxies and comes from countless dimensions, slowly opening its eyes and coldly watching Earth... the Eye of the Abyss!

"Buzz—!"

At that very moment, the extremely piercing air raid siren did not sound in the main control room, but exploded directly in the depths of the minds of all mankind!

……

At the summit of Kunlun, the wind and snow suddenly stopped.

Above the solid, millennia-old ice rock, only a silent ripple spread through the space. Gu Qing's figure silently leaped out from the depths of the earth's core, landing lightly on the edge of the cliff of the Heavenly Palace on the Cloud Top.

He stood with his hands behind his back, slowly raising his head. His gaze pierced through the thick barrier of the Nine Provinces without any obstruction, pierced through the distant starry sky, and stared at the abyss eye that was slowly opening, looking straight ahead.

He could feel that gaze upon him.

Accompanying this was the sickening friction of rules that arose as that being "opened its eyes," pressing against the barrier of the multiverse.

Within his sea of ​​consciousness, the system, dormant for so long, suddenly erupted with a frantic, almost "crash-like" flashing. Pale golden data streams, like boiling water, flooded Gu Qing's mind:

[Red Alert!!!]

[An unresolved conceptual entity has been detected arriving!]

[Opponent's energy level: Unknown! Dimension: Unknown!]

[WARNING: The system's underlying logic has been subjected to a conceptual-level shock! Constants are being distorted...]

Despite the system's piercing alarm, Gu Qing didn't even blink.

The Nine Provinces Barrier above Mount Kunlun, the absolute barrier that could once instantly refine even tens of millions of tons of high-dimensional void entities, now creaked under the weight of this gaze. Large areas of the originally bluish-gray light screen were now covered in deathly gray spots.

This was not a physical impact.

This is the rule attached to that eye, unilaterally crushing and altering the physical constants of this low-dimensional universe. Even the space within three zhang around Gu Qing has begun to show subtle misalignments and collapses.

But Gu Qing remained standing quietly in place.

He didn't draw his sword, nor did he appear tense as if facing a formidable enemy. He simply raised his hand casually and brushed away a snowflake that had landed on his shoulder.

"boom--!"

With this seemingly casual movement, a vast and powerful force unique to the "Dao Lord" spread out from him like a stabilizing pillar!

Those distorted and misaligned spatial faults were forcibly and brutally flattened by his powerful and unreasonable personal will!

"So this is the 'master' hiding behind the scenes...?"

Gu Qing stood amidst the howling, swirling snow, gazing at the enormous, emotionless eye deep within the starry sky. Far from showing any fear of the system, his eyes gleamed with a ruthless fervor akin to that of a master hunter eyeing their prey.

"I've been waiting for you for so long."

"It's finally here."