Chen Ye crossed a patch of knee-high weeds and came upon a crumbling flight of stone steps.
The steps beneath his feet were uneven, many of them broken, their cracks choked with moss and wild grass.
As Chen Ye walked deeper into the ruins, he spread his Divine Thought to sense every movement around him, guarding against the unexpected.
Along the way, he found many surviving stone statues twice a man's height, arranged on either side of a main road.
Most showed only their upper bodies; their lower halves lay buried deep in the earth.
Only a few still stood fully exposed.
The statues had been carved in a rough style. Weathering had long since stripped away their original features, leaving only faintly discernible human outlines.
Besides the statues, many ruined buildings stood nearby.
Their style seemed to belong to an ancient age.
Chen Ye had begun to suspect that the Real World he entered from different places was all part of a single whole.
It was simply so vast that he could only glimpse it through a narrow tube, which was why each visit seemed so different.
None of the buildings on the island was large. Judging by the surviving foundations, this settlement could once have housed fewer than a hundred people.
Each building was simple, with only one or two rooms and narrow doors and windows. They looked more suited to temporary use than long-term habitation.
Chen Ye passed through the cluster of low buildings and finally reached the center of the ruins.
He stopped.
Ahead lay a circular plaza built from massive blocks of stone. Dense runes covered it, clearly of the same origin as those he had seen inside the female corpse's coffin.
At the very center of the altar was a smooth, level circular space