Burning Abyss

Xie Chongming had been an adjudicator for ten years. No one knew how many lives he had taken.

Just as no one could guarantee that everyone he killed was an infected person contaminated by an alien species, rather than a perfectly healthy human.

Xie Chongming had always known that plenty of people doubted and cursed him, and even more wanted him dead.

But no matter how much people loathed Xie Chongming, they had to admit that with his "better to kill a thousand innocents than let one guilty person go" approach, he would never spare an infected person, even at the cost of his own life, let alone shelter an alien species.

Xie Chongming neither affirmed nor denied these judgments. He didn't care what people said. But he had never denied his ruthless, merciless attitude toward alien species, not until he met the boy who called himself "Shen Yuan."

He had initially thought the boy was nothing more than a lucky charm, someone who didn't matter. Because of a promise to an elder, and some feelings he couldn't quite put into words, he allowed the boy to stay in his room.

Later, after witnessing the boy emerge completely unscathed from an alien species' attack, Xie Chongming realized that the boy, who looked as pure as a blank sheet of paper, was far from simple.

He was drawn to the boy's purity and became lost in his mystery. Yet at the very end, he suddenly realized that their meeting had been an error that should never have happened in the first place.

At the edge of the Abyss, Xie Chongming was covered in blood and kneeling on one knee. He could only watch as the boy, who had always seemed delicate and fragile, walked step by step into the Abyss as if it were empty land.

Then the boy faced the Abyss and leaped down.

Black-red flames burst into life.

In a daze, Xie Chongming seemed to see the Abyss lift its eyes and cast him an indifferent glance.

He thought this was the end. He never imagined that the Abyss would look back, and the flames would consume it.

In the year 276 of the Star Calendar, on an evening that had been utterly ordinary, a meteorite quietly arrived beneath a sky blanketed with crimson clouds, bringing a terrifying transformation.

Humanity suffered heavy casualties in the cataclysm. To ensure the survival of their species, people were forced to abandon vast swaths of territory and retreat to the few remaining human bases, where they struggled to reproduce. Contaminated and mutated creatures slaughtered one another in a frenzy, shattering the landscape and creating a bottomless rift where the meteorite had fallen.

Using the satellites that remained, humanity observed the rift for a brief moment. The next instant, the rift and the alien species within it vanished from human sight.

Humanity named this mysterious and dangerous rift the Abyss, and called this new, chaotic era the Cataclysmic Age. For centuries, humanity struggled to survive in a world overrun by alien species...

Theme: Protect the stars from falling through judgment.