"Lousy game! So your open world was fake all along!"
Hearing the system notification, Lin Yuan couldn't help grumbling inwardly.
That said, he still noticed a few strange points in the brief notification.
"The system said this area doesn't currently exist. There seems to be something more to that."
Lin Yuan put his mind to work.
"I've been outside the game area before. The East Pole Sea was an area that hadn't opened yet back then."
"But although the East Pole Sea area wasn't open then, it definitely existed."
"Yet this place 'doesn't exist.' That's very different from the East Pole Sea."
The difference between the two wasn't difficult for Lin Yuan to figure out.
To use an ordinary video game as an analogy, the East Pole Sea was a ready-made new map that Players weren't allowed to enter, while Lin Yuan alone had entered through special means.
The Secret Realm Ancient Land before him, however, was a map that hadn't been built yet, something like a newly created folder.
But what puzzled Lin Yuan was that the scene inside the sphere of light looked perfectly complete. It didn't look like an unfinished map.
"No, this place isn't complete."
Lin Yuan suddenly realized something.
Although the scene inside the sphere of light was complete, it was frozen.
"The space is complete, but there's no time!"
The thought lit up Lin Yuan's mind like lightning.
"Time... That's right. The East Pole Island Lord also said the Fourth Stage of the game had something to do with time."
"So this place really is a game area for the next stage."
"It needs the Power of Time to open!"
"But if time is the only issue, why can't my A-rank energy detect this sphere's aura?"
Lin Yuan had found an answer, only to