Chang Xu walked step by step toward the statue at the center of the Altar.
Countless streams of thought that did not belong to him washed over his consciousness, gradually merging with his own thoughts.
Bizarre scenes drifted around him. The phantom of a colossal whale floated overhead, and the people walking by seemed to be underwater, stumbling forward one unsteady step at a time.
A stone tablet appeared before him again. Chang Xu stopped and scanned the inscribed words. The corresponding information was read by the system interface and displayed as fragmented phrases:
[The Rules...corruption...sacrifice...] [Sin...feeding...Nightmare...]
His mind automatically filled in the blanks between the words, weaving them into eerie visions:
Ancient creatures of hideous appearance rose from the ground, then began to crumble at the edges. Their limbs vanished piece by piece, as if something invisible were biting them away one mouthful at a time.
Dense black smoke billowed from their severed limbs, blanketing vast stretches of sea. All living things seemed to be erased inch by inch, disappearing where they stood and leaving behind only empty ships.
Chang Xu involuntarily began sorting through everything that had happened since he entered the instance.
At the very beginning, Captain Crouch had told the passengers to go to sleep, warning them that if they woke up along the way, they would disappear out of thin air...
There was no night on the island; the sky was always the color of dusk. The buildings were arranged in ways that defied logic, with strange feng shui. The Clock Tower probably contained a parallel space, since none of the players in the several teams who had explored it had encountered one another...
The hands of the Pocket Watch of Fate, which showed the objective time, had stopped...
The answer was already