Chapter 958 - 26: Vultures, Centaurs, and Desolation

In a daze, Sun Hang felt as if his perspective was being dragged down from high in the sky, but upon closer inspection, it seemed like he was standing atop a tall tower. Below the tower was a city constructed like a fortress, exuding an indescribable aura of deathly silence.

Many vulture-like bird creatures were circling above his head, emitting calls that pierced the eardrums.

In the blink of an eye, the lead-gray sky above shattered like a broken mirror, and the buildings below seemed to lose the support of the earth, beginning to plunge into a dark abyss.

Everything in sight started to crumble, and at the edges of the disintegration, numerous '1s' and '0s' became faintly visible. These fragmented numbers, like thin snow under the direct sun, appeared momentarily and quickly melted into nothingness.

In the next instant, the scene shifted, and Sun Hang's perspective abruptly found itself on a battlefield littered with corpses.

A centaur hundreds of meters tall stood at the center of the battlefield, covered in heavy armor. In areas not shielded by armor, its body exhibited a semi-transparent texture, somewhere between slime and a ghost.

"Spirit Body... creature?" Sun Hang's gaze shifted downward until he saw the symbolically significant four pairs of hooves of the centaur.

An eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, the mount of Odin, the father of gods in Norse Mythology.

But the problem was that this creature was not purely a horse. Its upper body was clearly a fully armed giant, holding a grotesquely oversized scythe—Odin's weapon is the eternal spear Gungnir, and aside from the Greek Mythological Cronus and the personified Western Grim Reaper, it seemed no deity used a scythe.

So is this a special creature born from "mythical hybridization"?

Sun Hang moved his gaze away from the conspicuous centaur and looked at the surviving soldiers on the battlefield.

Judging from the battlefield environment, excluding this giant creature, the battle seemed like an ordinary skirmish extracted from World War I. However, looking at the soldiers' attire and weapons, this was evidently a world of fiction that didn't match any point in time known to Sun Hang.

Or you could say it was a parallel world.

In summary, the technological development of this world seemed completely skewed—soldiers clad in metal armor brandished outdated muskets, the power core of humanoid armors exuding a fantastical aura spewed scorching steam, and the wreckage of burning airships bore shield-like emblems reminiscent of noble family crests...

"Steampunk" was the phrase that instantly popped into Sun Hang's mind.

The expressions of horror-stricken soldiers slowly petrified, and the scene once again twisted and blurred...

When the vision cleared again, Sun Hang found himself floating in space, with a war-ravaged barren planet beneath his feet. A giant spaceship resembling a UFO was slowly descending.

The friction between the ship's hull and the planet's atmosphere ignited dazzling flames—such a massive ship did not disintegrate under the planet's gravity during descent, something beyond the realm of current human technology. Otherwise, Mr. Ouyang's team wouldn't have been stuck at such technical barriers with no progress.

Aliens? Future world?

Is this the Sphinx hinting that humanity fled Earth to escape creatures in the future?

Yet why did that desolate planet below give Sun Hang an inexplicable sense of familiarity?

Vaguely, Sun Hang seemed to hear a faint but clear sound of cracking.

It sounded like ice breaking, followed by a swath of vivid red spreading from the planet's pole, rapidly covering the entire planet.

Subsequently, Sun Hang saw countless fragmented images flash by, like slides moving so quickly that even if Sun Hang activated bullet time, he couldn't glimpse any details.

He felt like time had elapsed for billions of years, worldline after worldline being destroyed and rebooted, entire ages compressed into an instant, ultimately returning to an infinitesimally small singularity.

For some reason, Sun Hang thought the cosmic singularity suspended in the void looked a lot like a blinking cursor.

As he thought this, a line of text "typed out" in front of the blinking cursor—"Do you think this world truly exists?"

Do you think this world truly exists?

Sun Hang felt a shiver run up his spine, giving him goosebumps. Unconsciously, he shuddered and woke up from this bizarre dream.

He opened his eyes. The face of Wang Xiyi was right in front of him, and beneath his body was a soft blanket and bedding.

"Ah, you're finally awake." Wang Xiyi said with a smile, "It's the first time I've seen you sleep so soundly."

"Wasn't I at the Primordial Palace?" Sun Hang looked around in confusion; this room was his exclusive resting place within Dubhe Tower, connected only by a corridor to the office Pei Zongjun had left for him.

"You fell asleep at the Primordial Palace, and then the robots brought you back," Wang Xiyi said. "They did a full check on you to make sure you were just asleep... Honestly, you were sleeping so soundly, you didn't wake up despite all the fuss."

"..."

Sun Hang sat up in bed, surveying the surroundings.

The furnishings weren't too familiar. Sun Hang hadn't lived here long, and in terms of sentiment, he still felt more at home at the Hunter's villa far away in Celestial City.

"Does this world truly exist?" Sun Hang couldn't help but mutter.

"What are you talking about? What truth, what existence?" Wang Xiyi flicked Sun Hang's forehead lightly, "Still groggy from sleep?"

Sun Hang stared at Wang Xiyi for over ten seconds until her expression became somewhat unnatural before he reached out and touched her cheek.

The smooth, soft skin and the hard, cold scales, the sensations under his hand were so real, along with the warm breath and faint fragrance—Sun Hang's brain repeatedly told him, "This is real, all of this truly exists."

"What's wrong with you?" Wang Xiyi asked, frowning slightly. "It feels like you woke up and became strange all of a sudden... What exactly did you encounter on your trip to Egypt?"

Sun Hang said nothing, but instead turned over and pressed her underneath him.

"Hey! It's daytime—"

But Sun Hang did nothing, only buried his head in Wang Xiyi's neck, breathing in her scent deeply.

Wang Xiyi's tense body gradually relaxed. She gently stroked Sun Hang's back and said in an unusually tender voice, "It's okay... It's okay... Whatever happened, I'm here, I'm always by your side."

She didn't know what had happened to Sun Hang, but she could clearly sense that he seemed to be in a state of extreme confusion.

This state was even more bewildered than when Sun Hang had just woken from a coma, knowing nothing about anything.

This gave her a vague sense of unease, but she didn't know how to help Sun Hang.

"I'm okay." Sun Hang mumbled, with his head buried in Wang Xiyi's neck.

"It's good that you're okay," Wang Xiyi said softly, "You almost scared me to death."