I Woke Up to Find the System with Me

Space groaned, like a sheet of paper crumpled by an invisible hand. On the cold, solid ground of the old central plaza, two souls were hurled back from the virtual abyss in a pitiful state. Blood stained the corner of Lin Xuan’s mouth as he knelt on one knee, the price of forcibly wrenching the laws of order into motion burning through him like magma. Chen Mo curled up nearby, his silver eyes dim, an icy chill lingering between his brows where a higher-dimensional will had scraped against him. The incomplete metal fragment they had accidentally brought back lay silent in his palm. Yet deep within its etched patterns, there flickered the faint light of a final accord, made at civilization’s twilight by two geniuses who had staked the fate of the world on it. Pillars of chaotic crystal rumbled deep within the planet’s crust, their greedy tendrils tracing the world’s ancient lifeblood toward the “Singularity of Primordial Possibility,” which could heal all things or destroy them all. And above it all, a pair of cold, hungry eyes from beyond the dimensions slowly opened. In this ruined world, time had become the most precious and fragile thing of all.