Chapter 770: Desperate World: Planet Kelley - Glory in the Ice and Snow

Enter the door.

As always, the void he expected did not appear.

Ye Qiyan did not enter that world either.

He opened his eyes.

Darkness lay everywhere he looked.

Only three paths existed before him.

At the end of each path was a different door.

“What is this?”

【You are about to enter the Desperate World · Kaela Star】

【This world is in a time-paused state】

【Enter the door to start the final 48-hour countdown】

【You are the Descender】

【Please, make a choice】

All three doors opened at once.

The light screen also displayed three different names.

【Arrival Point One: Frosted Remains】

Behind the door at the end of the first path, a huge skeleton lay quietly on the icy plain.

【Arrival Point Two: Ruins of the World Capital】

At the end of the second path, the view shown inside the door was a deserted city, blanketed in snow.

【Arrival Point Three: The Last Stronghold Against the Blizzards】

At the end of the third path stood a small hut with thin smoke curling from its chimney, clinging to life within a translucent light dome in the snow.

A light dome? A hut?

Wait, what was that?

Ye Qiyan’s eyes brightened, and without hesitation he chose the third path.

That’s it!

That light-screen barrier was exactly where the thing he was looking for was stored.

The storage barrier for the Calamity Card.

“Interesting. Could this also be a strengthened ability? It can directly display doors...but why didn’t it do that when entering a Station World?”

Ye Qiyan couldn’t fully figure it out, so he didn’t dwell on it.

He walked down the third path.

The moment he stepped on it, the distant door moved toward him on its own.

Phew!

【Cold】

Bone-piercing cold.

Even now, with 400 Stamina, Ye Qiyan felt his body gradually freezing the instant he entered this world.

The Wandering Star Holy Sigil deployed immediately.

The lethal cold was kept at bay.

Yet the temperature itself did not change at all.

“Nefeti.”

The fiery glutinous rice ball jumped out of the Matrix, landed on his shoulder, then slipped into his collar.

The space inside the Wandering Star Holy Sigil gradually warmed.

Ye Qiyan did not immediately step into the barrier to take the Calamity Card.

Instead, he turned his gaze to the dilapidated hut leaning against that barrier.

There was someone inside.

The Celestial Comet Drive activated.

Crossing the frost-covered ground, it soon arrived outside the little hut.

After a brief thought, he raised his hand and knocked on the door.

Bang bang—

He only knocked twice, because violent coughing erupted from within.

“Is it... a hallucination?”

The person inside asked.

“Or... is Death knocking? Heh heh heh...”

He made a joke.

“No, I prayed to stop time. If I can still move, it means...”

Crash!

Something shattered.

The person inside came to the door.

Facing that murderous wind, they opened it.

Ye Qiyan saw a man.

A scruffy old man in thin clothing.

He looked frail, as if even the weakest breeze could topple him, even in the lowest-tiered world.

But this very old man had managed to survive here.

How?

Just by living in a run-down wooden hut?

Impossible.

The real answer lay on the old man himself.

“...You really came... I don’t even know how many years have passed in the wasteland, heh heh...”

The old man coughed several times. Despite his withered body, only his eyes still retained a spark.

“You are the Train Conductor, right? What race are you? Golden Tribe? Silver Tribe? I can roughly make out your outline, this look... are you, like me, of the Hero race?”

The old man was not human.

“I am human.”

Ye Qiyan answered.

“Human? What is that?”

The old man fell into a momentary daze, but he did not linger.

“Never mind, not important... I said I could roughly see your shape, and you look a lot like me. Human... let’s just say you’re Hero race too, ha... cough...”

The old man seemed to feel some pain; his already hunched frame curled in further.

“Time... is short... 48 hours, heh heh... my life will end in 48 hours. Human, can you help me? I will give you something that will satisfy you.”

Ye Qiyan took out the Forever Accurate Pocket Watch.

“More precisely, forty-seven hours and fifty-three minutes. Before I help, can you tell me why this world is like this?”

“...We lost to the End.”

That answer explained everything.

“I am the king of this world...”

He was the last surviving native of this world.

“I am the one who gathers the dead of civilization...”

He was the king who could wait for others in a world already ended.

“Who am I?”

He was the watcher.

“Not important... I remember what I must do.”

The old man mumbled, then stopped looking at Ye Qiyan. He turned and, through the clutter and frost covering the hut, walked to the oddly pristine bedside cabinet.

Clatter!

He opened the cabinet.

He took out a box.

Whoosh!!

The instant the box appeared, the wind and snow outside seemed to grow more agitated.

The old man paid no mind to the weather, nor to his body steadily stiffening and a dark blood flowing from him.

With hands like dry twigs he opened the box.

The object inside did not emit any extraordinary radiance.

There was simply a ring, an undecorated bronze ring.

“Take him, leave this world, and then, they will all be yours.”

The box flipped.

An ice-crystal key sat inside.

Ye Qiyan frowned slightly but did not step forward to take them.

He instead summoned several Nano Giant Sting Bees to land on the two items and run system identification.

【Ring of Sovereignty of the King of Glory (Hod) (No grade)】

【When a world ends, even its strongest being can only gaze at their people, their world, their everything, as it dissipates in the End】

【In the end, only Glory remained in this world】

【Its heart was dead; over long ages it collected everything in the world, and made a bargain with the System: a time seal, until the one who ended the End would descend upon this world.】

【Before it went mad, only one sentence remained】

【“Whatever race you are, I wish you... to transcend everything, just don’t be caught.”】

【Wearing this ring grants the authority of the King of Glory [10/10]】

【A Key (No grade)】

【It can open an indestructible barrier】

An authority ring?

So that’s why... no wonder Ye Qiyan felt the ring was familiar when he first saw it.

He already possessed another ring.

This old man’s true identity was a “King” on the same level as the Cruel King Asmodeus.

What exactly was a King?

So far Ye Qiyan had seen two “Kings.”

Asmodeus, and this King of Glory.

But neither could answer the question for him.

All he could find was a commonality between the two.

“Failures... huh?”