Chapter 1239: Accident and Centaur

Chapter 1239: Chapter 399: Accident and Centaur

In the city center, a colossal palace-like architectural complex stood tall, as if it had hollowed out an entire mountain to be constructed. Further away, a peculiar, towering skyscraper caught the eye, seemingly crowned with a massive, slowly rotating glass orb, faintly emitting ominous energy fluctuations.

The whole city resembled a precise, cold machine, with every component functioning according to predetermined rules. This was the heart of the Empire of this erroneous timeline.

A place that pushed totalitarianism, terror, and distorted technology to their extremes.

“Attention passengers, please fasten your seat belts and prepare for landing.”

The airship slowly descended from high altitude, its propellers humdrum and weary in the thin air, casting a vast shadow over the orderly, chessboard-like streets below.

“I must quickly find what I’m looking for.”

Ian gazed through the porthole, staring at the oppressive capital of the Empire, calculating in his mind how to infiltrate the King’s Treasure Vault to find materials to repair the Time Machine and clues to the mystery of immortality.

He slightly closed his eyes, letting the Magic Power flow quietly, sensing the city’s Energy Field.

He could detect the omnipresent Anti-Magic interference wave, like an invisible iron net, suppressing all Supernatural Powers. But he also sensed a very faint, yet unusually ancient, Magic Power fluctuation deep within the central black spire of the city—something that technology couldn’t simulate, more like… a certain sealed Wizard’s relic.

“Perhaps it’s there.”

Ian was ready to take action as soon as he disembarked the airship, however, just as the airship was about to dock with the airdrome tower, and passengers began gathering their belongings.

“Boom!”

Without warning, a pale white lightning bolt tore through the gloomy sky!

It didn’t come from the clouds but seemed to erupt directly from the void, striking the massive airship’s envelope with precision, the lightning as thick as an ancient serpent, instantly piercing through the airship’s helium balloon and metal fuselage. This sudden moment bore no signs of explosion, only the advent of destruction.

Boom!!!

The ear-shattering explosion nearly ripped eardrums apart.

It wasn’t a regular fiery explosion.

But a bizarre detonation accompanied by spatial distortion!

The balloon was torn in a millisecond, high-pressure helium gas frantically leaked, triggering a chain reaction. The metal framework twisted and broke, the cabin walls shredded like paper. The entire airship disintegrated mid-air, turning into countless burning fragments cascading towards the ground. The airship’s metal skeleton twisted and snapped amid a piercing groan.

But the worst was yet to come.

The lightning didn’t dissipate, instead, it exploded in the air, tearing space into an ever-expanding, chaotically colored space-time vortex!

It was like a wound in the universe, its edges flickering with unstable purple-black light, inside were distorted galaxies and fragmented time pieces. An irresistible suction erupted from it, drawing everything within a kilometer radius, airship wreckage, passengers, even the air itself—into it.

“Damn it!”

Ian only managed to cry out.

A terrifying suction he could not resist emanated from the vortex.

His pupils contracted, and he instinctively tried to Apparate, but the force was too powerful, directly locking down Space Magic. He could only watch helplessly as he was pulled into the depths of the vortex. The porthole glass shattered instantly, cabin air was violently evacuated, passengers’ screams stretched, distorted, turning into a non-human bizarre tune.

Ian felt as if an invisible giant hand grasped him, forcibly dragging him towards that source of destruction.

In the split second before his body was fully absorbed by the vortex, he suddenly turned back, his gaze piercing through the explosions’ fiery light and the distorted space, locking onto a pair of eyes—a pair of giant, cold eyes floating in the void. There was no emotion, only pure, aloof scrutiny, as if viewing an insect that had inadvertently crawled into the wrong place.

Then came dizzying disorientation, all colors drained from everything. Ian was completely wrapped up in turbulent space-time currents. It was no longer a stable Time Passage, but a completely out-of-control chaotic storm. Colors no longer being colors, sounds no longer being sounds, time and space shattered and jumbled together.

“Entering a Time Passage directly without any equipment’s protection is certainly not fun!” Ian could see the terrifying scenes surrounding the other passengers.

Around Ian.

The bodies of other passengers withered at a speed visible to the naked eye. A middle-aged man’s skin instantly covered with wrinkles, hair graying, falling out, muscles shrinking, bones brittle, finally turning into a pile of yellow soil within seconds, swept away by the torrents. A young woman screamed, her face collapsing, eyes sinking in.

The entire person shriveled into a human skin like form, then shattered to dust. This was the ultimate punishment of the space-time turbulence on mortal bodies—forced acceleration to Death in the time flood.

Their bodies aged rapidly under the drastic changes in time flow speed, skin filled with wrinkles and age spots instantly, hair turning white then falling out, muscles atrophying, bones becoming fragile… Within mere seconds, one living person after another turned into heaps of scattered bones and dust before his eyes.

Even the dust was eventually swallowed by the torrents, annihilated into nothingness. The vortex’s interior was utter chaos, with time no longer flowing linearly but fragmented, reversing, accelerating, and stagnating simultaneously.

“Damn it!” Ian roared, the Sun God’s blessing within him instantly flaring. Golden flames erupted from every pore in his body, forming a thin Shield. This Shield did not completely block the turbulence but stabilized his time flow, preventing him from instantly aging to death like the others.