My Ultimate Sign-in System Made Me Invincible

Chapter 638: Just The Beginning

The group gasped collectively. The parents physically recoiled, several of them grabbing their spouses’ arms. It was one thing to walk through a shimmer.

It was an entirely different, terrifying thing to watch a nineteen-year-old boy manually rip a hole in the universe with his bare hand.

They did their absolute best not to let the shock paralyze them, their faces freezing in masks of wide-eyed composure.

"After you," Liam said casually, stepping aside and gesturing to the torn fabric of reality.

Kristopher was the first to move, clearing his throat and stepping through the tear with a practiced nonchalance that he didn’t entirely feel. Harper followed, then Matt, and eventually, the parents gathered their courage and stepped through the void, transitioning from the impossible cathedral back to the polished hardwood of the mansion.

Liam stepped through last. As soon as his boots hit the hardwood floor, the tear behind him snapped shut with a sharp, concussive *crack* that displaced the air in the hallway, leaving no trace that it had ever existed.

The transition back to reality signaled the final goodbyes.

Liam turned to the mansion staff first—Evelyn, Mason, Nick, and the others. "You all are off duty until Monday. Go home, get some rest, and don’t even think about coming into this house tomorrow."

"Thank you, sir. And happy birthday," Evelyn said warmly, the staff murmuring their own agreements before filtering down the hallway toward the staff exits.

Next were his friends and their parents. The goodbyes here were loud, overlapping, and filled with a lingering, buzzy adrenaline.

"Thank you for having us, Liam," Patricia Osei said, hugging him surprisingly tight. "Truly. It was an evening we will never forget."

"Keep him in line for me, Mrs. Osei," Liam smiled.

Gloria, Stacy’s mother, gave him a very pointed, lingering look as she shook his hand. "We will definitely be in touch, Liam. Don’t work too hard."

One by one, they filed out the front doors, moving toward the line of waiting cars that Lucy had arranged for their transport. When the heavy oak doors finally clicked shut, the massive foyer of the Bellemere Mansion fell blissfully quiet.

Only four people remained. Liam, Daniel, Lucy, and Yanxia.

"Walk with me," Liam said to Daniel, gesturing toward the interior of the house.

Daniel fell into step beside him, with Lucy and Yanxia trailing quietly a few paces behind.

"I’ll be leaving in two days," Liam said. "Maybe three. I don’t have an exact timeline for when I’ll be back."

Daniel nodded slowly, processing the information. This was the second time Liam had announced a departure. The first time, it had been for a trip through the solar system. But Daniel had a distinct, unsettling feeling that this trip was not going to be a simple sightseeing tour of the outer planets.

"Where are you going?" Daniel asked, keeping his voice even.

"Further," Liam said simply. It wasn’t an evasion; it was the most accurate answer he could give.

"Understood," Daniel said.

"While I’m gone, you and Lucy are in charge of everything terrestrial. The upcoming launch of LucidNet Finance, the clinical trials. All of it." Liam stopped at the base of the grand staircase and turned to face his financial manager. "If you run into a problem you can’t solve, one of my clones will remain here in the mansion. You can consult him. You can also leverage Whitlock; he knows where he stands now."

Liam paused, his eyes flicking briefly toward the girl in the gold dress standing behind Daniel.

"If something happens that threatens the absolute safety of the people I care about—and only if it is a catastrophic, unmanageable threat—you ask Yanxia." Liam’s voice was deadly serious. "She is the absolute last resort, Daniel. Do you understand? If she gets involved, she won’t just solve the problem. She will erase it. The collateral damage would be... significant."

Daniel swallowed hard, remembering the sheer, soul-crushing terror he had seen on Master Han’s face when the old man had looked at Yanxia. He had no desire to find out what a "significant" response from her looked like on terrestrial soil.

"I understand perfectly," Daniel said. "We will handle it. Have a safe trip, Liam. And happy birthday."

"Thanks, Daniel. Goodnight."

Daniel turned and made his way toward the door, his mind already spinning up the necessary contingencies for running Nova Technologies while its founder was off-world.

Liam watched him leave, then turned and began walking up the grand staircase. Lucy and Yanxia followed him in companionable silence.

The house was incredibly still. The geopolitical storms, the market crashes, the government panic—all of it felt a million miles away, locked outside the heavy walls of the mansion.

When they reached the door to his master suite, Liam stopped and turned to the two of them.

"Goodnight, Lucy. Thank you for everything tonight. The memory... it was the best gift I could have asked for."

Lucy smiled, a soft, radiant expression. "Goodnight, Master."

"Goodnight, Papa," Yanxia chimed in, stepping forward to wrap her arms around his waist for a brief, crushing hug that would have snapped a normal human’s spine. "Don’t sleep too late."

"I won’t," Liam laughed, patting her back.

He opened the door, stepped into his room, and closed it behind him.

The master suite was dark, save for the ambient moonlight spilling through the massive floor-to-ceiling windows. Liam didn’t bother turning on the lights. He walked over to the edge of his massive, custom-built bed and simply let himself fall backward onto the mattress.

He stared up at the ceiling, a deep, satisfied smile spreading across his face.

The birthday party had been better than he could have ever expected. There had been no political posturing, no unmanageable drama. Thanks to Lucy keeping the guest list ruthlessly restricted to those who actually mattered, the atmosphere had remained cozy, lively, and profoundly human. For a few hours, he had just been a guy hanging out with his friends.

He lifted his left arm, letting the moonlight catch the face of the custom analog watch Daniel had given him. He listened to the faint, mechanical ticking of the gears inside the casing. It was a rhythmic sound.

He was nineteen years old.

By human standards, his life was just beginning. By the standards of the cultivation world, he was barely an infant.

He was a Loose Immortal, standing at the edge of the Second Transcendent Stage. He commanded AGIs, owned a lunar base, and possessed wealth that could buy and sell continents. But as he lay there in the quiet dark, he knew that all of this—the terrestrial empire, the political leverage, the awe of the masses—was just the foundation.

The real work was waiting for him out there, in the dark, broken spaces between the stars. The universe was dying, operating on shattered laws rewritten by a dead god.

He still needed two more major cultivation breakthroughs before he was even strong enough to attempt replacing the millions of broken law gears holding the cosmos together.

His immortal life was just beginning, and the road ahead was impossibly long.

The Cosmos still needed saving.

But tonight, he was just a nineteen-year-old boy who had had a really good birthday.

Liam closed his eyes, let the ticking of the analog watch lull him into the quiet, and for the first time in months, fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.