Besieged, Yan stood at the center of the void.
He was not panicked.
His ice-blue pupils swept over Chu You, Lin Mo, over the Ye Shou squad, over every figure covered in wounds yet burning with fighting spirit.
The bloodstains and pallor lingering on his European features looked like shattered porcelain in the faint light of the void.
A flicker of confusion, like a tiny ripple, passed through the depths of his eyes—he could not understand how Chu You and the others had broken through layer after layer of spatial restrictions to appear precisely in this void realm where he and Lin Mo were dueling.
But in the next moment, that confusion was replaced by a deeper, icier understanding.
If he couldn’t figure it out, he stopped thinking about it.
Because the Death Realm itself was an unsolvable proposition.
A smile devoid of warmth curled at the corner of his mouth.
His voice, filtering through the cracks of his half-shattered mask, carried a metallic coldness, echoing clearly at the ears of everyone present.
“Angry? Resentful? You gathered everyone, thought you had a chance to turn things around?”
His gaze finally settled on Chu You, the look like an artist appraising a nearly finished piece—appreciative, but also possessive and unquestionable.
“Too bad. All your struggles happen within the very rules of the Death Realm.”
“To eliminate the obsessions that have festered in this land for a hundred years, to let the wandering souls find peace, to return this twisted space to normal or annihilate it completely…”
Yan slowly raised his newly formed, pale hand and pointed vaguely at the ground beneath him.
“The only way is to let history repeat itself—let the dead souls of the 103rd Division, led by Su Xiche, fulfill their final mission once more: detonate those big things deep underground, let the flames of nuclear fire cleanse this land again!”
“And once they detonate—”
His voice suddenly turned harsh, like a cold iron hammer slamming down.
“Every single one of you present in the Death Realm from the living world will be completely devoured by that real destruction. Body, soul, existence… turned to ash!”
He stared at Chu You, his expression behind the mask shifting into a demeanor of almost cruel amusement.
“But if you stop Su Xiche, stop this return… the obsessions of the Death Realm will not disperse. This space will remain frozen and twisted forever.”
“You will be trapped here forever, accompanied by endless ghosts and aberrant monsters, until your minds break and your bodies rot… another path to death.”
He took a tiny step forward, his posture resuming that elegant command over the situation, despite his tattered clothes.
“As for me…”
A thread of extremely faint gray-white light twined around Yan’s fingertip—the remnant of fate’s favor.
“I possess the Blossom of a Moment.”
“Death is nothing more than a brief rest for me.”
“A thousand times, ten thousand times… as long as this oracle remains unbroken, I will always return.”
In his ice-blue eyes, the aloofness and arrogance of an immortal—one who stands above all living things—was finally revealed without restraint.
“So no matter how you struggle, how much power you gather, how fiercely you ignite your fighting spirit…”
He stared at Chu You, uttering each word like a final verdict.
“You will never escape… your own already-destined fate. And you, Chu You…”
His voice dropped, carrying a spine-chilling fervor.
“You are destined to become that most perfect, most brilliant key. This grand destruction and sacrifice might… just be the final ceremony to unseal you.”
His words, like a cold key, unlocked the ultimate deadlock that everyone refused to face yet could not avoid—detonate and perish together, or don’t detonate and be imprisoned forever.
And he himself, with his immortal body, stood aloof beyond this deadlock.
Despair, like the deepest cold tide, seemed ready to drown the newly kindled will to fight.
But then….
“Is that so?”
A voice as clear and cold as a blade cutting through ice sliced through the stagnant air.
Chu You tightened her grip on the yao-forged tang dao, its peach-colored luster flowing along the blade.
She lifted her head.
In her peach-colored eyes, there was no fear, no wavering—only a frozen lake, beneath which boiled lava.
The corners of her mouth turned upward slightly.
It wasn’t a smile.
It was a kind of resolve, a disdain, a ferocity that, even facing certain doom, would tear a piece off her enemy!
“If we are destined to die…”
Her voice was not loud, but it reached everyone’s ears clearly, like the final silence before the battle drum is struck.
“Then before that…”
Chu You raised her sword, its tip gleaming with the peach-colored light of purification and white sacred flames, pointing directly at Yan’s brow.
“At the very least…”
“We won’t let you have it easy!”
As the last word fell, Chu You pushed off the ground, her form turning into a streak of peach light as she lunged forward.
Lin Mo’s blazing gold pupils flared massively at almost the same instant.
Gu Qiancheng’s fingertips shimmered with spatial ripples.
Xia Ji’s eyes swirled with bloody light.
The Ye Shou squad raised their weapons.
The battle aura of every fighter instantly locked onto Yan!
The final counterattack was about to erupt!
But then—
In that split second, when the killing intent saturated the air—
Zzzzz… zzz…
A faint but exceptionally clear crackle of electrical interference, like the most out-of-place interruption, sounded without warning!
It wasn’t coming from some communicator or from a specific direction.
The sound seemed to seep out from every corner of this void space, from the most fundamental rules that composed it!
The noise quickly stabilized, turning into a male voice—distorted by electromagnetic interference but exceptionally calm, exceptionally resolute, full of iron and blood and the weight of time.
“Zzz… comrades… fellow soldiers. I am Su Xiche, commander of the 103rd Division.”
Su Xiche?!
The moment that name appeared, everyone’s movements froze.
Chu You’s forward charge screeched to a halt.
The golden light in Lin Mo’s eyes solidified.
The pride on Yan’s face cracked for the first time, his blue pupils contracting sharply!
This voice… penetrated the spatial barrier?
And rang out directly in this void battlefield controlled by Yan?
No!
Not just here.
At almost the same instant…
In every corner of the vast, twisted Death Realm!
Scattered remnants of small units retreating through the gray mist abruptly stopped, looking up in bewilderment.
The main force, assembled and ready for their final tragic march toward the Binhai of their memories, all soldiers froze, staring at each other.
Squads and platoons that had stumbled into sudden aberrant swarms among the rubble, fingers paused on triggers as they instinctively turned their ears.
Whether in the Wilderness, the ruins, the caves, or the underground Great Wall passages… every surviving officer and soldier of the 103rd Division, every living person who had entered this place, and even some wandering, twisted aberrants—all seemed touched by an invisible radio wave, hearing the same voice at the same moment!
A blanket-wide broadcast!
Acting directly on the consciousness level of the entire Death Realm in an incomprehensible way!
In the void battlefield, Su Xiche’s voice continued, steady, clear, carrying the calm of shedding all burdens, and a deeper, unshakable resolve.
“Now, I’ll take a few minutes of your time. There are things that must be said clearly.”
“Just now… an old man, an incredible old man who seemed to have walked from the end of time, pierced through the past and future, pierced through the boundary of truth and falsehood… found me.”
In the crackle of static, one could almost imagine Su Xiche standing inside a dim underground Great Wall strongpoint, next to a thin, half-phantasmal old man, his gaze sweeping over the communication equipment that might have been before him, his expression solemn.
“He gave me a chance… a chance to confess to all surviving soldiers of the 103rd Division.”
For the next five minutes.
Su Xiche’s voice, at a pace neither fast nor slow but carrying the weight of a thousand mountains, echoed through the heavens and earth of the Death Realm.
He explained why the forward command suddenly lost contact, why internal communications had been cut off.
He pointed out who the real traitor was.
He confessed to the cruel and resolute final plan that those of them remaining in the forward command—the highest leadership—had made to protect the millions of civilians in Binhai from being overwhelmed by the terrifying main aberrant tide.
No stirring rhetoric, no embellishment—only cold, hard facts.
“…I know this isn’t fair to everyone.”
“There was no advance notice, no consultation. We kept our brothers in the dark and pushed them toward positions of certain sacrifice… There was no choice. Time didn’t wait, and the enemy didn’t wait.”
“I, Su Xiche, have failed you. Failed all my brothers.”
For the first time, his voice showed a hint of the slightest tremor, but it was quickly suppressed by a stronger force.
“Originally, I thought that when I got below, when I came into the next life… I would be a beast of burden for my brothers, to atone, to redeem.”
“But it seems now… plans can’t keep up with changes.”
At this point, Su Xiche’s tone suddenly became extremely serious, even carrying a desperate, unyielding sharpness.
“What I’m about to say might be beyond your understanding.”
“But please believe that this is the absolute truth, verified over and over.”
He began to reveal to all his listeners the matter of the future people.
And the land beneath the feet of the 103rd Division soldiers, covered in flames of war, was not a real historical world.
It was a false space, called the Death Realm, formed by the fixation of the dead and fragments of history!
The information hit like thunderclaps, exploding in the hearts of every 103rd Division soldier.
False?
Death Realm?
Future people?
Many soldiers wore expressions of confusion, shock, and even instinctive denial.
But Su Xiche’s voice, with its undeniable authority and honesty, forcibly forced these inconceivable concepts into everyone’s cognition.
In the underground Great Wall, at that strongpoint.
Su Xiche glanced at the thin old man beside him, whose form was growing fainter, as if about to dissipate at any moment.