Thus, Sky City continued flying steadily.
On this vast grassland, the next generation of children received an entirely new educational model.
The results seemed fairly good.
People could teach people endlessly without success; experience taught them once, and they learned.
Another nineteen months passed.
This grassland was far less fertile than the Underground Fissure, but fortunately, no other civilization had ever searched it, so it was not exactly barren.
Thanks to the Treasure Hunting Team's efforts, Human Civilization's spiritual mineral reserves were barely breaking even. However, significantly replenishing the National Treasury was extremely difficult.
And perhaps due to bad luck, the wealth they unearthed had been slowly decreasing over the past six months.
"I really want to find a huge mine! These past few months have been so damn dry."
Lieutenant Colonel Lu Ying climbed down from the "Flying Dragon" and yawned boredly.
He took out a camera and uploaded the maps it had captured to his computer.
By stitching those maps together, they could reconstruct a small portion of Pangu Continent's real terrain. This work had actually continued for a long time, from Lu Yuan's hand-drawn maps over a hundred years ago to today's computer-generated ones. Technology had advanced, but the work remained the same.
"Nineteen months, and we've advanced sixty-eight thousand kilometers... Isn't this grassland absurdly huge? Its radius is God knows how much bigger than Earth's equatorial radius."
Lu Ying muttered to himself as he fiddled with the computer for a long while, only to find that certain sections simply refused to line up. He had no idea where the problem lay.
He made a call. "Brother Yun, we've got a big problem. Help me deal with it."
"I'm busy too, Uncle Ying. Can you stop coming to me all the time?"
Hai Zhiyun was helpless. Ever since his human-computer abilities had been exposed, people had been asking him for help every other day. People feared fame just as pigs feared growing fat.
"Brother Yun, I'll definitely bring you along on the next treasure hunt. I'll pick up some trash ore for you."
Brother Yun had a hobby of collecting junk. He immediately beamed. "Easy, easy! Send me the file. It shouldn't be military classified information, right?"
"No, no, no. It's just an ordinary map."
But this time, the processing took longer than expected. A task that had once taken only a minute now took more than ten.
Hai Zhiyun called back. "Uncle Ying, is this map from today?"
His tone was somewhat grave.
"Yes. What's wrong?"
"We may have returned to where we were half a year ago... I found that the map is over ninety-five percent similar to one from half a year ago."
"Especially the locations of several large lakes. They're exactly the same." Hai Zhiyun highlighted several similar lakes with red boxes and sent over the photos.
Everything changed over time. Lakes and grasslands were no exception.
Although the lake water was shallower than it had been half a year ago, everyone in the Reconnaissance Room immediately recognized that it was indeed the same place.
Everyone was instantly stunned and sucked in a cold breath. After all that time, they had merely traveled in one enormous circle!
"What the hell is going on?"
Lu Ying did not dare delay and immediately filed a report with his superiors.
The matter quickly drew the Upper Council's attention.
"It can now be confirmed that we have encountered a Ghost Wall Incident."
"It is serious indeed. All compasses have failed, and even the sun rising in the east and setting in the west has failed... We wasted half a year for nothing, merely circling around."
"If we cannot find the cause, we may be trapped here for a long time."
Lu Yuan sat at the center of the meeting room, looking at the maps with shock and confusion mingling in his heart.
Besides compasses and the sun, the Opium Poppy Tree could connect with Yunhai City's Chinese Parasol Tree through its Dream Ability, allowing them to determine a general direction.
Yet even that guidance had failed!
Green Field City had spent half a year traveling in a twenty-one-thousand-kilometer circle.
The situation was truly bizarre.
"But this is not a life-or-death crisis. We have brought abundant supplies, and the water and grass here are plentiful, with many wild animals. That means... we should have enough time to solve this problem."
"If we can leave this strange place within a limited time, there is no need to inform the public just yet."
"Try heading in different directions."
Thus, under Lu Yuan's leadership, numerous soldiers stepped up their reconnaissance efforts. Riding Flying Dragons, they spent two months investigating an area spanning thousands of kilometers in every direction.
But the situation was simply that strange. Other than grassland, there was almost nothing here... all sorts of wild animals lived, survived, and reproduced here. It was quite vibrant and appeared harmonious.
The three King Bugs even traveled at supersonic speeds, trying every direction, but no matter which way they flew, they could only make a circle of over twenty thousand kilometers before eventually returning to their starting point.
Although Lu Yuan possessed Space Blink, he had no idea where to blink to.
The entire world was an endless grassland, yet it seemed to be shrouded by an invisible boundary. More importantly, he had no idea where that boundary actually was.
A three-dimensional creature could never touch the boundary of four-dimensional space, just as a two-dimensional creature would never understand the concept of "height."
This problem seems to be getting serious...
That day, after a fruitless bout of work, Lu Yuan suddenly thought of a highly mysterious natural disaster with a pounding heart—the Aberration Monster!
If we accidentally entered that monster's territory, wouldn't this be exactly what would happen?
Of course, the monster's combat power was not high. It specialized in mental attacks and raising underlings.
From that perspective, it did not seem quite right. Humanity had been here for more than half a year, yet not a single person had gone missing. That did not match the monster's behavioral tendencies.
"Do not lower your guard. Monsters are different from other natural disasters. It is timid as a mouse. Once it realizes the enemy is too strong, it will not rashly make a move." Lu Yuan instructed the soldiers. "Continue scouting the surrounding area and search for more clues."
"I will remain here."
He now did not dare leave the city rashly either. Every moment, he controlled the Greedy Demon God from the highest point of the Opium Poppy Tree, watching over the entire city.
The moment the monster activated its spatial ability and kidnapped the people, he would immediately use Space Blink and enter alongside them.
As long as the Greedy Demon God broke into the monster's Different Dimension, defeating that natural disaster should not be a problem...
Thus, in the fourth month of their agonizing wait, a turning point finally appeared!
After a "Flying Snake" that had gone out scouting returned to the city, the soldiers swiftly removed the camera from its head, processed the footage with computers, and fed it exquisite food.
There was no choice. Their current reconnaissance had yielded nothing, so humanity could only expand the search area from several thousand kilometers in every direction to tens of thousands of kilometers. With insufficient manpower, scouting through Flying Snakes became the preferred method.
A single Flying Snake mission lasted twelve consecutive days and could directly survey a distance of twenty thousand kilometers, making it rather cost-effective.
Current AI technology had gradually caught up to the level of Earth's past. Abnormalities in videos could be detected by AI in less than a few minutes.
Because they had gone so long without any information, the Reconnaissance Team's morale was not particularly good. Everyone was merely going through the motions.
Beep! Suddenly, a large screen sounded an alarm, and the rapidly playing footage stopped.
"This is..." A member of the identification team suddenly rubbed his eyes and stared at the large screen in disbelief.
A... city!
A lonely city floating in the sky?!
The city was not particularly large, roughly eight kilometers long and 7.2 kilometers wide. Its overall shape resembled a magnificent enormous palace!
Its main structure was octagonal, with a hemispherical dome in the center and sixteen smaller domes surrounding it. Vague patterns resembling sun gods were generally engraved upon the domes.
Vivid blood-red flowers filled every corner of the palace, making it seem like a city packed full of flowers.
Ancient halls, decaying pillars and beams.
Vanished light, darkness creeping everywhere.
Ash-white hues, cold illumination.
Vivid red flowers, speaking of horror.
Everything in sight was absurd.
The worker stared at it for several seconds, then sprang up from his seat in terror. Even though the information did not seem particularly unusual—at most, the palace was especially luxurious and the flowers especially crimson—he inexplicably felt extreme fear, as if facing a true natural predator.
After detecting the palace, the "Flying Snake" had made a wide turn and fled back from afar, so the footage it had gathered was very limited.
Thus, the investigators could only analyze the recording over and over, trying to extract more clues.
"Look here!"
A sharp-eyed worker pointed at one frame.
On one of the platforms stood several suspicious lifeforms.
They had slender bodies, two arms and two legs, and long pink forked tongues. Their cold eyes seemed unfocused as they gazed into the distance.
These creatures resembling Snake People held rusty weapons and wore tattered armor. People could not even tell whether they were mummified corpses or genuine living creatures.
"Are those statues?"
"No, absolutely not."
"Why aren't they moving... In several minutes of footage, they did not even blink once."
The lead scout shuddered and reported to his superiors, "Report! At a distance of 8,838.76 kilometers northeast of us, we discovered a small Floating City, possibly left behind by a Prehistoric Civilization. Its exact technological level is unknown."
"The footage taken by the Flying Snake causes intense unease."
Upon receiving the notification, Lu Yuan did not dare delay.
He first examined the photos for a few moments. The mysterious palace adorned with countless flowers looked as though it had syphilis, truly creating an unsettling and grotesque impression.
As for those strange Snake People... he could not tell whether they were dead or alive.
"Send some drones... No, wait. Don't alert the enemy yet!"
Before you continue