278: Chapter 280 Jiang Chen felt a sense of emptiness: How lonely it is to be invincible.

Inside the bridge of the luan niao starship, it was as quiet as a deep-sea tomb.

The once-bustling quantum communication channel was now reduced to a few scattered bursts of static, like the final sighs of ancient civilizations.

Outside the window, the galaxy remained resplendent, with brilliant starlight scattering across the deck like crushed diamonds, stretching Jiang Chen's silhouette long and thin.

The dimensional reduction strike that had just concluded was not merely a cleanup in the physical sense, but a transfer of power.

Those higher civilizations that once made the galaxy tremble were now either reduced to laborers in logistics hubs or had become "toys" locked away in museums.

Jiang Chen sat in the command chair, fiddling with the Law of Causality controller in his hands.

It was very quiet now.

Perhaps too quiet; the ancient runes that once flickered on its metallic surface had all extinguished.

"It's over."

Jiang Chen exhaled a long ring of smoke.

These three months had truly gone by too fast.

So fast that it felt like a lifetime ago.

He looked at the entire crate of spirit stones excavated from the Wasteland mines, their purity so high they were reflective, and then at the wreckage of alien warships piled in the corner of the warehouse, now used as spare batteries, and suddenly felt bored.

In the past, he would work himself to death for a few tens of thousands of energy points, staying up all night just to earn a small price difference.

And now?

With just a wave of his hand, the resources of half the Milky Way Galaxy would come rushing toward him like a tide.

"Boss, the official charter for our 'Galactic Federation' has been passed."

Zhao Gang had appeared behind him at some point. This former special forces king, while facing Jiang Chen now, held a gaze filled not only with fanaticism but also with a profound, almost bewildered awe.

"Those alien envoys are lining up outside the cabin, waiting for your 'audience'."

"They want to invite you to their home planet, saying they want to offer you... the kind of top-tier divine medicine that only appears in legends, capable of allowing one's mortal body to ascend to sainthood."

"The queue for presenting gifts stretches for a full one hundred thousand kilometers."

Jiang Chen listened to this without replying.

He simply stared at the endless darkness outside the window, his eyes devoid of the arrogance of one who held absolute power, revealing instead a strange sense of loneliness.

He suddenly missed that rented apartment.

He missed the version of himself who, to pay off a 500,000 debt, would click "feed" on his phone at three in the morning.

He missed that sensation—though poor, he could feel that "destiny was in his hands" with every step he took.

"Old Zhao."

Jiang Chen tossed the remote control in his hand into a wastebasket nearby. "Tell me, in a person's life, is there really such a moment of 'threshold collapse'?"

"Huh?"

Zhao Gang was stunned by the question and scratched his head. "Boss, what are you saying? I'm just a rough guy; I don't understand what a threshold is."

"It means..."

Jiang Chen gave a bitter smile. "When you've played everything you can play, won everything you can win, and even beaten gods into building blocks..."

"Life really becomes quite boring."

He stood up, walked to the porthole, and tapped lightly on the thick, blast-proof glass.

"Look, there."

He pointed to a void in front of him, where there was nothing.

It looked like ordinary darkness.

But on his system interface, a line of never-before-seen garbled text was flickering there—text that even the translator couldn't convert into human language.

That wasn't just garbled text.

It was a warning.

It was a call from the deeper reaches of the universe, or perhaps from a dimension higher than this dark forest.

"We thought we had won."

Jiang Chen turned his head to look at Academician Chen Shuyin, who was debugging the new generation of spatial stabilizers. "We thought we had unified the galaxy, conquered The Sweepers, and become the village chiefs of this universe."

"But in reality?"

"We had only just poked our heads out of the cage, just enough to attract the attention of a larger hunter."

Academician Chen Shuyin stopped her work.

She walked over and looked at the never-before-seen coordinate point on the screen. The thirst for exploration that originally belonged to a scientist was, at this moment, replaced by a deep fear.

She said softly, "You mean, behind that, there are even more advanced civilizations?"

"Not just civilizations."

Jiang Chen narrowed his eyes, his gaze becoming cold and sharp:

"That is—'The Keeper'."

"Or perhaps, the writers who created the rules of this cosmic game."

"They watch us dance here, watch us engage in internal strife, watch us fight until we're battered and bloody for those pitiful resources."

"They are waiting for us to show our heads."

"As soon as we show our heads, they reset us directly."

Jiang Chen clenched his fists. In that instant, what he felt was no longer the loneliness of invincibility, but a—new, thrilling, and spine-chilling challenge.

"So."

"The story of this volume should end here."

"Those so-called overlords, those so-called riches, that Galactic Federation—they were all just minor levels in this game."

He turned and strode toward the depths of the warship.

There, the last item he had excavated from the ruins was stored.

It was not some gold or treasure.

It was a letter.

A challenge written in human language, spanning seventy thousand years of time.

"Since they want to play..."

Jiang Chen stopped in front of the door leading to the depths of the warship's core, his silhouette appearing lonely yet arrogant under the lights.

A signature, despair-inducing evil smile hung on the corners of his mouth:

"Then I will..."

"Totally dismantle the firewall of this universe!"

"Make all the gods crawl down from their altars!"

"Let's see who exactly is the—in this game!"

"Ultimate Player!"

Pikachu seemed to sense its master's fighting spirit.

It jumped down from Jiang Chen's shoulder and shot a bolt of lightning into the unknown darkness, looking fiercely cute.

"Pika!!!"

(Screw you, gods!)

In the live broadcast room, the billions of netizens waiting for Jiang Chen to continue selling products couldn't see his expression, but through the low, rumbling sounds, they felt a power about to destroy everything awakening.

And right at the end of that endless void.

Beyond the crystal wall system that no one had ever touched, used by The Keeper to imprison all civilizations.

There was a pair of... eyes, composed entirely of logic, capable of piercing through all dimensional disguises.

They were staring fixedly at this tiny warship named luan niao starship, carrying a complex emotion similar to human "curiosity" and "apprehension."

It saw that young man.

That young man who should have been an ant, but had forcefully raised himself to become the fiercest beast in this forest.

"Interesting."

That voice skipped the laws of space and reverberated throughout the quantum entanglement field of the entire universe:

"This is the first time."

"An experimental subject has attempted to... dismantle the cage."

"Since that is the case."

"Then descend."

"Let that ignorant fool see..."

"What is true, absolute... divine power."