Help! I’m doomed—the sky’s falling on me!

The old man ran like a startled deer through dust and shadow, heart howling like a storm bell. Heaven’s my witness, he was just passing by.

In a blink, the old man was a speck on the horizon, wind at his heels. Makes sense—who dares watch a scene like this without a few hidden blades?

Ouyang saw the old man flee into the far hills, and panic bit like frost. He lunged after him, and the old man lifted a chunk of ancient timber, grinning like a fox in fog, and hurled it at Ouyang and Augustine—whoosh.

“Teacher… how ’bout we just cross the stars and slap that planet flat?” Augustine’s voice was a low ripple under thunder.

The thrown timber cut their pace like a river stone, and the storm took its chance—lightning rained down, a white net across the sky.

Humiliation! The word tasted like ash and iron.

Augustine saw his teacher’s face darken like a brewing squall and tried to drift away like smoke. Ouyang snagged him back with an iron grip.

“Kid, how can we quit so easily?” His tone was a mountain bell, cold and clear.

Their projections flared and leapt to that distant world again, light stepping across the void like frost on glass. This time Ouyang fixed his gaze on the old man like a hawk on prey.

Jie, a hidden adept in the mountain mist of the Empire of Lan. In an age where steel and circuits surged like a rising tide, adepts like him were rare as cranes in winter.

The elders stayed buried in snow-bound caves, and the young weren’t keen on quiet practice. For them, the empire’s star lanes were rivers of light, and starships were great whales across the night sea.

In times like these, espers sprouted like spring bamboo.

By a stray spark, war flared between hidden adepts and espers. The new adepts fell like leaves in a high wind, and seeing the saplings break, the old roots rose from deep earth.

The elder adepts were strong as old pines, but they had a flaw—they didn’t bend with the wind of the era.

Espers marched out robots like iron ants and piloted ten-meter mecha like steel giants, pounding the adepts back step by step, hammer on anvil.

Just as extinction loomed like a black tide and a new age opened like dawn, one man walked out. With a bronze-forged ancient sword on his back, he split their ace mecha with a single stroke, moonlight carving iron.

Jie, the hidden adept, ended an era like a bell that silences a hall.

Now, enshrined by the royal house of Lan, Jie rested on a mountain, clouds drifting like slow thoughts.

For some reason, he felt a wrong note humming under his skin, ever since a strange scene days ago. His soul kept ringing like a night watch drum—something terrifying had fixed its eyes on him.

Death didn’t scare Jie; at a hundred years, he was a late autumn leaf. But he couldn’t lay down the Empire of Lan, that river he’d guarded.

Days ago, he’d seen thunderclouds herd two men like hounds. They ran under a hunt of lightning, bolts chasing like wolves, and he felt the world itself push against them like a tide against a rock.

Had they grown so strong the world rejected them like a body rejecting a splinter?

Then again, if they were that strong, would a tossed log slow them like a wheel stuck in mud?

He shook his head, lost in mist. Since that accident, his heart was a restless bird; sleep tasted thin, food was dust, and doom felt like a storm brewing over the ridge.

Sleep-starved, dark circles pooled under his eyes like bruised moons, and he drifted into dreams.

He dreamed an absurd dream, a whisper like cold wind at his ear. The voice begged him to stop those two, never let them stay in this world, not for a breath.

The scene flipped like a banner. The Empire of Lan stood in ruins—smoke coiling like snakes, warfire licking the bones of cities. The land was rubble, and in the void above it, two living shapes stood like black pillars. Bat wings unfurled behind them, and curving horns crowned their heads.

Jie knew them at a glance—the two hunted by lightning, grinning like demons over a world of ash.

“Don’t… ever… let them… linger… in this world…” The whisper dragged like chains through fog.

He jolted awake, sweat slick on his brow like rain. Waking minds lose dreams like sand through fingers, yet he remembered this one clear as ice.

Right then, the sky grew heavy—clouds layered like slate, lightning stitched in white thread, wind rising like a blade.

Not good! The thought bit like frost.

He swept a look across the trees, and the two demon-like figures stood behind him like shadows.

Crack, crack. They popped their knuckles, eyes cold as river stones. They didn’t speak, but malice hung like smoke.

Run! The word flashed through him like a fox through brush.

He ran. With clouds boiling, lightning would fall like spears. What had they done to earn heaven’s wrath like this?

“Wait, you two—let’s talk…” Jie shouted, voice flung into the wind, but Ouyang and Augustine heard only foreign noise, a bird call they didn’t know.

Lightning fell; the quiet forest answered with drumrolls of thunder, trees trembling like reed flutes.

Jie couldn’t fathom why they kept chasing him like hawks hounding a hare. The storm locked onto them, and wherever they passed, lightning scythed the ground bald, grass turned to charcoal.

He knew—if he stopped and they caught him, the thunder would cook him black, a statue of ash.

He didn’t know how they survived last time, dancing under thunder, but he wasn’t like them. If lightning took him, he’d be a name carved on stone.

By pure strength, once he ran, their current projections were shadows compared to his stride. But ahead, a few people walked out of the trees like figures in mist, and someone cried “Grandfather,” a warm bell in the rain.

Jie’s heart dropped like a stone in a well. Sure enough, the two rushed toward his bloodlines, a storm drawn to tinder.

He knew—if he didn’t block them, once they reached his descendants, lightning would reap them like wheat. Between kin and self, Jie chose to stand as a wall and break.

Endless thunder poured down like a winter river…

“Teacher, we died again…” Augustine stared at a land of roaring magma, the ground boiling like a red sea, and let out a long sigh.

“Ouyang, I think… we’ve got something to show for it.” His eyes caught a flicker like a lamp in smoke.

Augustine turned toward Ouyang and saw one more figure in their world, a third shadow under a bruised sky.

“Heh…” Ouyang smiled like a cat, eyes slitting. The old man who’d once smashed them with a log—Ouyang had kept that thorn under his tongue. Now, on his own turf…

Under a sullen sky and a flowing river of magma, Jie froze like a deer in a lantern’s beam, age forgotten for a breath.

“You… you two…” His voice wavered like a reed in wind.

Jie didn’t know what this place was, but it clung to these two like scent to smoke. He tried to speak, and they rolled their wrists, working their fists like smiths, then laid into him like a storm on tin.

“Stop—another hit and someone’s going to die…” Jie’s plea was a dry leaf in a gale. His proud strength felt like a baby’s grip against iron.

Strangely, after a beating that should’ve left him broken like pottery, he felt no weakness, only the cool echo of blows fading like rain.

“Whew—that felt good!” Ouyang blew out a breath like steam. He’d been choking on frustration—by his power, crushing that world should’ve been a breeze, yet it kept tripping them like roots. At last he’d hauled a native out; how else to vent the smoke?

In short, two blacklisted trespassers had snatched a local off another world’s lawn like thieves in fog.

“Who are you two? I’m Jie, of the Empire of Lan—” His words cut off as Ouyang’s fist landed like a hammer.

“Old man? I don’t even know how many tens of thousands of years I’ve lived, and you call yourself old in front of me and my Teacher?” Ouyang’s voice rang like iron. Augustine burned too, not at the word, but at the memory of that edge world grinding them like grit. They came in peace, and the world shoved them like a rude tide.

As for language, once Jie’s soul got dragged here, meanings hooked like fish on a line.

When the storm passed in their knuckles, teacher and student let the wind out and stopped.

“Ahem. Old boy, first off, congrats—you’re the first customer of the Resting Ground of the Dead.” Ouyang’s tone was a drum covered in silk.

Resting Ground of the Dead? Jie’s heart trembled like a leaf. Under endless thunder, how could he still be alive? This place smelled like the underworld, cold and stark. But “first customer”—what did that mean, a shop in shadow?

After a short exchange, Jie learned this world was newly built, fresh clay on cosmic hands, and these two were its makers, gods in plain clothes.

“My lords, I’m Jie, the chief enshrined guardian of the Empire of Lan. May I—”

“Shut up.” Ouyang’s brows drew like storm lines. “I don’t care who you are, or about your world.” His truth was clean as a blade; he cared only about ferrying souls like boats across a night river.

“Old boy, here’s a job. Go back to your world. If you see any beings in soul-form, grab them and haul them here.” Let the local try; maybe the world wouldn’t push him like a tide against a stranger.

Sending Jie back was easy as drawing a line in wet sand. He belonged to that world. His soul held a faint thread back to it, a cobweb bridge. With that thread, opening a path was child’s play.

When Ouyang sent Jie’s soul back…

There was no “then.”

“Ahem. My bad. Too far. I misjudged the force.” Ouyang stared at the mirror, where a planet burst into a spray of shards, like a glass lamp under a boot. He swore he hadn’t meant it.

Augustine’s face creased like old parchment at the awkward wreck.

“Teacher, do we keep the experiment?” His voice was a tired ember.

“We keep going. Of course we keep going!” Ouyang’s resolve was a cliff against waves.

Time slid by like sand through an hourglass…

“Teacher, that makes one thousand three hundred forty-two worlds destroyed, and our one thousand three hundred forty-two failures.” Augustine counted like beads in a smoky shrine.

Ouyang covered his face like a curtain, then blinked out of sight, a spark in wind. In the next heartbeat, he stood in a dead, silent world, air still as a frozen lake.

His voice ripped the hush like a storm tearing canvas: “Ancient Turtle, get out here! Who swore this method would birth a second Nether? You old swindler—get out here!”