Child of the World, Iron Throne

High above, four devastating Spirit Power beams screamed toward Black Bear No. 1.

The terrifying Spirit Power shockwaves sent every prodigy below wide-eyed with shock, all of them staring up at the sky.

"Four Peak Lord Grade vessels!"

Every eye locked onto Black Bear No. 1, watching to see whether it could hold against a simultaneous barrage from four Peak Lord Grade flying vessels.

At that moment, several blurred shapes carved through the chaotic sky.

Mid-tier Lord Grade flying vessels.

They hurled themselves directly into the path of the Peak Lords' Spirit Cannon fire.

**Boom!!**

Spirit Power beams collided. Ring-shaped shockwaves radiated outward in every direction, expanding hundreds of meters wide.

The violent force sent nearby vessels tumbling out of the melee.

The Peak Lords' Spirit Cannons far outclassed anything mid-tier Lords could produce — after the barest instant of standoff, the Peak Lord beams tore straight through the weaker salvos and kept coming.

The remainder drove on toward Black Bear No. 1.

But several mid-tier Lord vessels had placed themselves squarely in the beams' path.

The Spirit Cannons hammered into their energy shields. A deafening roar rang out again.

The shields fractured in a spiderweb of cracks — and then shattered entirely.

The beams slammed home, blasting the mid-tier Lord vessels to pieces.

While those vessels bought the moment of cover, Black Bear No. 1 had already surged two kilometers forward, leaving the Peak Lord vessels behind.

Then the alarms aboard Black Bear No. 1 screamed to life again.

In the airspace surrounding the ship, a wave of red blips materialized.

More than ten of them.

And three of those blips burned just as fiercely as the earlier Peak Lord Grade vessels.

Lu Yuan's expression darkened. He drove his Spirit Power to its absolute limit and unleashed Mechanical Control at full force.

Every low-tier Lord Grade vessel and below wheeled and charged toward the three Peak Lords.

He had used his interference ability to make them register the Peak Lords as enemies.

He also seized control of six mid-tier Lords and flung them straight at the three high-tier Lord vessels.

With every vessel tangled in a furious brawl, Black Bear No. 1 pressed forward.

Thunder rolled through the sky without end.

Looking up from the steel city below, the prodigies of every race watched the vast defensive swarm — packed like a locust storm — plunge into utter chaos the moment Black Bear No. 1 entered. Spirit Cannons blazed in every direction, detonations reverberating across the heavens, blinding flares of Spirit Power strobing constantly.

From down there, they could only make out the black diamond-shaped craft inching steadily deeper into the defensive line — slow, but absolutely relentless.

Only the final stretch remained between them and the Central Floating City.

Nearly every watcher held their breath, eyes fixed on that diamond silhouette, all asking the same silent question: *could they actually cross that last gap and enter the Central Floating City they had all dreamed of?*

Aboard Black Bear No. 1.

Both Yeye and Amy wore taut, grave expressions.

The battle projected on the ship's display was nightmarish, and it had drawn the color from their faces.

Amy glanced over at Lu Yuan from time to time. Each time she saw how grim he looked, she turned her eyes back to the front.

Yeye was steadier — she simply watched the chaos ahead in silence.

Three kilometers. That was all that remained between Black Bear No. 1 and the Central Floating City.

Such a short distance that, at full throttle, the ship could cover it in under a second. Even at five times the speed of sound it would take barely two.

Amy and Yeye could already make out the soaring skyscrapers rising inside the Floating City, and beyond them — deep within its heart — the massive Iron Throne.

But between them and it lay an ocean of flying vessels. Tens of thousands, packed dense.

Then an alarm shriek cut through the air — unlike anything they had heard before.

In the final three-kilometer stretch between Black Bear No. 1 and the Central Floating City, nearly a hundred red blips materialized all at once.

Ten of them were Peak Lord Grade vessels. And two were Perfect Lord Grade.

At the sight of it, Amy and Yeye both stiffened, their hands clenching involuntarily.

Lu Yuan narrowed his eyes.

He could already feel the Spirit Power condensing in the vessels massed across that zone.

A faint, almost unhinged smile crossed his face.

"Amy, Yeye — brace yourselves. I'm going in!"

Something profound ignited in the depths of his dark eyes. His Spirit Power surged violently.

He wrung every last drop of potential from himself and drove Mechanical Control to the absolute limit.

**BOOM!!!**

The riot erupted.

Under Lu Yuan's interference, every low and mid-tier Lord vessel in the area wheeled and crashed straight into the higher-tier Lords, plunging the entire sky into pandemonium.

Black Bear No. 1 became a streak of light and rocketed toward the Central Floating City.

Then — the Central Floating City let out a low, resonant hum.

A ghostly blue luminous barrier materialized around the city's entire exterior.

It was vast — a dome that swallowed the whole of the Central Floating City.

And Black Bear No. 1 was hurtling directly toward it.

Hitting that barrier might not destroy them — but it would stop them cold.

Amy and Yeye both went wide-eyed, alarm flashing across their faces.

"Lu Yuan!"

Amy cried out.

Yeye turned to look at him as well.

She caught the focused calm on his face. Her gaze steadied. She said nothing.

Down on the steel city below, everyone else saw it too: as the diamond vessel closed to within the final two kilometers, a vast barrier blazed into existence above the Central Floating City.

The instant it registered, every mouth fell open.

"A shield?!"

Then most of them erupted into laughter.

"Hahahahaha!! Hahahahaha!! Never saw THAT coming!"

"Ha! Nobody's ever tried to enter the Central Floating City from the air — nobody even knew there was a shield up there!"

"Hahahahaha!! Beautiful! Now let's see how the Night King and those two humans survive THIS!"

"Trapped deep in a zone swarming with Lord Grade vessels, and now a shield cutting off their path — how do they get out of this alive?!"

As the crowd's laughter rang out, aboard Black Bear No. 1, Lu Yuan's expression was perfectly cold.

He maintained his control — feeding low and mid-tier Lords into the path of the Peak and Perfect Lord vessels, intercepting the incoming Spirit Cannon fire.

Black Bear No. 1 rode the swell of Spirit Power, shouldering aside vessel after vessel blocking its path, and barreled straight toward the glowing barrier.

Amy and Yeye both tensed.

Amy squeezed her eyes shut, unable to watch.

A flicker of genuine shock crossed Yeye's face.

At that moment, something strange stirred within Lu Yuan — a deep, internal resonance.

Black Bear No. 1 struck the blue barrier —

— and passed through it like a hand slipping into still water, inside without the slightest resistance.

Behind them, a high-tier Lord Grade vessel that had been giving chase slammed into the same barrier — and detonated on impact, blasting apart in a shower of wreckage.

Black Bear No. 1 drifted serenely in the air above the Central Floating City.

Outside, the defensive line of flying vessels snapped back into formation as though nothing had ever happened.

The fierce battle that had raged moments ago seemed to have never existed.

Below the Central Floating City.

The laughter died.

All at once, every last voice fell silent. Every pair of eyes went wide, fixed on the vessel that had simply passed through the barrier — staring in flat disbelief.

The silence stretched, heavy and complete.

Then a burly Kaman warrior bellowed:

"That's impossible!! That barrier stopped the ruins' own mechanical vessels — so why didn't it stop outsiders?! Why didn't it stop the humans and the Night King?!"

"This makes no sense! How?! Is that shield just decoration?!"

The other Gene Warriors looked equally staggered, their minds simply refusing to process what they had seen.

No matter how they tried to reason it out, nothing explained why the Central Floating City's barrier had blocked mechanical vessels while letting three foreigners pass straight through.

"…If that's really the case…" an Elf girl murmured to herself, "have the Night King and those two humans entered the Central Floating City four full hours before the Central Tower opens?"

One by one, the others went quiet. The words landed with their full weight.

They looked at each other.

Nobody had anything to say.

High above, inside the Central Floating City.

Aboard Black Bear No. 1, the atmosphere was equally silent.

Amy, who had her eyes clamped shut, suddenly noticed that the thundering din from outside had faded. Things had gone still.

She cracked one eye open cautiously and looked around.

She saw the towering buildings surrounding them on all sides. The glowing barrier still shimmering behind them. The dense swarm of vessels massed just beyond it.

Amy blinked her large violet eyes, genuinely confused.

"How did we get in?"

Lu Yuan smiled. "We passed through the barrier — so of course we're in."

Amy stared at him. "We didn't hit the barrier?!"

She looked back at the still-glowing blue shield. The expression on her face was that of someone who had just lost faith in how reality worked.

*That's impossible!*

Yeye had never closed her eyes — she had watched the ship slip through the barrier the entire time.

Even so, she was still a little dazed.

She turned to look at Lu Yuan, curiosity in her gaze.

"Why did we pass through?"

Lu Yuan smiled easily. "I'm just naturally gifted."

Honestly — before they'd entered, when the barrier appeared, his heart had nearly bottomed out.

He'd been certain they were going to have to fall back.

Then, without warning, an intuition surfaced in his mind. A clear, certain feeling: *we can pass through this.*

Not a guess. The Aier Mechanical Ruins itself had told him.

In all the time he'd spent exploring Floating City after Floating City, the Aier Core Fragments he had collected were no small number.

After absorbing them, he had felt a growing sense of closeness to the Ruins — but beyond that, no concrete change he could identify.

He had hoped that deepening that bond might eventually let him control all the Mechanical Guardians outright, sparing him the effort of driving each one manually through Mechanical Control.

Instead, he still had to do it the hard way.

But now — the moment the barrier appeared — the Evolution Cube, laden with dozens of absorbed Aier Core Fragments, had suddenly vibrated. And in that instant, Lu Yuan had simply *known* it, bone-deep: he could pilot Black Bear No. 1 straight through the barrier and into the Central Floating City.

Because he was a being that the Aier Mechanical Ruins recognized.

Put it in dramatic terms — perhaps he was the Chosen One?

Or something like a Child of the World?

Whatever the title, he was inside now.

This was naturally not something he could share with Yeye or Amy.

No one he had ever heard of had absorbed this many Aier Core Fragments. Without the Evolution Cube, he probably couldn't have done it at all.

Hearing his answer, Amy's mouth twitched.

She thought back over all the ways Lu Yuan had been "naturally gifted" since the very beginning.

Finding Aier Core Fragments, for instance — no matter how obscure or hidden the location, he had turned up every single one across all their Floating City raids. She had gone numb to it long ago.

Then there was Mechanical Control.

And every other inexplicable feat he had pulled off.

And now this man could pass through the Central Floating City's barrier?

*Why couldn't she be this naturally gifted?*

Her head was full of question marks.

Yeye, for her part, was nothing like Amy — she did not actually believe it was simply natural talent. Her deep, slit-pupiled eyes rested on Lu Yuan for a long moment. She didn't press.

She gave a small, composed nod and spoke calmly:

"We're inside the Central Floating City now. Four hours until the Central Tower opens. Time is limited. Where do we go from here? You're the naturally gifted one — you decide."

Amy looked to him as well, grinning. "Right — you're the naturally gifted one. You call it."

Lu Yuan felt his eye twitch.

*Why did it sound faintly off when Yeye said "naturally gifted"?*

He guided Black Bear No. 1 upward, giving them a sweeping view of the city below. Skyscrapers stretched in every direction — the shortest still reached five hundred meters, while thousand-meter towers were the norm, and they grew taller the deeper one looked toward the core. In the central zone, buildings surpassing ten thousand meters were everywhere, and at the very heart of it all stood an immense Iron Throne.

Lu Yuan's gaze lingered on it. A flicker passed through his eyes.

"Yeye — can we get there?"

Yeye gave a small shake of her head.

"Impossible. The Mechanical Guardians along the Central Floating City's outer edge start at Second-rank Elite Grade and go up to Second-rank Lord Grade. Once you reach the inner ring, Third-rank Mechanical Guardians appear. Based on the power scaling — the area around the central throne should have Third-rank King Grade guardians."

"Third-rank King Grade?!"

Lu Yuan's eyes went slightly wide. The words hit him like a wall of cold water.

"Then who could possibly ever reach the Iron Throne and claim anything there?"

Amy gave a dry look. "Since the Aier Mechanical Ruins first opened, not one person has ever made it to the central zone."

"Not one person?"

Lu Yuan blinked.

Amy nodded. "Not one. Even someone who inherited a King Grade gene — after absorbing Aier Core Fragments and stepping into Second-rank — their peak combat power still wouldn't exceed Second-rank Peak Lord Grade. Surviving the inner ring alone would already be a struggle. Even someone with Emperor Grade heritage would probably hit a wall before they ever reached the throne zone."

Lu Yuan went quiet.

*Third-rank King Grade. Who on earth could handle that?*

Even Second-rank Peak Lord Grade was already beyond his reach right now.

He thought for a moment. "Then let's start by exploring the outer buildings. See if there's anything useful against those two Kings."

Yeye and Amy both nodded.

Lu Yuan guided Black Bear No. 1 forward — and the ship vanished from where it hovered.