The moment Shi Feng spoke up in the luxury suite, the entire room fell eerily silent. Every person present—from Gu Jiuli to Jing Wuming—turned their gazes toward Yu Luo.
Since arriving here, they had encountered far too many unknowns and surprises.
Given all the possibilities they had considered, the only thing they could do was remain silent and observe everything quietly, including those so-called NPCs and players.
Because in their eyes, whether it was the NPCs, the monsters, or the players, they all seemed like anomalous beings. The players, in particular—they were clearly supposed to be players, yet they gave off an entirely different impression.
It felt as though these players weren't really players at all. They were more like inhabitants of this world who had fully accepted this virtual reality.
No—more precisely, these players had come to regard this world as a real one, and they had been living in it for an extraordinarily long time, long beyond what any of them could have imagined. Otherwise, that strange sense of dissonance wouldn't have been so pronounced.
Shi Feng, in particular, was all too familiar with that uncanny feeling. It was like seeing Feng Qianyu all over again—except Feng Qianyu had been even more extreme than these people, projecting an aura that was simultaneously player and not-player, something deeply unsettling that he could never quite put into words.
These players now gave him a similar sensation, and the shock he felt at that moment far surpassed what anyone like Jing Wuming could have experienced.
But he couldn't very well say it aloud. After all, Feng Qianyu's connections ran far too deep. Besides, just as they had noticed something strange about these players, these players had likewise noticed something strange about them—clearly, these players were just as unfamiliar with their kind.
Between their earlier conversations and what they had gathered, Shi Feng couldn't shake the feeling that both sides might as well have been living in entirely different worlds.
The old man in the cave had already told them that this world was the Divine Realm continent of ancient times. In theory, there shouldn't have been any players here at all, and yet the number of players was far from insignificant.
A rough estimate put the player population of Meteor Fire City alone at over five million—no less than a royal capital back in their kingdoms. And according to Liang Yun, human cities like this numbered well into the hundreds—over five hundred of them.
A simple calculation put the total player population at over twenty-five billion.
Such an enormous population, yet back in the real world, none of the major powers had ever heard a whisper of it. Who among them had known about the ancient Divine Realm world? It was simply unbelievable.
"That's right. Everything is exactly as you've guessed." Yu Luo looked at the stares fixed on her, and the relaxed, cheerful expression on her face vanished in an instant, replaced by gravity and earnestness. "Both this Divine Realm and the players here—they don't belong to the same world as us!"
"Not the same world?" Gu Jiuli's breathing grew heavier involuntarily. "How is that possible?!"
Although he had already harbored certain suspicions, receiving Yu Luo's confirmation still felt utterly inconceivable. The more they learned about the Divine Realm, the more the various problems it presented—and the involvement of major world-class conglomerates—seemed to transcend anything past virtual games had ever offered.
But to say that an entire human civilization existed in a different world? That was too staggering to believe.
"Well, I shouldn't say not the same world exactly." Yu Luo shook her head with a rueful smile. "Rather, these people don't share the same world that we grew up in."
"What do you mean?" Shi Feng asked, puzzled.
"You must all be aware of the Migration Plan from a century ago," Yu Luo ventured.
"Of course we are," Gu Jiuli nodded, still struggling to believe what he was hearing. "Back then, Earth's resources were running short, environmental pollution was growing worse by the day, and it was becoming increasingly uninhabitable for humanity. So the Migration Plan was launched. They sent out large numbers of people to explore habitable planets in the universe. Could you be saying these people are the ones who were sent away?"
"Exactly. They are the descendants of those explorers." Yu Luo spoke slowly and deliberately. "At the time, Earth had already identified several planets capable of supporting life, but they were extraordinarily distant, and the journey would take far too long. So the combined resources of the entire world were pooled to construct several hundred interstellar vessels—carrying all manner of resources, top-tier technical talent, self-sustaining living environments, and over a hundred million outstanding individuals—bound for those habitable planets."
"Over the course of that century, these people have been living aboard interstellar vessels. But the time they experienced during transit was far longer than what those of us on Earth lived through. I've heard that some have been traveling through space for over six hundred years, and depending on the route, some ships have been in transit for upwards of nine hundred years…"
"The population aboard the ships has grown steadily over time, long since surpassing ten billion. Through constant resource acquisition from various planets and endless renovation and expansion, those interstellar vessels have long since ceased to resemble ships—they're more like floating continents, still making their way toward those life-bearing worlds."
"However, because resources on those interstellar continents are limited, the vast majority of their inhabitants can only live inside virtual worlds. Only a tiny fraction can move about freely in the real environment. As a result, their familiarity with virtual reality surpasses even that of professional gamers—it has become their entire existence."
"Especially since the opening of the Divine Realm, it has become everything to them. Something we simply cannot compare to."
When Yu Luo finished speaking, the room remained silent for a long time. Gu Jiuli and the others sat with mouths agape, utterly stunned to learn that something so astonishing had been unfolding beyond Earth—and they had been completely unaware.
They could no longer even fathom what kind of life it would be to spend hundreds of years in the void of space.
"So that's how it is." A sudden clarity dawned on Shi Feng as well.
In his previous life, before his rebirth, the Divine Realm had suddenly released a patch ahead of schedule—the most unique expansion in the game's history. Normally, expansions upgraded content within the Divine Realm first and then notified the players, but this one had spread through the real world first.
The expansion's very name had even been revealed in advance.
Clash of Worlds.
The announcement had been explicit: multiple worlds would crash into the Divine Realm continent, and those worlds—each fighting for their own survival—would unleash an unprecedented war of conquest.
The victor would be king; the vanquished would perish.
The strong would survive; the weak would die.
It had thrown countless players across the Divine Realm into a frenzy. The Divine Realm continent's territories had long since been carved up, conflicts were growing fewer, and everything had been settling into a dull calm.
The sudden emergence of multiple worlds to fight over? How could that not set hearts racing?
Major powers had already begun gearing up, poised to charge into those new worlds the moment the expansion went live and begin an entirely new chapter.
And he, because of all that, had been expelled…
As the room's occupants slowly came to terms with it all, Yu Luo smiled bitterly. "My coming here was a complete accident. I was exploring the underground space beneath Dragon Heart City on my own when I was suddenly swept up in a space-time storm. I woke up and found myself here. I've been in this world for twenty days now. I want to go back, but neither dying nor jumping into another space-time storm works. The most frustrating part is that I can't log out from here at all…"