Siheyuan: At the beginning, I can integrate everything!

The piercing red alarm echoed across the Northwest Space Base.

Zhang Huaimin stroked the cold hull of the "Pangu" ship, his eyes turning as sharp as a knife in that instant.

Sublight speed?

Are they coming for Earth?

"It seems that the falling of the Nine Dragons Coffin not only smashed open the Ancient Starry Sky Road."

"It even attracted those cosmic thieves hiding in the shadows."

Zhang Huaimin sneered, showing no fear whatsoever. Instead, the battle blood that had been dormant within him for so long began to boil faintly.

At this time.

In Beijing, thousands of miles away from the northwestern desert, lies Nanluoguxiang.

The early summer evenings were so hot and humid that it was hard to breathe.

In the Hongxing Courtyard, everything has changed.

Those neighbors from back then, the old ones are dead, and the young ones are old.

Many new tenants have moved into the compound, and the "beastly" atmosphere of the past is gone.

Intermediate People's Court.

Outside a dilapidated bungalow that reeks of urine and mold.

An old, 14-inch color television with a screen that occasionally flickers with static was placed on a wooden table with a missing leg.

This is the most valuable possession of the Jia family.

The television was broadcasting news that had shocked the world in the past few days.

"...A phantom image of nine dragons pulling a coffin appeared atop Mount Tai, with purple aura stretching three thousand miles eastward!"

"...my country's first domestically developed kilometer-class interstellar mothership, the 'Pangu,' will conduct its maiden flight test today at the Northwest Base!"

"...Comrade Zhang Huaimin, the chief science and technology advisor of our country and the creator of all these miracles, said..."

on the screen.

The camera cut to a close-up of Zhang Huaimin.

He was wearing a black trench coat, with sharp eyebrows and bright eyes.

That extremely handsome face, untouched by the passage of time, exuded an air of composure and dominance that seemed to look down upon the world.

in front of the TV.

An old woman sitting in a dilapidated wheelchair is staring intently at the screen.

Her head was full of white, sparse hair that clung to her scalp like tangled weeds.

The skin on his face was loose and sagging, covered with brown age spots and deep wrinkles.

His mouth was sunken, and all his teeth had long since fallen out.

Only in those cloudy, sunken eyes could one vaguely discern the shadow of the woman who was once known as the most beautiful widow in the courtyard.

Qin Huairu.

Time has not only taken away her beauty, but also drained her hard work.

After Banggeng became half-idiot, he was killed a few years later when he was crushed by a falling steel pipe while collecting scrap metal at a construction site.

Unable to bear the blow, and with her old illness recurring, Jia Zhangshi also died not long after.

Of the entire Jia family, only she and her two daughters remained, like duckweed struggling in a swamp.

"Mom, why are you still looking at him!"

A middle-aged woman walked out of the house, her face full of impatience and disgust.

It's Xiao Dang.

She held a tattered fan in her hand, fanning herself while glaring fiercely at Zhang Huaimin on the television.

"If he hadn't been so heartless back then, pushing our family to the brink of death, would my brother have ended up in juvenile detention? Would he have become mentally disabled?"

"Did our family really have to end up like this, not even having enough to eat?"

Huaihua also came out carrying a basin of dirty water and splashed it directly onto the muddy ground in the yard.

"Sister is right!"

Huaihua rolled her eyes, her tone full of resentment.

"You were blind back then!"

"They're always scheming to steal that big, clumsy guy Zhu's lunchbox!"

"You have such a cash cow and a living ancestor like Zhang Huaimin, yet you insist on stealing his house!"

The complaints of her two daughters were like poisoned knives, stabbing deeply into Qin Huairu's already wounded heart.

Qin Huairu did not retort.

Her hands, dry and withered like tree bark, gripped the armrests of the wheelchair tightly.

The nails were curled up and bleeding from the excessive force.

She watched the man on the television screen, the man who was surrounded by stars and worshipped by the whole world.

That boy is still as dazzling as when we first met him at eighteen!

"So... he wasn't an ordinary person after all..."

Qin Huairu's turbid tears finally broke through her dry eye sockets.

It fell down in a soft rustling sound, following the deep wrinkles.

Regret!

An overwhelming sense of remorse, powerful enough to devour the soul, instantly engulfed her!

in case.

If only she hadn't listened to Jia Zhangshi's lies when Zhang Dashan died.

If she could use her most skillful gentleness to genuinely care for that five-and-a-half-year-old orphan.

Even if it's just giving him a bowl of hot soup every day!

Given Zhang Huaimin's current character of repaying even the smallest kindness with boundless gratitude, and even bestowing upon his bodyguards god-level bulletproof vests, it's clear he's capable of doing so.

How glorious must Qin Huairu be now?!

She will definitely become the most noble woman in the world!

She can live in the super big villa next door.

They can eat delicacies every day and have countless servants to wait on them.

Her stalk will not die, and her two daughters will become the most noble young ladies!

but.

Everything is ruined.

All for a few honeycomb briquettes, for two side rooms.

She personally brought this deity who could take her to the highest heavens and the deepest earth.

They were forced into becoming mortal enemies!

"Heh...heh..."

From Qin Huairu's throat came an extremely unpleasant sound, like a broken bellows leaking air.

She was breathing heavily, her chest heaving violently.

Extreme regret and heartache triggered her already pre-existing heart condition.

She trembled as she struggled to raise her withered right hand.

Facing the television screen.

It weakly reached out towards that dazzling, godlike figure in the sky.

It was as if he wanted to grasp the unparalleled glory that was once within reach but which he had pushed away with his own hands before he died.

"I...I was wrong..."

"I'm so stupid... really..."

A trickle of black blood oozed from the corner of Qin Huairu's mouth.

Her cloudy eyes stared intently at Zhang Huaimin on the screen one last time.

The light in his eyes gradually dimmed, and finally dissipated completely.

That hand reaching out into the air.

In extreme resentment and endless regret, he slumped heavily and helplessly onto the armrest of his wheelchair.

It was once famous in Hongxing Courtyard.

The ultimate scheming woman who manipulates all the beasts in the courtyard, a master of disguise and bloodsucking.

And so, on this sweltering evening, she left with her ridiculous schemes and endless regret.

He breathed his last.

"Mom! What's wrong?"

"Help! Call an ambulance!"

Xiao Dang and Huaihua realized something was wrong and screamed in terror, causing chaos in the scene.

however.

No matter how much they cried and screamed, they could no longer wake up this once arrogant mother.

The old era of the compound came to a complete end at this moment, with the death of Qin Huairu.

but.

Just as chaos erupted in the Jia family courtyard.

Inside that old 14-inch television set.

The video of Zhang Huaimin speaking was playing when it suddenly emitted an extremely piercing "sizzling" sound.

Immediately afterwards, the signal was completely cut off.

The screen turned into a speckled mess of static.

But soon, the snowflakes disappeared.

Instead.

It's a live global broadcast that was urgently interrupted by space stations and ground radars from various countries!

on the screen.

It was a deep, dark cosmic sky, with Earth's near-Earth orbit as the backdrop.

It's located less than tens of thousands of kilometers from the atmosphere.

The once peaceful vacuum.

Sudden.

It was as if it had been violently torn apart to both sides by a pair of invisible, extremely terrifying giant hands!

A massive spatial rift, tens of thousands of kilometers long, radiating a blinding red light, seemingly capable of swallowing everything.

Without any warning.

It lies across the sky above the Earth!