"A boomerang from years ago, struck me right between the eyebrows..."
Lin Hao raised his hand and gently pressed his brow.
I'm speechless.
Ji Ziyue had finished laughing. Looking up at Lin Hao's expression, she stuck out her tongue, buried her face in his leg, and rubbed against him, muttering softly:
"Grandpa, why aren't you smiling?"
"I think it's quite interesting... My great-grandmother even told me stories like ' Lin Daiyu uprooting a willow tree' and ' Sun Wukong fighting Transformers three times'..."
"How about I switch to another section?"
Lin Hao's forehead was once again covered in black lines. "No, never mind..."
"Oh~"
Ji Ziyue nodded, just about to say something else...
Buzz--!
But at that moment, without any warning, the entire Yinghuo Ancient Star suddenly trembled slightly.
Immediately afterwards, a ripple spread out from the very top of the dark red sky, as if a pebble had been thrown into a calm body of water.
Soon, the ripples expanded rapidly, distorting the light and tearing through the dark red dust.
The next moment, nine enormous dragon corpses, resembling black mountain ranges, dragged an ancient bronze coffin that seemed capable of containing a mountain. They crashed through the void, carrying an incomparably majestic and ancient aura of suppression, and slowly descended!
Nine Dragons Pulling a Coffin, arriving at Mars!
Rumble...
A deep, resounding roar echoed between heaven and earth.
The Nine Dragons Pulling a Coffin did not fall directly to the ground, but was drawn slowly by an invisible force towards a certain direction of the ancient star—there, the outline of an ancient altar, a ruin made of five-colored giant stones, could be vaguely seen.
The Five-Colored Altar sensed the arrival of the bronze coffin and suddenly lit up!
Five colors of light shot into the sky, intertwining to form a dazzling pillar of light that connected heaven and earth, and temporarily dispelled the dark red dust that had permeated the sky above the ancient star for many years.
It illuminates a more desolate, lifeless land, riddled with huge cracks and eerie black gravel.
The lid of the bronze coffin slowly slid open a crack in the light of the Five-Colored Altar.
Douluo Continent, Shrek Academy Square.
A deathly silence lasted for more than a dozen breaths.
Everyone's eyes were fixed on the Heavenly Screen.
There, the Nine Dragons Pulling a Coffin broke free from the shackles of the azure "sphere" and disappeared into the boundless darkness.
Just when everyone thought that what followed would be that unsettling darkness and distant starlight again, the scene suddenly "fell" into a completely new and incomprehensible world, following the giant bronze coffin!
A dark red, oppressive sky; an endless, crimson desert; jagged, grotesque rocks; an environment so deathly silent it's maddening...
"Where... where is this?!"
Ma Hongjun's voice trembled. The shock from the previous blue "giant sphere" had not yet subsided when this eerie and terrifying red world crashed down upon him.
"Where did that coffin... land?"
Oscar clenched his fists tightly. "They brought Li Dan, Ye Fan, and the others to... such a... hellish place?"
Yu Xiaogang nodded. "There seems to be nothing here... just sand and stones... and the sky is red too, it's terrifying..."
"However, it seems... the journey of that coffin is not over yet."
"Is this another... 'world'?"
Tang San activated his Purple Demon Eye to its fullest extent. He noticed the shapes of the strange rocks, which vaguely resembled the skeletons of some kind of giant beast. He also noticed that the desert was not completely flat, but seemed to have huge, bottomless ravines and cracks.
This is definitely not a safe place!
The Spirit Hall, the Pope's Palace.
Bibi Dong had recovered from the shock of the "spherical world," but the dark red, lifeless world that appeared before her stirred up her recently calmed heart once again.
"A... world of death."
She spoke slowly, her voice echoing in the empty hall, "No life, no greenery, only sand and a blood-red sky."
Why is that coffin here?
"Could this be... its destination?" Yue Guan frowned. "But this place doesn't look like a habitable place at all. It looks more like..."
He paused, carefully choosing his words, "Like a legendary ancient battlefield, or... a forgotten land of the dead."
Gui Mei added, "Moreover, the 'atmosphere' here is very off."
"Even though it was just looking through the Heavenly Screen, the deathly stillness, the desolation, and even... a touch of the eerie, could be felt even through the 'image'."
Bibi Dong nodded slightly, her sharp eyes searching the screen.
She saw the light of the Five-Colored Altar and the Nine Dragons Pulling a Coffin.
"It seems that the coffin's 'voyage' is guided and powered by these ancient altars."
"From one altar to another... this red world of death is just one stop along the way."
Her mind raced. " Li Dan, Ye Fan, and the others are ordinary people who were accidentally caught up in this."
Their fate is entirely out of their own hands.
"And this is simply because they happened to be on Mount Tai, and happened to be on that altar... Weakness is the original sin."
"Faced with higher-level beings and powers, one cannot even control one's own destiny and can only drift with the tide."
This realization made Bibi Dong's heart grow both colder and hotter.
She would never want to be that kind of ant!
"Look! The coffin has been opened!"
At that moment, Yue Guan suddenly cried out.
In the Heavenly Screen above, amidst the glow of the Five-Colored Altar, the bronze coffin lid slid open slightly, and some panicked figures stumbled out from the gap, falling onto the ground covered with black gravel.
It was a group of tourists from Mount Tai led by Ye Fan, Pang Bo, and Li Dan.
Still shaken, they looked around blankly, their faces filled with fear, shock, helplessness, and deep despair at this strange, desolate world.
The Yinghuo Ancient Star, beside the Five-Colored Altar.
Ye Fan was the first to leap out of the coffin, his feet landing on the cold, hard black gravel. He stumbled and almost fell.
He forced himself to endure the dizziness and nausea, and suddenly looked up at his surroundings.
A dark red sky, a desert where crimson and black intertwine, a massive crack, and indistinct mountain shadows on the distant horizon, like the fangs of a demon...
Where is this?! Is this hell?!
Pang Bo, Li Dan, and the others also climbed out one after another. When they saw the scene before them, they all gasped in shock, their faces turning ashen.
Some people collapsed to the ground, some retched uncontrollably, and some let out suppressed, desperate sobs.
"What... what kind of place is this?" Pang Bo asked in confusion.
"Are we... are we already dead?" a girl asked, trembling.
"No, it can't be..."
Ye Fan's face also turned pale, but he forced himself to calm down and observed his surroundings.
He saw the Five-Colored Altar emitting a faint light, and further away, the dilapidated silhouette of a building reduced to a black silhouette against the dark red Heavenly Screen.
"There... it looks like there's a building there!"