I am the Arcane Archer, and all my skills are self-created.

"Have you been here all this time?" Li Wu asked.

Ghost Sword glanced at him, his gaze lingering on him for a couple more seconds.

"You don't have a panel," Ghostblade said.

This is not a question.

"Yes," Li Wu replied.

A flicker of interest flashed in Ghost Sword's eyes.

He glanced at the crowd again and quickly identified who had the panel and who didn't.

How many people chose the second option?

"More than twenty," Li Wu said.

Ghost Sword frowned slightly.

"That's too little."

The moment those three words were uttered, everyone's expression changed.

"What do you mean?" Caesar pressed.

Ghost Swordsman didn't rush to answer.

He turned around, took two steps toward the fork in the road to the right, and then turned back and waved.

"Come with me."

"Where to?" the Iron-Blooded Emperor asked warily.

Although he chose the second option, it doesn't mean he trusts a stranger.

"Let's go to a safe place," Ghost Sword said. "There, I can explain things to you slowly."

Everyone looked at each other.

Li Wu took the lead and followed closely behind Hua Zitong.

The others hesitated for a moment, then followed suit.

The procession of over three hundred people followed Ghost Sword forward in a grand procession.

As Li Wu walked, he noticed a problem.

The passage has narrowed.

It started out being ten meters wide, then shrank to eight meters, then six meters, then five meters...

No, it's not that the passage has narrowed.

It is the channel that is excluding certain people.

Hua Yufengyin, who was in the middle of the line, suddenly stopped.

"What's wrong?" Hua Zitong turned to look at him.

Hua Yufengyin's face was extremely pale.

He reached out and touched an invisible wall in the void in front of him.

"I can't walk anymore," he said.

"What?" Hua Zitong walked back and reached out to touch it as well. Her hand passed right through the spot without any obstruction.

"You can't touch it?" Hua Yufeng stared at her hand.

"I can't touch it." Hua Zitong's heart sank.

She immediately realized what was happening.

Flower Language and Wind Whisper chose the first option and kept the panel.

I chose the second option, so I removed the panel.

"It's not just him." A voice as immovable as a mountain came from behind, "I can't get through either."

Steel Shield, Angelica, Pinellia, Winter Solstice—all those who chose the first option were blocked by an invisible wall.

They could see the passage ahead, and they could see Li Wu and Hua Zitong's backs as they continued walking forward, but they just couldn't take that step.

Caesar was also blocked.

His face was ashen, and he slammed his fist against the invisible wall, making a dull thud, but the wall did not budge.

"What's going on?!"

Ghost Sword stopped in his tracks ahead.

He looked back at the people who were blocked from view, his expression complex.

It's not sympathy, it's not mockery, it's more of a sense of helplessness.

"You are bound to the Origin Realm," Ghost Swordsman said.

"So what?" Caesar asked through gritted teeth.

"That's why you can't get here."

"Why?!"

Ghost Swordsman paused for a moment.

"Because beyond this point, it is no longer the Realm of Origin."

This statement stunned everyone.

"If you choose to retain the panel and bind yourself to the Origin Realm, then you will forever be a part of the Origin Realm."

"But this path leads to a space beyond the Realm of Origin. You are bound and cannot leave."

Caesar's face turned pale instantly.

"You mean...we made the wrong choice?"

Ghost Sword shook his head: "I didn't say right or wrong, but if you want to continue moving forward, you can only choose the second option."

"But we've already made our choices!" Caesar roared. "The options are gone!"

Ghost Swordsman did not respond.

The man who remained unmoved grew anxious: "Boss, what do we do? Should we go back?"

He glanced back; the transparent passageway he had come from was still there, but the light gate was closed.

"Can we go back?" Hua Zitong hurriedly asked Gui Jian.

"Those who have chosen to bind can go back," Ghost Swordsman said. "They are bound to the Origin Realm and can teleport back at any time through the panel."

Immovable Mountain tried it, and sure enough, a new option, "Return to the Realm of Origin," appeared on his panel.

"What about those who chose to leave?" Zhui Feng asked anxiously.

"You can't go back," Ghost Sword said. "Your connection with the Origin Realm has been severed."

Zhui Feng's face turned deathly pale.

"Can't go back? What about my account... my equipment..."

"They're all gone," Ghost Swordsman said decisively. "You're no longer a player in the Realm of Origin; you are yourself."

Li Wu listened from the side, her heart unmoved.

He was aware of this when he chose the second option.

But Hua Zitong's brows were furrowed tightly.

"Have you been waiting for us here all this time?" she asked Ghost Sword.

Ghost Sword nodded.

Why?

"Because you need to know the truth." Ghost Sword's gaze swept over everyone. "What you think you know about the Origin Realm is all insufficient."

"Then what is the truth?" Li Wu asked directly.

Ghost Sword looked at him, his gaze now more serious.

"Come with me, you'll see when you get there." He paused, then said to those who were being blocked, "You, go back first."

"Go back?" Caesar was unwilling.

Ghost Sword didn't explain further; he turned and continued walking forward.

Li Wu followed, along with Hua Zitong, Zhuifeng, Yefeng, Anying, the three people from the Heavenly Punishment Guild who chose the second option, and about twenty other scattered individuals who chose to leave.

Fewer than thirty people passed through the invisible wall and continued forward.

Behind them, more than 300 people who had chosen to bind themselves stood still, watching the backs of these fewer than 30 people walk further and further away.

Caesar's fists clenched so tightly they cracked.

"Lord Caesar, what should we do?" Ironwall asked from the side.

Caesar did not answer.

He stared at Li Wu's back until he could no longer see her.

Then he pressed "Return to the Realm of Origin" on the panel.

With a flash of white light, he disappeared into the transparent passage.

We followed Ghost Sword for about twenty more minutes.

No one spoke along the way; the atmosphere was so quiet it was almost oppressive.

The starry sky on both sides of the passage became denser and the starlight became brighter.

As Li Wu walked, he used his perception of the laws to explore the situation ahead.

He could sense that at the end of the passage was a huge energy field, and the laws governing that place were different from anywhere else he had ever been before.

It wasn't chaos; quite the opposite, it was a remarkably high sense of order.

It's as if someone meticulously arranged every rule there to make them work perfectly.

Finally, the passage came to an end.

Suddenly, everything became clear.

A platform suspended in the starry sky appeared before everyone.

The platform is very large, about the size of several football fields.

The platform's surface is semi-transparent, revealing a dense network of flowing laws within, resembling some kind of complex circuit board.

Thirty-six tall stone pillars stand along the edge of the platform, each engraved with a huge cryptic symbol.

Li Wu recognized them at a glance; they were thirty-six secret texts.

Blazing, rock, flowing, mist, condensation... all the way to the last one.

"We're here." Ghost Sword stopped at the entrance of the platform and stepped aside.

"Where is this place?" Zhui Feng asked cautiously.

"This is the true realm of the gods," Ghost Swordsman said. "Not the Tower of Despair, not those trials. Those are just entrance exams. This is the finish line."

As Li Wu stepped onto the platform, the threads of law beneath his feet glowed slightly in response to his presence.

"You've been here this long?"

"Yes." Ghost Sword walked to a stone pillar and sat down, his movements as casual as if he were back in his own home.

He touched the one-handed sword at his waist: "On the day I cleared the game, I chose to leave the Origin Realm, and that's how I ended up here."

Hua Zitong listened from the side, with countless questions in her mind.

"Who exactly are you?" she asked.

"Your name has never been on the leaderboard. Nobody knows where you came from, how you reached the maximum level, or how you entered the God Realm before everyone else."

Ghost Swordsman chuckled.

"My name is Gu Yuan," he said, revealing his real name.

"Gu Yuan?" Hua Zitong searched her mind for the name, but had no recollection of it in either her past or present life.

"It's normal that you don't recognize me," Gu Yuan said, "because I'm not one of your group of players."

"What do you mean?"

Gu Yuan pointed a finger at the platform beneath his feet:

"The Realm of Origin has been open for 21 years, right? A new server opens every year. The first year was server 1, the second year was server 2... You guys are server 21."

"right."

"I'm from Zone 0."