The cold night wind drifted through the gaps between the silver leaves, carrying a soft rustling sound that contrasted with the lingering roar of the vertical waterfall in the distance.
Beneath the shade of a sturdy ancient tree, Yan Shuo lay flat on his back upon ground damp with moss and mud. Around him, three human-sized black logs that he had previously carried now lay scattered in a state of splintering and fracture—silent witnesses to the brutal friction between wood fibers, hydraulic pressure, and human bones forced beyond their limits.
Yan Shuo's breathing came in ragged gasps, short and heavy like a blacksmith who had run out of air. His chest rose and fell unevenly, leaving behind a burning pain every time oxygen forced its way into his lungs.
From the gray sky above, which was gradually fading into the glow of the isolated dimension, a silhouette descended with absolute elegance. Haoran landed soundlessly upon the damp grass, only a few steps away from Yan Shuo's head. His black sunglasses reflected the artificial sunlight shining dimly at the edge of the dimension, while his black hair fluttered gently with the night breeze. A faint smile, thin yet laden with meaning, curled upon his lips.
"How does it feel, Yan Shuo? Quite thrilling, isn't it?" Haoran asked, his voice so casual that it sounded as though he had merely taken his student for a stroll through a city park rather than tortured him to the brink of death.
Yan Shuo did not answer immediately. He merely glanced at his teacher from the corner of his red and swollen eyes, irritated by sweat and waterfall spray. Staring at the arrogant gleam reflected on those sunglasses, Yan Shuo let out a hoarse snort before turning his gaze back toward the empty ceiling of the dimension.
With the last remnants of strength forced from the muscles in his thighs and screaming back, Yan Shuo dug his fingers into the ground and dragged himself upright. He settled into a cross-legged position. His movements were slow, trembling, and broken. Raising his violently shaking right hand, he stared at his palm, now covered in fresh calluses, scrapes, and streaks of black mud.
Slowly, he clenched his fingers into a fist until his knuckles turned white.
"It has already been a very long time... and the training has been extreme as well," Yan Shuo said, his voice hoarse and trembling between despair and overwhelming exhaustion. "I've carried absurd weights, calculated spatial coordinates while my head was being hammered by thousands of tons of water... but why? Why won't my Stellar awaken? Was... was all of this just a coincidence? Am I actually someone with no talent at all?"
Upon hearing that, Haoran slowly lowered his smile. The brows hidden behind his sunglasses furrowed slightly. Without a word, the teacher bent his knees and sat cross-legged directly in front of Yan Shuo, bringing their eye levels even. The atmosphere between them suddenly became heavy.
"There is nothing instantaneous in this world, Yan Shuo. Everything requires effort piled upon effort until your vessel is ready to contain it," Haoran replied. His tone was calm yet firm, like a reef unmoved by crashing waves.
Yan Shuo raised his head and stared at Haoran. The frustration, exhaustion, and physical pain that had accumulated since earlier that day suddenly ignited the emotions festering within his chest. His eyes locked onto the professor with anger he no longer bothered to hide.
"But I've already done everything!" Yan Shuo cut him off, his voice rising with anger. "I've followed every bit of your logic! I've run until my legs went numb! I've kept pushing forward and never given up every time my body collapsed into the mud! But why... why haven't I gotten even the slightest hope? No spark, no flow of energy, nothing at all!"
Yan Shuo slammed his hand against the ground, forcing his trembling body to stand upright. Pointing directly at his teacher's chest, he spoke through heavy breaths.
"We should just end this ridiculous training. I'm sick of it! I want to go back to the dormitory and sleep on a soft bed. I'm not a soldier—I'm just a former day laborer!"
Haoran remained silent for several seconds, observing every ounce of fury erupting from his student. Slowly, Haoran rose to his feet as well. His long coat fell neatly along the contours of his upright posture.
"Very well, then," Haoran said shortly.
Yan Shuo froze. The step he had been about to take immediately halted. He stared at Haoran in disbelief, his eyes widening.
"Really? You're letting me go?"
Haoran began turning his back toward Yan Shuo, slipping both hands into his pockets. However, just before Yan Shuo could sigh in relief, Haoran glanced slightly over his shoulder and revealed an unmistakably mocking smile.
"Of course I'll let you go... but on one condition. If you can touch the edge of my clothing or any part of my body before the countdown ends."
"You—!"
Before Yan Shuo could protest this new trick, Haoran raised his right hand and snapped his fingers into the air.
Snap!
Boom!
The world around them suddenly flipped upside down. The ancient forest, silver leaves, and vertical waterfall collapsed in an instant like shattered digital pixels. The cold, damp air was abruptly replaced by the smell of scorched metal and dense concrete dust.
Yan Shuo staggered as the landscape beneath his feet transformed completely. They now stood in the middle of a dead city reduced to ruins. Skyscrapers had collapsed atop one another, asphalt roads were split open with underground pipes jutting out, and overturned cars had become rusted wreckage. It was a distorted replica of a battlefield from an Isolated Sector.
"Stop daydreaming, Yan Shuo. Your time is ticking," Haoran said, standing casually atop the hood of a crumpled car about five meters in front of him.
The anger burning through Yan Shuo's reason finally reached its limit. Without thinking any further, he slammed his foot against the cracked asphalt and unleashed every remaining ounce of strength in his thigh muscles as he charged forward. His body shot ahead while his right hand stretched out, aiming directly for Haoran's collar at full speed.
"Got you!" Yan Shuo shouted.
Yet just as his fingertips came within mere centimeters of Haoran's clothing, the space between them suddenly stretched in an unnatural manner. Haoran had not moved, yet the wrecked car beneath him seemed to slide backward by an entire meter in an instant. Yan Shuo's hand grasped nothing but empty air.
Swish!
"Too slow. Your spatial logic becomes dull when you're angry," Haoran mocked.
"Damn it!"
Yan Shuo twisted his body upon the asphalt, using the momentum of his fall to launch a sweeping kick toward Haoran's legs.
Whoosh!
Haoran merely lifted one foot lightly, allowing the kick to pass beneath him without touching the sole of his shoe in the slightest. As Yan Shuo sprang back up and unleashed a barrage of punches toward his chest and face, Haoran continued evading with movements so minimal they seemed absurd. He merely tilted his head to the left, angled a shoulder to the right, or stepped back a single pace.
Every reckless attack Yan Shuo launched was broken apart before it could land. Haoran's speed was incomprehensible, as though he already knew where Yan Shuo's fists were headed before the muscles in Yan Shuo's arms had even contracted.
"Left. High. Too wide. You're wasting your energy, Yan Shuo," Haoran continued correcting him while dodging with an utterly calm expression hidden behind his sunglasses.
"Shut up!"
Yan Shuo kept charging. He leaped over car hoods, punched, kicked, and even clawed at the air. Yet after five minutes of futile pursuit through the ruins of the city, his body finally reached its absolute limit. His lungs felt as though they were on fire, and every muscle in his body had turned weak as jelly.
He collapsed onto both knees atop the asphalt, breathing in harsh bursts while sweat and saliva dripped from his chin. His eyes remained fixed on Haoran, who stood upright before him without the slightest trace of perspiration. Even his clothing had not shifted by a single centimeter.
The overwhelming exhaustion combined with a bitter realization tightened Yan Shuo's chest. He clenched his fist against the hard asphalt until blood began to flow.
"You... you're cheating..." Yan Shuo hissed, his voice trembling as he fought back tears of frustration. "You're manipulating the spatial distance around you... How am I... how am I supposed to touch a Special Realm Stellar user with an ordinary body like this? This isn't fair!"
Haoran walked toward Yan Shuo, who was still kneeling and trembling. He lowered his head until it was directly in front of his student's face. The eyes hidden behind his sunglasses stared straight ahead, and a faint smile tinged with coldness once again appeared upon his lips.
"Not fair?" Haoran repeated, then a second later he burst into laughter. "Hahaha! Not fair, you say?"
Yan Shuo looked up, glaring at Haoran with surging fury.
"What's so funny?! Huh?! I've already tried everything! I've followed every insane order you've given me!"
His voice suddenly cracked in the middle of the sentence, hoarse from profound despair.
"I... I don't have anything left to try anymore..."
Haoran stopped laughing.
Silence suddenly suffocated the atmosphere around them.
"Really?"
The question sounded simple, yet to Yan Shuo it felt like a brutal slap across his ego.
Haoran crouched down, matching their eye levels for the second time that night.
"You're still breathing, Yan Shuo. And as long as your heart is still beating, there's still one thing you haven't tried: stop thinking that you have to pursue power the same way I did."
Yan Shuo furrowed his brows deeply. His mind, already exhausted beyond measure, could not comprehend the riddle hidden within the professor's words.
"I don't understand—"
"You don't need to understand. You only need to feel it," Haoran interrupted firmly.
He rose once more, stepping back three graceful paces before raising his right hand. His fingers prepared to trigger another spatial distortion and begin the next session of brutal training.
However, something happened before Haoran's fingers could complete the snap.
Thump.
Yan Shuo felt it first.
A strange vibration that came neither from the ground nor from the air within the isolated dimension, but from deep within his own chest.
The second heartbeat that had existed only as a faint echo behind the emptiness of his soul suddenly began pounding violently.
Boom! Boom!
The heartbeat felt as though it had just awakened from a slumber that had lasted thousands of years.
"...What is this?" Yan Shuo whispered, his breath catching in his throat as his right hand instinctively clutched his chest, which felt as though it had been struck by an invisible hammer.
Haoran's movement stopped instantly.
The faint smile that usually rested on his face vanished without a trace.
Before him, Yan Shuo's eyes began radiating an unnatural light.
This was no longer the faint glimmer that had appeared during the classroom incident.
This time, the white light within his right eye blazed brighter and brighter like an exploding star, while the darkness within his left eye thickened to an extreme degree, resembling an absolute black hole that devoured all surrounding light.
Whoooooosh!
The wind inside the isolated dimension—which should have been under the absolute control of Haoran's spatial structure—began blowing wildly.
It swirled in every direction without any logical pattern, disregarding the laws of space that the professor himself had created.
"Yan Shuo, calm yourself—"
Haoran attempted to give an instruction, but his sentence was cut short.
Too late.
Yan Shuo's body rose to its feet on its own, as though pulled upward by an ancient force that did not belong to him.
His joints moved stiffly and jerkily, like a marionette puppet being manipulated for the very first time by invisible strings.
He no longer felt the exhaustion weakening his muscles; the pain in his bones simply vanished.
All he felt was a torrent of Orienzu energy—so immense, so overwhelming, and so alien—pouring into the axis of his soul from every corner of the infinite dimension.
Far away from the isolated dimension, in the real world, something strange began happening on a global scale.
Inside the Seroin Indah Nursing Home, Vat, who had been holding a rag to clean up a spilled bowl of porridge, suddenly froze.
The curtain beside the window billowed violently as wild winds rushed through the ventilation gaps, carrying a mystical sensation that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
Meanwhile, atop a tall building, Professor Marayonka, who had been analyzing data, suddenly staggered backward.
An abnormally powerful gust of wind slammed into his body, spiraling so fiercely that he nearly lost his balance at the edge of the rooftop barrier.
"This energy... where is it coming from?!"
In the city park, Kiko, who had been leaning against a bench while watching over Elara as she slept weakly from the aftermath of the thief's attack, suddenly straightened up.
The candy in his mouth stopped moving.
His eyes turned toward the night sky, which had suddenly become turbulent with massive whirlwinds enveloping the entirety of Seroin City—and beyond that, the same winds were blowing across every corner of the world simultaneously.
On another continent, inside an old, suffocating factory filled with piles of corpses bearing clean sword wounds, a man in a white high-collared jacket sat calmly while holding the hilt of his katana.
His hand froze as fierce winds burst into the factory, slamming the doors open and causing several corpses to slide and be thrown aside by the suddenly intensified air pressure.
In a narrow, dark alleyway within another metropolitan city, an eccentric man dressed in a joker-like fashion—with a masked face, black-and-gold attire, and a magician's hat—was casually playing with a deck of cards.
Whoosh!
A sudden gale swept through the alley, causing every card in his hands to scatter into the night sky like a flock of birds.
High above the boundary of the atmosphere floated a mysterious man dressed in modern white-and-blue attire—a refined white coat adorned with sapphire-blue accents, paired with elegant trousers and polished leather shoes.
His appearance was simple yet luxurious, radiating unmatched authority as he gazed down upon the glittering cities below.
Suddenly, a powerful current of wind struck his coat, causing him to narrow his eyes as he realized that something enormous was awakening.
Even on the side of the world illuminated by the scorching sun, in the middle of a vast desert, a ragged man leaning upon a wooden cane and wearing a cowboy hat came to an abrupt halt.
The dense winds slammed into the sands around him, transforming the peaceful desert into a raging sandstorm within moments.
Far away, atop the highest mountain shrouded in eternal snow, a muscular man dressed in ancient clothing suddenly opened his eyes from meditation.
His spiritual focus shattered as powerful gusts battered the mountainside with a roaring sound.
Within an isolated impoverished village, a man whose mouth had been sewn shut looked up at the sky, feeling the same atmospheric pressure crawl across his skin.
On a luxurious beach, a mustached man enjoying his vacation in casual beachwear suddenly removed his sunglasses as violent winds sent beach umbrellas flying through the air.
And within a silent old building, a terrifying figure possessing a pair of horns upon his head and three eyes upon his face sat upon a grand chair.
His muscular frame was wrapped in worn and tattered clothing.
Beside him stood a woman serving as his personal assistant, her body trembling as powerful winds struck the building's glass windows, causing them to shake violently.
The three-eyed man lowered the coffee cup he had been drinking from, and a meaningful smile spread across his face.
"Ahh... that power has awakened."
Back inside Haoran's dimensional space.
Haoran attempted to step closer toward Yan Shuo.
However, his movement was halted.
Yan Shuo continued absorbing Orienzu energy on a scale that defied reason, creating a wall of absolute pressure around his body.
Even with Haoran's spatial abilities inside his own dimension, the professor discovered the horrifying reality that simply reducing the distance between himself and his student had become extraordinarily difficult.
"Yan Shuo! Control your power! Close the energy gateway!"
Haoran shouted, attempting to calm Yan Shuo with a voice infused with suppressive energy.
However, there was no movement or response whatsoever from Yan Shuo's consciousness.
From both of the young man's palms, beams of light began condensing.
A sphere of energy started forming—initially no larger than a clenched fist, yet expanding at a horrifying exponential rate.
Crack! Crack!
The artificial asphalt beneath Haoran's feet began fracturing and shattering apart merely from enduring the abstract pressure it emitted.
A dense emerald-green hue intertwined with pure golden radiance, spiraling together into an extraordinarily intricate pattern within the sphere.
At the very center of the energy sphere, a crescent moon emblem slowly took shape, shining with a light that felt unimaginably ancient—a light older than any civilization Haoran had ever known throughout the history of the world.
Haoran stared at the sphere, his pupils trembling.
For the first time in many years as a high-echelon combatant, he felt something utterly foreign crawling down his spine.
A feeling of pure fear.
"...What exactly have you inherited within your body, Boy?" Haoran whispered, his voice catching in his throat.
The question was directed more toward fate and the mystery behind Yan Shuo's origins than toward the student who had already completely lost conscious awareness.
The energy sphere suddenly stopped growing.
For a fraction of a second, the world within the dimension became utterly silent—even the violent winds that had been raging moments ago seemed to hold their breath in terror.
Then Yan Shuo—without ego, without killing intent, driven purely by the ancient instinct of the colossal energy flowing through his veins—raised both hands and released the sphere forward.
There was no battle cry.
No final words.
Only a flash of emerald-green and golden light that shot forward, splitting through space and targeting Haoran at a constant speed that could no longer be measured by mathematics or any spatial sensor.
CRACK! BOOM!
The sphere had not even exploded yet, but the pressure of its mere existence was already enough to tear apart the fabric of Haoran's isolated dimension, shattering it into countless fragments like glass struck by an iron hammer.
Haoran had no time to analyze further.
The combat instincts forged through decades as a Special Realm powerhouse immediately seized complete control of his body.
If he remained here, he would be erased without a trace alongside his dimension.
Shhhk!
Using the remnants of his spatial authority, Haoran shifted the coordinates of both himself and Yan Shuo out of the dimension and leaped back into the real world.
However, he knew all too well that the convergent attack possessed a ripple effect capable of penetrating spatial boundaries.
If the isolated dimension collapsed completely, the ancient energy explosion would leak into reality and possess enough power to flatten an entire city.
Consumed by overwhelming fear, Haoran did the only insane thing he could think of.
He grabbed the energy sphere—or more accurately, he wrapped both himself and the sphere inside a fold of empty space. A second later, he leaped out again, leaving a portion of the sphere's destructive power trapped and suppressed within the fold he had abandoned.
Whoosh!
Yet the remaining explosion that had not been neutralized continued pursuing him, still blazing with nearly undiminished power.
Haoran jumped again.
He wrapped the sphere within another newly created spatial fold, leaving behind another fraction of its energy before escaping once more, just before that fold itself was destroyed by the pressure it contained.
Whoosh! Shhhk!
Once. Ten times. One hundred times.
Each jump succeeded in shaving away only a tiny fraction of the sphere's power—and each time, the spatial fold left behind immediately collapsed under the residual energy too great for it to contain.
Haoran repeated the cycle endlessly: enveloping, eroding, escaping, then enveloping again within another space—like someone attempting to extinguish a colossal inferno by scooping it little by little into small buckets that melted the instant they touched the flames.
Thousands of times within mere milliseconds, he repeated the process.
The space within Haoran's perception distorted violently each time he reentered his collapsing dimensional folds, continuing to erode the advancing energy sphere bit by bit.
Yet even after thousands of reductions, the sphere remained.
Still burning.
Still containing a power that made Haoran's battle instincts scream in warning.
Haoran's pupils trembled.
He knew.
He would not be able to erase this attack completely.
The only thing he could do was weaken its impact to a level the world could still endure.
"...Enough," he hissed quietly between increasingly labored breaths.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
The emerald-and-gold energy sphere finally exploded within the last dimensional fold.
Emerald and golden light flooded the entire space until the limits of vision disappeared completely. The resulting shockwave tore through dimensional walls like sheets of thin paper, mercilessly annihilating every remaining spatial structure.
The expanding explosion relentlessly pursued and destroyed every layer of space Haoran attempted to construct.
The massive backlash slammed into the professor's body with brutal force.
"UGHHAAAH!"
Fresh blood suddenly erupted from Haoran's eyes, nose, ears, and the corners of his mouth.
The veins across his neck and arms bulged beneath his skin as though they were about to burst.
His long robe was shredded by fragments of dimensional debris, while cold sweat mixed with blood continuously seeped from the pores of his body.
His energy reserves were drained to their absolute lowest point.
Yet with one final spatial exertion that consumed every last drop of power he possessed, Haoran succeeded in sealing the remaining ripples of the explosion inside a dead dimension.
Thud!
Haoran fell to his knees upon solid ground, his breathing choked by blood clogging his throat.
His body trembled violently from severe shock.
Before him, Yan Shuo already lay unconscious upon the floor, his eyes returned to normal, completely unaware after exhausting every ounce of energy within his body.
Haoran wiped the blood from his lips, then let out a small, hoarse chuckle that echoed softly through the silence.
"So... this is... the true power of Moon Chess..."
A faint smile filled with both awe and terror appeared across his bloodstained face.
With the last remnants of his fading consciousness, Haoran slowly and heavily snapped his fingers, transporting both of their bodies back into the empty classroom at Noxward University—the very place where everything had begun.