Night had long since fallen. Neon lights blinked and flickered on both sides of the roads. The city at night still pulsed with boundless energy — towering skyscrapers rose in dense rows, thrusting up into the sky.

And yet, viewed from space looking down, all of it amounted to nothing more than a patch of ground no bigger than the palm of one’s hand.

This was an extraordinary night, destined not to pass quietly. On the ground, dozens of main control rooms had locked their eyes on the pitch-black sky above.

In the Desolate cosmos, nine Dragon Corpses gleamed with a cold, metallic luster, their bodies entirely covered in black Dragon Scales the size of large fans, flickering faintly with a dark sheen.

The dragon — a creature of legend — had no right to exist in this world. And yet here it was, stretched across the heavens for all to see.

The image captured from the darkness of outer space was awe-inspiring and deeply unsettling. The enormous Dragon Horns branched like ancient trees — powerful and mysterious. The bodies were like mountain ranges — vigorous and imposing in their might. The Dragon Scales were like blades, their cold gleam flickering; the overall effect was grand and overwhelming.

Nine colossal corpses devoid of life — they represented a tremendous shock to the foundations of human understanding, overturning certain long-held beliefs.

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“Ye Fan, how has your life actually been going these three years?” A number of people showed genuine concern for him and asked after his wellbeing.

“I’ve been alright, I suppose. My life has been quite uneventful — nothing particularly remarkable has happened in three years…”

Just then, the group at Liu Yinzhi’s table came over to toast, delivering a string of well-wishes. Everyone clinked glasses in rapid succession, and the atmosphere grew boisterous.

Those who had earlier threatened to penalize Ye Fan with drinks never came to find him specifically. It was only later that Lin Jia and Wang Ziwen each came over in turn and shared a one-on-one drink with him.

As the evening wore on, many people grew tipsy. They moved on to a karaoke room afterward, where the singing seemed to carry everyone back to the tender years of their student days.

“How many have adored your face in the bloom of youth — do you know who would gladly bear the relentless changes of the years? How many have come and gone by your side — do you know, through a lifetime, it is I who will always be beside you…”

Perhaps because they were truly a little drunk, one couple who had been in love during their student years but had parted ways helplessly after graduation sat facing each other in wordless silence.

As the song continued to echo through the room, the young woman suddenly lost her composure. Her eyes clouded with tears, and she broke into unrestrained sobs. Everyone gathered around to comfort her.

For various reasons, not a single one of the romantic couples who had formed among the classmates after graduation had managed to stay together. Though they had all once tended carefully to those campus romances, none had come to anything in the end.

Graduation meant the end of love — perhaps it was a kind of curse. Every year, the graduates of universities all across the country seemed to be playing out the same tragedy over and over.

And tragically, this pattern was very likely to persist for a long time to come — bound up with youthful impulsiveness, with the pressure of finding employment, with the realities of society… and perhaps with other things as well.

Almost everyone chose songs from three years prior. Some sang with heart and feeling, pulling everyone’s thoughts back three years. The scenes and events of their student days were still vivid in their memories.

At last, the “microphone hog” emerged — a thoroughly drunk classmate who occupied the microphone for an extended stretch, producing a sound that was genuinely difficult to compliment, something along the lines of mountains crumbling, the earth splitting, ghosts wailing and gods howling. While thoroughly assaulting everyone’s eardrums, it did generate a wave of hilarity, sending the whole room into fits of laughter.

It was very late before everyone finally walked out of Sea and Moon City. There were more activities planned for tomorrow — they were going back to visit their alma mater.

Those who had come from far away had mostly booked rooms at the same hotel, while a few classmates who had cars would take responsibility for driving them there.

“Lin Jia, I’ll drive you back to the hotel.” Liu Yinzhi pulled his Toyota up beside her.

Some of the other classmates wanted to take a taxi, but the seats in the nearby cars were genuinely limited, and they felt too uncomfortable to step forward and ask Liu Yinzhi and the others for a ride.

At that moment, a Mercedes-Benz pulled up to the curb. Ye Fan stepped out and approached the haggard-looking female classmate. “Let me take you back,” he said.

Ye Fan felt genuine sympathy for her. Back in university, she had been a happy and uncomplicated girl who loved standing outside the football pitch cheering for her classmates, and sometimes, with a faint blush, she would shyly bring them a few bottles of mineral water.

But now, the hardships of her life had left her thoroughly subdued — her complexion pale, her color poor, and throughout the entire evening she had barely spoken a word.

The sudden sight of Ye Fan pulling up to the curb and inviting her into the car left her both grateful and at a loss for what to do. Not once that evening had anyone paid attention to her, and she seemed unaccustomed to being looked at by the classmates around her in that moment.

On the other side, Liu Yinzhi saw Ye Fan drive up and his expression went blank for a moment — then clouded with a sudden darkness.

Around them, the classmates wore an assortment of expressions: puzzlement and confusion, surprise and complicated feelings.

Everyone, intentionally or not, glanced toward Liu Yinzhi. What stood before their eyes was completely at odds with what he had implied.

In that moment, Liu Yinzhi felt his face burn — as though someone had dealt him a hard, stinging slap.

Those classmates who had adopted a condescending tone to lecture Ye Fan also felt an unbearable awkwardness, wanting to say something but not knowing how to begin.

A small number of people revealed looks of amusement and curiosity — especially those who had clinked glasses with Ye Fan at the same table — as though they felt this scene had well and truly deflated Liu Yinzhi’s little circle.

Just then, two more people walked over, pulled open the car doors, and climbed in. They were classmates who could not have been any closer to Ye Fan.

The Mercedes-Benz carrying them gradually disappeared into the distance, while many people had yet to come back to their senses. Liu Yinzhi stood rigid, his body stiff, facing the strange looks from those around him — like needles pressing into his back.

At this very moment, far above in space, aboard the International Space Station orbiting Earth, several astronauts wore grave expressions, their nerves stretched to a constant, near-breaking tension — they were in an extreme state of anxiety.

In the dark and cold expanse of space, the nine colossal Dragon Corpses seemed to have existed since the beginning of time — thick iron chains spanned the void, connecting them to an Ancient Bronze Coffin — filling the beholder with a feeling of endless desolation and antiquity.

Those in command on the ground had already deliberated and decided: if any significant change occurred, they would immediately destroy the nine Dragon Corpses and that mysterious ancient bronze coffin.

But no one wished for such a thing to happen.

Nine Dragons Pulling the Coffin — coming from the dark and Desolate depths of the cosmos, the value and significance it held was immeasurable, beyond all reckoning.

Suddenly, the main monitoring room of the International Space Station detected a set of mysterious signals — a certain unusual fluctuation. The source was right before them: the Ancient Bronze Coffin being pulled by the nine Dragon Corpses. Some kind of mysterious fluctuation was emanating from those ancient, blurred engravings on its surface.

“Indecipherable…” The signals were transmitted back to the ground and run through the most precise supercomputers available for analysis, yet it remained utterly impossible to make any sense of them.

The ancient engravings on the Ancient Bronze Coffin were obscured beneath a layer of bronze patina and rust, making it impossible to see them in their entirety.

“Based on preliminary analysis, those bronze engravings appear to be connected to ancient Chinese legends.” Every monitoring room across different nations arrived at a similar conclusion: “The beast-shaped engravings on the Ancient Bronze Coffin resemble certain primordial and fearsome creatures recorded in China’s Classic of Mountains and Seas, while the human figures depicted in the bronze engravings are suspected to be deities…”

Despite managing to identify the origins of some of the bronze engravings, the extremely faint and mysterious signals remained wholly indecipherable — not a single thread of meaning could be extracted from them.