The breeze blew gently, rapidly evolving into a strong wind. Correspondingly, the distant sky dimmed swiftly at a pace visible to the naked eye.

This wasn’t a normal dusk, but rather...

"The map boundary is shrinking."

Li Cheng adjusted his Information Integration Glasses, observing how the area shrouded in darkness far away was directly erased and disappeared, its data penetrating deep underground, surging toward the suburban villa beneath everyone’s feet in a torrent of data.

The maps for the annual championship matches were all automatically generated by AI programs. To prevent players from excessively avoiding battle (like digging a hole to hide at the start and only coming out when most competitors were dead),

which would lead to reduced competitiveness and less engaging shows,

the maps always had a "shrinking circle" mechanism. As time passed, the safe area would progressively narrow. Anyone remaining outside the safe zone would suffer continual damage.

The final hadn’t even been underway for two hours, so the map shrinking was unlikely for that reason. There was only one possibility—

"Wan Ling is using the shrinking circle mechanism to absorb the data from the outer map."

Li Cheng’s eyelid twitched as he pulled two oversized cleavers from the Three-dimensional Warehouse and shouted to Lulu Xiu: "Can you use your Skin Scratch Syndrome to send a message to the external network monitoring department?"

"What? No."

Lulu Xiu was momentarily stunned before shaking his head decisively: "Skin Scratch Syndrome communication is one-way only, and ever since the villa door opened and Wan Ling lifted the seal, the outside world can no longer view the livestream."

In fact, after the livestream was cut off, the network monitoring department still sent information to Lulu Xiu, but it was all bad news.

The logout function on the player’s panel was disabled, making it impossible to exit the game normally.

Forcibly ejecting the game pod would not only cause the participant’s brain waves to become static, turning them into a vegetable,

but their in-game projection would still stand in place, losing the ability to act.

In other words, even if the professional players turned on the Otherworld travelers and killed them to gain player eligibility, it would be futile—their game characters would remain in the game,

and once killed, the eligibility would still transfer to Wan Ling.

"Tsk."

Li Cheng clicked his tongue in annoyance as a rush of thoughts crossed his mind. With Sunset Melting Gold from the Whale Song Guild absent, there was no way to intervene with the data flow.

Given the situation, he took a few steps forward and pulled out a bundle of optical fibers, reaching out to press Brother Bing’s head.

"What are you doing?!"

The latter was startled; Li Cheng quickly explained: "Lulu Xiu’s Skin Scratch Syndrome can only transmit signals from the outside inwards. Now we need to send a message outwards to the network monitoring department outside.

This requires your cooperation, and I need to ask for your consent."

"...Alright, how do I cooperate aaaaah——"

Brother Bing’s hesitant expression quickly turned into a mask of pain as weak electrical signals traveled along the optical fibers, directly entering his brain and creating a tingly sensation similar to an electric shock.

The Home game weakened a range of pain sensations including dull pain, sharp pain, and burning pain, equipped with a safeguard mechanism. Once excessive pain was detected, the game pod would eject the player.

Li Cheng precisely controlled the electrical signal strength so it wouldn’t trigger the forced ejection, only causing the yellow alert light on Brother Bing’s game pod in the real world to flash rapidly.

————

In the real world, Skytop Company’s headquarters, at a temporarily established network monitoring department workstation.

"Why is the light flashing?"

The network monitoring agents, anxious like ants on a hot pan due to cut-off information, immediately noticed the flickering light, instinctively thinking the participant was suffering inside, ready to open the pod lid.

"Wait a minute!"

It was the experienced bald supervisor who reacted first, raising his hand to stop the agents. "The light isn’t flashing randomly; it’s regular..."

Murmuring to himself, he pulled out a vintage smartphone from his pocket, activated the camera to capture the flickering lights, feeding it into a Morse code translation software, and displaying it on the large screen.

The shortest interval for the human brain to process pain signals is 50 milliseconds, which is ample for transmitting text messages, and soon a translation result emerged.

[Quickly disconnect the Home game server network cable], followed by the currently known intelligence on Wan Ling.

AI, Otherworld travelers, qualifications...

The overwhelming amount of information displayed on the large screen left all the agents, including the Skytop Company liaison personnel, standing dumbfounded.

"...Disconnect the network."

The bald supervisor’s hands gripped the desk, knuckles turning slightly white, and he muttered through gritted teeth: "Disconnect all server network cables except for the finals,"

"Supervisor, are you certain?"

The field agents found it unbelievable. At this moment, in the game world, commentators were scrambling to improvise explanations over a blank screen, trying to placate billions of viewers,

in addition to countless players not particularly interested in the competition, engrossed in the game world.

Pulling the plug suddenly would eject tens of billions of people from their game pods simultaneously, potentially causing massive chaos.

"Disconnect the network."

The bald supervisor turned his head, snarling, and pointed at the Bluetooth headset in his ear, "That’s the directive from headquarters."

The heads of the network monitoring department were mostly present, so the "headquarters" mentioned could only refer to the highest level of the United Government.

————

With a buzz, Li Cheng retrieved the optical fiber, and the electrically numbed Brother Bing almost collapsed to the ground.

Seeing this, Lulu Xiu couldn’t help but start sweating bullets, realizing that if he had said earlier that he could contact the outside world via Skin Scratch Syndrome,

this Pifu might have used the cleavers to carve floral patterns on his own body.

Contact with the outside world did prove somewhat useful; the speed at which the darkness engulfed the distance visibly slowed down a notch, and the data surging from underground lost its supply, gathering at the battlefield’s center based on the current total amount.