145: Returning to the real world. (The Finale)

He felt a cold like never before.

That cold was not the seventy degrees below zero of Antarctica, but a deathly chill approaching absolute zero, the void of the universe.

The ship's sensors were firing errors frantically because they had never operated in such an environment. All physical parameters had changed.

Jiang Yuan struggled to calm his violently pounding heart.

He knew he had succeeded.

He had broken out.

With trembling hands, he unbuckled his seatbelt. At this moment, he didn't dare look ahead; a massive fear born of biological instinct gripped his heart.

But he had to look.

He had put in so much effort just for this one look.

"Turn the ship around."

Jiang Yuan's voice was as raspy as if he had swallowed a handful of sand.

"Let me see... what kind of hellhole we actually came out of."

The ship slowly completed a 180-degree turn in the vacuum.

Jiang Yuan looked up and gazed out the porthole.

The next second.

His pupils shrank to the size of pinheads, and the blood throughout his body seemed to freeze at that moment.

He saw it.

In the void before him.

There was no azure planet, no slowly rotating globe.

In that endless, cold, vast space filled with strange, glowing dust...

...suspended a... glass marble.

Yes, a glass marble.

It looked so exquisite, so fragile, and so... tiny.

It was only about ten meters in diameter.

The surface of the sphere was a transparent glass shell, which now had a large hole broken into it.

And inside that glass shell...

...were sealed miniature continents, miniature oceans, and miniature clouds.

Jiang Yuan could even see, beneath the hole, that white Antarctica which had just experienced a storm; it was as small as a moldy biscuit crumb.

That was Earth.

That was the world that carried the joys and sorrows of seven billion humans, the world they regarded as the center of the universe.

It was nothing more than... a small ecological landscape marble placed on a large laboratory table.

Jiang Yuan floated outside that damaged "Glass Earth," his mind experiencing a brief blankness.

But he had no time for shock.

Because as his gaze moved away from that tiny glass marble and looked around, a grander, more absurd, and more shocking reality crashed into his retinas like a tsunami.

This wasn't some dark laboratory at all.

This was a city.

A boundless hub city of the multiverse, suspended above a cosmic singularity.

Above his head was no longer a single starry sky, but countless colorful planar bubbles slowly rotating.

Beneath his feet was a Starry River Boulevard paved with pure photons, stretching to the end of his vision.

In this world, the past, the future, magic, technology, cultivation, superpowers... all the power systems humanity could and couldn't imagine coexisted perfectly, interwoven into a bizarre and magnificent tapestry.

Jiang Yuan saw a giant wearing nano-mecha, riding a flame dragon from Western mythology, weaving through the gaps between interstellar battleships.

Jiang Yuan saw a cultivator in flowing white robes, treading on a flying sword, using talismans in his hand to repair the energy core of an anti-gravity skyscraper.

Jiang Yuan saw a monk of mechanical ascension, chanting sutras for a captive star.

This was the real world.

And the place that imprisoned not only Earth but also countless similar "glass marble" civilizations was merely one part of the city's central plaza—the [Low-Dimensional Civilization Ecological Exhibition Area].

"Vroom—!!!"

Suddenly, the entire cosmic city seethed.

The originally noisy interstellar lanes instantly went still. The originally multicolored neon signs instantly went out.

Immediately after, countless giant holographic screens, tens of thousands of feet high, lit up at the same time throughout the city.

Whether suspended on the surfaces of buildings, projected into the sky, or even on the portholes of every battleship.

Billions of screens displayed the same image.

It was Jiang Yuan's face.

Not the tourist Jiang Yuan in a windbreaker, but a Jiang Yuan clad in an Imperial Star River robe, his eyes looking down on all things, seated upon the Supreme Throne.

It was the demeanor of one who ruled the myriad heavens and worlds, suppressing endless dimensions.

Below the screens, a line of golden characters condensed from the universal laws illuminated the entire cosmos:

[Welcome back, the Empire's Sole Ruler · Eternal Starlight Emperor] [Vacation Over]

"This..."

Jiang Yuan was stunned.

Just then, the voice of the system that had always accompanied him, "Zero," suddenly changed.

It was no longer that emotionless electronic synthesis, but a female voice full of majesty, reverence, and a hint of trembling.

In the void beside him, countless golden data streams converged, transforming into an exquisite woman wearing an interstellar marshal's uniform, with twelve wings of light on her back.

She knelt on one knee in the void before Jiang Yuan, deeply bowing her proud head.

"Your Majesty."

Zero's voice echoed in the depths of Jiang Yuan's soul.

"Your 'Earth: Mortal Experience Dungeon' has been cleared."

"Are you tired of playing with that glass marble?"

She looked up, her eyes flashing with fanatical light, pointing toward the infinitely brilliant starry universe.

"If you're done playing, then..."

"Please return to your place and continue to rule these myriad heavens and worlds."

(The End) (Thank you for watching.)