Chapter 1169: Extreme Chaos Space
Anticipating that the Special Defense Department wouldn't let him land on the island, Xu Huo simply said "See you on the island" to Song Xiaohua and got off the plane first.
Above the sea, he used "Destination Arrival" several times in succession, avoiding the patrol boats and players outside, carefully observing the island's barrier.
The barrier around the island resembled uneven wavy lines, with large fluctuations in height, but at regular intervals, some sections with gentler slopes had relatively weaker barriers. If one wanted to enter, they would have to tear open the space barrier from these points.
Xu Huo didn't rush in. Instead, he randomly chose a boat to board, used his Spiritual Power to interfere with the people on board, and obtained first-hand information from the Special Defense Department.
According to the data, the Special Defense Department had already locked down five entry points that didn't require items to land on the island. Apart from these five points, ships and people couldn't freely enter or exit the barrier elsewhere. Additionally, forcefully attacking the barrier would cause its boundaries to expand outward. The current "wavy" shape of the barrier was largely due to the Special Defense Department's efforts.
But from the final results, whether using items or thermal weapons, the biggest impact was merely expanding the barrier, not causing it to collapse—this indicated that the space where the vanished island was located was very stable and likely wouldn't suddenly crumble.
As for the patrol boats at sea, besides preventing ordinary players from approaching, they also had the task of receiving members from player organizations that had reached agreements with the Special Defense Department. Any teams approaching the barrier were transported by them.
On the boat Xu Huo was on, there were two Special Defense Department players preparing to land on the island. They weren't part of the main force but were responsible for monitoring the players landing. This trip was to pick up a batch of player organization members.
From their conversation, the Special Defense Department's elite team had already landed and conducted a large-scale search, but without much gain. It seemed to be just a chaotic space inside, not a soon-to-be-completed Instance.
When the boat approached one of the entry points, Xu Huo left the boat and passed through the island's outer barrier. His vision shifted. The space that had appeared as just a vanished island with the sea still intact from the outside had turned into a ruined city. Under a gray sky, the air was murky, and fragments and debris of buildings floated in midair as if weightless. But touching them revealed they were actually frozen in place, as if firmly embedded in the invisible wall of air.
Upon closer inspection, some stone slabs were arranged very regularly. They floated in the air at intervals of over a meter, sloping upward toward the heights like a path. At the end of this path was another cluster of floating city buildings.
From what Xu Huo could see, although the ground-level buildings were damaged, they largely hadn't moved from their original positions. They didn't seem to come from the same place as the floating buildings in the sky, and the decorative patterns on the buildings were different—it looked like two different cities had been pulled into the same space.
Following the stone path upward a bit, he casually dropped a pebble he had picked up. The pebble fell rapidly.
Similarly, after climbing onto the sky buildings, he threw another pebble, and it also fell straight to the ground.
This meant that the space still had gravity, and anyone entering later, along with their actions, had to follow this rule.
It was just unclear by what principle this sky city was floating in the air.
Most of the buildings in the sky and on the ground were destroyed, with only a few broken walls retaining some text and totems. From the fragmented text, the sky buildings seemed to have originally been places of worship, while the totems were imaginative combinations of multiple animals—of course, given the current Mutant Animals, creatures with scales, shells, armor, and tails weren't uncommon, and even humans could grow scales and hard shells.
Unsure whether this worship was of imaginary creations or Xenomorphs, Xu Huo came back down the same way. But halfway down, he suddenly noticed that this stone path had shifted from its previous position.
The direction had changed.
Xu Huo paused, then turned back toward the sky buildings. However, as he stepped onto the stone slab at the edge of the building, he felt a faint, almost imperceptible force pass through his body—the building before him didn't change, but where there had been no one, several people suddenly appeared!
The people opposite also saw him.
Although both sides thought the other's appearance was too silent, since they didn't know each other, neither disturbed the other's rhythm: the Special Defense Department had let in quite a few players.
Xu Huo retraced his steps through the area he had just examined, pausing briefly on a totem that had turned in a different direction before heading back down.
Those few players also followed him down. While both sides were still in midair, the scattered, floating stone slabs not far from them suddenly began to move slowly, forming a new path leading to the sky. But at the end of this stone path, there was nothing.
Just as Xu Huo and the others were warily watching this change, the stone path beneath their feet suddenly vanished, and at the same time, the sky building behind them was swallowed by darkness.
A black, missing corner appeared in the originally complete sky, as if it had suddenly sunk into night. But this night was impenetrable, even able to devour light.
"What's going on?" one of the suddenly appearing players said to the person at the back of their team. "Is the island space shrinking?"
The person at the back should be a Special Defense Department player. He said impatiently, "How should I know? Maybe it'll light up on its own in a while."
"Didn't the Special Defense Department send you to be a guide?" the questioner looked at him displeased. "With this attitude, you expect us to sell what we find to the Special Defense Department?"
The Special Defense Department player gave them a cold look but didn't continue arguing. Instead, he said, "This is a normal phenomenon in this space. The sky buildings appear and disappear from time to time. It's best not to approach the darkness. Some Special Defense Department people went in and got lost; they haven't come out yet."
Those players from a well-known domestic player association didn't quite believe him, but they weren't foolish enough to test it themselves. Instead, they turned toward the newly formed stone path. "Let's go check that side out."
Xu Huo didn't follow them. He accelerated through the space, running forward two thousand meters, when he suddenly felt that subtle force passing through his body again. When he stopped, a ruined space identical to the one before appeared in front of him.
The same stone path, the same sky buildings, without the sudden descent of darkness—it looked like a copied space. But when he looked back, he could still see the place he had just come from, where the darkness that had swallowed the sky building remained.
Different positions, the same space; the same position, different spaces. The space on this island should be quite chaotic. Seemingly under the same sky, the scenes one saw and the people one encountered might not be in the same space at all.
"Crack!" A stone slab fell to the ground. Xu Huo followed the sound and saw that the stone path he had just seen was collapsing from low to high, like falling dominoes, until even the floating building debris began to fall piece by piece.
(Chapter End)