BOOOM!
A terrifying explosion rang out as the skyscraper collapsed, instantly pulverizing thousands of zombies beneath an avalanche of rubble.
Lucian watched the cloud of dust billow into the night sky, hanging suspended from the side of an adjacent building by a single thread of qi.
’Beijing, huh?’
He didn’t know the exact way yet. Though he remembered general geography, Beijing lay far to the north of Shanghai. The distance was likely over a five-hundred kilometers, and traversing an unknown, ruined wasteland on foot was a massive gamble without a route.
’But first, let’s get a map.’
His combat strength was higher than he had estimated, though part of that was due to the degraded intellect of the zombie.
The ordinary small fries couldn’t even touch the hem of his robes anymore.
So Lucian moved through the ruins.
He searched everywhere and it took three full days before he finally found a map, and even that only covered the greater Shanghai municipal region and the surrounding regions.
’Why do people not keep physical maps these days?!’ he complained internally.
Digital technology was convenient until the power grid died. With no electricity, every smartphone, tablet, and GPS unit he found in the offices was nothing more than a dead brick.
Yet during those three days of searching through dusty archives and abandoned emergency centers, he also managed to piece together scattered newspaper clippings, military logs, and diary entries.
The timeline of what had truly happened finally became clear.
And what he discovered did not please him at all.
***
Earth, 2049.
With rapid breakthroughs in advanced artificial intelligence, human civilization has been progressing at a faster pace than ever before.
Many of the chronic crises that had plagued humanity since the early 20th century—resource distribution, medical shortages, and climate management—were being rapidly solved.
Though the threat of the Great Rifts still loomed across the globe, official Explorers stood firmly on the frontlines, keeping the monster hordes contained behind fortified borders.
And then, one fateful afternoon, the world changed forever.
Every single human being on Earth—whether they lived in the Eastern or Western Hemisphere, bustling metropolises or isolated mountains, world leaders or common citizens—heard a voice inside their minds.
It spoke in every person’s native tongue, carrying absolute, unquestionable intent.
Everyone heard it at the exact same second:
"YOU HAVE SINNED! BE PREPARED FOR RETRIBUTION!"
People called it the Voice of God.
Following that global transmission, the peace of the world shattered overnight.
Radical religious movements erupted in every corner of the globe, each cult interpreting the terrifying words in their own apocalyptic way. Though direct violence was initially suppressed by military forces, the entire planet was thrown into deep paranoia and civil chaos.
A full year passed before societies began to calm down, accepting the event as an inexplicable anomaly caused by some powerful explorer.
Then, in 2050, something occurred that no ordinary human ever dreamed would happen in their lifetime.
Every single nation on Earth possessing nuclear arsenals launched their warheads at the exact same second. Over ten thousand atomic missiles streaked across the skies, targeting the exact same geographic coordinate regardless of political alliances or treaties.
They targeted the Great Arctic Rift.
Yet when the missiles converged, no mushroom cloud erupted. The Great Arctic Rift simply swallowed the entire global nuclear payload like a bottomless pit, vanishing the warheads without a trace.
And from the very next day onward... the plague began.
Starting from common civilians, millions of humans suddenly began collapsing, their flesh rotting as they transformed into rabid, mindless zombies.
As cities fell one after another across the continents, a terrifying rumor that had been suppressed by global authorities for decades resurfaced.
Gods had begun their judgment.
And...
Aliens had come to deliver it.
***
"Just where in the world is Earth headed?" Lucian muttered, rubbing his temples.
’There are definitely great things that happened and weren’t known.’
The parasitic curse he had cleansed from his body was undeniably connected to the Voice of God and the missiles swallowed by the Great Arctic Rift.
’For now, let’s focus on going to Beijing.’
Lucian looked down at the map. Tracing the lines north of the river, he spotted the Chongming military airfield, located roughly sixty to seventy kilometers away from central Shanghai.
Rather than running on foot for days, his best option was securing an aircraft and flying straight to the capital.
Ever since the introduction of seventh-generation technology, modern tactical aircraft no longer ran on refined petroleum; they were powered by condensed Energy Stones harvested directly from the Great Rifts. So as long as the frame was physically intact, Lucian knew he could pilot it.
After all, he held official certification to pilot an 8th-gen tactical combat aircraft from the World Explorer’s Academy.
Lucian moved out immediately. Using Nine Heavens Cloudstep, his silhouette blurred across the shattered highways, arriving at the perimeter of the military base in a little over an hour.
The runways were littered with wreckage, and zombies wanderers roamed everywhere. Several had clearly been low-ranked awakeners in life, but none were above C-Rank.
Lucian slipped past their blind spots, taking down a handful of zombies silently. Inside an open reinforced hangar, he found what he was looking for: an intact, advanced multi-role transport craft.
He climbed into the cockpit, flipped the main breaker, and slotted the energy core into the ignition drive.
THRUST!
The dual thrusters roared to life with a vibrating hum, blowing dust across the hangar deck as the landing gear lifted off the concrete.
– GRAA!
Dozens of zombies shrieked, sprinting from all directions toward the noise, but they were far too late.
SWISH!
The aircraft surged straight into the clouds, banking sharply toward the north.
A long time passed.
’It’s great that modern aircraft don’t get damaged easily.’
Continuing north, Lucian crossed the perimeter of Beijing, descending below the cloud deck. He immediately noticed a strange anomaly.
Unlike Shanghai’s swarming streets, there were almost no crowds of zombies lingering here. There were few wandering zombies.
As Lucian looked at the historic Forbidden City, his gaze locked onto the central courtyard of the Palace Museum.
Standing atop the grand stone stairs was a solitary man in tattered clothes, waving an arm up toward the sky as if directly calling the plane down to land.
Lucian narrowed his eyes. With the determination to die if it turned out to be a trap, he lowered the craft.
CLUCK!
The moment the cockpit hatch opened and Lucian stepped down onto the stones, a suffocating, terrifying pressure bore down on him from every direction. Dozens of hidden, intensely malicious presences lurked in the dark surrounding the courtyard, locking their bloodlust onto him.
Before Lucian could draw his sword, the man standing on the stairs casually raised a hand.
CRACKLE!
Thunder rumbled across the sky.
In an instant, the malicious pressure and the hidden gazes lurking in the shadows vanished completely, suppressed by raw power.
The man walked down the steps. Looking closely, Lucian felt his breath hitch—the left half of the man’s body was withered, gray, and rotting like a corpse, while the right half was pristine, healthy human flesh.
The man looked directly into Lucian’s eyes and spoke.
"I did not expect you to resurrect, my friend Lucian."
"How do you know me?" Alarm bells rang in Lucian’s head.
"Don’t tell me you don’t remember all that happening?"
The man’s eye showed genuine confusion, while the dead, crimson eye on his rotted side twitched with bloodlust.
"I guess this much should be fine, resurrecting may have consequences, let’s sit and talk Lucian, maybe it can help you remember."
With that said, the half-dead man turned and walked calmly into the palace hall.
Cautiously, Lucian followed behind him.
"Your face looks confused, so let me start from the beginning I guess," said the man who introduced himself as Ye Tianming.
"You said you know me?" Lucian asked, observing his strange aura.
"Yes, we were friends, I don’t know if you remember or not, but we went together in the great rift and one unfortunate day, you died there, but because of what you got in the rift, I was able resist this plague, and currently there are only six people in the world, well including you maybe seven."
"How did I die?" Lucian asked, staring intently at him.
Ye Tianming looked up into the shadowy rafters of the hall.
"Well... will you believe me if I say, some mages wanted to kidnap us and because of your sacrifice, Luther, I, Sara and Mari survived."
Lucian stared at him with a look of pure, utter disbelief.
Every single name—Luther, Mari—hit him like a hammer to the chest.
"Augh...!"
Ye Tianming suddenly groaned in agony, his hand shooting up to grip his skull. The black veins on his rotting left cheek pulsed violently, fighting against his human flesh as the curse began to eat him up rapidly.
"I-I guess saying such things will get us both killed readily, and I also can’t keep those things suppressed for a long time," Ye Tianming said, gritting his teeth.
"Just what happened?" Lucian demanded, stepping forward.
"Lucian do not look in my eyes now, this parasitic curse encourages killing humans, just follow me."
Ye Tianming pushed himself up, leading Lucian quickly through the back corridors into a reinforced inner vault. From there, a heavy hydraulic lift descended deep underground, opening into a massive, secret place.
Parked in the center was a heavily customized, long-range transport plane.
"Go to Egypt, to the Great Pyramid of Giza, Sara is there, she is one of the people immune to curses and the only one who still is likely human," Ye Tianming said.
A whirlwind of questions tore through Lucian’s mind.
How did this man know Luther and Mari? Who was Sara? Why would his future self sacrifice his life for them? And where did ’mages’ fit into the Great Rifts?
"Lucian soon night would arrived, and even I will feel difficult to suppress my instincts, just go, who would have known the preparations I made will be used by somebody?" Ye Tianming said with deep melancholy as he struck an emergency lever.
A deafening groan echoed as the massive blast roof high above began to slide open.
"You know if this is a prank, I will come here again and kill you."
"Hahaha! How can you kill a dead man again?"
Ye Tianming laughed weakly, though his skin was darkening by the second as thick, oily black veins spread across his remaining human eye.
"You had a talent as a pilot, anyways this is farewell, though you may not remember me, I will remember you my friend."
’My friend who died trying to save the world,’ Ye Tianming thought in silence, watching Lucian’s back.
Some things happened too late, and some things never happened.
Ye Tianming honestly wished he had died back then instead; at least then, there might have been a real chance for humanity to survive on Earth.
’I just hope you kill those damn fucking aliens!’
Lucian climbed into the cockpit, dropping into the pilot’s seat.
’Ye Tianming, just who the hell are you?’
The moment the transport cleared the airspace over Beijing, a horrifying, earth-shaking pressure erupted across the entire imperial district below.
In explorer’s terms it was way beyond S-Rank.
And if Lucian had to identify it in cultivation terms, the sheer density of the aura was somewhere beyond the Dharma Soul Realm, bordering on the threshold of the Core Formation Realm.
The entire ancient city of Beijing trembled under the unrestrained pressure of a single man.