Long Chen’s hand reached toward the portal, his fingers re centiters from the swirling energy that would take him into the Slaughter Line’s hidden vault. He could feel the pull of it, the promise of techniques and weapons that would make him stronger than he’d ever imagined.
Then ti stopped.
Not taphorically. Actually stopped.
Long Chen’s hand froze mid-reach, his body locked in place as if reality itself had pressed pause. Yan Shou’s form beca a statue mid-breath, the guardian’s eyes fixed on the portal without blinking. Even the spiritual formations covering the walls went still, their energy patterns suspended mid-pulse.
Everything was completely, utterly frozen.
Except Long Chen’s consciousness.
He could still think, still observe, still feel the panic rising in his chest as he tried to move and found his body completely unresponsive.
’What’s happening? System? Azazel?’
Neither answered. The connection to both felt distant, muted, as if sothing had wrapped reality in cotton and blocked all communication.
Then a notification flared into existence.
Not the usual green text of his system. This was different—blazing red, the color of an ergency alert, pulsing with urgency that made his frozen heart want to race.
[ERROR ERROR ERROR]
[CRITICAL PRIORITY OVERRIDE DETECTED]
[FORCEFUL EJECTION PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]
[HOST EJECTION TO REALITY IN 3... 2... 1...]
’Wait—what? No, I’m not—’
The portal disappeared. Yan Shou disappeared. The entire fortieth floor chamber dissolved around him like smoke caught in wind.
Then sothing massive slamd into Long Chen’s chest with the force of a battering ram.
The impact knocked the breath from his lungs, sent spiritual energy scattering through his ridians in chaotic patterns, and tore his consciousness away from the cultivation world with violent finality.
Aiden’s eyes snapped open with a gasp that hurt his ribs.
He was lying on his back on the floor of his flat, the familiar cracked ceiling staring down at him. The transition from standing in the Tower to sprawled on cold tile was so jarring that for several seconds his mind couldn’t process where he was or what had just happened.
’I’m ho. Back in London. But I didn’t choose to return. The system forced out.’
He tried to sit up and his entire body protested. Every muscle ached like he’d been beaten with clubs, his qi—no, his cultivation reserves felt scrambled and unstable from the forced ejection, and his head pounded with a headache that made thinking difficult.
But he forced himself upright anyway, using the wall for support.
"System," Aiden said, his voice coming out rough. "What the hell just happened? Why did you eject ? I was about to—"
He stopped mid-sentence.
The pressure hit him all at once.
Not spiritual pressure like what cultivators radiated. Not killing intent like Yan Shou had demonstrated. This was sothing else entirely, sothing that felt wrong on a fundantal level, pressing down on reality itself from sowhere above.
Aiden’s head snapped toward the window.
The sky was wrong.
During his ti in the cultivation world, it had been late afternoon in London. The sun should have been setting, painting everything in orange light. Instead, the sky outside his window was black—not the natural black of nightti, but an unnatural darkness that seed to absorb light rather than simply lacking it.
And through that darkness, red lightning flashed.
Not regular lightning that branched and split across clouds. This was different. Massive bolts of crimson energy that tore across the sky in straight lines, crisscrossing overhead like soone was drawing a grid pattern with blood-colored electricity.
The lightning didn’t make thunder. It made a sound that was sohow worse—a deep, resonant hum that vibrated through the air itself, through the walls of his flat, through his bones.
Aiden stared out the window, his mind struggling to process what he was seeing.
’This can’t be real. This has to be so kind of hallucination from the forced ejection. Or maybe I’m still in the cultivation world and this is—’
His thoughts cut off as mory surfaced.
Historical docuntation. School lessons from thirteen years ago. Mandatory education about the event that had changed humanity forever.
The First Awakening.
Sixty years ago, when mana first returned to Earth, the sky had turned black with red lightning. For three days straight, the heavens themselves had bled crimson while reality restructured itself to accommodate the return of supernatural energy.
People had thought it was the end of the world. Religious groups declared it divine judgnt. Scientists scrambled to explain atmospheric phenona that violated every known law of physics.
Then the rifts had appeared. Tears in space leading to dungeons filled with monsters. And humans had started awakening abilities, developing mana cores, becoming sothing more than they’d been.
The First Awakening had been recorded extensively. Every detail docunted, analyzed, taught in schools so future generations would understand what had happened.
And what Aiden was seeing outside his window right now matched those historical records perfectly.
Black sky. Red lightning. The oppressive pressure of reality itself changing.
"Isn’t this how the First Awakening happened," Aiden whispered, his voice barely audible.
His phone was on the desk where he’d left it before returning to the cultivation world. He grabbed it with hands that trembled slightly, his mind already racing ahead to what this might an.
He needed to call his parents. Make sure they were safe. Find out if this was happening everywhere or just London. Get answers about what the hell was going on.
But before he could unlock his phone, before he could even pull up his contacts, the system notifications flared.
[ERGENCY PLANETARY ANALYSIS COMPLETE]
[DETECTING HOST PLANET IN SECOND STAGE OF EVOLUTION]
[CLASSIFICATION: EARTH - STAGE 2 PLANET]
[STAGE 1 COMPLETION CONFIRD: 60 YEARS AGO]
[STAGE 2 INITIATION: NOW]
[INTERPLANETARY WAR PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]
Aiden’s breath caught. "War protocol? What—"
[PLANETARY CONFLICT DETECTED]
[AGGRESSOR PLANET: VALDRIS]
[CLASSIFICATION: STAGE 3 PLANET]
[TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCENT: SUPERIOR]
[MILITARY CAPABILITY: SUPERIOR]
[MANA INTEGRATION: COMPLETE]
[TI UNTIL DINSIONAL BARRIERS COLLAPSE: 72 HOURS]
A countdown appeared in Aiden’s vision, hovering in the corner like a death sentence.
[71:59:47... 71:59:46... 71:59:45...]
Three days. Seventy-two hours until whatever was holding those armies back failed and they could pour through the rifts into Earth.
"Valdris," Aiden whispered, staring at the na. "A Stage 3 planet. We’re Stage 2. They’re an entire evolutionary stage ahead of us?"
[CORRECT]
[STAGE 3 PLANETS POSSESS: Advanced mana weaponry, Widespread awakened population, Established cultivation systems, Dinsional travel capability]
[EARTH DISADVANTAGES: Limited awakened population (23%), Primitive mana integration, No unified planetary defense, Technological reliance over cultivation developnt]
[ESTIMATED COMBAT EFFECTIVENESS RATIO: 1 VALDRIS SOLDIER = 8.7 EARTH HUNTERS]
Aiden’s breath caught. "Second stage? What do you an second stage? Mana awakening was a one-ti event. Everyone knows that. It happened sixty years ago and then it was done."
[INCORRECT ASSUMPTION]
[PLANETARY EVOLUTION OCCURS IN STAGES]
[STAGE 1: MANA INTEGRATION - Atmospheric energy returns, rifts appear, human awakening begins]
[STAGE 2: INTERPLANETARY CONFLICT - Planet ets requirents for dinsional warfare]
[STAGE 3: COMPLETE MANA SATURATION - Planetary cultivation network established]
[EARTH STAGE 2 REQUIRENT FULFILLED]
"What requirent?" Aiden demanded, though part of him already suspected the answer wouldn’t be good.
[REQUIRENT: SUFFICIENT MANA DENSITY ACHIEVED]
[REQUIRENT: DINSIONAL BARRIER WEAKNESS DETECTED]
[REQUIRENT: STAGE 3 PLANET INITIATED INVASION PROTOCOL]
[RESULT: INTERPLANETARY WAR - MANDATORY]
The single word hung in Aiden’s vision, stark and terrible.
War.
Not conflict. Not tension. Not the small skirmishes and dungeon raids that had defined the past six decades.
War.
Actual, large-scale, civilization-threatening war.
Aiden’s mind reeled as he tried to understand what that ant. "War? What kind of war? Between who? Countries? Hunter guilds? What—"
His phone buzzed violently in his hand.
Not a call. An ergency broadcast notification. The kind that overrode all settings, that blared alerts even if your phone was on silent.
Aiden looked down at the screen.
ERGENCY ALERT - NATIONAL THREAT LEVEL: CATASTROPHIC
ALL CITIZENS ADVISED TO SEEK IMDIATE SHELTER
MULTIPLE SIMULTANEOUS DINSIONAL RIFTS DETECTED NATIONWIDE
WARNING: HOSTILE FORCES VISIBLE THROUGH BARRIERS
COUNTDOWN DETECTED: 72 HOURS UNTIL BARRIER COLLAPSE
PREPARE FOR INVASION
THIS IS NOT A DRILL
The ssage repeated three tis, then his phone buzzed again with incoming calls. His mum. His dad. ssages flooding in from numbers he didn’t recognize.
Aiden ignored them all and ran to the window, pressing his face against the glass to get a better view of the sky.
The red lightning was intensifying. Each flash ca faster now, the bolts growing thicker and brighter until the darkness itself seed to pulse with crimson light.
And between the lightning flashes, Aiden could see sothing else.
Rifts.
Not the small, controlled dungeon gates that appeared occasionally and were managed by hunter guilds. These were massive—tears in reality itself, so of them large enough to swallow buildings whole.
They were opening everywhere.
Aiden counted six from his window alone, and he could only see a small section of London. The rifts hung in the air like wounds in the fabric of space, their edges crackling with energy that made the air shimr and distort.
From the nearest rift—maybe a kiloter away, over the rooftops—sothing started erging.
It was too far to see clearly, but Aiden’s enhanced vision from his cultivation caught glimpses. Massive shapes, moving with purpose, pouring out of the tear in reality like water from a broken dam.
Not the random monsters that usually spawned from dungeon gates.
These moved in formation. Coordinated. Organized.
’An army,’ Aiden realized with growing horror. ’That’s an army erging from the rift.’
His phone buzzed again. This ti he looked.
A video call from his mum. He answered it imdiately.
His mother’s face appeared on screen, pale and frightened. She was in her car, the steering wheel visible in fra, and her voice ca through with static interference that hadn’t been there during previous calls.
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