Three days later, Lu Chen set out from Northern Garrison Pass and headed west.
Return to Ruins lay deeper within the Western Wasteland—on the map Yun Qingyue had given him, Return to Ruins was located another four hundred li west of the sinkhole.
That area on the map bore only a question mark, with four words left beside it by the first Valley Lord: those who enter never leave.
He walked for an entire day.
The Black Sandlands changed after passing the sinkhole. The sand shifted from black to deep purple. It was no longer soft beneath his feet, but hard as stone, like stepping on frozen-solid flesh. There were no footprints in the sand—not because no living thing had passed through, but because the sand restored itself.
The footprint he left behind had already smoothed over by the time he walked a hundred zhang and looked back.
[Entering the outskirts of Return to Ruins. Deathly energy concentration: extremely high. Recommendation: continuously circulate Dragon Thunder True Essence to protect the body.]
As night was about to fall, he saw Return to Ruins.
It was not a pit. It was a fissure. The earth had split open here, a gash stretching from east to west, with neither beginning nor end in sight.
The fissure was roughly three hundred zhang wide and bottomless. The rocks at its edge were black, yet their surfaces were coated in a transparent crystal layer like glass, reflecting a dark crimson gleam in the last rays of the setting sun.
Lu Chen stood at the edge and looked down. Dragon Eye pierced the darkness, seeing at least five hundred zhang below, yet still finding no bottom.
Five hundred zhang down, deathly energy churned through the fissure as thick as liquid. Dark crimson runes flickered within