Chapter Nineteen: The Wasteland

"Woo—"

The mournful wind swept across Guan Qian's brow, and Tang Ruyan’s white dress billowed and fluttered in the breeze.

Heavy, leaden clouds clung stubbornly to the low-pressured sky, making the atmosphere feel oppressive and suffocating. Faint light filtered through the thinner parts of the cloud cover, casting a hazy glow that only heightened the sense of mystery.

Guan Qian stared, utterly bewildered, at the lifeless wasteland before him.

Who could have guessed that the other side of the domain gate led to such a place—a desolate, uninhabited expanse that filled him with shock and awe.

He gazed into the distance; as far as the eye could see, the wasteland stretched on endlessly, littered with ruined buildings and wild, overgrown weeds.

The scent of decay and abandonment assaulted his senses.

“What is this place?” Tang Ruyan frowned.

“There doesn’t seem to be any sign of life,” Guan Qian replied uneasily, scanning the surroundings through his pale pupils.

“I have a very bad feeling about this,” Tang Ruyan murmured, the air tinged with a faint, putrid stench making her frown deepen.

“I wonder what has become of Jiang Qiang and the others. I hope nothing has happened to them,” Guan Qian sighed, his heart weighed down with worry.

“Can you sense the key to the spatial domain gate now?” Tang Ruyan pressed closer to him.

“It seems… it seems there’s something unknown pulling at me from the northeast,” Guan Qian replied, carefully attuning his senses; the prescient awareness within him immediately responded.

“Then we should head northeast at once—and keep an eye out for any trace of Jiang Qiang and the others along the way,” Tang Ruyan suggested, her gaze fixed on the dim light in that direction.

“Wait, let me observe a little longer,” Guan Qian said cautiously.

For the domain gate to transport them to such a desolate place, the false Prophet could not possibly intend for them to retrieve the key so easily. Danger surely lurked here, hidden from sight. He would need to plan every step with utmost care.

Pale pupils!

To pierce through to the essence, to seize the threads of cause and effect!

His entire worldview seemed to unravel before him, every detail laid bare—yet aside from desolation, he saw no trace of life. Everything appeared as though it had been forcibly transplanted, every living being vanished as if evaporated into thin air, leaving only an incredible void.

“Well?” Tang Ruyan asked.

“I don’t see anything suspicious, but something feels wrong. What could it be?” Guan Qian’s eyes flickered with uncertainty.

Tang Ruyan listened in silence, then crouched down and began to divine the outcome upon the earth.

No matter how she tried, the hexagrams remained blurred, neither auspicious nor ominous, the future shrouded in complete uncertainty.

“This…” Tang Ruyan’s brow furrowed. Something unknown was interfering!

A tense atmosphere rapidly settled between Guan Qian and Tang Ruyan.

In the stillness and ruin before them, danger surely hid in every shadow.

It was the unpredictable, lurking threats that inspired true terror—and now, both Guan Qian and Tang Ruyan felt that unimaginable fear seep into their bones.

“Let’s go. We’ll just have to take it one step at a time. I’ll keep my pale pupils active; if anything happens, I’ll notice immediately. Stay close—don’t move more than half a meter from me,” Guan Qian warned.

“All right,” Tang Ruyan replied, clenching her fists and nodding lightly.

Northeast.

The dim path ahead was shrouded in thick mist.

Moisture mingled with the scent of mildew and saturated the heavy air, making it hard even to breathe.

Broken, dilapidated houses lined their way, the scene like an abandoned continent, evoking a sense of helplessness.

Perhaps, once, this land was home to a highly civilized nation—towering buildings and strange, rust-stained structures scattered everywhere filled Guan Qian with a sense of lament.

"Woo—"

The wind howled, rushing through collapsed houses; dry, fractured tree roots teetered precariously, and shallow puddles brimmed with mud and filth.

Clang—

A faded sign, battered by the wind, snapped and crashed heavily to the ground, causing both Guan Qian and Tang Ruyan to tense with alarm.

Suddenly—

“Look! What’s that?” Tang Ruyan’s cold little hand gripped Guan Qian’s arm, pointing toward a shadowed corner up ahead.

Yet, before her words were done, she realized Guan Qian had already noticed it—a dreadful sense of foreboding washing over him.

Now, his pale pupils flared with light, piercing through the mist to reveal a heap of bone-white objects in that darkened corner.

Bones!

Heavens—it was a pile of decayed, snow-white bones!

Guan Qian’s heart pounded in terror.

“What did you see?” Tang Ruyan, noticing his ashen, rigid expression, already sensed something was wrong.

“It looks like bones—and a lot of them,” Guan Qian replied after a stunned pause.

“What?” Tang Ruyan glanced around nervously, her unease mounting.

In this ruined, forsaken place, they had finally stumbled upon the last thing they wished to find.

The nameless dread within them grew even heavier.

“We should take a look—something’s not right,” Guan Qian said, cautiously pulling Tang Ruyan closer as they approached the shadowy corner.

“Yes, these are bones—many of them already decayed. They must have died long ago,” Tang Ruyan said, steadying her nerves and examining the gruesome sight.

“These… these don’t look human,” Guan Qian said, crouching to study the piles of bones more closely.

“Wait—this one looks almost intact. It must belong to some unknown creature,” Tang Ruyan pointed out.

“Yes, its form resembles a human’s, but there are clear differences,” Guan Qian observed, circling the nearly complete skeleton, his frown deepening.

“So many bones, could it be…” Tang Ruyan’s breath quickened as she gazed over the mountain of remains.

“That’s right! It’s a massacre! I think every soul on this wasteland was slaughtered—the civilization here is gone forever,” Guan Qian sighed, staring at the mound of bones, his heart heavy and unsettled.

In this alien space, what kind of place had the false Prophet brought them to?

Corpses littered the land, now reduced to dry bone. What terror had descended here to bring such utter annihilation—not just the destruction of life, but the erasure of an entire civilization?

"Woo—"

The wind swept across the bones, a desolate sorrow seeping into the earth, carrying away the last traces of vitality, leaving only deathly silence.

“Let’s keep moving.” Guan Qian bowed deeply before the remains, unable to linger any longer. There were still people to find, and the mysterious domain key awaited him—he had to press on.

Night fell quietly, shrouding the already dim wasteland in a veil of eerie mystery.

Step—step.

With each footfall on the ruined ground, Guan Qian led Tang Ruyan forward, inching through the darkness. The gloom could not impede his sense of direction; with his pale pupils, he discerned the path ahead with unwavering clarity.

But as they moved on, a pair of blood-red eyes began to follow them from behind.