Jincheng University, China, Earth.
It was 10PM in the night, and the moon was barely visible, hidden behind layers of clouds that filled the sky above. However, this didn't hinder visibility in the campus environment, as artificial light sources made it such that the night was almost as bright as daytime.
By now, the streets were devoid of the large crowd of students that were frolicking about just a couple of hours earlier, save for one youth who was just making his way home.
This youth, named Di Tian, was about seventeen years of age. He had brown-eyed, possessed a rather ordinary build, and had barely passable facial features. There was no distinct quality to his appearance; he appeared mundane, banal even.
Di Tian was in his second year in the University, studying Computer Science. At the same time, he was also working part-time as a freelance programmer.
Right now, his forehead was scrunched in a deep furrow as he sorted his thoughts.
After lectures ended earlier today in the afternoon, Di Tian had returned to his hostel, taking a nap as usual. Upon waking up hours later, he discovered to his dismay that his laptop was nowhere to be found.
As this was his sole work tool, this was extremely bad news for Di Tian. But then, he rifled through his memory and realized that he had simply forgotten to grab his bag after class today. His laptop, charger and study materials were all inside it.
This prompted him to go back to retrieve them, but even after a thorough search, the bag was no longer there. Di Tian wouldn't be so pained about this had it not been for the fact that he had an almost finished project on the system he was supposed to submit by 7AM tomorrow to a client.
"If only I backed up the project to my cloud storage earlier, damnit," Di Tian involuntary cursed aloud. Now, the only option he had left was to borrow a friend's laptop when he got back to his hostel and pull an all-nighter, hopefully finishing the work in due time. He would worry about tracking his device after that.
Just as Di Tian passed a tree park on the side of the street, he heard a loud, ripping sound. As he was too caught up in his thoughts, he barely paid attention to this and continued moving.
However, the trees he passed suddenly lit up in a dull glow.
"Hhm?" Di Tian's interest was instantly piqued as he noticed this. Without realizing, he involuntarily stopped.
"Are my eyes deceiving me, or are those trees.....glowing?" He muttered, blinking his eyes warily to make sure it wasn't a trick of the light. To his surprise, it wasn't.
But the next second, the light subsided as quickly as it appeared.
"Hhm?" Di Tian froze, perplexed.
By nature, he was a naturally curious person, so a strong urge to investigate possessed him right away. Without wasting any time, he veered straight into the tree park.
******
Ten minutes later, Di Tian stopped dead in his tracks. Less than a couple feet from him, there was a humanoid figure lying on a pile of fallen leaves.
The thick cover of trees made it difficult to see clearly, so Di Tian wasn't able to identify if indeed it was a human or not.
He hesitated. But at that moment, he heard it make a coughing sound. In the silence of the night, it was unmistakable.
At the same time, the same glow from earlier appeared again, lighting the surroundings.
Di Tian instinctively squinted, then cautiously opened his eyes when he realized the light was not intense.
"What?"
Now that he could see more clearly, Di Tian's gaze landed on the figure.
It was indeed in humanoid form, but the entire body appeared to be metallic, making him instantly suspect it was an alien. Di Tian suspiciously cast a glance at the light source which appeared to be a glowing rock of some sort in the figure's hand, which he noticed looked human.
Upon closer inspection, he realized the metal suit was probably an armour the figure was wearing.
Di Tian hesitated briefly before inching close. He could only see the back view as the figure was lying on its face, so he wanted to adjust the position so he could see better.
Meanwhile, a cold glint flashed across the "alien's"—Yi Ming's—eyes. Although his injuries actually worsened after being ejected from the spatial tunnel, his divine sense was still present, so the youth's approach was not hidden from him.
"He has no bit of cultivation base at all, and there's barely any spirit energy in the air," Yi Ming's wariness waned as he concluded he most likely was on a mortal-grade planet. This was good news; there would be no cultivators from the planet joining the fray to chase after him.
While Yi Ming was in the chaotic spatial tunnel, he had surprisingly completed primary refinement of the Supreme Primordial treasure, so he no longer had to worry so much about his exact whereabouts being tracked in real time. But he also knew that his pursuers probably had an estimate of his general location. Thus, the priority right now was to heal his injuries and recover his cultivation base.
As Di Tian curiously knelt beside the body, he was unaware that Yi Ming was gathering mental power at that moment to unleash a spiritual attack at him.
Just as he placed his hand on the armour, an explosion deafened the atmosphere as a figure suddenly appeared mid-air, descending towards them.
Di Tian instantly felt a strong sense of danger and was frozen on the spot.
"Shit," Yi Ming immediately knew who it was; the lady from the Auna Clan. She was here, she found him. And he was too injured to play any tricks to escape.
The light receded as Li Mei landed gracefully. She barely looked at the dumbfounded mortal and focused on her target, Yi Ming.
Li Mei frowned. With her Divine Sense, she discovered he was severely injured, and the Supreme Primordial treasure was enclosed in his hand. But something was off. It was no longer emitting its unique signature aura, and that could only mean two things.
It was either already refined, or a fake. But it was basically impossible to refine a treasure of this level in such a short while, so she was leaning towards the second option.
If it was already refined, there was probably a trap waiting. Once she attempted to retrieve the treasure, Yi Ming would most definitely utilize the treasure to unleash destructive sneak attacks.
"You," she suddenly turned her attention to the mortal youth. "Grab that object from his hand."