Mystery: When the Lost Homelanders Meet the Lost Homeland Call

Let's rewind to the time when Lynn caught the big fish and announced the existence of Leviathan to the world.

The astral plane is trembling.

This is not a metaphor. In this plane of pure symbolism and concept, a visible distortion has occurred, like the surface of water tossed with a pebble.

All seven gods sensed it.

The transparent barrier to the world was originally riddled with cracks, like a robe that had been worn for too long—torn but still barely covering the body. The seven gods were able to mend the cracks with their divine kingdoms.

But now, a crack has appeared in the barrier, and the crack is expanding outward in a slow but unstoppable manner.

To be precise, it's hard to call it a crack; it's an indescribable intermediate state between a barrier and something that isn't a barrier. If error itself weren't already a sequence name, all the gods would call this state "error"!

The enormous shadow located between the Earth and the Moon, slowly being "resolved" by the rules of the world, continues to spread.

Leviathan itself has not yet truly entered this world, but its shadow has already penetrated part of the barrier and is reflected in the astral plane. The shadow seeps in through the gaps in the world barrier, like ink overflowing from the mouth of a bottle, spreading along the gaps in the symbolic net, and wherever it passes, the concepts themselves begin to subtly shift.

Near the astral region close to that shadow, some previously stable symbols began to blur. For example, the symbol for "gravity" became inconsistent in size, and the edge of the symbol for "space" appeared blurry.

The symbolism of "water" underwent a dramatic change, transforming from representing tides and flow to representing stillness and condensation, and then back and forth, unable to remain stable.

The first to speak was the Lord of Storms. His voice boomed from the eternal lightning, carrying an impatient, ready-to-act rage:

"Who put this thing in here?"

His voice carried a denouncing tone, after all, it was obvious to anyone with eyes that Lynn and this thing were the same type of thing.

He intended to kill Lynn outright, but was stopped by the other gods.

Since the other gods intervened, it also means that they share some responsibility for the subsequent consequences caused by Lynn.

There was no response, but the Lord of Storms clearly didn't expect one either.

He was already mobilizing his authority; a torrent of lightning gathered, accelerating matter to near the speed of light, and projecting it toward the black mass that was still seeping in.

But when His lightning-like light rushed into Yin and Yang, it only stirred up ripples, like pebbles thrown into deep water, and then those ripples were silently swallowed up by the shadows.

Immediately afterwards, matter traveling at the speed of light shot out of the barrier in a bizarre manner.

It completely violates any momentum rules.

The Lord of Storms was confused. From the perspective of lightning, that thing didn't exist!

The second to speak was the goddess of night. Her voice was deep and calm, like a serenade:

"It didn't come in on its own. It was sent here."

"By whom?" The Eternal Sun spoke, its light expanding outward from His divine realm, forcibly "sunbathing" several nearby astral regions that had been shrouded in shadow back to their original state.

The golden CD player cast a shadow, but as the sunlight faded, the shadow quickly seeped back from deeper within. "Who has the ability to send something... this large into the barrier?"

"Perhaps it's not 'anyone'." The voice of the god of knowledge and wisdom emanated from the rows of brass bookshelves and the swirling text, as if the books themselves were speaking, "It's a natural mechanism. A kind of attraction."

"Speak like a human," the Lord of Storms urged.

"Just as water flows downhill," the god of knowledge and wisdom calmly replied, "this alien object—what that 'void' calls 'Leviathan'—has a nature that is incompatible with our world."

"When dealing with this mismatch, our world instinctively 'guides' it to a suitable location. It was guided to the space-time intersection between the Earth and the Moon, because this happens to be the most stable spacetime intersection within the barrier, suitable for long-term decoding."

"Decoding." The "voice" of the God of Steam and Machinery resounded from the divine realm. "You mean, our world is 'reading' this thing?"

"Using the word 'understand' isn't quite accurate," the god of knowledge and wisdom corrected. "It's more like putting a 'price tag' on it. The world needs to know what it is—its mass, volume, properties, relationships—before it can decide how to treat it."

"This process takes time. Before that, it's just an 'undefined' existence, like a piece of paper that hasn't been written on yet—it exists, but it doesn't function."

"When will it be 'defined'?" Eternal Sun asked. Its light held a wary glint, as if it were ready to burn away anything deemed dangerous at any moment.

The god of knowledge and wisdom paused briefly: "At the current calculation speed... it will take about two to three weeks."

A moment of silence fell over the astral plane. The shadow continued its slow infiltration, altering the shapes of nearby symbols in its own way. But the gods did not act rashly, for they had witnessed a crucial fact:

Leviathan did not exhibit aggression during its infiltration of the barrier. It did not attempt to tear the barrier apart, expand into any divine realm, or attempt to corrupt the structure of reality like the Outer Gods. It simply existed there, terrifyingly large and unsettlingly quiet, like a stranded iceberg slowly melting in a sea it did not belong to.

The Lord of Storms spoke up: "What about the smaller one?"

His gaze shot forth from the lightning, piercing through layers of star planes, and fell upon the sea near Tingen City. There, a ghostly green figure stood on a long-legged, box-like ship, clutching a shrunken shadow in its hand that looked like a fish.

"That... 'Lynn'." The Earth Mother uttered the name with a subtle tone, a mixture of wariness and curiosity, "It has some kind of connection with this 'life'."

"I saw the guide to the end." There was certainty in the God of War's voice, as certainty as the twilight of the end times. "Leviathan came with him. Or rather, Leviathan came for him."

Eternal Sun scrutinized the figure: "Its disguise is so realistic, just like a real Sequence Three..."

"Sequence Three is merely the 'manifestation' he chose," the God of Knowledge and Wisdom interjected. "His true level is beyond my comprehension. His existence is more like a hole, a 'gap.' External things enter our world through him, but he himself is not the true source."

"So you mean," the Storm Lord's voice deepened, "that our world now has a 'glitch' right next to Tingen City, and this glitch even took down a gang and built a dock guild?"

"His decision to establish the bank was indeed somewhat unexpected, and it seems to be driving social change," the God of Steam and Machinery commented with a hint of doubt. "But it doesn't pose a threat, at least not for now."

No further valuable information was offered, and the conversation between the deities quickly came to an end.

The Eternal Sun did not reply. He simply withdrew his scorching gaze and turned his attention back to the shadow that was slowly seeping in.

"So, we're just going to leave it like that?" The Lord of Storms broke the silence. "An undefined object with a mass more than ten times that of Jupiter is floating on our doorstep, and you're planning to hold an academic conference to discuss its nature?"

He clearly disapproved of the God of knowledge and wisdom, and was therefore mocking His decisions.

"We need more information," said the god of knowledge and wisdom. "Until it is fully solved, we cannot take any effective action against it. Rashly attacking something we don't understand will only bring it to life sooner."

"I suggest we wait," said the God of Steam and Machinery. "Observe, record, and wait. Leviathan hasn't shown any aggression yet, and that being named Lynn clearly intends to deal with it. He just sent a clone over, and it seems ready to take over. Let him do it; we reserve the right to intervene."

"Let one outsider deal with another outsider?" Eternal Sun was clearly not satisfied with this plan.

"When did we ever need a stranger?" The Lord of Storms and the Eternal Sun were at odds, but their personalities were quite similar.

"When needed," the Goddess of the Night replied, her tone calm yet carrying an undeniable certainty. "And you've tacitly approved of him; he's not a complete stranger."

The Lord of Storms fell silent. The gaze emanating from the lightning withdrew from Lynn's direction and returned to the slowly creeping shadow.

Between the Earth and the Moon, that enormous, fluctuating shadow, like a mass of flesh, is expanding at a speed imperceptible to the naked eye, like a flower slowly blooming in water.

Within the astral plane, seven gazes converged at a single point, then retreated back to their respective divine realms. A brief but intense consensus had been reached: leave it alone.

The astral plane returned to calm, with only that shadow slowly, silently, and irresistibly seeping into this sky that did not belong to it.