Descends Once More

Lishan Martial Arts School, study.

The glow of the setting sun streamed in through the window, falling squarely upon the entire Sandbox.

Yet there was not the slightest hint of beauty within it.

Lin Tuo stood frozen at the side, the shock on his face impossible to hide!

His mind was filled with a string of question marks and exclamation points.

"What happened?!"

"I was only gone for a little while—how did it turn into this?"

"Who touched my Sandbox?!"

Above the vast Tako Continent, thick clouds of dust had spread across the sky, nearly blotting out the sun. The entire continent lay in dim light and utter devastation.

Tilting his view to avoid the rapidly surging dust clouds and looking down at the land, he saw that the once vibrant earth had become scorched ground.

Outside the cities, fields that should have been lush and green had turned blackish yellow, as though blanketed in soot. Every plant seemed to have withered away.

The cities were even more terrifyingly silent.

Great swathes of buildings had collapsed. Once-bustling stations and streets stood empty, devoid of human life, while the formerly busy factories looked as though they had been abandoned for ages.

The river that ran from west to east across the continent had turned a murky blackish green. Even the sea was an unnatural grayish blue.

When he shifted his gaze toward the western side of the continent, he saw that the farther west he looked, the more severe the damage to the cities and natural environment became.

Especially the western mountain range.

What had once been vast forests was now engulfed in flames.

The fire swept across the entire mountain range. Under Time Acceleration, it flickered for only a moment before going out, leaving nothing but ash.

Even the earth's crust seemed to have been affected. Some volcanoes erupted, molten lava roiling as they spewed thick black smoke that joined heaven and earth.

Yet under Time Acceleration, they quickly died down as well. In a daze, Lin Tuo saw countless blackish-gray flakes of snow drifting down from the sky.

They fluttered through the air and blanketed the earth. In the blink of an eye, everything had become grayish white!

The whole continent was scarred beyond recognition!

"Adjust the time ratio!"

At the sight of this, Lin Tuo jolted awake and hurriedly shut off the acceleration at top speed, adjusting the ratio to 1:1.

He had already realized that as human civilization was destroyed, social complexity had plummeted in an instant, causing time within the entire Sandbox to speed up.

By his rough estimate, several years—or perhaps even several decades—might have passed since the "disaster."

Once the adjustment was complete, the scene within the Sandbox stopped changing.

Only then did Lin Tuo let out a breath. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and forced himself to calm down.

A moment later.

When he opened his eyes again, Lin Tuo looked at the Sandbox that had become a Wasteland, confusion rising within him.

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

What lay before him was simply too far beyond anything he had expected. With the Sandbox Empire's civilization approaching that of Earth, the time ratio had already become very low.

No matter how he calculated it, only a few years at most should have passed within the Sandbox during his absence.

Who could have imagined that in merely a few years, a perfectly fine world would become like this?

Then, when he turned his gaze to the Virtual Panel, his expression became even uglier.

Current Environmental Aether Concentration: Negligible

Just as expected!

With the drastic upheaval in human society, Aether had plummeted along with it.

"Open the Operation Log."

Suppressing the ache in his wallet, Lin Tuo began retrieving the Operation Log, trying to find the root of the destruction.

The interface unfolded. Sure enough, it was already packed with many lines of text.

Because the thing blocked too much of his view, Lin Tuo kept it turned off most of the time. Otherwise, it would seriously affect his Daily Life.

And even taking a step back, even if he had kept the panel open while eating just now, he still would not have had time to stop anything.

After all, the Operation Log only recorded major historical events that had already occurred.

Though it had previously recorded the successful development of the "Annihilation Bomb" in just a few words, who could have expected some mad emperor to manufacture three thousand of them and detonate them all at once?

Directly destroying the entire Sandbox's ecosystem?

Therefore, Lin Tuo did not feel much regret. This had never been something easy to prevent.

He merely began carefully reading through the records line by line:

Year 700,041,065 of world evolution: A first-generation emperor of the New Dynasty detonated three thousand Annihilation Bombs at the central laboratory on the Great Western Continent in an attempt to destroy the Isolation Shield. Failed.

...The explosions triggered a series of chain reactions, destroying the world's ecosystem. Dust clouds blocked out the sunlight, temperatures plummeted, the environment deteriorated, and all living things withered...

...Human society ground to a halt, civilization regressed, and volcanoes, earthquakes, bitter cold, famine, and war... arrived one after another...

That same year... the intense radiation caused by the explosions corroded the soil and life itself. Countless plants and animals died, mutations appeared... the human social system collapsed, and the world's population was reduced by ninety percent... the age of Cataclysm began...

...

As he read the written records on the Virtual Panel, Lin Tuo's expression kept changing.

After reading all the useful entries, he fell silent for a moment, rubbed his face hard, and gave a bitter smile.

"What was this called? If you don't court death, death won't come courting you?"

At that moment, his emotions were indescribably complicated.

It was not a natural disaster, but a man-made calamity—and an utterly inconceivable one at that.

It was so absurd that even ordinary logic could not make sense of it.

Instead of properly being an emperor, the man had insisted on courting a colossal death—and acted so fast that no one could even stop him!

Lin Tuo let out a deep sigh, and his expression grew heavy.

After all, he knew very well that this Sandbox was not some game. It was a real world. The entire civilization and its tens of millions of humans were all alive.

Every person within it had their own life, their own joys, angers, sorrows, and pleasures.

It was precisely because of that that Lin Tuo had always proceeded with the utmost caution, never disturbing the Sandbox world unless necessary.

Yet who could have imagined that in the end, a mad emperor would drag everyone with him toward destruction?

"The key is that he actually succeeded..." Lin Tuo's expression was complicated, and he could not quite understand it.

Shaking his head, he began sorting through his thoughts.

"The situation is already like this. There's no way to reverse it. But from the Operation Log's description, it isn't hard to see that humanity hasn't been completely wiped out. Quite a number of survivors remain..."

"In other words, the tinder of civilization is still there... It hasn't completely gone to hell. Perhaps there's still a chance to save it..."

"In any case... my top priority now is to understand the situation inside the Sandbox. Only then can I deal with it accordingly..."

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

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

"Ah."

With 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 all right, sir?"

When Lin Tuo shifted his consciousness into the Avatar, he heard a worried voice by his ear. Someone seemed to be shaking his shoulder.

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

Behind her stood two other coworkers who had rushed over.

It seemed that his "consciousness" had been gone for too long, and they had thought something had happened to him.

"Mm, I'm fine... I was just sleepy, so I took a short nap." Lin Tuo forced a smile.

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

"It's all right. I'm done eating. Please clear away the rest." Lin Tuo stood up as he spoke.

A short while later, Lin Tuo walked out of the restaurant and saw that the street had gradually darkened, while the traffic had become much heavier.

After looking around, he cautiously avoided the cameras, turned into a secluded alley, then switched back to his main body and used Observation Mode to bring the Avatar back.

After Lin Tuo recalled the Avatar, turned on the room's lights, and looked once more upon that scarred land, feeling the faint chill within the Sandbox, he took a breath and tried to find a human settlement on the continent.

"Here will do."

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

Through his Avatar, he descended upon the Wasteland once more!