Somewhere in the Middle East, in a hidden terrorist den, the air was thick with dust and fear. A group of men, their faces wrapped in scarves, stared in horror at the figure approaching through the haze. It moved slowly, with a heavy, mechanical sound. Its shape became clear, and a chill worse than fear froze their blood. The thing looked exactly like the Iron Man from the movies.
"Open fire," their leader screamed, his voice cracking. "Now!"
"Da da da! Da da da!"
The rattle of submachine guns filled the cramped cavern. Sparks flew in the darkness as bullets hit the metal figure. The sound was a frantic, deafening drumbeat.
Suddenly, a new sound joined the noise.
"Ding ding ding ding ding!"
It was the sound of bullets harmlessly flattening themselves against the robot's shell, falling like metallic rain to the rocky ground. No matter how many they fired, the red and gold armor showed not a single dent.
Inside the suit, Lin Yu felt each impact as a deep, satisfying thud through the frame. He smiled. He was very happy. Although this battle armor, modified by his cousin Lin Yumo, had an advanced energy shield function, Lin Yu had deliberately left it off. He liked watching this scene. He liked hearing the helpless ding of bullets against his invincible shell. It was a pure, simple pleasure. So delightful.
"Have you fought enough?" Lin Yu's voice boomed from an external speaker, loud and calm over the dying gunfire. The terrorists had now scrambled behind a makeshift bunker of sandbags and scrap metal, still shooting wild, hopeless bursts.
He stretched out his armored hands. The circular emitters on his palms glowed a fierce, electric blue. "Then it's my turn," he said.
Two thick beams of blue energy lanced from his palms. They cut through the dusty air and pierced straight through the sandbag bunker as if it were paper. The beams kept going, through the wall of rock behind it. The frantic shooting from behind the bunker stopped. Everything was silent.
Immediately afterwards, Lin Yu stood still. A panel on his forearm slid open. A miniature missile launcher rose smoothly from the armor. With a soft whoosh, a single small missile flew toward the heart of the terrorist position.
Then came the sound.
"BOOM!"
The explosion was huge, swallowing the cramped space in fire and noise. When the smoke cleared, most of the terrorists were gone.
Far away from the dust and fire, in Huaxia, in GD province, S City, it was a quiet night. Not far from where Lin Yu had once bought a lottery ticket, in an ordinary residential building, in a small one-bedroom rented room, everything was still.
On a dusty computer desk, the screen of a desktop computer suddenly lit up. It glowed a bright, sterile white, so intense it illuminated the whole room as if it were daylight. Just as suddenly, the light vanished, sinking the room back into darkness.
But now, the room was not empty. Seven people stood there, blinking, four men and three women, their clothes a mix of strange, practical gear.
One of the young men, who had a kind and popular face, took a shaky breath. The air smelled of dust and home. "It's like waking up from a dream," he said with deep emotion. "I'm finally back. I don't know how long it's been here. I don't know if my parents are in good health."
A girl with short hair, dressed in men's clothes and looking very heroic, glanced around. "This is your original dream world? This is your room?" she asked.
"Yeah," the kind-faced man, named Bai Meng, said. He pointed at the computer. "When I was playing League at the beginning, the Main God's reminder suddenly popped up on the screen. I thought it was an ad. I clicked it, but there was no response for a long time. Then the screen just showed two options. They were, 'ys' and 'yes'. How was I supposed to choose?" He made a frustrated face. "The Main God is such a thug. I always feel someone must have done the same thing as me before, that's why the Main God became such a cheat." His expression turned mournful. "It's a pity. I was about to get a pentakill at that time. What a day!"
The six other people stood in silence for a moment.
"Let's not talk about that for now," a man with a stern look said. He walked to the computer desk, rummaged through the clutter, and pulled out a smartphone from a small grid. He handed it to Bai Meng.
"It's out of battery," Bai Meng said, turning the dead phone in his hands. "And I remember, when I left, it seemed only a few days should have passed here." He looked at his teammates. "I'll recharge it first, and turn on the computer to check. I don't have a clock here."
He plugged in the computer and found a power bank. He connected his phone and waited. When the computer monitor flickered to life, he looked at the date and time displayed in the corner. He let out a long, slow breath.
"It's been more than ten days. It's okay, it's okay. It's not long," he said, relief washing over him. "I experienced ten worlds. The time in those worlds, plus the time in the Main God's space, is almost two years for me. I thought the real world must have passed for a long, long time."
"I told you a long time ago," said another man in the group, who had a handsome but frivolous look about him. He was their captain, Yun. "The time flow rate in the Main God's space is independent. It's much faster than most worlds. Generally, it's about ten to one. We only count the time spent in the mission worlds, not in the Main God's space itself." He leaned against the wall. "Of course, you can also apply to adjust the time flow rate between the Main God's space and your original world. You just need to pay the corresponding reward points. It's very cheap, though."
"Well," Bai Meng nodded, his resolve firm. "I will apply for that after we return. I have to adjust the time flow between the Main God's space and here to at least one thousand to one. Otherwise, if I come back and my parents and friends are gone, what's the use of all these powers?"
"Okay," said a young man with a very sunny demeanor. "Go and meet your family."
"That's right, Meng," a lively girl chimed in. "You go see your family. We'll have some fun in this world too."
"Let's go," Captain Yun said, pushing off from the wall. "We exchanged for 20 days in this world. Everyone should take this chance to relax." He looked at Bai Meng. "Bai Meng, you can go home by yourself. We won't go with you."
Bai Meng hesitated. "Well, Captain Yun, I should take you all to find a hotel first. I can go home tomorrow. It won't be too late."
"Fine," Captain Yun replied with a casual nod.
Bai Meng led the way out of his small rented room and down the stairwell. As he walked, he held the phone that was now charging from the power bank in his pocket. It finally vibrated to life. He opened WeChat, and a flood of notifications cascaded down the screen. Dozens of messages from the past half-month appeared all at once. There were worried texts from his mother, jokes from his friends, reminders from his group chats. His heart felt full and heavy as he began to read and reply to each one.
Finally, he clicked on a chat interface with a friend named Lin Yu. The history was sparse. Besides Bai Meng's own words of thanks from weeks ago, the other side had only sent one line. It read, "It was no trouble," followed by a simple, friendly smiley face.
Bai Meng's thoughts wandered. "Speaking of which, I promised to invite him to dinner as a thank you, but I never did. After all, he helped me. I got summoned to the Main God's space that very night." He remembered the incident clearly. A group of thugs had cornered him in an alley, and this Lin Yu had stepped in. It was over in seconds. "He knows martial arts, for sure. I don't know how strong he really is. I wonder if there are superpowers, immortal cultivators, or magicians in the world I was born in. Brother Lin Yu probably knows something about that..."
His thoughts were cut off as they reached the street, the familiar city lights washing over them.
Meanwhile, high above a different desert, Lin Yu was having the time of his life. "Cool!" he shouted into his helmet, the word echoing in the sealed space. Piloting the Iron Man armor, he had just turned over his sixth terrorist den. He flew high in the night sky, the reactors on his boots humming. The triangular arc reactor on his chest glowed brighter and brighter, charging up.
Below, the terrorist base was a scurrying anthill.
The light from his chest condensed into a single, blinding point. "Boom." A massive, single-beam light cannon slammed into the heart of the base.
A secondary, much larger explosion erupted instantly as the stockpiled ammunition ignited. The ground shook. A few surviving figures, tiny from this height, stumbled out from the inferno, running for the open desert.
"You still want to run?" Lin Yu asked, his voice flat. Hovering in mid-air, he commanded the armor. Panels on his shoulders slid back. Two rows of miniature missile launchers emerged.
With a series of soft pops, six miniature tracking missiles streaked toward the ground. Then, in mid-flight, each one split apart.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!..."
They multiplied into hundreds of smaller, smarter projectiles. Each found a heat signature, a running form. Under the horrified, upturned faces of the fleeing men, the cloud of missiles descended. The series of small, precise explosions that followed lit up the desert floor like deadly fireflies, and then there was only the quiet crackle of the burning base, and the endless, starry sky.