The appearance of the Great Barren Remnants truly left me baffled.
According to Shadow Heaven One, the Great Barren Remnants were people from the era of Great Barren Island itself, not descendants of those people.
Shadow Heaven One also said that they did not belong to this era. They should have died long ago.
On the way back, I asked Jiang Ziyan what she thought about the Great Barren Remnants.
Jiang Ziyan said that the Great Barren Remnants resembled the returnees who had ventured into the Illusory Sea. Logically speaking, those who had entered the Illusory Sea should not have still been alive either.
"Zhong Wuyan seemed very certain of her identity. She wasn't putting on an act. If these returnees and the Great Barren Remnants are both real, and no one has tampered with them, then there is only one possibility: something has gone wrong with the spacetime here. Or rather, someone tampered with the spacetime here and brought these people, who should never have appeared again, into the Illusory Sea," I said after thinking it over.
Jiang Ziyan was startled. "If that's the case, then we're in trouble. We at least have some idea of the number of returnees—just over a thousand, and they all belong to the Four Great Families. But the era of Great Barren Island was different. There were hundreds of thousands of people then, perhaps even more. If the appearance of the Great Barren Remnants is merely an isolated case, that's one thing. But if it's like you said, and all those people can really come from that era..."
She did not finish her sentence, but I already understood.
I had the same concern.
"Let's wait and see. We still don't know exactly what's going on. These are only our guesses. Maybe things aren't