Chapter 480 - 477: Weird Battlefield

Chapter 480: Chapter 477: Weird Battlefield

They hadn’t walked far before they noticed something strange up ahead.

"It looks like a huge battle happened here."

Zhou Chao crouched, examining the marks on the ground.

The ground was covered in a chaotic jumble of bizarre marks. Some looked like the claw marks of a beast, others were the scars of weapons, and still others were the unidentifiable footprints of some unknown creature.

Moreover, the forest ahead looked as if it had been sheared in half by something incredibly sharp.

Some trees were stuck crookedly in the earth, while others had been stripped of all their branches, leaving only bare trunks.

A strange, grim aura filled the air, with shattered leaves and fragments dancing on the wind. Zhou Chao gently caught a piece and examined it for a moment.

"Is this... metal?"

He handed the fragment to Li Luo in confusion, who took it with curiosity.

"It’s definitely metal. A tiny metal fragment."

This was a bad omen. The presence of metal meant that some kind of civilized artifact must have existed here before.

"Look, there in the dirt. There are lots of fragments like this." Zhou Chao pointed ahead, where broken metal shards were half-buried in the soil.

"Do you smell that?" Zhou Chao asked suddenly.

"Rust. A very strong smell of rust."

Li Luo answered without hesitation. The smell had been filling her nose ever since they entered this part of the forest.

A breeze swept across the Sky Island, but the thick stench of rust gave them a strange sense of oppression.

Zhou Chao carefully stepped forward and pulled a metal fragment from the soil.

The fragment was caked in a thick layer of rust, making it completely unrecognizable, but he could still vaguely make out its shape.

’What is this? It feels so familiar.’

Holding the fragment, Zhou Chao felt a sense of déjà vu, as if he had seen it somewhere before.

Just then, Li Luo came to his side and recognized it instantly.

"It’s a hair clip."

Hearing Li Luo’s words, Zhou Chao had a flash of recognition.

’No wonder it felt so familiar...’

But now that he knew it was a hair clip, Zhou Chao grew even more tense. A hair clip was unmistakably a human artifact.

’Why is there a hair clip here? Are there other people?’

Holding the rusted hair clip, his thoughts raced. He walked forward and dug through the dirt, unearthing more metal fragments.

A hair clip, a safety pin, a razor blade...

These mundane objects, so common in human society, were appearing in a forest on a deserted Sky Island.

"Are you sure your investigation team was the first group of people to set foot on this Sky Island?" Li Luo asked, looking at the objects in confusion.

"Of course! I remember it clearly. When we arrived on this Sky Island, we specifically ran a beacon check. We confirmed that this island had never been recorded. Not just this one—all the nearby Sky Islands are unexplored territory," Zhou Chao said with absolute certainty.

"Every Sky Island on the fourth floor of the Abyss that has a beacon has been assigned a number. This one’s number was only assigned recently."

Li Luo pondered for a moment. "Then could it be that other Hunters came to this Sky Island before, but were completely wiped out before they could send a message?"

Zhou Chao froze at Li Luo’s question.

"It’s possible..."

Then, he suddenly asked Li Luo, "You didn’t get to the fourth floor using an official Synchronous Passage, did you?"

"How did you know?" Li Luo was surprised. She had never told Zhou Chao about this.

"It’s easy to figure out. Your arrival point was unusual."

Zhou Chao began to explain slowly to Li Luo:

"The official Synchronous Passages don’t just dump Hunters on any random Sky Island. There are designated Sky Islands that serve as reception points for Hunters arriving on the fourth floor. After all, most Hunters who can reach the fourth floor are elites. The officials don’t want to lose personnel to some random mishap."

Even though there are many Synchronous Passages from the 3rd Floor of the Abyss to the fourth, humanity has already figured out how to create fixed "arrival points," ensuring all Hunters who use them arrive on a specific Sky Island.

"The fact that you appeared on this Sky Island out of the blue must mean you didn’t use an official Synchronous Passage."

"The 3rd Floor of the Abyss has many such Synchronous Passages. Some are naturally occurring, and some were built by other civilizations. The destinations for these passages can be fixed, but they can also lead to strange, unknown places."

"That’s why I’m so sure you reached the fourth floor using an unofficial Synchronous Passage..."

Li Luo nodded, listening to Zhou Chao’s reasoning.

But Zhou Chao wasn’t finished. He looked at the strange little objects and proposed a theory.

"Humans couldn’t always create Synchronous Passages with fixed arrival points. In the very beginning, the first people to reach the fourth floor also had to use the Abyss’s native passages. Their arrival points were completely random."

"And back then, there were no positioning beacons, of course. All information on the Sky Islands was a chaotic mess. People could only feel their way forward in the dark."

"So, do you think it’s possible that these objects were left behind by the people from that era?"

"They happened to land on this Sky Island, left these things behind, and then departed. Since there were no beacons, they completely lost track of this island..."

"But why would they leave so many things behind?"

"Could it have been a supply transport team?" Li Luo guessed. "Maybe they ran into some kind of danger and had to abandon their cargo..."

"That must be it!" Hearing Li Luo’s words, Zhou Chao seemed to have an epiphany. He said excitedly, "Maybe ’living pollution’ already existed back then, but people at the time had no way to deal with it, so they had to abandon their supplies and flee!"

’So this battlefield... was it left behind by those people fighting on the Sky Island?’

Zhou Chao walked over to the strange marks for a closer look, then moved to the broken trees and ran his hand over them.

However, after a moment of observation, his confusion returned. "These marks... they’re new. This battle happened very recently."

This completely contradicted his theory.

The debris left on the battlefield was old, rusted beyond recognition, yet the signs of battle were fresh. How could something be so contradictory?

"Could it be caused by some kind of animated being?" Li Luo guessed.

"Very likely." Zhou Chao nodded, looking over the bizarre battlefield.

However, neither of them noticed that in the distance, hidden by the wreckage, an invisible blade suddenly sliced through a large tree, instantly splitting it in two.

A moment later, several claw marks appeared out of thin air on the severed trunk, reducing the fallen tree to splinters.

It seemed there was a group of invisible enemies on this battlefield...