Darkness.
Pure, absolute darkness that swallowed even the light of a match.
Su Ming held an old-fashioned windproof lantern, his eight walking legs feeling their way forward across the slick stone floor. Above, Blackwater Lake hung like a heavy slab of lead, sealing off all light from the world. The lantern's pitiful yellow glow only illuminated the three steps ahead; beyond that lay a bottomless void.
The passage sloped downward.
Not a gentle incline, but a steep drop of nearly forty-five degrees. Su Ming's heavy carapace scraped against the stone with a grating shriek. Every step required him to first clamp his pincers onto the ground to prevent sliding down and shattering into a pile of fragments.
The air grew thinner.
Or rather, there was no air at all. His shrimp gills opened and closed in vain, but instead of oxygen, they drew in a cold, metallic-tasting liquid. The fluid was thick as honey, seeping into the cracks of his carapace and condensing on his surface into a thin layer of black frost.
[Environmental Warning: Abyssal Penetration Level Rising. Current Rank: D. Recommendation: Retreat immediately.]
Red warnings on the system panel popped up repeatedly, like a death knell.
Su Ming ignored it.
He had no way back. Above him lay Blackwater Lake, and on its surface, the Tianming Guild's thousand-man blockade line. Even if he turned back now, he would be focused into a sieve the moment he broke the surface.
Moving forward offered at least a sliver of a chance.
The stone walls on either side of the passage were carved with dense rows of runes. Unlike the blue runes of the lake-bottom formation, these were dark red, embedded in the stone like congealed blood, radiating an unsettling heat. Su Ming's antennae accidentally brushed a wall, and his fingertips shot with a burning pain, as if touched by red-hot wire.
These runes were not decoration.
They were chains.
Chains binding something down.
Inside Su Ming's carapace, the fragment of the Abyssal Core began to pulse again. Since entering this passage, it had never stopped. Each pulse sent a sharp, stinging pain from his chest spreading to every part of his body, as if someone were hammering nails into him. Yet, he could feel the fragment's energy slowly growing. This growth didn't come from external absorption, but from—resonance.
Something deep within the passage was resonating with the Abyssal Core.
Su Ming quickened his pace.
About five minutes in, the passage forked.
Three paths. The left passage was wider but reeked of rotting decay, scattered with white bone fragments on the ground—whether from players or monsters, it was impossible to tell. The middle one was the narrowest, barely enough for his massive body to squeeze through, but the dark red runes on its walls were exceptionally dense, covering the entire surface. The right passage was completely blocked by rubble; not even a rat could get through.
Su Ming stopped at the fork, his compound eyes scanning the three directions.
"Master, take the middle path," the Sprite's voice muffled its way out from the cracks in his carapace. "The dead end on the right isn't worth looking at. The left one... I smell the scent of Abyssal Vanguards. At least three of them, and their levels are high. The middle path has the densest runes, meaning the seal is heaviest, which implies whatever is locked inside is the most valuable."
Su Ming said nothing.
Not because the Sprite was wrong, but because he had noticed another detail. On the floor of the narrow middle passage, there was a trail of shallow footprints.
Not monster claw marks.
Human handprints.
Five fingers deeply embedded in the stone, with drag marks stretching from the entrance into the darkness. Judging by the direction of the drag, the person wasn't moving forward, but backward. As if pushed out from the inside, or perhaps, fleeing for their life.
The spacing between the handprints grew wider, eventually turning into two parallel scratch marks. In the final stages, that person had been crawling flat against the ground.
But no one had crawled out.
Because the other end of the passage was a dead end—at least for ordinary players.
Su Ming chose the middle.
His carapace fit snugly between the walls of the passage. With every step, the rough rock surface scraped a white line across his body. The lantern's flame danced wildly in the compressed airflow, the light flickering on and off, casting eerie shadows on the walls.
After walking about two hundred meters, the passage suddenly opened up.
A massive underground cavern lay before them.
The ceiling soared dozens of meters high, adorned with countless stalactites hanging down like rows of jagged teeth. In the very center of the cavern stood a stone platform. Upon it rested a massive bronze mirror, its surface facing upward toward the ceiling. The mirror's surface wasn't smooth; it was etched with an incredibly complex star map. Every star was inlaid with a gemstone of a different color, refracting tiny shards of light under the lantern's dim glow.
But what truly made Su Ming stop wasn't the mirror or the star map.
It was the person sitting in front of the mirror.
A figure in a deep gray cloak sat cross-legged on the edge of the platform, their back to him. The hood was pulled low, obscuring most of their face. In their hand, they held a slender staff topped with a dark purple gem, emitting a faint, flickering light like a dying star.
Su Ming's eight legs instantly dug into the ground, assuming a defensive stance. His right pincer raised silently, a faint black glow appearing on the blade.
He was one hundred percent certain—this person had been sitting here before he entered the cavern. No footsteps, no breathing, no signs of life. If not for the gem still glowing, he would have thought it was a corpse.
"Your heartbeat is too fast, Big Lobster."
The voice came from beneath the hood. It was clear, calm, like deep water with no bottom. There was no panic, nor any hostility.
Su Ming did not lower his pincer.
"Who are you."
The other person didn't answer immediately. The hand, clad in a black leather glove, slowly raised and pushed the hood back.
A young, pale face was revealed.
Short hair, with a faint scar on the temple. The features were exquisitely carved, as if stepped out of a meticulous painting, yet a coldness beyond their years lingered between the brows. Those eyes were particularly striking in the dim cavern—the pupils were not normal black, but a deep, bottomless dark purple, like two crushed amethysts with faint lights swirling within.
Su Ming's pincers tightened instantly.
He recognized that face.
How could he not?
The number one strategist of the Skyward Squad. Codename: "The Chessmaster." The only person in the previous life's Abyssal Campaign who could predict monster behavior patterns solely through divination and deduction without any攻略资料 (strategy guides). SSR-class Abyss Diviner. In the three years since the launch of "Divine Realm," no more than five players had obtained this hidden class, and Lu Yao was the only one who had leveled it to the maximum.
Lu Yao.
The one who, in the tenth layer of the Abyss, had been surrounded by three Abyssal Overlords while covering the main force's retreat, and whose body was never found.
"It seems you haven't forgotten your past life's memories completely," Lu Yao's lips curved slightly, a movement so small it was almost imperceptible. "But I must say, this form of yours is much easier to recognize than last time. After all, last time you were a sword-wielding human; now you're a claw-wielding crustacean. Quite a contrast."
Su Ming remained silent for three seconds.
"You died."
"Yes," Lu Yao looked down at her empty left hand—where the Skyward Squad's command ring should have been, there was nothing now. "In the tenth layer of the Abyss. Torn apart by three Overlords. The process lasted about four seconds. It hurt, but there was no time to be afraid."
She looked up, her dark purple pupils staring directly into Su Ming's compound eyes.
"Then I woke up in this cavern. About—" she tilted her head, thinking, "six hours before you."
Su Ming slowly lowered his right pincer.
Not because he had lowered his guard, but because he had confirmed one thing.
"A Reborn."
"More accurately, a System-selected Eligible One," Lu Yao corrected him, her tone as flat as discussing the weather. "The Abyssal Invasion isn't a sudden event, Su Ming. It's the final plot written into the underlying code of 'Divine Realm' from day one. The souls of all players who died in the Abyss are recycled by the System, filtered, and redeployed to the server launch point. I am one of them."
She stood up.
Her figure was slightly thinner than Su Ming remembered. Underneath the cloak was a set of dark blue cloth armor, devoid of any guild or squad insignia. A small leather pouch hung at her waist, bulging with unknown contents.
"And you—" Lu Yao's gaze lingered on Su Ming's lobster form for two seconds. "Clearly, you are a different result of the selection. Your soul didn't return to your original account but was stuffed into the shell of a level one lobster. This indicates the System's classification for you isn't 'Reborn Player,' but 'Abyssal Sequence Creature.'"
Su Ming let out a cold snort.
"So the System raised me as a monster."
"Something like that," Lu Yao walked to the bronze mirror, her fingertips lightly tracing the star map on its surface. "But monsters have monsters' advantages. Your Abyssal Core fragment grants you immunity to the hostility of most Abyssal creatures, which is almost a necessity for clearing the late game. And I—"
She raised her staff, the dark purple gem suddenly flaring to life. The entire cavern was bathed in a faint purple halo.
"SSR-class Abyss Diviner. Able to predict the flow of events within the Abyssal domain for the next three seconds. Three seconds sounds short, but in high-difficulty dungeons, three seconds is the distance between life and death."
The gem's light slowly dimmed. Lu Yao lowered her staff and turned to face Su Ming.
"Last time, it took the Skyward Squad a year to assemble a full roster. This time, the prototype is here on day one. An Abyssal Sequence Tank and an assistant who can predict three seconds ahead. How do you think this start is?"
Su Ming didn't respond.
He stared into Lu Yao's eyes for a long time. There was no fluctuation in those dark purple pupils—no passion, no sentimentality, not even the slightest emotion of reuniting with an old friend. She was simply stating facts, like a chess player explaining their opening moves to an opponent.
This was very Lu Yao.
Back when they were in the Skyward Squad, she had always been this way. Always calm, always rational, always calculating the optimal solution. Her Tarot cards weren't for fortune-telling; they were for tactical deduction. Every card flipped was the only remaining answer after hundreds of possibilities had been eliminated one by one.
But Su Ming also remembered another thing.
In the tenth layer of the Abyss last time, when Lu Yao gave the retreat signal, her voice had been trembling. Not because she feared death, but because she knew the ones who stayed behind wouldn't survive, and she was the one who had to stay. Someone who always sought the optimal solution had, in the final moment, chosen the non-optimal one.
"The message you left on the lamp at the bottom of the lake," Su Ming spoke.
Lu Yao nodded slightly.
"I knew you would come to the center of the marsh. In the previous life, while you were leveling up in this area, I noticed your behavioral pattern—you always chose the most dangerous route with the highest reward. So when the Tianming Guild forced you into the marsh, I guessed you would fight your way to the deepest part."
"You've been waiting for me?"
"Six hours," Lu Yao reached into her waist pouch, pulled out a small potion bottle, uncapped it, and downed it in one gulp. "This rotten cavern is cold and damp, and there are no monsters to fight. If not for that lamp being usable as a consumable, I almost dismantled my staff to start a fire for warmth."
Su Ming noticed a hint of barely perceptible irritation in her tone when she said "no monsters to fight."
An SSR-class Abyss Diviner, trapped in a monster-free cavern for six hours. That was probably the most humiliating thing she had experienced since her rebirth.
"So what's your plan?" Su Ming walked to the stone platform and set the lantern on the ground. "Just expecting me to single-handedly cut through the Tianming Guild's thousand-man blockade and then run away with you?"
"Cut through? No," Lu Yao shook her head. "A thousand-man blockade can't be broken by brute force. Although Po Jun of the Tianming Guild is an idiot, his second-in-command, Zhen Guo, is an SSR-class Silver Spear Knight. A classic configuration of a front-line tank and back-line damage dealer. If you charge head-on, you might kill two or three hundred people, but your HP will drop to critical levels, and you'll be focused down."
"You certainly know my capabilities well."
"I've studied your combat data. The Skyward Squad's tactical library from the previous life contains recordings of every boss fight you participated in from level one to sixty," Lu Yao walked to the edge of the cavern and looked up at the stalactites on the ceiling. "Your Dark Energy mechanism is powerful, but it has a fatal flaw—it relies on continuous input of negative emotions. Once the fear and anger on the battlefield are exhausted, the recovery speed of your Dark Energy will plummet. The Tianming Guild's elite squad has priests specialized in psychological counseling who can cleanse negative status effects from teammates during combat. In other words, they have a way to cut off your energy source."
Su Ming fell silent.
He hadn't considered this layer. In his previous life, he had reincarnated as a Sword Cultivator, relying on raw strength and level suppression, never deeply researching the Abyssal mechanics of the lobster form. Lu Yao's words had hit his biggest weakness directly.
"Then what do you plan to do?"
Lu Yao turned around, a glimmer of light finally appearing in her dark purple eyes. It wasn't the light of enthusiasm, but the light of a hunter spotting prey.
"Not cutting through, but control."
She pulled a deck of Tarot cards from inside her cloak.
The cards were black, with edges plated in dark silver patterns, radiating an aura that didn't belong to the game's regular equipment system. Not something purchasable from the System Shop, nor a standard dungeon drop.
"Abyssal Tarot," Lu Yao spread the cards in her hand. The twenty-two Major Arcana cards were laid out in a row. Each card bore an unsettling image—a burning cross, a hanging puppet, a cracked sky, and a massive eye rising from the Abyss.
"Exclusive equipment for the SSR-class hidden class. The twenty-two cards correspond to twenty-two skills. Each card has its own cooldown and usage conditions, but using them in combination creates additional synergy effects."
Her fingers moved rapidly over the cards, drawing three and placing them face down on the stone platform.
"The Fool, Reversed—Forced Chaos. Causes a three-second input delay for all enemies in the target area. For ordinary players, three seconds might just mean flustered movements, but for the Tianming Guild's elite squad, a three-second delay is enough to create fatal gaps in their formation."
She flipped the second card.
"The Star, Upright—Domain Purification. Removes all positive buffs within the range, including the protective barriers Po Jun might cast on the elite squad and the priests' mental resistance. Combined with your Abyssal Taunt, it will expose them directly to your mental shock without protection."
She flipped the third card.
"The Tower, Upright—Environmental Destruction. Alters the terrain. There are numerous underground dark rivers in the center of the Misty Marsh. If I can detonate the water pressure of these rivers, the entire ground will collapse into a mud pit. The Tianming Guild's heavy warriors and siege crossbows will be sitting ducks in the mud."
Three cards. Three moves.
Looking at the cards on the platform, Su Ming slowly understood Lu Yao's meaning.
She wasn't helping him fight a battle.
She was designing a massacre.
"Last time, this is how you commanded in the Skyward Squad," Su Ming's voice was low, carrying a complex emotion he couldn't quite name. "Calculating every variable, then executing with second-by-second precision."
"Last time, I missed one variable," Lu Yao gathered the cards, her gaze calm. "The timeline of the Abyssal Invasion. I thought we had three years, but it was only seventy-two days. So this time, I cannot make the same mistake."
She walked to Su Ming, tilting her head up to look into the eyes of the giant lobster.
"Form an alliance."
Not a request. Not a negotiation.
A notification.
Su Ming looked down at her. The cavern was quiet, save for the gentle flickering of the lantern's flame.
"I have one condition," he said.
"Speak."
"No more of those mind-gaming tricks. You should know better than anyone how the Skyward Squad fell apart last time. I don't need a second Po Jun, nor a second traitor."
Lu Yao's expression didn't change.
"Are you questioning my loyalty?"
"I am confirming your stance."
The two stared at each other for a full five seconds.
Then Lu Yao smiled.
It was a very small smile, barely a millimeter's rise at the corner of her mouth. But in the dim cavern, amidst the silent standoff of two Reborns, that smile seemed incredibly distinct.
"The Skyward Squad fell apart last time because everyone wanted to be the Chessmaster," she said. "But I only played one game. The name of that game was 'Let everyone return alive.' Unfortunately, I lost."
She extended her hand, palm up.
"This time, I want to play one more game."
Su Ming looked at that hand.
It was pale, thin, with distinct knuckles. In the previous life, this hand had flipped Tarot cards countless times, deduced countless battle scenarios, and in the final moment, held the staff to shield against three Abyssal Overlords.
He had no hand to shake.
But he had a pincer.
Su Ming extended his right pincer and gently touched Lu Yao's palm. The cold carapace met the warm skin, producing a very faint "click."
"Deal."
Lu Yao withdrew her hand and turned toward another exit of the cavern. That exit was much wider than the passage Su Ming had entered, and faint light filtered in from outside.
"Let's go. The Tianming Guild has already set up a blockade line by the lake, but they won't wait long. Po Jun is impatient; if there's no result within half an hour, he'll send a diving team down to search. We need to get back to the surface before they dive."
Su Ming followed.
His body was too large to squeeze through that exit. But Lu Yao was prepared. She pulled a Tarot card from her pouch and pressed it against the stone wall of the exit.
"The World, Upright—Spatial Folding."
The card glowed blue. The opening, which could barely fit one person, instantly expanded by two times. The stone edges on both sides extended outward like softened rubber, forming a temporary passage wide enough for Su Ming.
"The cooldown for this card is twenty-four hours," Lu Yao said without looking back. "Don't waste it."
Su Ming sidestepped into the passage. His carapace scraped against the walls on both sides, making a grating sound that set teeth on edge. The passage sloped upward, growing brighter. He could smell the scent of humus in the air outside and hear the distant, muffled noise of crowds.
The exit was located below a cliff at the edge of the marsh.
Su Ming poked his head out of the hole, and his compound eyes immediately caught the dense clusters of lights in the distance.
The Tianming Guild's blockade line was even tighter than he had anticipated. Not only were there sentries and traps scattered around the lake, but the main channels of the marsh were also sealed off by magical barriers. Further away, the silhouettes of several siege crossbows loomed faintly in the firelight.
"Twelve hundred people," Lu Yao stood behind him, her voice calm. "Two hundred more than I expected. It seems Po Jun not only brought the Tianming main force but also hired a batch of cannon fodder from other guilds."
"You can tell?"
"Passive effect of Tarot Divination. Within the Abyssal domain, I can perceive the quantity and level distribution of all hostile sources within a certain range." Lu Yao closed her eyes, her dark purple pupils moving slightly beneath her eyelids. "There are about fifty core members above level twenty; the rest are ordinary players around level ten. Also—"
She opened her eyes, her expression showing a slight change for the first time.
"There is an SSR-class member. Zhen Guo. Silver Spear Knight, the number one combat power of the Tianming Guild. He isn't by the lake; he's on standby in the reed marsh to the east. If the blockade line in front can't stop you, he is the second line of defense."
Su Ming pondered for a moment.
Zhen Guo.
In his previous life, while in the Skyward Squad, he had heard this name. The Silver Spear Knight was one of the rarest SSR-class combat classes in "Divine Realm," with fewer than ten holders server-wide. And Zhen Guo was the strongest among them. He had once single-handedly killed three elite players of the same level in a guild war. His aim was so precise that he could hit any point within three centimeters of a moving target's forehead while both were in motion.
"A bit troublesome," Su Ming admitted.
"Trouble is good," Lu Yao pulled out a card, spinning it between her fingers. "No trouble, no reward. Zhen Guo possesses an Abyssal Resistance item—the Silver Snake Spear. If you can defeat him and obtain that spear, your Abyssal attributes will undergo a qualitative leap."
"How do you know he has the Silver Snake Spear?"
"On the seventy-second day of the previous life, when the Abyssal Invasion officially began, Zhen Guo was one of the first SSR-class players to rush into Shattered Star City. He held out in the city for three days and three nights with the Silver Snake Spear, and was finally swallowed whole by an Abyssal Overlord. Before being swallowed, he even stabbed the beast, though it only dropped less than one percent of its HP."
Su Ming: "..."
The story sounded both heroic and ridiculous.
But he didn't laugh.
Because when Lu Yao said "Shattered Star City," her tone was too light. As if reading out a place name that no longer mattered. But Su Ming knew that on the day Shattered Star City fell in the previous life, half of the online players on the entire server died. That was the first great massacre of the Abyssal Invasion, and the place where the nightmare for all surviving players began.
"You mean the countdown for the Abyssal Invasion has already started, right?" Su Ming asked.
Lu Yao didn't answer directly. She looked up at the sky.
Through the mist above the marsh, the color of the sky seemed off. It wasn't the normal deep blue night sky, but faintly tinged with a dark red, as if something deep within the heavens was slowly burning.
"The System updated this afternoon," Lu Yao's voice was soft. "The update content was a single line: 'The Abyssal Gate is ready. The countdown will begin once all Eligible Ones are in position.'"
Eligible Ones.
Her and Su Ming.
"So you mean, as soon as the two of us meet, the countdown will start."
"More accurately, the countdown starts the first time we cause mass casualties among players after meeting," Lu Yao withdrew her gaze and looked at Su Ming. "The System is waiting for a festival. To feed the Abyssal Gate with the fear and death of all players on the server. And we are the priests it has chosen."
Su Ming took a deep breath.
The rotting stench of the marsh flooded his shrimp gills, carrying a nauseating sense of reality.
Festival. Priests.
These words reminded him of the final moment of his previous life. When the Abyssal Gate opened, the sky he saw was the same color. Dark red, burning, like a giant beast opening its eyes.
"Then we won't let it wait too long."
Su Ming's voice came from beneath his carapace, low and hoarse, carrying a roughness honed by struggle.
He turned, facing the dense sea of lights in the distance. A blockade line of twelve hundred people, an SSR-class Silver Spear Knight holding the fort, and siege crossbows poised to fire.
This was the festival stage the System had prepared for them.
Lu Yao walked to his side, pressing three Tarot cards into her palm. Dark purple light spilled from her eyes, like two clusters of cold flames in the night wind.
"The Fool. The Star. The Tower."
She whispered the names of the three cards.
"Ready, Big Lobster?"
Su Ming raised his right pincer. The massive blade gleamed with cold light under the moonlight, and the Abyssal patterns on his carapace began to slowly illuminate, spreading like black veins across his surface.
"Let's do it."
Lu Yao flicked her wrist, and the first card flew out.
The card face burst into flames in mid-air, transforming into a beam of dark purple light that shot straight toward the distant blockade line.
The Fool, Reversed.
Chaos had begun.