103: Chapter 103 Azure Sky Domain

With an extremely violent tremor, the massive [Cloud Top Fortress] burst out as if breaking through the surface of a viscous, deep-sea quagmire!

Zhou An grabbed the edge of the control console to steady himself and immediately looked up at the panoramic viewport.

After passing through that outrageously thick energy barrier, the surroundings were still an endless expanse of black fog.

But this black fog was no longer as deathly silent and stagnant as before.

It was rushing forward at a terrifying speed of approximately 120 km/h!

"It's moving... Since there is wind speed and flow direction, it means this damn place has space for movement!"

He slammed the power throttle forward: "EVA, follow the direction of the black fog's flow, max out the engine power, and break through at full speed!"

The next three full days.

The fortress jolted violently in the turbulent airflow of the black fog, like a leaf ready to be torn to shreds at any moment.

Until noon on the third day.

"Boom——!!!"

[Cloud Top Fortress] finally broke through the last layer of ink-thick smog!

In an instant, the world suddenly opened up.

A brilliant, warm, and blindingly large golden sun leaped into Zhou An's sight without any warning.

The cloudless blue sky and the boundless white sea of clouds formed the most luxurious and beautiful picture scroll of the past half-month.

There was no nauseating stench, no massive swarms of monsters.

Golden sunlight poured through the large floor-to-ceiling viewports into the main control room, illuminating Zhou An's pale, exhausted face with a bright glow.

"We're out..."

Zhou An subconsciously raised his hand to block the long-lost, blinding sunlight.

Feeling the trace of warmth penetrating through his fingers, his chapped lips trembled slightly, and his nerves, which had been stretched to the limit, finally felt a hint of relief at having survived.

However, before he could fully enjoy this hard-won respite—

"Beep beep beep beep beep——!!!"

The regional communication system, which had been silent for a long time, erupted with a bombardment of notifications the moment it connected to the normal airspace signal, like a giant reservoir opening its floodgates!

And when he saw the timestamps on those notifications, Zhou An's pupils shrank to the size of pinpricks.

The time is wrong!

By his best estimation, he had spent less than a month inside the black fog. But according to the external system time, a full five months had already passed!

Could it be that after activating the "Demonic Contract", he had actually been asleep for several months?!

Before he could think it through, the system logs had already laid out the notifications of the past five months before his eyes:

Core system log update... Synchronizing missing information...

[Highest Warning! An extinction-level Abyssal Contamination has erupted in Area 997!]

[Regional Announcement]: The [Lone Wolves Alliance] has completely disbanded, and Alliance Leader Wu Feng has been confirmed to have mutated and fallen!

[Regional Announcement]: All members of the [Blood Blade] Guild have mutated, and Guild Leader Scar has been classified as a "High-Risk Contamination Source" and has been erased!

[Regional Announcement]: The [Four Seas Chamber of Commerce] base has been completely swallowed by a mutation tide, Guild Leader Qian Wanguan is missing, and the Chamber of Commerce exists in name only!

[Regional Announcement]: The [Sky Engine] Guild has officially annexed the remnants of [Hongyan Pavilion] and [God's Domain], completing the preliminary unification of Area 997!

[Succession Announcement!]

[It has been one full year since humanity descended into this world; the first stage, 'Cloud Sea Survival', has officially ended!]

[The second stage, 'Cangyun Airspace', has officially begun!]

Zhou An looked at these dense battle reports, feeling a sense of dread.

In these displaced five months, the sky of the entire Area 997 had been completely overturned! The situation of warlords and competing heroes that once existed was gone.

[First Stage Final Settlement Announced!]

Current number of survivors in the region: 214,501.

[Individual Foundation and Combat Power Leaderboard]:

TOP 1: City Lord Zhao Tianyu (Guild Leader of Tianqing Guild) —— Score: 2.03 billion.

TOP 2: Guild Leader Lin Xiaotian (Vice Guild Leader of Tianqing Guild) —— Score: 850 million.

TOP 3: Minister Su Hongye (Vice Guild Leader of Tianqing Guild) —— Score: 720 million.

[Special Announcement: Top-ranked City Lord Zhao Tianyu has received an additional [Divine Favor]!]

"Guild Leader Lin Xiaotian and Minister Su Hongye, the former top overlords, actually bowed their heads and became Vice Guild Leaders of Sky Engine?"

Zhou An frowned, quickly opened the full survivor list for the region, and his fingers slid rapidly across the virtual screen.

Sure enough.

The names of those former small and medium-sized guilds had all been erased.

The 210,000 people who survived now almost all had the uniform prefix [Sky Engine] in front of their names.

City Lord Zhao Tianyu not only survived the Abyssal catastrophe that nearly destroyed everything, but he even used that catastrophe to thoroughly reshuffle the deck, rounding up all dissenters and competitors, and integrating the entire Area 997!

But Zhou An didn't care at all about how strong City Lord Zhao Tianyu was, nor did he care that his title of "Number One in Combat Power" had long been removed.

His fingers trembled wildly on the virtual screen as he entered the names he cared about most into the teammate search bar.

If the Demonic Contract had really taken effect... If they had made it through those five months...

"Old Zhang... Muzi..."

[Search Successful: Zhang Ming, Lin Qing, Li Muzi]

[Status: Alive.]

Zhou An let out a long sigh of relief, his tense back slumping slightly, and his eyes felt uncontrollably sore. It's good that they are alive.

Afterwards, he took a deep breath, as if using all his remaining strength, and slowly typed those two characters into the search bar.

"Luo Ning."

The system cursor spun for a second.

[Search Successful: Luo Ning]

[Status: Alive.]

"Ha... Hahahaha!"

Looking at the clear "Alive" on the screen, Zhou An suddenly burst into laughter in the empty main control room. He laughed until his lungs burned, laughed until tears streamed down his face uncontrollably.

She survived.

He won.

Zhou An stared fixedly at the light screen, his gaze, which had been trembling slightly from wild joy, finally refocusing.

"Well done..."

However, before he could fully calm down, the system broadcast sounded again.

[Highest System Announcement: Second Stage loading complete!]

[The barrier between the hundred regions has shattered! Plane fusion has officially begun!]

[100 initial regions, including Area 997, have been successfully spliced and reorganized into a brand new super plane—'Cangyun Airspace'!]

"Hundred-region fusion?"

Zhou An's pupils shrank slightly; the first stage was just wandering in vehicles in the cloud sea, but the second stage actually forcibly spliced the space of one hundred regions into one airspace!

But this shock had only just begun.

[Multi-dimensional plane access detected, ecological diversity unlocked!]

[Non-human racial barriers have been lifted! Survivors of alien races such as Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, and Goblins have descended into the Cangyun Airspace simultaneously!]

[Competition rules upgraded: The era of racial hegemony has begun!]

"Non-human races? Elves? Orcs?"

Zhou An looked at the words popping up on the light screen.

He had always thought this survival game was just a disaster for Earth humans, but he hadn't expected that this was essentially an ultimate breeding ground where countless planes and countless races were forcibly kneaded together!

Immediately after, a shocking casualty settlement report for the hundred regions popped up like an obituary.

[Initial Fusion Settlement Report for Cangyun Airspace]:

Total number of regions participating in the fusion: 100.

Completely wiped-out regions: 68.

Note: These 68 regions failed to resist the Abyssal contamination, reaching 100% contamination, with no living organisms surviving; the original regions have turned into dead zones.

Area 997 data: Initial population of 5 million, after experiencing the Abyssal rainy season and the mutation tide, there are currently over 210,000 survivors.

Current total surviving biological count in 'Cangyun Airspace': approximately 3.12 million.

One hundred regions, which should have had tens of millions of lives, had 68% of their areas erased after just one stage of elimination! In Area 997, which started with 5 million people, not even a fraction of the original population survived.

In the entire merged new continent, all races combined only amounted to a little over 3 million living beings!

What a cruel battlefield this was.

Zhou An's mind stirred, and he immediately opened the [Cangyun Airspace Regional Public Chat Channel] which had just finished updating.

Sure enough, the UI interface of the channel had undergone earth-shaking changes.

The once simple names now had conspicuous guild and racial prefix identifiers, and the messages in the entire channel were scrolling frantically at a terrifying speed.

[Sky Engine - Human] Liu Dadao: "Holy crap! My radar just scanned a group of people with ears and tails! Are there actually Elves?! Alive!"

[Bonecrusher Tribe - Orc] Ulg: "Weak human vermin, get out of this sky island! This is now the territory of the great Orc clan!"

[Freedom - Human] Anonymous Survivor: "Help! We are surrounded by a fleet of Goblin warships! They want to steal our Tier 4 materials, help!"

[Darkwood - Night Elf] Selina: "The ominous aura is getting heavier... This fusion will only make death come faster."

Zhou An watched those posts in the channel quietly.

Although humanity had achieved unification in Area 997, in the face of the great integration of over 3 million alien beings, it obviously lost its original dominance instantly, and conflicts between various factions had already reached a fever pitch on the first day of the fusion.

"Racial hegemony..."

Zhou An closed the chat channel.

No matter how many gods fight or how many alien races compete for hegemony in this Cangyun Airspace, for him, the goal now was simple.