It started when a bloody rain was about to fall.

After learning about the graduation ceremony, Lin Ye quietly turned off his phone.

The instant the screen went out, he saw his face reflected in the black glass:

Pale as paper, the dark circles under his eyes are like indelible ink stains—marks left by long hours of staying up late, which can never be erased.

My cheekbones have become more prominent due to recent weight loss, resembling two lonely mountain peaks with a sunken cheek in between.

His dry lips had tiny cracks, some of which were bleeding—he hadn't bought lip balm for three days.

A dull ache came from my left leg, like a rusty nail slowly rotating in the bone.

The pain wasn't intense, but it was persistent, like some kind of background noise, always there, always a reminder.

Lin Ye struggled to get up.

Unable to bear weight on his injured left leg, he could only rely on his right leg and the wall for support as he limped to the kitchen area, which was less than three square meters.

Then, I turned on the gas stove, and a blue flame shot up with a "whoosh," emitting a steady hissing sound.

When the water in the pot boiled, Lin Ye tore open the last half packet of instant noodles.

The cheap, salty aroma of the seasoning powder permeated the air, mixing with the damp, musty smell and the dusty smell of old books in the room, creating a unique, unnamed odor formula characteristic of life at the bottom of society.

This recipe contains hunger, exhaustion, despair, and a stubborn will to survive that refuses to die.

Outside the window, the ceremonial cannons fired again.

Twenty-one shots—that's a ceremony prepared for top graduates, the highest honor the school can bestow.

The cheers came like a tidal wave, then gradually subsided.

Like the ocean tide forever crashing against a shore that has nothing to do with him—Lin Ye can hear the sound, but can never reach the source of that sound.

My legs hurt a lot.

My heart feels empty.

But life goes on. Tomorrow's rent still needs to be paid, the medical bills the day after tomorrow still need to be raised, and the first repayment date for next month's student loan hangs over my head like the Sword of Damocles.

Lin Ye picked up the bowl.

The cheap ceramic burned his fingertips until they turned red, but he couldn't bear to let go—because this temperature was the only thing that made Lin Ye feel "alive" at that moment.

The rising steam blurred his vision and also obscured the darkening sky outside the window.

Until the blood rain fell.

Until the end times begin.

Until that turmoil and its fall...

---

8:40 AM.

Sunlight streamed obliquely into the room.

The glass of the doors and windows was covered with a layer of dust from last night, which made the light appear fuzzy, warm, and pale when it shone through, like diluted amber.

The amber flowed slowly through the air, turning every suspended dust particle golden, causing them to swirl slowly in the beam of light, as if dancing an eternal, unseen dance.

The light fell on the old wooden floor, illuminating several bright squares that were covered in fine dust.

The edges of the squares were so clear, as if drawn with a ruler, that they separated shadow and light into two completely different worlds—one belonging to the past, the other to the future; one to death, the other to rebirth.

The room was very quiet.

You can hear the faint hum of the streets in the distance—that's the heartbeat of the city, a daily symphony played by millions of people.

The sound, filtered by distance, became blurred and distant, like a memory of "ordinariness" from another world.

Lin Ye, standing in this light, temporarily sealed away his memories of Ye Qingrou from his university days.

Lock it away in a soft corner of your heart—a corner that Lin Ye deliberately left out, a corner he had prepared in his previous life, specifically to store those things that cannot be touched, yet cannot be forgotten.

That was the forbidden zone of Lin Ye's soul, the proof that he was alive, and also his wound that could never be healed.

Now is not the time to dwell on the past.

There are more pressing and practical things to do—

Test his spatial abilities after rebirth and formulate a six-month preparation plan that is detailed down to each day.

Lin Ye walked into the cramped kitchen and reached out to touch the old refrigerator that was making a buzzing noise and had a poor cooling effect.

"receive."

A thought arose.

Without sound, without light and shadow effects, without spatial fluctuations—the entire refrigerator, half the height of a person, vanished instantly, as if it had been "erased" directly from reality by an invisible hand.

In Lin Ye's consciousness, the refrigerator appeared in a fixed corner of the storage space.

It floats silently in the absolute stillness, in the void devoid of direction, like a specimen forgotten by time.

The flow rate of time within the space is zero.

The sound of the refrigerator compressor was completely shut off, and the power supply was cut off—more precisely, due to the standstill of time, all physical processes stopped.

The current solidifies in the wires, the refrigerant remains still in the pipes, and even the temperature inside the refrigerator is locked at the moment it is put away.

"put."

The refrigerator was returned to its original position intact, the plug was reconnected to the wall socket, and the compressor continued to hum and run, as if it had never been moved.

Even the supermarket discount stickers on it are still in their original positions—those stickers were put on three months ago, and although the edges are curled up, they are still stubbornly stuck there.

Lin Ye tested it more than ten times in a row.

From refrigerators to microwaves, from water glasses to entire desks, every storage and release is precise, with a response time of no more than 0.1 seconds, and the items remain perfectly preserved.

Even the temperature of the water in the cup hadn't changed at all—it had just been boiled that morning and was still scalding hot, as if time had never passed over it.

"Volume..."

Lin Ye focused his mind and sensed it.

Consciousness sank into that void, beginning to meticulously measure the boundaries of space.

In his previous life, until the moment of his death, Lin Ye's storage space was only ninety-three cubic meters—that was after he spent four years painstakingly building it up with all sorts of rare and precious materials.

Moreover, the structure is unstable, like a dilapidated building that may collapse at any time. Every time you store items, you have to be very careful, for fear that too much vibration will cause it to collapse.

And now-

One hundred cubic meters, three hundred, five hundred, eight hundred...

It eventually stabilized at around 1,200 cubic meters!

It's nearly thirteen times larger than in my previous life! Moreover, the spatial structure is incredibly stable, and the fragile feeling of walking on thin ice and the possibility of collapse at any moment that I had in my previous life has completely disappeared.

The barriers of the space have a dark gray metallic texture, with complex and ancient black and gray patterns flowing on the surface, which are the same as those of the mysterious fragments.

Those veins, like those of a living creature, pulsate, flow, and change constantly. Each pulsation releases imperceptible ripples in all directions, further reinforcing the boundaries of the space.

"It's the effect of the fragments."

Lin Ye then turned his gaze to the dark gray fragment in the center of the space.

It hovered in the center of the void, like a miniature black hole, devouring all light that approached it.

But upon closer inspection, the blackness is not pure nothingness—on its surface flows a dull luster, like some kind of liquefied metal, or like solidified flame.

The luster had a rhythmic quality, like breathing.

When it expands, the dim light spreads outwards like ripples, touching the barriers of space; when it contracts, the light converges inwards, as if digesting some unknown energy from the depths of the void.

Each pulse releases a barely perceptible "ripple" into the surrounding space.

Wherever those ripples passed, the spatial boundaries gently expanded outwards, and the structure became more stable and dense.

Moreover, Lin Ye also sensed several new abilities that he had just unlocked in his previous life, or that he had not yet unlocked, or that were only in their nascent stages.