Die Ping sat on the rooftop, back against the cold wall, staring up at the stars. His drunken eyes blurred, and in the shimmer he seemed to see the worn, aging faces of his parents. The sight tore something open inside him, and tears streamed down his cheeks like a broken dam.
Two years. Two full years since he’d last gone home to see them.
And all of it because he’d fallen for a girl he should never have loved—Sylvia Rogers. He’d fought his way through Zhongzhou for three long years, finally meeting every impossible condition the Rogers family had set. But the moment he achieved it, word came back that Sylvia, studying abroad, had agreed to an engagement with the young master of the Lee family in Kyoto.
Die Ping fainted on the spot. When he woke, he locked himself inside the so‑called love nest he had built for her, shutting out the world for two days and two nights—no food, no water. On the third day he finally stumbled downstairs and bought armfuls of liquor. If he was going to drown, he wanted to drown deep.
He wiped the wet streaks from his face and let out a bitter laugh. Only now, it seemed, had he truly grown up. No wonder people said a man untouched by love was never really a man, even if he had been scraping through the marketplace for years.
“Tomorrow, I’m going home.” Die Ping took a long swig of beer, then hurled the can onto the concrete.
The distant stars flickered faintly, lighting the edges of his face. The heavens stretched outward without end, and the Milky Way turned slowly like a massive, ancient whirlpool—its countless lights shimmering with a cold, mysterious allure.
But tonight, at the edge of that endless river of stars, a black‑robed figure hovered in the void, eyes shining with sharp, divine light.
“What grand hand is this?” he muttered. “Someone set a stellar formation over this entire star system… even I couldn’t construct such a thing. I want to see what secret you’re hiding here.”
His fingers moved in swift arcs, sending streaks of flowing light shooting into the darkness.
A deep roar shattered the eternal stillness. The void trembled—no, the entire galaxy seemed to quiver.
Then torrents of energy surged from beyond the system, pouring toward the Milky Way like a maddened flood. The impact carved violent whirlpools in the empty dark.
“Not good. This is an Energy Sealing Grand Array.” The middle‑aged man’s brows knotted. “Whoever did this… they blocked cosmic energy from entering, cutting off every creature’s path of evolution. Vicious. Truly vicious.”
“Oh? A planet with intelligent life?” His divine sense swept across the blue sphere, and his brow furrowed even deeper. “Under this kind of energy assault, mutations will be brutal. The human race here… survival will be a cruel fight.”
He fell silent, thinking. After a long breath, he raised a hand. A pitch‑black sphere appeared in his palm. Just looking at it made his heart tighten with pain, yet he still gritted his teeth and flung it away. The black sphere streaked off toward the blue planet like a bolt of dark lightning, while the robed figure vanished into the star‑strewn void without a trace.
Down on the rooftop, Die Ping tilted his head back, eyes still roaming the heavens. Suddenly, far in the depths of the night sky, a star flared bright for an instant. A warm gust howled through the neighborhood a heartbeat later, making his clothes snap wildly.
Then the ground shuddered beneath him—sharp, abrupt, like an earthquake. In the complex below, car alarms exploded one after another.
“Don’t tell me it’s really an earthquake?” he muttered, frowning as he moved toward the stairs.
“What the—what is that?” He froze. Just as he pulled himself away from the railing, a blazing streak shot through the sky, coming straight toward him.
A meteor? he thought numbly. Just my luck—
The glowing streak slammed into him before the thought even finished. His vision went black. His consciousness sank.
“Detected low‑level intelligent lifeform. Conditions for inheritance… met. Beginning fusion… 1%… 2%… 100%. Fusion complete.”
“Beep… commencing information scan. Low‑level civilization electronic devices detected. Accessing network data…”
“Beep… matching civilization inheritance program located. Initiating integration.”
“Beep… 1%… 100%. Integration complete. Apocalypse Shelter Inheritance System awaiting activation.”
