Chapter 214: Entering the New World

Chapter 214 -213: Entering the New World

Gu Su reached out and activated the Mushroom Cloud Badge hanging on the city gate.

The moment his fingertip touched the badge’s surface, a warm Power surged out of it, spreading through his finger to the entire Graveyard Demon.

The ground beneath his feet began to tremble slightly. It wasn’t the violent shaking of an earthquake, but a slow, heavy pulse originating from deep within the earth.

Then, a blinding white light burst from the badge, enveloping the entire Graveyard Demon.

Gu Su subconsciously squinted. Through the white light, he watched the scenery of the Doomsday Plain rapidly fade away. That desolate land, forever shrouded in the light of a dim, yellow sunset; those scattered Mobile Cities; those mountain-like piles of rubble and debris—all of it blurred and twisted within the white light before dissolving into nothingness.

A powerful force reached out from the void and seized the bottom of the Graveyard Demon. It felt as if an invisible giant hand was tearing the entire Mobile City out by its roots.

The sensation was completely different from being guided along the front lines. That time had been smooth and passive, like sitting in a car being pushed. This time, it was like being hoisted up and dragged toward some unknown destination.

Gu Su gripped the gate’s bolt tightly to steady himself. The white light before him gradually dissipated, replaced by a portal so enormous it was breathtaking.

The gate floated in front of the Graveyard Demon, hundreds of meters tall and hundreds of meters wide. Its edges burned with ghostly blue flames that danced silently, twisting and distorting the space around them.

Through the portal, he could vaguely make out the silhouette of another world: a hazy gray sky, a dark red earth, and blurry buildings whose shapes were impossible to discern.

System prompts popped up frantically before his eyes, one after another, nearly flooding his entire field of vision:

[Welcome, No. 629SHD2S0FXC30, to Game World EzAXOTZh8Len. World Difficulty: Tier One to Tier Two. World Background: Unknown.]

[Main Quest: Find and enter the Inverted Tower. Inside the Inverted Tower, find and bring back the entrance/exit marker labeled with the Book of Inversion.

Failure Penalty: Be permanently trapped in this Game World.]

[External Quest: Establish a temporary garrison for at least seven days and ensure the safety of the players stationed there as much as possible. Failure Penalty: None.]

[Temporary Quest: …]

Before Gu Su could get a closer look, the Graveyard Demon was already being dragged into the portal.

The moment they passed through the portal, he felt as if he’d been thrown into a rapidly spinning tunnel. The surrounding light and shadows stretched into countless thin threads that streaked past his eyes.

The sensation was somewhat similar to being guided across the Doomsday Plain, but it was far more intense and uncontrolled. He could only cling desperately to the gate and wait for the force to subside on its own.

He didn’t know how long it had been—perhaps a few seconds, or maybe a few minutes—but his vision finally stabilized.

Gu Su found himself standing somewhere extremely high up, looking down upon a strange land below.

It was a vast, desolate world.

The earth was dark red, as if it had been scorched by something, its surface covered in a web of cracks.

There was no sun or clouds in the sky, only a layer of hazy gray light that fell evenly, blanketing the entire world in a deathly silence.

Scattered across the ground were a few abandoned cities and manors.

The cities weren’t particularly large. From up high, they looked like gray patches stuck to the land.

The cities’ edges were jagged, with ruined buildings toppled in every direction. In some places, the original outlines of streets were still visible, but most had been erased by time and sand.

The manors were even more dilapidated. Their surrounding walls had mostly collapsed, and the buildings within were reduced to a few solitary walls, their roofs long gone.

Courtyards, streets, and the spaces between ruins were all piled high with the bones of the dead.

The bones were yellowed and brittle. Some were still in the final poses of their death—curled up, stretched out, or piled on top of each other—as if something had snuffed out all their lives in a single instant.

Gu Su examined the layout of the cities carefully and discovered a strange pattern.

At the center of every city was a massive depression—not a crater from an explosion, but a more regular, downward-extending structure.

The city’s buildings radiated outward from this depression, like fragments peeling away after being breached from the center.

The view began to move, the perspective slowly descending from high in the sky, sweeping past one abandoned city after another.

Gu Su noticed that approximately every ninety kilometers, a distorted entrance to an underground passage would appear on the ground.

The forms of these entrances varied. Some looked like tears in the earth, revealing a pitch-black space below.

Some resembled the mouthparts of some creature, their edges lined with jagged stone spikes.

Others were simply gigantic funnels that had seemingly sucked in the surrounding land.

But regardless of their form, every entrance exuded an unsettling aura, as if they were gateways to another world.

In truth, this was the core of this world: the Inverted Tower.

The Inverted Tower was an inverted pyramid structure, fifty kilometers in diameter and so deep it reached the mantle.

Its tip pointed down, buried deep within the earth, while its base was level with the ground.

No one knew how many floors it had in total, only that each floor was an independent, self-contained ecosystem, completely separate from the others.

Some floors were dense jungles, some were frozen deserts, some were swamps filled with Poisonous Qi, and others were simply a dead, silent void.

Between every ten floors, there was a massive annular platform that connected the surrounding Inverted Towers.

These platforms were the only passages between the towers, allowing one to cross from one tower to another.

As for what lay below the platforms, no one could say for sure.

Under normal circumstances, no one would casually attempt to cross between towers.

Each tower covered an area fifty kilometers in diameter, roughly the size of Shenzhen.

Walking from the edge of a tower to its center would take ten to twelve hours without rest.

Without suitable transportation, crossing between towers in a short amount of time was simply impossible.

Only in the later stages, when some towers could no longer be explored any deeper, would players consider merging into other towers. That’s when cross-tower movements would become more common.

Of course, the Gu Su of this moment was still oblivious to all this information.

He could only watch as the cutscene flashed by frame by frame, revealing this strange continent to him bit by bit.

「The scene suddenly shifted.」

A sudden downward pull struck, dragging the Graveyard Demon plummeting down.

It felt like a rollercoaster plunging from its highest point. The feeling of weightlessness made Gu Su’s heart leap a few times. The surrounding scenery flew past as the ground grew closer and closer. The abandoned cities and manors went from blurry to clear, and from clear to immense.

BOOM!

The Graveyard Demon slammed heavily onto the ground, kicking up a sky-full of dust.

Gu Su steadied himself and looked up.

He saw a dilapidated manor lying not far ahead of the Graveyard Demon.

The manor’s surrounding wall had mostly collapsed, and the buildings within were nothing but crumbling ruins. The courtyard was filled with dried bones and rubble. Behind the manor stretched a hazy, gray wilderness that extended to the horizon.

And at the edge of the wilderness, about ten-odd kilometers away, stood the entrance to an Inverted Tower that wasn’t particularly tall.

The entrance’s silhouette was twisted and bizarre, like a torn scar lying across the land.

Gu Su let out a breath.

‘It seems the game gave me a relatively safe starting location, after all.’