Chapter 620: Prelude to a New Era

"...... This world really has gone mad, hasn't it?"

Yang Yixie was snapped back by Sun Yu's words; on the screen to his right was a startling image of Yang Yichen confronting Luo Jinyou. A small robot was lurking in the grass, its Ying Guang Lu rune circuit hidden by a metal shell, looking like a piece of discarded tin trash.

Sun Yu was looking at his phone, drawing Yang Yixie's attention to it as well.

The internet has already been flooded with all kinds of news, but to obtain truly useful information, one still has to......

Yang Yixie couldn't bother with that much, and, like a ghost, led Sun Yu through the crowd, found an inconspicuous spot, leaned against a wall, and opened the player forum.

The player forum was even more completely maddening; anyone who had seen Tianmian City knew exactly what that massive thing on its head was.

But there was even more valuable intel inside; places where such a huge black shadow appeared were not limited to Shoudu, only that Shoudu's location was the most conspicuous, thus drawing the biggest discussion.

Floating in the sky was only Tianmian City, but elsewhere: desolate outskirts that no one visited, the once flat endless plains, the densely wooded deep mountains......

All were uninhabited places, yet city phantoms similar to Tianmian City also appeared.

Those cities flickered back and forth between phantom and reality, as if a single step could make them real.

"Is this right? The game turned into reality?"

"Even though I know the game world is about to collapse, and if I die in the game it's hard to escape death in reality, this still doesn't feel right, does it?"

"I guess the spatial jump before logging out last night refers to this? Jumping directly from the game into reality."

"Now that you mention it, the countdown for the spatial jump coincided exactly with our return time."

"Damn, could it be that because players returned, the NPCs also followed the network line into reality?"

"Stop naming every NPC; everyone knows this isn't a game at all, but a parallel world. I just want to know why Tianmian City appeared in reality! Could those monsters have also come into reality?"

The internal player debate was sharply polarized; some jumped straight into conspiracy theories, while others thought that if only survivors came over, this might be the only way the parallel world left a spark.

After all, they don't even understand why they were chosen for the game, let alone the reason the game invaded reality.

If it were just a single Tianmian City, it would be easy to explain; beneath Tianmian City an unknown device affecting both worlds was installed, and Ying Duo had previously bombarded that device, influencing the back-and-forth of players in both worlds.

But could that really be possible? Multiple cities in the game invading reality simultaneously— even if those Divine Oracles had exerted power, they couldn't achieve this scale.

To accomplish something like this, one would at least have to be a god...

Impossible; the rune constraints on transactions remain, and the one closest to a god, Yang Yixie, will use any means to sever the link between the two worlds.

Buzz—

It sounded like a boundary being broken; Yang Yixie subconsciously lifted his head, and Yang Yichen, who was about to let Luo Jinyou wait in the rear compartment, also raised his head.

The people around seemed oblivious, still excitedly chatting with each other; Yang Yixie tried to look outside more clearly, but that would be too conspicuous.

The phantom in the deep mountains solidified, and the city outline at the desert's edge ceased flashing, as if an invisible hand forcibly removed those originally illusory pieces from the wilderness puzzle and placed them into a war‑scarred city.

Especially the Tianmian City above Shoudu; the barrier that had constantly repelled and rejected it was finally torn open with a slit and forced inside.

The rain stopped.

When everyone's gaze was drawn to that massive shadow, the drizzle was paused, leaving only the fresh sprouts on the ground still moistened by rain.

The dark clouds seemed to have finally fulfilled their duty of blocking the sky, drifting away from both sides of the massive Floating City, allowing distant onlookers to see the Floating City's true form.

It was a mobile fortress built of artillery fire, and also a massive refugee camp.

When the faint light at the horizon barely illuminated this world, people in Shoudu beneath Tianmian City finally saw what those clearly dark protrusions at the base of Tianmian City actually were.

They were one thick Cannon Barrel after another, each bearing Engraving of intricate, ornate Runes.

It had originally been just an ordinary afternoon, yet it was also a dawn of rebirth for another group of people.

Most people didn't know what that massive thing actually was, but they could realize one point:

The new era has already arrived, accompanied by the "Noah's Ark" from the game world.

The Aberrant Species that originally surrounded the barrier outside Tianmian City, as Tianmian City fully merged into this world and was completely separated, those countless Aberrant Species vanished entirely.

After a brief silence, Tianmian City erupted with one scream after another and cheers.

Regardless, at least they were temporarily away from those terrifying monsters, gaining a moment of peace; after enduring the flames of war, such peace felt especially precious.

They survived.

Yet at the very top of Tianmian City, inside the Pale Throne Cathedral, it was so quiet it seemed entirely unrelated.

The chapel, originally built of white stone, had its twelve supporting stone pillars whose Engravings of Runes were all extinguished; they had once been filled with cold blue light, now only damaged, overloaded circuits remained.

A man in a pure white holy robe collapsed onto the floor, his hands limp at his sides—hands that clashed with his face.

His once youthful, tense hands had become dry and gaunt, covered in deep wrinkles, like those of a seventy‑ or eighty‑year‑old.

"Noah's Ark" successfully reached its destination, just as in the myth, the ark forged to resist disaster fulfilled its mission, and they paid a great price.

For example... the helmsman fell into an endless abyss, never able to reach shore.

Mu Linyuan raised his hand, tossing his long hair—turned brittle white from overusing energy—back behind his head, no longer obscuring his sight.

She indeed completed her mission, but what about him?

【Ying Duo: What did you do!!!】

After Tianmian City truly invaded this world and fully stabilized, all the system pop‑ups that had been interfered with burst out all at once.

The Ying Guang Lu pop‑ups were truly eye‑sore, making viewers feel disgust.