Yang Zicang stood next to the toilet.

It seemed like someone under confinement had taken to studying the only toilet in his possession.

In fact, his mental perception had already nearly mapped out the passage structure connecting this flush toilet to the septic tank’s plumbing system, all within his Spirit World.

Amidst the spiritual comfort of rustling trees, it was as if something long-hidden had surfaced, offering one complete release and the chance to flush away one’s discomfort.

“If this keeps up, my Spirit World is going to be ruined.”

Yang Zicang pressed the flush button again.

Swoosh!

Under his “Right of Mental Manifestation,” Silent Night operated like the mental tendrils of his own consciousness, constantly exchanging information. It spread through the entire septic tank and finally detected some minute cracks.

The mental tendrils squeezed through the fissures, and gradually, the outside world began to appear.

[Such a powerful Right of Mental Manifestation! It’s truly strong!]

His mental energy constantly extended across the barren, wasteland-like ground. When it touched the occasionally quivering, desolate terrain, it felt like touching some stagnant region utterly devoid of information.

[The great Right of Mental Manifestation strolls through the empty backyard of the void.]

Suddenly, his senses were abruptly pulled away by some eerie force, racing across dozens or even hundreds of miles in an instant, nearly plunging headlong into the depths of grey mist.

Trapped within the cube, Yang Zicang urgently tried to retract his mental energy, but it was far too late to react.

The pattern’s mental voice came to an abrupt end!

A grand world appeared in his perception. Yet it was so blurry, like a painting soaked in water stains—hazy and formless, yet full of beauty and regret. It was still the same desolate land as before, but now tinged with a strange sensation.

A bizarre black figure, shaped like a human, appeared in his perception. Its face was like a mask made of metal and stone, overlooking the earth as if gazing upon Yang Zicang himself.

Then Yang Zicang found himself standing on the ground.

“I’m… here?”

The figure before him, covered in disheveled feathers like a Black Stork standing upright, lifted its hollow eyes as Yang Zicang raised his head.

{This is my, Spirit World. What are you doing?}

Yang Zicang turned his manifested spirit body around, and sure enough, he couldn’t see the Lost Illusion Company anymore.

He awkwardly said to the strong one who had once saved him:

“Sir, it’s good to see you again. I got involved in making the Demon English Hall, and since I’m about to leave the Dream Company to participate in the city’s ranking battle, I was locked up for five days… So I’m trying to find a way to get out early. I didn’t expect to meet you, Senior.”

Not knowing how to address the one who had saved him, Yang Zicang mimicked the form of address for seniors and great warriors in movies.

“May I ask what I should call you, Senior?”

{Just call me Gray Crow.}

“Gray Crow?”

{Both the appearance and the name are just code. From now on, just call me ‘Senior.’ I’ll be happy to hear it.}

“Yes, senior.” Yang Zicang saluted respectfully with his hands clasped. It would be great if he could leave early with this person, but that would be extremely difficult.

Upon hearing the term “senior,” although no change in expression was visible, the aura emanating from the person before him softened slightly.

The large, mottled feathers on the Gray Crow, which looked like a Black Stork, rustled as if moved by an unfelt wind.

{Since you’ve obtained the Right of Mental Manifestation, you shouldn’t waste a single second of possessing it. Use this time to cultivate with it.}

“How precious is it?”

{The Eighth Ring.}

He turned his head, lifting his claw-like hand from under the fluttering feathers and made a grasping motion in the air. A slice of a scene was caught in the Gray Crow’s hand, then casually tossed away.

The rumbling Mordo Fang Chamber, the cascading waterfall curtain, the people tangled in battle with the monsters.

On-site information regarding the Dark Monster Hall appeared directly around Yang Zicang, as if he were right in the middle of it all.

“That’s amazing.”

Yang Zicang, still pondering the words “The Eighth Ring,” was captivated by the sight before him. He looked at the nearby Mordo Fang Chamber, in which a common-strength team was locked in combat with a monster.

The Gray Crow had actually intercepted and manifested this scene, who knows how far away it was.

{There’s nothing to marvel at. Warnings of death, even well-intentioned ones, are never welcome.}

“A warning of death?”

As if confirming the Gray Crow’s prophecy, within just a few seconds, the person charging at the forefront of this team was bitten on the neck by a strange serpent shooting out from the darkness, freezing their body stiff.

—”Captain!”

—”Ahhh~”

In that brief pause, the man was dismembered by several attacks from multiple monsters.

As soon as the victim died, the scene immediately shifted to reveal another Mordo Fang Chamber, and within seconds, the figure inside was also torn apart by the creatures.

Yang Zicang’s heart pounded violently.

In the cube, most people watched the flashiest and most eye-catching spectacles. But now, under the gaze of this humanoid Black Stork, countless lives marched toward their deaths in wave after wave!

This was the true form of how the Demonic Hero Hall treated its lower-ranking members!

Yang Zicang trembled and took a step back, feeling like an accomplice to an executioner.

{This is all inevitable. Don’t lose heart; you’ve already greatly reduced the difficulty.}

“But they died because of me.”

{If you were strong enough, this could all change.}

“I…”

A strange gold coin appeared in the Gray Crow’s palm. He weighed it for a moment, then put it away.

{Every moment you possess now, they will never have again. Especially you, with the Right of Mental Manifestation.}

The Gray Crow’s pitch-black, claw-like hand landed on Yang Zicang’s face, and a stream of dark gray energy surged within its palm, slowly seeping into Yang Zicang’s mind.

{Everything has its omens, and so does death.}

{Just as some can sense impending misfortune, this is the revelation granted by mental power.}

Yang Zicang felt his mental sea being pried open by a force, undergoing a miraculous transformation, like a calm ocean beginning to churn with complex undercurrents.

{What I am instilling in you is a secret technique I created from my bloodline: 【Prelude to Death】. Though you may ultimately find it difficult to master, you will at least gain some inspiration.}

Then, one by one, mental energy manifested as bizarre humanoid figures in Yang Zicang’s consciousness, resembling ordinary people from everyday life.

{Let’s jump straight into the hardest part,} said Gray Crow.

“The hardest part, just like that?!”

Suddenly, these figures perished by various causes—collisions, murders, deadly diseases, disasters—their deaths striking without warning. A strand of death’s terrifying aura seeped into Yang Zicang’s mind, as if he were living through the death experiences of many people all at once.

{Attune to the aura they emit, imprint this feeling, and learn to sniff out these omens before events unfold.}

Yang Zicang instantly grasped the purpose of this secret technique.

It wasn’t about witnessing death, but about detecting and altering it!

Deeply moved within, he sat cross-legged, immersing himself to painstakingly sense each instance of “death” and parting.

[I, an insignificant quadrilateral, begin to comprehend the “Prelude to Death.”]

Over these past months, he had either brushed past death himself or witnessed the eternal rest of other lives.

Although emotions are directly experienced, it is hard to sense and identify them with such a deliberate focus as now.

“This is not the numbness born from witnessing countless deaths, but rather the act of discovering that trace of an ‘omen’ amid each and every fall.”

Countless people and scenes emerged in his mind, only to swiftly die away.

Yet Yang Zicang gradually calmed down.

A few hours later, Yang Zicang sensed that the manifested figures around him had suddenly decreased, and he opened his eyes. The gray crow had already grasped a mass of light in its claw. As the young man looked up, the crow raised its hand, and the phantom of Demon’s Hall unfurled once again within its murky Spirit World.

{The perceptions you’ve just had, one after another, were passive—undertaken with the foreknowledge that they would die. Now, take the initiative to experience it, and see if from here, you can detect the coming aura of death in advance.}

The prelude to death…

Yang Zicang focused his mind, activating the Right of Mental Manifestation to intently perceive.

Amid the phantom composed of countless slowly spinning disks, the faint and elusive aura of the “Prelude to Death” perpetually unfolded, an ever-present spectacle by his side.

The illusion of Demon’s Hall shifted erratically nearby—left and right, up and down—but each attempt yielded nothing but repeated failure.

“This is really difficult.”

{Take it slow. The more you rush, the farther it runs.}

The evening of the third day arrived swiftly.

Having sat silent and unmoving for hours, the scene of Demon’s Hall that had been restlessly drifting by Yang Zicang’s side suddenly shifted—the phantom sped around like a surge of swirling mist.

He sensed a rather intense aura of the “Prelude to Death.” At that very moment, the gray crow’s claws, shrouded in even denser mist energy, tapped on the young man’s shoulder, helping him grasp this faint aura more smoothly.

The room swiftly swooshed past more than a dozen massive Demon Gear pillars.

“Cheng Yunze?”

Upon seeing these people, Yang Zicang was slightly startled. Was the Prelude to Death related to them?

The giant mud-armored creature crashed down with a thud under Zhang Zhiquan’s crimson punch.

Klonk!

At that exact moment, another colossal Demon Gear mountain, carried by a force field, slammed into view, striking precisely the phantom of the force field that materialized behind Yang Zicang.

The connecting force field of the two rooms shattered, and in the newly crashed Mordo Fang Chamber, seven or eight people immediately assumed combat stances.

Before Cheng Yunze, the radiant skeleton standing in a pool of blood like a stream looked up toward the new room.

—”Finally stepping onto the Demon Gear Millwheel of City 41. You there, give us a yellow claw, and we’ll let you go.”

Upon hearing this, the phantoms of the City 41 folks behind Yang Zicang found it utterly absurd and broke into a chorus of curses and insults.

And at that moment, the aura of the “Prelude to Death” suddenly grew more intense.

“This is the feeling… mentor, they…”

Before the words faded, the skeletal creature composed of faint yellow light shot through Yang Zicang and the Mountain Crow like a flash, turning into a stream of light charging toward those from the 41st City.

Boom!

Its solid-like light claws grabbed, and in the red glow, two heads instantly fell from their bodies.

Thump, thump, thump!

—”Ah! What kind of monster is this?! Urgh…”

The Skeleton of Light, which only took a beating on the giant Bound Spirit’s hands, now seemed like the Grim Reaper from the underworld.

In less than five seconds, the last person holding the iron spike fell lifeless, his eyes losing their glow.

Yang Zicang stared blankly at the fallen bodies. They died without ever knowing they had encountered the chief of the 23rd City.

This team was considered fairly decent in strength within the 41st City. They hadn’t perished under the suppression of the Xiong Ying Group, nor had they been recruited as combat members of headquarters, yet they fell right here.

The silhouettes of Cheng Yunze’s group walked over, nearly pressing close to Yang Zicang and the others.

—”Over there, that’s the room for the 41st City.”

—”Yang Zicang still hasn’t come out. Looks like we’ve got this round won.”

—”Hurry in. The gears are about to start turning again.”

As they stepped inside, a voice rang out in the chamber of the 41st City’s Demon Gear Millwheel.

—{You have entered the competing city. Congratulations on qualifying for doubling returns financing.}

Cheng Yunze paused slightly upon hearing this voice.

— {“You will be watched by everyone in this world. Strive to become the strongest temporal financier. All who invest in you will gain double dividends in Virtual Zero Sequence.”}

— “The strongest known by all, huh.”

Beside him, Cheng Yunze looked ahead at the endless gears, his heart brimming with boldness and ambition.

Meanwhile, Yang Zicang, watching him, felt as if his heart were being ground between two millstones.

— “I heard the strongest team here is near the eye of the mill. Let’s go meet them.”