I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

Ninety days after the war, the first snow of the winter finally fell in the new Chang'an City.

Fine snowflakes drifted down onto the roadside trees, illuminating the scattered spirit lamps still flickering inside their windproof covers with a softer glow. The Donghai Defense Line Field Hospital, once crammed with wounded soldiers, had dismantled its temporary outer tents; the thick smoke that had lingered over the New Chang'an Heavy Industrial Zone was gradually returning to its normal color.

In a classroom of an ordinary primary school, the bell has just rung to signal the end of get out of class.

Behind the podium, the young teacher was grading homework. In the front row, a boy was hunched over his desk, drawing furiously on a white sheet of paper with a red marker. The drawing depicted a giant gas planet and an exaggerated sword-like gash that stretched across half of it.

The teacher walked over and gently tapped on the boy's desk.

"Teacher, when I grow up, I want to go to Kunlun and fight on Jupiter!" The boy looked up, his eyes sparkling.

The teacher didn't scold him; she simply reached out, gently folded the drawing paper, and placed it under the boy's Chinese textbook.

"War is for adults. Your task now is to study hard," the teacher said softly, patting the boy's head.

Human life is slowly but steadily reviving amidst the ruins.

However, in the underground of Kyoto, beyond the reach of ordinary people, the atmosphere in the joint control room was as heavy and tense as ever.

Wang Mingyuan frowned as he looked at the jade slip that had just appeared out of thin air in front of him.

He initially thought this would be the infrastructure blueprint for the next stage of the "Breaking Boundary Star Gate," but after probing with his divine sense, he discovered that the engineering plan was unexpectedly small and secretive.

It was a special creation named "Boundary Marker".

Although Wang Mingyuan could not understand the dimensional logic at the bottom of the boundary marker, he immediately understood the Dao Lord's intention: blindly pushing open the star gate before fully understanding the storm outside the gate would be tantamount to suicide.

Before the stargate is truly erected, Earth needs to throw a pebble outside the cosmic barrier and nail down its own coordinates.

To probe the stability of the outer ocean of rules, and to verify whether humanity truly possesses the qualification to actively locate other universes.

......

Underground at New Chang'an, in the first workshop of Interstellar Heavy Industry.

The roaring psionic array was tuned to an extremely precise frequency band.

In the center of this massive workshop, capable of forging the base of a hundred-meter-tall star gate, hundreds of advanced array technicians were gathered around a specially made array pattern lathe less than two meters tall.

On the lathe, a black and gold nail, only the length of an adult's arm, was quietly fixed in place.

The boundary marker is small in size, but the materials used in its forging made every worker involved feel a chill down their spine.

Its main body is made of crystallized lunar soil powder with a purity of up to 99%, forged from uncontaminated main cannon core fragments from the Jupiter shipwreck; its outer shell is covered with dark gold patterns of nine tripods imprinted using micro-carving technology.

What's most unsettling is the hollow core inside the boundary marker.

The experimenter wore an extremely cold-weather insulated suit that made it almost impossible to move, along with three layers of protective gloves. In his left hand, he held a spirit-sealing box that exuded a chilling aura, containing a tiny amount of sealed remnants of "divine blood rain."

Even after being stripped of its higher-dimensional will, that tiny bit of dark golden powder still caused the surrounding temperature to plummet and subtle distortions to appear in the air.

"Damn it, this thing is even harder to take care of than replacing the keel of a capital ship."

The lab technician cursed under his breath, his forehead covered in cold sweat. He held his breath and, with extremely slow and steady movements, poured the tiny bit of residue into the core cavity of the boundary marker. Then, he quickly grabbed the last screw engraved with array patterns and tightened it tightly.

With a soft "click," the cavity closed.

Everyone in the workshop let out a long sigh of relief.

This boundary marker did not remain on Earth, nor did it linger in New Chang'an for even a second longer. The instant the sealing was completed, it was placed in a top-level shielded box and secretly sent to the moon by a guard team composed of Nascent Soul stage sword cultivators.

The far side of the moon, the Guanghan base.

The spatial calibration work on the periphery of Zone 7 has been ongoing for five days.

Zhou Lan stared at the constantly fluctuating data on the screen, her eyes cold and stern. The boundary marker absolutely could not be placed on Earth; it held too much of humanity's vitality, and the consequences of any unknown high-dimensional pollution backlash would be unimaginable.

The final drop point was chosen at the edge of Zone Seven. The "shadow of rules" left in three-dimensional space by the desolate remnants of the broken chain served as a springboard.

......

At the edge of the seventh district, around the boundary marker deployment point, a hazy array had already been laid out.

This is the Yellow Springs Protection Team sent by the Underworld.

Zhao Feng didn't make a big show of it, only sending a force of fifty elite Yin soldiers. The Underworld hadn't fully recovered, and this trip wasn't for war, but to prevent the leakage of that one in ten thousand contamination.

The leading judge in red robes planted a tattered Yellow Springs Flag deep into the airless lunar soil. Even though there was no wind, the flag trembled slightly and eerily at that moment.

Everything is ready.

High atop the distant Kunlun Mountains, deep within the Heavenly Palace.

Gu Qing sat cross-legged, the dark gold vertical line between his brows appearing more subtle and profound than it had a month ago.

Although he did not personally visit the far side of the moon, every array pattern of that boundary marker was clearly reflected in his sea of ​​consciousness through his vast divine sense.

After initially digesting the core fragments of the dimension, Gu Qing had vaguely figured out the fluctuation patterns of those "weak rule layers".

After confirming that all external defenses were in place, Gu Qing simply raised his right hand slowly inside the Heavenly Palace Hall, joined his sword fingers together, and pointed at something in the air.

A wisp of extremely pure dimensional core power, carrying a trace of human karma fire and a trace of ashes of rules forcibly extracted from the broken chain remnants on the far side of the moon, ignored the distance in space and instantly pressed into the depths of that boundary marker on the far side of the moon!

The entire deployment process was conducted in an extremely quiet, discreet, and restrained manner.

Under the watchful eyes of Zhou Lan, the red-robed judge, and countless mechanical probes, the dark gold patterns on the surface of the black-gold nail floating in mid-air only flashed faintly.

Immediately afterwards, the space directly in front of the boundary marker, like a small stone thrown into a calm lake, gently sank inward.

"Whoosh."

The boundary marker vanished without a trace the next moment.

Inside the main control room in Kyoto, Wang Mingyuan stared intently at the large screen. All the conventional detection radars had stopped at the point where the boundary markers disappeared.

No data was transmitted back, and no visual feedback was provided. Humanity's proud cultivation technology and observation methods became utterly blind after being removed from the barrier of this three-dimensional universe.

Where did the boundary marker go? What does it look like outside the gate?

They knew nothing. They could only wait for news from Kunlun in a suffocating silence.

Because at this very moment, there is only one person on Earth who can "see" the world outside the door.

Deep within the Kunlun Heavenly Palace.

Gu Qing's soul had already followed that boundary marker, completely breaking free from the physical constraints of the solar system and extending into the vast and boundless multidimensional sea of ​​rules.

This is a magnificent painting that could drive any low-dimensional life form insane in an instant.

In Gu Qing's perception, there were no stars, no galaxies. Countless universes were like enormous bubbles floating on an absolutely dark sea.

His divine sense, aided by the penetrating power of the boundary markers, swiftly swept across the edges of these bubbles.

He "saw" that some of the world bubbles had turned a despairing, deathly gray, filled with viscous pollution, like graveyards completely drained by the harvesters.

He "saw" that some worlds were burning fiercely, and two enormous wills were clashing against each other within them;

He also "saw" some extremely weak, even primitive and desolate worlds that had not yet given birth to civilization;

And those vast realms that radiate blinding light and have frighteningly high levels of rules—those are places that should never be approached rashly, as touching them could easily attract the attention of new harvesters.

Gu Qing wasn't just aimlessly throwing dice; he was carefully selecting the first testing ground for Earth's civilization.

The target world's rule level must be lower than Earth's current pressure limit to ensure that it can forcibly withdraw when danger is encountered; it must not have harvesters monitoring it in real time; a civilization must exist inside it so that Earth can obtain intelligence and resources; at the same time, its extraordinary system should ideally have a certain degree of compatibility with Earth.

After passing through thousands of world bubbles, Gu Qing's soul locked onto a bubble that was gray with a faint golden light.

This is an ancient world of cultivation that is heading towards decline.

Through the perception of the boundary markers, Gu Qing saw some blurry silhouettes: collapsed and dilapidated city walls, streets and alleys filled with the burning of paper money at night and a deathly atmosphere, huge monsters in the mountains that prey on people, a small sect whose lineage was about to be cut off and whose disciples had been killed or injured, and the dragon aura that was about to be completely extinguished deep in the imperial city.

With spiritual energy depleted and the dynasty nearing its end, demons and monsters proliferated.

This world is full of chaos and danger, but these dangers are not beyond the control of Earth's cultivation civilization. It is practically a perfect first anchor point.

"You're the one."

With a thought, Gu Qing's boundary marker, which had been traversing the sea of ​​rules, instantly pierced through the weak barrier of that world.

The boundary marker silently pierced through the clouds and nailed straight into that world, into a depleted ley line node deep within an uninhabited mountain range.

No powerful being in the local world noticed this external fluctuation.

Only the surface of the stagnant water in an abandoned well in the mountains rippled very slightly. The moment the boundary marker landed, it activated its self-concealing array, silently absorbing the faint spiritual energy of the area to establish the initial "reverse coordinates" connecting to Earth.

At the summit of Kunlun, Gu Qing slowly opened his eyes.

He then used his divine sense to issue brief instructions to several core personnel.

"The boundary marker has been lowered."

"The rules of the target world are under control and there is no higher-dimensional being watching."

"Do not open the door for now."

"Begin establishing the first cross-border reconnaissance team, and complete the roster within thirty days."

"Exploration first."

In the main control room in Kyoto, Wang Mingyuan looked at the information that appeared in his mind and let out a long sigh.

Now that the objective has been set, what these executors need to do is make the most thorough preparations before setting foot on the unknown land.

……

And in that unknown universe, separated by countless dimensions.

In the depths of an uninhabited mountain range, in an ancient world where spiritual energy has been depleted.

Beside that abandoned well, an old locust tree that had long since withered and died sprouted a new, dark golden leaf overnight from its dead branches in the cold autumn wind.

In the distance, a young hunter dressed in tattered animal skins and carrying a rough wooden bow was traveling at night.

He seemed to sense something, stopped, and looked back at the silent, deep mountains with some confusion.

The mountain is still the same mountain, and the night is still the same night.

The young hunter tightened the animal hide around his body and continued walking out of the mountains.

He had no idea that just now, the gaze of another universe had crossed the endless void and landed on this world.