Chapter 1 What's the Situation?

The hibernation pod opened silently, and Hao Ren sat up with a jolt: "What's the situation now?"

The data terminal had previously moved the hibernation pod from the basement of his home to the bridge of the *Giant Tortoise Rock*. Now, as soon as Hao Ren opened his eyes, he saw the familiar sight of the spaceship's control room. He saw a large holographic projection suspended above the control panel in front of him, with a planet slowly falling into the sun in the center of the picture. Lily reached out and dragged him out of the hibernation pod: "See for yourself, I've never seen such a spectacular sight in my life..."

Hao Ren came to the control panel, adjusting the angle of the external monitor while asking: "Where are we now?"

"Above the planet Zhuom, 50,000 kilometers from the surface, on the tangent of sunlight and the planet, where you can clearly see the planet being ignited by the sun," the data terminal replied immediately. "According to the planet's current orbit, it should have been gradually captured by the star two thousand years ago, and then experienced a slow orbital descent for twenty centuries. Now everything on the planet's surface has been burned, the temperature on the sun-facing side reaches several thousand degrees, and the crust has melted and cracked on a large scale... The sun's gravity is tearing it apart. It is estimated that before it is burned to ashes, it will first be torn into pieces."

Hao Ren didn't say anything, just frowned and looked at the scene outside the spaceship.

A young star with a mass about three times that of the sun was illuminating this space. Because it was so close, its magnificent corona of fire occupied almost a third of the external monitor's field of vision. At this distance, the sun's rays could directly blind most creatures, so the *Giant Tortoise Rock* had opened its sun filters to weaken the power of the sunlight. And in this boundless sea of fire, a small, dark brown planet was dragging a long tail of flames as it plunged towards the corona.

The planet had long been unrecognizable. The sunlight had burned away its surface and partially melted the rocky shell. The mountains, rivers, deep valleys, and trenches that had once existed on the planet were no longer distinguishable, and they were all piled together due to the softening and collapse of the crust.

This was the real Zhuom—although the repeated cycles that Nolan had experienced could be called disasters, they were nothing compared to what had happened in the real world.

This was the truth: the "Zhuom" that Nolan lived in was indeed a virtual world, and its repeated cycles were just scripts happening within a large program. The real Zhuom was right in front of everyone's eyes. There were no traces of any human civilization on it, and the entire planet was slowly falling into the sun. Linking these two points together, Hao Ren believed that the virtual world Nolan lived in should be something like a shelter. Its main body was probably a giant server, buried deep in the planet, and humans had become ghosts in the server, hiding from the blazing sun of the real world in the virtual world.

As for the continuous "world reset" and the apocalyptic trend, it should be that the server had a problem, perhaps the deterioration of the surface disaster caused this failure, which led to the continuous restart of the virtual world, and the "script" became more and more bad.

There were still many things that needed to be explained throughout the process, but for now, this was all the known information. Regarding whether that "server" really existed, Hao Ren believed that it could be investigated by entering the planet's underground.

"The planet is still rotating, rotating once every twelve hours. During this process, the sun-facing side will melt rapidly under the sunlight and eject a large amount of material, while the dark side will cool and solidify rapidly. When the first rays of sunlight rise on the second day, those newly solidified shells will produce continuous explosions that spread across the entire continent. This process continues, exacerbating the planet's disintegration process," the terminal released a holographic projection, simulating the continuous destruction process of this planet. "The surface is completely devoid of human remains, but a shelter of some kind should be hidden deep underground: a virtual world shelter, maybe something like a server."

"Is there a suitable place to land?" Hao Ren frowned as he looked at the shocking scene in front of him. This scene was indeed more exciting than most of the battlefields he had experienced.

"To be honest, nowhere is suitable. The surface of the planet is completely melted, and it is extremely hot everywhere. The spaceship itself is not afraid of this temperature, but it is not suitable for personnel to work outside—your shields will consume very quickly, and the life-sustaining collars of others can only run for a few hours at most."

Nan Gong Wuyue's tail had stiffened with fright. She looked stiffly at the sea of fire: "Landlord... you're not planning to take people up there, are you?!"

As an aquatic creature, seeing this scene of flames roasting the earth and a barren landscape between heaven and earth had a huge impact on her. The siren girl felt like she was a dried salted fish and began to dehydrate.

"We can't just leave it alone, there are billions of people down there," Hao Ren tapped the control panel. "Terminal, land on the dark side, choose the day-night transition line, and try to buy as many working hours as possible."

The *Giant Tortoise Rock* chased after Zhuom's figure in the blazing sunlight and slowly landed on the part of the planet's surface that had just entered night. At this location, the sun had just set below the horizon a few minutes ago, and the hellish day had ended, but the night that followed was not cool either: the earth still maintained a high temperature of thousands of degrees, the lava in many places had not had time to cool down, and the ground was covered with crisscrossing magma rivers and rock steam vents that were still erupting. The environment was even worse than the world inhabited by demons.

But this was already a rare "safe area". At least the sun did not shine here, and without the radiation of that deadly star, everyone's shields could last longer.

After the data terminal controlled the spaceship to land, it reported the surrounding situation: "Radar shows a crack 300 meters ahead. It is very unusual for a crack to remain on such a crust. It may be the entrance to the shelter. The crack is less than 100 meters in size, and the spaceship cannot enter. You can only explore it yourself."

Hao Ren checked his shield status, and then issued an extra set of life-sustaining collars to everyone who was going to disembark with him. Since the environment was really bad this time, he only chose a few people from the team who were most resistant to harsh environments: Lily, Vivian, and Izhaks and his daughter.

Wuyue and Elsa were sirens, and they were most afraid of dehydration. Nangong Sanba and Nangong Wudi were both half-baked demon hunters, and their strength was insufficient in this situation. They could only stand by on the spaceship.

"Wear both life-sustaining collars. When the energy of the first collar is insufficient, immediately switch to the second one. Don't feel bad about the energy," Hao Ren instructed everyone, especially Lily, who was always unreliable. "With your physique, you can last for a while after the collar energy is exhausted. Don't be brave at that time, just teleport back, understand?"

Lily happily put the collar around her neck while confidently puffing out her chest: "Got it, isn't it just being a coward, I'm good at it."

Izhaks smiled and glanced outside: "This place is quite suitable for us—it inexplicably reminds me of my old home. The place where I used to take a bath was similar to this. Elizabeth and I should be able to explore a little further later."

Hao Ren quickly reminded him: "Take it easy. When the sun rises, it's not the same concept as now. Even demons can't withstand high-energy particles."

Gun was squatting next to the chair, watching everyone busy. Suddenly, she tugged at Hao Ren's clothes: "Big cat, going on an adventure?"

Hao Ren hadn't noticed that this guy was actually here (mainly because this stupid cat was too used to finding a corner to hide in). At this time, he was stunned: "Hey, how did she come along too?"

The data terminal shouted: "Didn't you say to pull out all the combat power at home to hold the line! This machine is also carrying Dou Dou, she's in that pot behind you, but she's asleep again."

Hao Ren then remembered that he had indeed issued such an order before, but now he only felt a headache: How could he have known that the real situation of Zhuom was so shocking? He thought that calling a few gold medal fighters and an armed spaceship would be enough to handle the situation, and at most, there would be a cannon shot to end all grudges, but looking at the current situation... What use could Gun, other than being a cat, be?

Gun kept tugging on her master's clothes and purring, obviously wanting to follow out. Hao Ren saw this and pressed the cat girl's head: "You know what dried fish is, right?"

The cat girl immediately nodded vigorously, purring.

"See that scene outside?" Hao Ren pointed to the scorching earth displayed on the holographic projection. "If you go out, if you're not careful, you'll instantly become drier than dried fish."

The silly cat thought for a while, and then very reservedly went under the chair to sleep.

Hao Ren led the team out of the spaceship. The moment he came outside, he seemed to feel a heat wave rushing towards him.

However, this was just his illusion. It was the impression given to him by the scene of the planet falling into the sun that he had seen before and the overflowing magma on the surrounding ground. The shield effectively isolated the heat outside, including the ground temperature coming from under his feet. At least until the shield energy was exhausted, he didn't need to use his body to resist this inferno of thousands of degrees.

Although he felt that his enhanced body should be able to withstand it for a while, he didn't intend to really try this sour and refreshing feeling of human jerky being dried.

Elizabeth jumped up and down on the ground and shouted in surprise: "Wow! The ground is still soft!"

"After all, the sunlight has just passed, and the ground hasn't had time to completely harden." Lily analyzed very professionally, and then unconsciously was attracted by a touch of golden streamer on the horizon.

That was the direction where the sunlight disappeared: Although the atmosphere of this planet had been burned dry, each time the sunlight swept over it, it would cause a large amount of rock steam and other gases to erupt into the air. These gases moved synchronously with the day-night line, forming a huge wall of gas that constantly swept across the surface of the planet. This wall of gas magnified the already quite huge corona like a lens, thus forming the golden streamer covering the entire horizon in the distance.

Although it was essentially a high-temperature storm of two or three thousand degrees, it was still very beautiful when viewed from afar.

Lily stared at the streamer formed by the corona for a while, and suddenly sighed softly. Hao Ren knew that this girl, who was very artistic at heart, must have felt something again.

"My dog eyes are blind."

Lily sighed.