I am the creator of New Life on the Earth

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Hey everyone,

I have to post this message with a very heavy heart because I've made a huge mistake, and I am incredibly sorry for it.

I somehow managed to upload a completely wrong set of chapters. Everything from Chapter 292 all the way to Chapter 313 is incorrect and has nothing to do with our main storyline. I can only imagine how confusing this must have been for all of you, and I am truly ashamed of this error.

So, this is what I need you all to do:

Please, please SKIP all chapters from 292 to 313.

The story picks back up correctly at Chapter 314. Please jump straight to Chapter 314.

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Adam's eyelids fluttered, then dragged themselves open with a leaden weight. His first conscious sensation was a dull, pervasive throbbing that resonated from the back of his skull, spreading a fuzzy ache through his temples.

He blinked several times, trying to clear the disorienting blur from his vision, but was met only with an oppressive, near-impenetrable darkness. A disquieting sense of dislocation settled over him; this was not his room, not any place familiar.

He tried to lift a hand to his head, to assess the source of the pain, but his arm met immediate, unyielding resistance.

A jolt of alarm, cold and sharp, shot through the lingering grogginess. He strained again, a grunt escaping his lips as he discovered his other arm was similarly immobilized.

Panic began to bloom in his chest as the full reality of his situation dawned: he was seated, and bound. Tightly. The hard, unyielding surface of a chair pressed against his back and thighs.

His wrists were pulled sharply behind the chair's back, secured by something coarse and abrasive – rope, he realized with a sinking feeling, already chafing his skin raw with his initial, reflexive struggles.

He tested the bonds cautiously, pulling and twisting, but they held firm, digging deeper.

He forced himself to take a slow, steadying breath, fighting down the rising tide of fear. He scanned his surroundings, his eyes straining to pierce the deep gloom.

It wasn't absolute blackness; after a few moments, faint, almost subliminal variations in the darkness began to resolve into the vague outlines of what seemed to be a large, featureless room.

No windows were visible, no discernible sources of light. The air was cool, still, and carried a faint, sterile, almost metallic tang that tickled his nostrils. He had no memory of arriving here.

His last clear recollection was the sudden, incapacitating psychic assault in his own room, Sona's light dimming as she fell…

A faint sound, almost too subtle to register, broke the heavy silence. A soft, dry scuffing, like a shoe sole sliding almost imperceptibly on a smooth, hard floor.

It came from somewhere directly in front of him. Adam's head snapped up, every nerve ending suddenly alive, his senses straining to locate the source.

A form, a silhouette darker even than the surrounding oppressive shadows, detached itself from the murk and began to move towards him with a slow, deliberate, almost leisurely pace.

The figure was humanoid, but its features remained indistinct, a shifting patch of greater darkness within the encompassing void.

Adam's mind, now clear of the initial fog of unconsciousness, raced. He needed information, leverage, any advantage he could grasp. "System Window," he commanded internally, his mental voice sharp and urgent.

He visualized the familiar translucent blue interface materializing before his eyes, ready to feed him data, to offer him options, to connect him to his network. He anticipated the soft, confirmatory chime that always accompanied its activation.

He waited. One second. Two.

Nothing.

No luminous display shimmered into existence. No comforting chime echoed in his mind. The mental command, an action as reflexive and reliable as breathing, simply vanished, absorbed by an unseen, unresponsive barrier.

A cold dread, far more profound than the fear of his physical restraints, began to creep through him. This was wrong. Terribly wrong.

"System Window, activate!!" he projected again, with greater force, a note of desperation creeping into his mental tone. He focused all his will on the command, picturing the interface, willing it to appear.

The result was identical: a stark, echoing void where his system should have been. It was as if a fundamental part of him had been excised, a sense organ abruptly and completely severed.

Surprise quickly gave way to a profound and deeply unsettling worry. His most crucial tool, his constant companion and primary interface with his abilities, was utterly offline. He was effectively blind and deaf in the way that mattered most.

The approaching figure had now drawn much closer, solidifying from the indeterminate shadows into the recognizable form of a man. He stopped a mere few feet from Adam's chair.

Even in the dim light, Adam could now make out a tall, lean build and the glint of eyes fixed steadily upon him. A faint, almost predatory smile touched the man's lips as he regarded Adam's bound form.

"Don't trouble yourself, Adam," the man said. His voice was smooth, cultured, with an almost conversational ease that was chillingly at odds with the situation. The words, however, were anything but casual.

"Your… particular talents," he continued, the smile widening almost imperceptibly, "they won't function in this room. Not in the slightest." He paused, letting the statement hang in the heavy air, his gaze unwavering.

"We've been observing you, you see. For a very, very long time. We've made it our primary concern to understand precisely how you, and your rather… unique team… operate."

Each word struck Adam with the impact of a physical blow. "We've been watching you." The casual certainty in the man's voice, the calm assertion of his powerlessness, the specific mention of his team – it all painted a horrifying picture of meticulous surveillance and calculated planning.

These were not random assailants. They knew him. They knew about Sona, Pratham, Zero. They knew about his abilities.

A thousand questions, sharp and urgent, screamed through Adam's mind, but one fought its way to the surface first. Who were these people? How had they achieved this? How had they so completely and utterly neutralized him?

A tremor of cold anger began to vibrate through Adam's restrained body, momentarily pushing aside the fear and confusion. He strained against the ropes, his muscles cording, the rough fibers biting viciously into his skin.

He lifted his head, his eyes, now more accustomed to the oppressive gloom, fixing on the man with a burning intensity. "Who," he bit out, his voice low and taut, each syllable laden with barely suppressed fury, "are you people?"

As Adam's raw question echoed unanswered in the stillness, a new sound emerged – lighter, quicker footsteps from somewhere behind his chair, circling around from his blind spot.

Before he could fully register the new presence or attempt to twist his head, a second figure moved into his limited field of vision, coming to stand beside the first man.

This newcomer was a young boy, or at least appeared to be. He couldn't have been much older than his late teens, with neatly styled black hair that fell slightly across his forehead.

His eyes, even in the pervasive dimness, were remarkably clear and piercing, and they regarded Adam with a cool, unnervingly detached curiosity.

He was dressed in what Adam recognized as a standard school uniform – a crisp white shirt, a neatly knotted dark tie, and tailored dark trousers.

The normalcy of the attire was utterly incongruous, almost surreal, in the context of this dark, menacing room and Adam's current predicament. The boy offered no greeting, no explanation, simply observed Adam with that same steady, analytical gaze.

Adam's attention, already stretched taut, snapped from the man to the boy and back again. His first question remained unanswered, but a far more immediate and agonizing concern now clawed at his throat.

"My team," Adam forced out, his voice hoarse and urgent, each word a struggle against the knot of fear constricting his chest. "Where are they? Sona… Pratham… Zero… What have you done with them?" He could hear the desperation in his own voice and hated it, but the well-being of his companions overshadowed everything else.

Upon hearing Adam's frantic questions, the boy's lips curved into a small, knowing smile. It was not a smile of sympathy or reassurance; it held a distinct hint of condescension, a subtle amusement at Adam's obvious distress.

"Which team, precisely, are you referring to?" the boy inquired. His voice, when he spoke, was surprisingly mature and articulate for his youthful appearance, smooth and unnervingly calm.

Adam stared, a flicker of stunned incomprehension crossing his face at the boy's cryptic, almost dismissive question. Which team? What could that possibly mean? The boy's casual deflection felt like a deliberate taunt.

He quickly suppressed the momentary disorientation, his anger and desperate worry surging back with renewed force. He gave his head a sharp, involuntary shake, as if trying to clear the disorienting fog of their words and the oppressive atmosphere.

"Don't play these childish games with me," Adam growled, his gaze, hard and intense, boring into the boy before shifting to the equally impassive man.

"If you don't tell me, right now, what has happened to my team, you people are going to find yourselves in a world of trouble you cannot even begin to imagine."

The threat felt weak, almost pathetic, even to his own ears, given his current state of utter powerlessness, bound and stripped of his abilities, but the words burst out of him, fueled by fear and fury.

Ignoring their unchanging, calm expressions, Adam once more turned his efforts inward, a desperate hope flickering within him.

He reached out with his mind, attempting to forge a connection through his auxiliary channels, the direct telepathic links he maintained, the ones that bypassed the main System interface.

"[Phantom!]" he projected the call with every ounce of mental force he could summon, picturing the entity's distinct signature, focusing on their established bond. "[Phantom, can you hear me? Emergency override! Report your status!]"

The mental void remained absolute. It was like shouting into a soundproofed chasm. No echo, no response, no flicker of acknowledgement.

"[Pratham!]" he tried again, his heart sinking further with each failure, a cold knot of dread tightening in his stomach until it ached. "[Pratham, it's Adam! Override all protocols! Respond to my signal! Urgent!]"

Still, only silence. The familiar, reassuring presences of his AI companions were gone, as if they had never existed.

"[Zero! Sona! Can anyone hear my voice? Is anyone there? Respond!]" His mental voice was a raw, desperate plea now, echoing unanswered in the vast, terrifying emptiness of his severed connections. Each failed attempt was like another vital support being kicked out from under him, leaving him feeling increasingly isolated, exposed, and terrifyingly vulnerable.

The man standing beside the boy, who had been observing Adam's increasingly frantic mental struggles with an air of detached, almost clinical interest, let out a soft, dry chuckle. It was not a sound of mirth, but of cold, superior amusement.

He slowly raised both his hands, palms upward, in a gesture that was part theatrical shrug, part deliberate, patronizing presentation.

"I believe I already made mention of this, Adam," he said, his voice still smooth, but now laced with an unmistakable, almost pitying amusement. His eyes crinkled slightly at the corners as he met Adam's desperate gaze.

"You really cannot utilize any of your powers in this location. None of them whatsoever. We were… exceptionally thorough in our preparations."

A wave of cold despair washed over Adam, so potent it almost stole his breath. The man's confident, almost sympathetic tone, the utter and complete failure of every single one of his attempts to reach out, to access his abilities – it coalesced into a crushing realization of his true, helpless predicament.

"What are you saying?" he managed to choke out, his voice hoarse, the last vestiges of defiance draining out of him. He looked from the unsmiling man to the equally impassive boy, his gaze searching, desperate for an answer, any answer that could penetrate the fog of his confusion and fear.

"Who are you people? What do you want from me? Why are you doing this? Why are you after me?"

The man and the boy exchanged another brief, almost imperceptible glance. A shared smile flickered between them – a fleeting expression that held no warmth, no empathy, only the cold, detached satisfaction of those who held all the power, observing their captive's struggles with a distant, almost academic interest.

The oppressive darkness of the room seemed to press in on Adam, amplifying his profound sense of isolation, his chilling powerlessness, and the terrifying mystery of his captors.