Level 1 to Infinity: My Bloodline Is the Ultimate Cheat!

Chapter 972: The Thin Place Between Worlds

After that, the Ethereal system finally returned to normal.

The half-month maintenance had nearly driven the entire player base insane. The second the servers came back online, players flooded in so fast it almost looked coordinated. At the same time, the official website released another announcement: Ethereal would now operate twenty-four hours a day. No more nighttime-only access. From now on, it would function like any normal online game.

Deep within the chaos of Earth, the Order Keeper sat alone.

A stone table rested before him beside an unfinished game of chess. Across from him sat an untouched wine gourd, placed in the empty seat Morzan used to occupy almost every time they met. Every now and then, the gourd trembled faintly, as though reacting to something unseen.

The Order Keeper lowered his gaze, his eyes carrying an exhaustion that seemed to come from somewhere far beyond the present moment.

Morzan still hadn’t returned.

Elsewhere, in Vatican City, complete chaos had erupted.

The ancient structure that had stood for centuries had recently been reduced to ruins. Witnesses claimed that impossible thunderstorms had raged there for days straight. Lightning split the sky relentlessly, even when the weather should have been clear. Then, just as the storms faded, a gigantic figure erupted from underground, towering high enough to blot out the heavens themselves. It held an enormous spear in its hand, and with a single sweeping motion, Vatican City’s most iconic landmark collapsed like a sandcastle.

After that, countless figures shot into the sky. Something winged met them above the clouds, far beyond the range of ordinary human sight, and a terrifying battle unfolded overhead for hours.

Then came one final roar of thunder that shook the heavens.

And after that, silence.

Nobody knew what had really happened. Some governments attempted to retrieve satellite footage from the region, but every image came back corrupted or completely blacked out.

Soon afterward, similar reports began surfacing across the world.

Violent thunderstorms. Burned land. Entire regions left scorched and barren after the storms passed, as though something unnatural had descended there.

No one realized what they were witnessing.

Certain beings had completed their Heavenly Tribulations. Events that once belonged only to myths and legends were now happening openly in the modern world.

Ironically, some people online had accidentally guessed the truth.

"Which immortal just ascended? Take me with you!"

The comments spread everywhere, mostly as jokes. People laughed, scrolled past, and moved on.

But the joke wasn’t a joke at all. Those storms had been tribulations.

Immortals, gods, demons... all of them undergoing the trials that were supposed to determine whether they could transcend mortality itself.

And the strangest part was that every single one of them had gone into it expecting death.

The legendary Heavenly Tribulation was supposed to be terrifying beyond imagination, the kind of thing that destroyed countless Energy users before they ever had a chance to ascend. Most of them had prepared themselves mentally to die before attempting it.

Instead, the tribulations turned out to be absurdly weak.

Pathetically weak.

Not a single one of them hesitated after realizing it. Most of them had already lived for so long that even if they failed to ascend, they only had a few years left before their lifespans ran out anyway.

But what happened after the tribulation shocked all of them far more than the lightning ever had.

They thought ascension meant leaving this world behind and entering a higher realm.

Instead, they found themselves trapped.

Yes, they could now fly freely through the skies, but every time they tried to leave Earth completely, an invisible force slammed them back down. Whatever bound them to this world had not loosened in the slightest.

As a result, gods and immortals had begun appearing all over Earth. Most stayed hidden, intentionally avoiding humanity, but sightings still occurred from time to time. Ordinary people occasionally caught impossible glimpses of figures flying through the clouds or crossing the night sky faster than aircraft.

At the same time, the Energy on Earth began recovering at an unbelievable rate.

It grew denser with every passing day, even richer than it had been when the Energy spheres first appeared.

The effects spread across the entire planet almost overnight. Environmental collapse, which humanity had worried about for decades, suddenly began reversing itself. The air became so clean it felt unnatural.

Then satellites started capturing even stranger phenomena.

Plants were growing at impossible speeds. Forests expanded visibly within days. Even the Taklamakan Desert, once considered a lifeless forbidden zone where almost nothing could survive, had begun sprouting patches of green. Oases appeared where there had only been endless sand before, and the desert itself seemed to be shrinking.

Humanity’s environmental crisis simply... vanished.

For ordinary people, though, none of this felt frightening. If anything, life had become easier.

Most people didn’t think too deeply about the reasons behind it. They simply adapted and kept living, because for the average person, life had always been simple: be born, survive, continue on.

With Ethereal now running around the clock, more professional players began emerging. People’s physical health improved dramatically as well. Conditions once dismissed as "sub-health" disappeared completely, and even terminal illnesses started showing signs of recovery.

Ethan knew none of this.

He was still drifting through the endless darkness of the void.

Then suddenly, he stopped.

His body froze mid-flight. Slowly, he turned around and drifted backward a few feet.

"What the hell?"

The connection to his Avatar had changed direction the moment he crossed a certain point.

After dozens of attempts, he finally located the exact position. It was directly in front of him, less than a foot away.

The sensation was strange, almost like a thread piercing through fabric. Whenever he moved, the direction of the connection shifted with him, but its root remained anchored to that exact location no matter what.

Realization slowly dawned on him.

"So that’s it... I’m stuck between two worlds. If I want to go back, I need to break through the spatial barrier between them."

It was the only explanation that made sense.

The problem was whether he could actually do it.

Ethan frowned and slowly clenched his fist. A dozen different skills compressed together instantly before exploding outward in a single punch.

BOOM.

The compressed energy tore through the void and disappeared into the distance. Far away, it struck what looked like a drifting patch of cosmic dust before fading uselessly into nothingness.

Ethan stared at the darkness in silence.

The barrier itself was invisible. If he couldn’t even perceive it, how was he supposed to destroy it?

He launched two more attacks in frustration, then suddenly noticed something that made his expression stiffen.

Three attacks.

Only three.

And each attack had already consumed nearly a third of his internal energy reserves.

Cold sweat immediately formed on his back.

For as long as he could remember, Ethan had never worried about energy consumption. His recovery had always outpaced his usage to such an absurd degree that the concept of depletion barely existed for him.

But this place was different. There was no Energy here.

None.

What he currently possessed was all he had.

Even his earlier high-speed flight had consumed energy continuously, but because the drain had been gradual, he hadn’t noticed it until now.

A heavy pressure settled over him.

He couldn’t afford to keep attacking blindly, especially when none of the attacks were even reaching the actual barrier.

What’s my real rank supposed to be? he thought bitterly. Voidbreaker should mean breaking space itself, shouldn’t it? I surpassed that level ages ago... so why can’t I tear this thing open?

The truth was that Ethan had never grown through any normal system.

He had never experienced bottlenecks, realms, or structured advancement. His strength simply continued growing endlessly without explanation. He could already fight monsters like Uncle Jed and Regis, people who stood far above conventional power systems, yet his own aura still felt strangely ordinary.

Back then, he’d never cared. Now he finally understood the problem. This was what people meant by understanding the Way.

Or perhaps mastering Laws.

He possessed overwhelming raw strength, but he had never truly comprehended the Law of Space itself. Without that understanding, he couldn’t break through the barrier no matter how much force he used.

The place he currently occupied was likely the weakest point connecting Earth and this world. That was why his connection to the Avatar could still pass through here in the first place.

If he couldn’t break through even here, then his chances elsewhere were even worse.

Ethan rubbed his forehead slowly.

"What the hell is wrong with my body anyway...?"

He had always known he was different from everyone else. The Vessel, that was what they called him.

Was it because his mother had taken his Energy Core back then? He exhaled slowly and forced himself to calm down.

"What do I do now?"

He sat cross-legged within the empty void and began thinking quietly. Then a clear voice suddenly echoed inside his mind.

"Big brother."

Ethan’s eyes snapped open instantly.

"Yaya?"

Relief hit him almost immediately.

Everyone within him had been asleep cultivating this entire time, leaving him completely alone in the void. He had nearly gone insane from the silence.

And out of everyone there, Yaya was the most gifted. If anyone could help him figure this out, it would probably be her.

"Big brother, where are we?"

Before Ethan could answer, before he could even pull his consciousness fully back into his Mindscape, light suddenly flickered beside him.

A figure appeared in the darkness.

Graceful and alive.

Ethan froze.

"Yaya...?"

For a moment, he genuinely didn’t recognize her.

The little girl with pigtails was gone.

The Yaya standing before him now looked seventeen or eighteen years old. Her beauty carried an almost unreal purity to it, the kind that made impure thoughts feel inappropriate the moment they appeared. Every feature on her face seemed perfect on its own, yet together they created something even more breathtaking, as though a goddess had stepped directly out of myth.

Yaya tilted her head slightly and smiled.

"Big brother... am I pretty?"

The expression on Ethan’s face clearly amused her.

"Yeah," he answered instinctively.

The moment the word left his mouth, Yaya burst into laughter. Not gentle laughter; mischievous laughter. The kind that instantly made Ethan realize he’d walked straight into a trap.

"You little brat..."

He could already imagine how dumbfounded he must have looked just now. Reaching out instinctively, he tried to smack her lightly on the head.

"Big brother, I’m sorry!"

But this wasn’t the obedient little Yaya from before.

The moment she saw his expression, her eyes immediately turned watery as she shrank back pitifully like a frightened rabbit pretending to be bullied.

Ethan’s heart twitched helplessly. She had become a complete menace.

He cleared his throat awkwardly and forced himself back to the main topic.

"Anyway."

He gestured toward the endless darkness surrounding them.

"We’re not in our world anymore. I found what should be the weakest point connecting this place to Earth, but I can’t break through the spatial barrier. Do you know any way back?"

Yaya’s playful expression disappeared almost immediately.

She looked carefully toward the point Ethan had indicated, her eyes growing thoughtful.

"This really is the weakest point between the two worlds," she said softly. "But if we want to return, you still need to shatter the void itself."

She paused briefly before continuing.

"The problem is that your body is still restricted by the Laws. Your actual strength is incredibly high, but your rank hasn’t caught up to it yet. Right now, your existence is still judged as an ordinary mortal by the world itself, so you haven’t reached the level where you can truly shatter space."

Ethan narrowed his eyes. That was almost exactly what he had suspected.

"So how do I raise my rank?"

Yaya looked directly at him.

"If you break the Law restricting your body, your rank will rise very quickly. With the strength you’ve already accumulated, your realm would skyrocket almost instantly."

Ethan straightened immediately.

"How?"