Chapter 119 Returning to Reality and the Main World, Preparing for the Ultimate Invasion of the Abyss

Less than half a day after the three Creator Gods signed the agreement, Lin Ye had fully digested the fused energy from the Magic Origin, Interstellar Core, and the Immortal Cultivation Dao Fruit, returning to reality from the Immortal Cultivation World. The moment the inter-dimensional channel closed, a fist-sized black-gold fusion energy core appeared in his backpack; it was a byproduct that had automatically condensed during the absorption of the three supreme energies. After Ghost scanned it, he stated that its energy density was over six times that of star core steel alloy.

Lin Ye handed the fusion energy core to Ghost for research and headed straight to the Guardian Alliance headquarters. Sister Chen was waiting for him in the combat command center, where a wall-sized screen displayed real-time data from the national Abyss energy monitoring network. Six red hotspots were constantly refreshing, each corresponding to an area of abnormal Abyss energy fluctuations. Sister Chen got straight to the point, stating that the exact arrival time of the Lord of the Abyss still could not be precisely predicted, but the monitoring network's data was sufficient to determine that there was more than one arrival anchor—at least four were simultaneously injecting energy into the game's main world, the real world, the magic plane, and the Immortal Cultivation plane. This multi-point synchronous anchoring required tremendous energy, and the Abyss Council's recent frequent dispatch of scouts was to collect coordinate data for the final anchoring.

Lin Ye walked to the screen, observed the distribution of the red hotspots, and turned to inform Sister Chen of the agreement reached by the three Creator Gods: when the Abyss Council launched a full-scale invasion, he would have to defend the core areas of all three planes simultaneously, and the real-world defense line needed to be led by the Guardian Alliance. Sister Chen immediately agreed to mobilize all of the Alliance's assault teams to Level 1 combat readiness and synchronized the Abyss defense monitoring network's data interface with his studio's backend.

After leaving the Guardian Alliance headquarters, Lin Ye did not return to the studio but went straight to God's Domain. The moment the game pod closed, the holographic interface unfolded, and the plaza of the main city, Dawn City, was densely packed with players. The guild leaders from major global regions had been waiting for him in-game for half a day—the heads of major and medium-sized guilds from War Soul Hall, the Casual Player Alliance, and the Chinese Server were all online, and several top guilds from overseas regions that had previously signed protection fee agreements had also sent representatives. Messages in various languages were scrolling through the cross-server channel, all conveying the same core message: the Abyss version's World Boss, the Lord of the Abyss, was about to appear, and the entire server required unified command.

Lin Ye posted a screenshot of the agreement signed by the three Creator Gods to the server-wide channel, then initiated a server-wide voice chat in the center of the Dawn City plaza. The voice message was brief, the gist being that the Lord of the Abyss was no ordinary World Boss; its invasion would simultaneously affect the game and reality—Abyss-corrupted dungeons and main cities in the game would be directly mapped to geographical coordinates in the real world. If they couldn't hold them in the game, they certainly wouldn't be able to hold them in reality. From this moment on, all global guilds were unified under the Cross-Dimensional Anti-Abyss Alliance, with him serving as commander-in-chief, and the Alliance headquarters would be established on the third floor of the Unscrupulous Business Center.

The War Soul Hall leader was the first in the channel to pledge unconditional obedience. The dozen or so branches of the Casual Player Alliance followed closely behind. In the overseas regions, the newly appointed leader of the Korean Server's Goryeo War God Temple sent a message stating that since protection fees had already been paid, it wouldn't make sense not to follow the commander now. The new leader of the US Server's Freedom Alliance immediately expressed willingness to accept unified deployment. The CEO of Star Journey officially issued a gold server-wide announcement in-game, declaring that all cross-server firewalls would be temporarily suspended during the Abyss version, allowing global players to freely team up for cross-server combat, and all cross-dimensional materials dropped from Abyss Dungeons would be uniformly allocated by Lin Ye's studio for Alliance equipment upgrades.

That night, Ghost completed an extremely massive data integration. He cross-referenced the coordinates of the Abyss Rifts in the game with the latitude and longitude of the abnormal Abyss energy points in reality, finding that over 70% of the hundreds of existing Abyss Rift entrances in the game highly overlapped with the hotspot areas monitored by Sister Chen in reality, with minimal deviation. He projected the massive map, which superimposed the coordinate systems of both the game and reality, onto the main screen, and said to the dense light points on the screen: "The Abyss Council has never fought the two battlefields separately; they are fighting one battlefield. They broke through the barrier between the game and reality much earlier than we did."

Lin Ye stood in front of the main screen, reviewed the entire map from start to finish, and then issued the deployment—dividing the world into several war zones based on geographical location. The Abyss-corrupted dungeons and main cities in the game would be defended by the global guild coalition. The Abyss energy hotspot areas in reality would be defended by a joint force of the Guardian Alliance assault teams and local public security and armed police. The core areas of the three planes would be guarded by the Shadow Demon Dragon, Interstellar Behemoth, and Sword Venerable Qingming, each leading their own server's BOSS legion, while also serving as a cross-plane mobile force to reinforce whichever war zone could not hold out from the nearest plane channel. Su Qinghan and Fatty Wang were responsible for the unified scheduling of logistical supply lines, synchronizing the Abyss-resistant equipment produced in the game to the real-world defense line through the previously opened two-way resource chain. Qin Wentian was responsible for intelligence review and counter-espionage screening within the Alliance. Ghost was responsible for technical support, including the maintenance of cross-plane communication links, energy fluctuation early warning, and monitoring electronic infiltration by hostile forces.

Su Qinghan spent an entire night completing the troop deployment and equipment allocation tables for the major global war zones. Fatty Wang single-handedly handled the scheduling and shift roster for the BOSS legions across the three planes, muttering to himself about how "the Shadow Demon Dragon is on the night shift and I'm afraid it will doze off," "the Interstellar Behemoth has developed obsessive-compulsive disorder from mining," and "Sword Venerable Qingming doesn't need to sleep, but his sword needs daily maintenance." Qin Wentian, working with several overseas operation specialists, completed the first round of intelligence review within the Alliance within three days, simultaneously intercepting a batch of encrypted communications sent by the Abyss Council to remaining forces around the world. After Ghost cracked the encrypted communications, he discovered that the Abyss Council was recruiting human traitors on a global scale, promising them the status of "New World Administrator" after the Lord of the Abyss arrived. Ghost integrated all the evidence and implemented corresponding countermeasures.

By the fourth day of preparations, the total number of assault teams deployed by the Guardian Alliance in global defense zones exceeded two hundred. Logistics support and heavy equipment provided by local military forces arrived one after another. The BOSS legions of the three planes were all in place. The peak number of online players in the global guild coalition in the game exceeded 120 million on a single day.

Early on the fifth day, Sister Chen sent an encrypted message. The injection rate of Abyss energy by the Abyss Council globally had suddenly accelerated by nearly three times in the past six hours, and the energy synchronization rate of the four arrival anchors was already very close to 100%. The Lord of the Abyss could formally arrive at any moment.

The first thing Lin Ye did after receiving the message was not to hold a meeting, but to go to the kitchen downstairs to cook a bowl of instant noodles. During the few minutes waiting for the water to boil, he leaned against the stove and sent a message to Su Qinghan on his phone: "After this battle is over, the studio will have a three-day holiday. I'll take you and Fatty to Grandpa Zhang's hometown to eat cured meat." Su Qinghan replied quickly, saying okay, and then added that Qin Wentian had just reported a few more suspicious IPs and was working with Ghost to investigate.

After the instant noodles were ready, Lin Ye carried the bowl to the first-floor lobby of the studio and ate, slurping, while standing in front of the wall full of banners. The banner directly opposite was sent by Grandpa Zhang, with the five golden characters "Unscrupulous but Just" shining in the morning light. He finished the last bite of noodles, set the bowl on the coffee table, picked up his phone, opened the Cross-Dimensional Alliance Commander-in-Chief channel, and said only one sentence: "Everyone, check your equipment and defense deployment one last time. It's coming."