Cool, soft, and fragrant.
Chen Luo felt his face press against a pair of such things, and he instinctively opened his mouth and took a bite.
"Ow!"
With a startled cry, Chen Luo's head was thrown out of the warmth and crashed heavily onto the broken ground where lava was gushing.
The impact jolted Chen Luo awake. He opened his eyes and instinctively said,
"Unfamiliar ceiling... What the hell is this?!"
Chen Luo was lying on the lava, and in the sky he could see, the sun and moon had disappeared.
The sky was like a shattered mirror, with missing pieces everywhere.
Along the edges of the gaps, dense golden lightning bolts crisscrossed like needle and thread, attempting to repair these breaches.
But as soon as one was repaired, more gaps would be exposed.
Beyond the gaps, there was no longer the flowing, infinite illusionary colors, nor the dark red river of blood from the Dark Demon invasion.
Instead, there were patches of nothingness.
Dark, empty, pure void.
Just looking at the blackness beyond the gaps, such concepts naturally surfaced in the mind.
During the Dark Demon invasion, the entire Blue Star seemed to be isolated in some space. Now, this isolation had not only not disappeared but had become even more pronounced.
Gazing at the dense, void-filled gaps in the sky, Chen Luo couldn't shake the feeling that the world was far from saved.
Suddenly, a pair of soft, tender hands gently pulled Chen Luo out of the lava.
Long Niang said apologetically,
"Master, I'm so sorry. You were acting like that, and I couldn't help myself, so I pushed you out."
Chen Luo looked at Long Niang, utterly bewildered. But when he saw that she had transformed into her adult form,
He understood his hazy feelings from earlier.
"Ahem, it's fine, Violet. How long have I been asleep?"
Long Niang casually brushed away the lava sparks from Chen Luo's hair:
"Master, after you drove away that monster, it's been about ten minutes."
"After I stabilized the defenses in Great Yan, I came to find you."
Chen Luo wanted to nod, but found he couldn't even manage such a simple movement.
A feeling of emptiness, originating from his kidneys, swept through his entire body.
[System Skill "Future Self" has been deactivated. Player has entered a state of weakness.]
[This skill was released by the system. The cost of distorting space-time is borne by the system, but the impact of ultra-high strength must be borne by the player themselves.]
As if to answer Chen Luo's confusion, the system's prompt automatically popped up.
However, the information was quite substantial. Chen Luo remembered that before the battle, the Doomsday Game had indeed used a skill called "Future Self" to temporarily grant him the power of the Domain's limit.
As the thought arose, that feeling of near omnipotence once again enveloped his chest.
As if he had experienced millennia of bloody battles, Chen Luo suddenly possessed countless combat experiences and qi and blood power capable of overturning heaven and earth.
[In the "Future Self" state, the player will temporarily gain the power of a certain future possibility.]
The more he pondered the memories in his mind, the blurrier they became, but the feeling of power remained clear.
The Domain's limit was power sufficient to contend with a Grand Lord.
At this moment, he had only just stepped into the Domain; the road ahead was still long.
"System, how long will my weakened state last?"
As he asked, Chen Luo's heart gradually sank. This feeling of exhaustion, as if his kidneys had been hollowed out, made him uneasy.
Will I be drained dry?
[Player, just go home and sleep. Your body is monster-level. Don't worry, you won't be drained dry.]
His thoughts read, Chen Luo coughed twice as a cover.
It seemed that was indeed the case. When the battle ended, the fatigue had made him fall unconscious.
Now, only ten minutes had passed, and he was woken up by Long Niang's fragrance. If not for the lingering emptiness in his kidneys, Chen Luo would have thought he was fine.
At this moment, Chen Luo could finally move his neck. Just as the system said, his body was indeed monster-level.
If he hadn't dealt with an enemy of the Dark Demon's caliber, he probably would never have experienced the feeling of his kidneys being hollowed out.
Chen Luo slowly stood up with Long Niang's support, leaning on her and floating in mid-air together.
Looking down, the continent that was once called Australia was like glass shattered on the ground, broken into pieces.
And in the vast cracks, large amounts of lava were continuously gushing out, while at the broken edges of the continent, the seawater that had been pushed out began to pour back in.
This had truly become a literal hell on earth.
"Fortunately, it was Australia that was hit. If there are any survivors in Australia, they shouldn't protest to Great Yan, right?"
Chen Luo suddenly had this peculiar thought, but more than Australia, Chen Luo was more concerned about the problem in the sky:
"Didn't I repel the invaders? Why is the sky still like this?"
Both the system and Long Niang answered Chen Luo's question.
[Your world has been pulled into the middle layer of the void, and due to damage to its origin, it can no longer resist external erosion.]
"Master, this world is probably close to destruction. The monster's power has likely caused permanent damage to the world."
Chen Luo's heart leaped. The meaning of the system and Long Niang was very clear: his world was still doomed?
Chen Luo tried to ask the system for more information, but the system remained silent.
The information on the system panel was rapidly refreshing with meaningless runes, as if the system was also calculating something.
Seeing no response from the system, Chen Luo leaned on Long Niang and asked softly,
"Violet, do you know what the middle layer of the void is? And if the world's origin is damaged, is there any way to repair it?"
Long Niang was startled by the question, seeming to not understand why Chen Luo was asking, but after a moment of thought, her eyes suddenly lit up:
"The middle layer of the void! This is the middle layer of the void!"
"So, existences of the third tier can pull worlds into the depths of the void?"
Through Long Niang's explanation, Chen Luo understood what the middle layer of the void was, and why the sun, moon, and stars had all disappeared since the Dark Demon invasion.
The void appeared in different states in the eyes of different existences.
The Void River that Chen Luo saw when he inscribed the void was the higher layer of the void seen by the Abyssals.
That great river, without beginning or end, flowed with the information and energy of all worlds.
Those who wished to inscribe the void had to withstand the erosion of the Void River.
And upon successfully inscribing themselves in the Void River and opening up a domain, the Domain Master gained the qualification to explore the Void River preliminarily.
According to Violet, when the strong among Domain Masters further mastered their relationship with the void, they could enter the more advanced middle layer of the void.
As for the material world, some speculated it was independent of the void, while others speculated that the cosmic star river of the material world was the uppermost manifestation of the void.
And since the Dark Demon invasion began, it, located in the deep void, had forcibly pulled the Blue Star of the material realm directly into the middle layer of the void!
So it wasn't that the sun, moon, and stars had disappeared,
But that the Blue Star had been displaced!