A tiny meteor appeared above the Mysterious Zone.
Though its life was brief, it was a first in human history.
At that moment, everyone held their breath, as though they had become a satellite, straining to gaze into the distance from high above.
That fleeting glimpse from on high revealed a corner of the Mysterious Zone's vast grandeur and eerie strangeness.
Above the immense blue-black ocean, distant clouds like heavy curtains seemed to have been drawn aside by an invisible hand to reveal this world. The golden sun looked down on all things, yet still could not illuminate the dark sea, as impenetrable as an abyss.
What kind of world was this!
A silent graveyard.
Everything had sunk into the stillness of the primordial past. Even the ceaseless waves had quietly frozen here.
What lay buried in this graveyard was not living creatures.
It was worlds,
history,
civilizations,
The 2.1 billion years of the Archean Eon lay buried at the very bottom of the sea.
The 1.83 billion years of the Sinian Period, the 300 million years of the Paleozoic Era, and the 160 million years of the Mesozoic Era lay buried in the middle depths.
Last came the 70 million years of the Cenozoic Era. By the time humanity finally arrived, while humans were still playing with mud, the ages had already shifted and changed like fireworks. Countless stories had begun, and countless stories had ended.
But now, the brief Cenozoic Era was coming to an end as well.
It, too, would be...
Buried here!
Li Xianfeng's heart suddenly pounded several times. An intense grief came over him, yet he could not say what it was for.
That sorrow permeated the entire control room, until some of the younger people could not help shedding tears.
He held on desperately, clenching his teeth to keep his emotions from slipping out of control.
The satellite images continued.
This world had almost no curvature, or rather, its curvature was so slight that the naked eye could barely discern it.
Although the rocket had not reached its intended altitude, it was still more than a hundred kilometers up. Looking down on Earth from that height, they would have clearly seen the boundary between its atmosphere and space.
Here, there was almost no curve.
The landscape seemed flat. Year after year, day after day, the sun rose in the east and set in the west, as though an endless radiance flowed from it, spilling over this world on the brink of death.
Against that backdrop of interwoven streams of light, an ancient term came to mind: geocentrism.
Once, humanity had believed Earth was the very center of the universe, and that everything revolved around it. As time progressed, humans realized that belief was wrong. Earth was merely an unremarkable planet, an insignificant part of the universe.
Yet for some reason, this group of people in the Mysterious Zone found themselves thinking something similar once again: perhaps this place was the center of all things, the end of history.
Farther away, seemingly endless gray-black clouds and mist swirled.
From that vantage point high above, apart from the ship they were aboard, all they could see was the blue-black ocean stretching endlessly outward. There were no islands, and no life.
The sea was dead, without waves or currents.
An emotion beyond words lingered in their hearts.
"Perhaps there are more, many more... parallel worlds here?"
"Earth's final resting place will be this world, too..."
Without a human home base behind them, a lone ship sailing through this boundless, silent sea would have been far too lonely.
Before they could analyze much more, the satellite images abruptly vanished.
The satellite had burned up and was rapidly falling from the sky along a parabolic trajectory.
Li Xianfeng came to his senses and immediately gave the order. "Everyone, snap out of it. I know you may have had some inexplicable revelations, but now isn't the time to discuss them. All hands, return immediately. We're going back to Earth!"
"Back... to our... world!"
Mysterious Zone 16.
Returning from the mangroves with a full haul, Zhang Ming let his thoughts wander.
His backpack was stuffed with all kinds of strange new plants, probably weighing fifteen to twenty kilograms.
"I wonder which is stronger-the golden eel, the red toad, or that black six-legged monster mentioned on the broadcast..."
The familiar surroundings filled him with a sense of security. As someone who cared purely about power rankings, Zhang Ming idly imagined the monsters fighting one another.
Character devotees' love was fleeting. They readily switched their affections and preferred to build harems, caring only about looks. But power enthusiasts' love was eternal. As long as you were the strongest in the world, they would keep watching you, loving you, and discussing you with single-minded devotion, never wavering, regardless of whether you were beautiful or ugly.
After thinking it over, he still felt that neither the toad nor the six-legged monster could compare to the golden eel in the mangroves.
"Apart from the enormous creature at the island's center and that ten-thousand-meter-long superorganism, the golden eel is T1."
"Its supernatural ability is T1, too."
Just then, however, he suddenly felt his foot strike something smooth.
With a soft clink, the little object rolled several meters away, then bounced across the ground with a series of rattling chimes.
He took a closer look.
Somewhat bewildered, Zhang Ming picked it up. The more he examined it, the more astonished he became.
Even his eyes grew wider with bafflement.
It was a...
Piece of pottery?!
Made from fired clay.
Zhang Ming was certain it was a pottery shard, perhaps part of a bowl or teapot. There was absolutely, positively no way it had formed naturally!
If nature really could produce something like this, he would twist his own head off and become a headless horseman.
He turned it over and over, studying it. It was so ancient that the elements had eroded the pattern on its surface, leaving it hard to make out.
"Could there be humans on this island? Natives?"
"Or have humans visited this island before?"
"I'm not alone?"
The startling discovery sent adrenaline surging through Zhang Ming. His heart raced, and a chilling sensation swept through his entire body!
His imagination ran wild, and the more he thought, the more excited he became. "Or could there be another intelligent civilization here?"
"Did I fucking cross over into a parallel world?"
He had no idea what this meant, or whether it was good or bad. All he knew was that
His temples throbbed wildly.
A string of key phrases-"Mysterious Zone, supernatural phenomena, unknown island, mutated life, intelligent civilization"-flashed back and forth through his mind, giving rise to one bewildering, intricate mystery after another.
Calming himself, he patiently searched around the pottery shard for a while and found a large slab of bluestone.
The slab was far too regular in shape. It had clearly been dressed by hand.
It might once have been part of a bluestone path, but as time passed, the surrounding vegetation had covered it. That was why Zhang Ming had failed to notice it despite passing this way several times.
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