The Second Descent

In the study of Lishan Martial Arts School.

The light of the setting sun streamed through the window, striking the entire sandbox squarely.

Yet, within the sandbox, there was not a trace of beauty.

Lin Tuo stood rigidly to the side, his face unable to conceal his shock!

A string of question marks and exclamation points churned in his mind.

"What happened?!"

"I was only gone for a moment—how did it become like this?"

"Who touched my sandbox?!"

There, above the vast Tako Continent, thick clouds of dust had spread, nearly blotting out the sun. The entire continent was dim and desolate.

Angling his view to avoid the swiftly churning dust clouds and looking toward the land, he saw that the once vibrant soil had turned to scorched earth.

In the outskirts, fields that should have been lush green were now a blackish yellow, as if covered in ash, and all the plants seemed withered.

The cities were eerily silent.

Large swaths of buildings had collapsed. The once bustling stations and streets were empty, devoid of human life. Factories that had been busy before now seemed abandoned for ages.

The river that ran from west to east across the continent was a murky black-green, turbid and foul. Even the sea was an unnatural grayish blue.

His gaze shifted to the western side of the continent, where the damage to cities and the natural environment grew increasingly severe the closer he looked.

Especially the Western Mountain Range.

There had once been vast forests, but now they were ablaze with fire.

Flames swept across the entire mountain range. Under time acceleration, they flickered for only a moment before extinguishing, leaving nothing but ash.

Even the earth's crust seemed affected. Some volcanoes erupted, spewing lava and thick black smoke that connected heaven and earth.

Yet under time acceleration, they too quickly died out. In a daze, countless flakes of black-gray snow fell from the sky.

They drifted down, blanketing the ground, and in the blink of an eye, everything was a pallid gray!

The entire continent was a scene of devastation!

"Adjust the time ratio!"

Seeing this, Lin Tuo jolted and hurriedly shut off the acceleration at the fastest speed, setting the ratio to 1:1.

He had already realized that as the entire human civilization was destroyed, the social complexity had plummeted instantly, causing the entire sandbox's time to speed up.

Roughly estimating, at this point, it might have been several years, or even decades, since the "disaster" occurred!

Once the time adjustment was complete, the scene in the sandbox stopped shifting.

Only then did Lin Tuo breathe a sigh of relief. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and forced himself to calm down.

A moment later.

Opening his eyes again, Lin Tuo looked back at the sandbox, now reduced to wasteland, and a doubt rose in his heart:

"Was it a natural disaster? Or man-made?"

The sight before him was far beyond his expectations. After all, as the sandbox empire's civilization approached Earth's level, the time ratio had already become very low.

At most, only a few years had passed in the sandbox during the time he was away.

Who would have thought that in just a few short years, a perfectly good world could turn into this?

And when he turned his gaze to the Virtual Panel, his expression grew even uglier.

[Current Environment Aether Concentration: Low]

As expected!

With the drastic change in human society, the Aether had also plummeted.

"Open the Operation Log."

Biting back the pain, Lin Tuo began to retrieve the Operation Log, trying to find the root of the destruction.

The interface expanded, and sure enough, many lines of text had piled up.

Because this thing blocked too much of his view, Lin Tuo kept it closed most of the time; otherwise, it would seriously interfere with daily life.

And even if he had kept the panel open while eating, it wouldn't have been enough to stop anything.

After all, the Operation Log only records major historical events that have already occurred.

Although a few lines earlier had recorded the successful development of the "Annihilation Bomb," who could have predicted that a mad emperor would manufacture three thousand of them and detonate them all at once?

Directly destroying the entire sandbox's ecological environment?

Thus, Lin Tuo felt no regret—this kind of thing was inherently hard to prevent.

He simply browsed through the records carefully:

[Year 74,065 of World Evolution: The First Emperor of the New Dynasty detonated three thousand Annihilation Bombs in the Central Laboratory of the Great Western Continent, attempting to destroy the Isolation Shield. Failed.]

[...The explosion triggered a series of chain reactions, destroying the world's ecosystem. Dust clouds blocked sunlight, temperatures plummeted, the environment deteriorated, and all life withered...]

[...Human society ground to a halt, civilization regressed—volcanoes, earthquakes, extreme cold, famine, war... came one after another...]

[That same year... the intense radiation from the explosion eroded the soil and life itself. Countless animals and plants perished or mutated... The framework of human society collapsed, the global population plummeted by ninety percent... The Age of Cataclysm had begun...]

Scanning the text records on the Virtual Panel, Lin Tuo's expression shifted continuously.

After finishing all the useful records, he fell silent for a moment, then rubbed his face vigorously and gave a bitter laugh:

"What do you call this? Really, if you don't court death, you won't die?"

At this moment, his emotions were incredibly complex.

It wasn't a natural disaster—it was man-made, and a bafflingly absurd "man-made" one at that.

Even by normal logic, it was hard to comprehend.

A perfectly good emperor, and instead of ruling, he had to go and stir up catastrophic trouble, moving so fast no one could stop him!

Lin Tuo let out a deep sigh, his face growing heavy.

After all, he knew very well that this Sandbox was no game—it was a real world, an entire civilization, tens of millions of living people.

Every single person in it had their own life, their own joys and sorrows.

That was precisely why Lin Tuo had always been cautious, never disturbing the Sandbox world unless absolutely necessary.

But who could have guessed that in the end, it would be a mad emperor dragging everyone down into destruction?

"The key point is, he actually succeeded..." Lin Tuo's expression was complicated, unable to figure it out.

Shaking his head, he began to organize his thoughts:

"The situation is what it is—no way to reverse it. But from the Operation Log's descriptions, it's not hard to see that humanity isn't completely extinct. A fair number of survivors remain..."

"That means the spark of civilization is still there... not completely screwed. Maybe there's still a chance to salvage this..."

"In any case... my first priority now is to understand the internal situation of the Sandbox clearly. Only then can I deal with it properly."

With that thought, Lin Tuo instinctively prepared to release his Avatar.

Then he remembered—his Avatar was still at the Hotpot Restaurant.

"Ah."

Letting out a sigh, Lin Tuo sat back down in the rattan chair, closed his eyes, and switched his consciousness back to the Avatar.

"Sir? Wake up. Are you alright? Sir?"

When Lin Tuo cut his consciousness into the Avatar, he heard a worried voice by his ear, and it felt like someone was shaking his shoulder.

He slowly opened his eyes and saw a waitress staring at him nervously.

Behind her, two other colleagues had also arrived.

It seemed that his "consciousness" had been gone too long, and they'd mistaken it for something being wrong.

"Ah, I'm fine... just sleepy, dozed off for a bit." Lin Tuo forced a smile.

The waitresses visibly relaxed and smiled back: "That's good. Sorry for disturbing you."

"It's fine. I'm done eating. You can clear the rest." Lin Tuo stood up and said.

A moment later, Lin Tuo walked out of the restaurant and saw that the street had gradually darkened, with traffic thickening.

He looked around, carefully avoided the cameras, and ducked into a secluded alley. Then he switched back to his main body and used Observation Mode to bring the Avatar back.

When Lin Tuo retrieved the Avatar, lit up the room, and looked again at the scarred land, feeling the faint chill within the Sandbox, he took a breath and tried to search for some human settlements on the continent.

"Right here."

A moment later, Lin Tuo raised his hand and reached into the Sandbox.

Through the Avatar, once again, he descended upon the Wasteland!