Chapter 1723: Lost Time

At this moment, Chen Ling's thoughts seemed to have stalled.

It wasn't until he confirmed that the outline in the distance wasn't an illusion, but something that truly existed, that he dazedly came back to his senses...

How could Human Domains appear now?

Moreover, if Chen Ling remembered correctly, even if it reached the period when Human Domains should appear, this location should correspond to the Red Dust Domain...

But wasn't the Red Dust Domain hidden inside a flower by Su Zhiwei?

And what were those towering city walls?

Countless doubts flashed through Chen Ling's mind. He directly set off and rushed to that place. As he continuously got closer, a tall and magnificent wall entered his field of vision.

The scale of this city wall was much larger than Chen Ling imagined, fully over a hundred meters high. He probingly knocked on the wall surface. Judging from its hardness, it seemed to already be enough to resist the attacks of a large portion of low-tier Calamities.

At this time, the outer surface of this city wall already had quite a lot of pitch-black bloodstains and scratches, as if it had experienced quite a few Calamity attacks. And when Chen Ling looked up above the wall surface, four giant characters over a hundred meters high entered his sight...

——[Red Dust Prison].

Red Dust... Prison?

Prison??

If the suddenly appearing city wall only made Chen Ling endlessly doubtful, then the four large characters before his eyes directly almost made Chen Ling's mind lose its guard... He looked at those four large characters, an unprecedented sense of absurdity rising in his heart.

Red Dust Prison... Who could call the Red Dust a prison??

Chen Ling had an ominous premonition in his heart. He didn't delay any more time, but directly utilized [Wall Breaking] to turn into a 2D shadow, flashing past the city wall.

Inside the city wall wasn't the city Chen Ling imagined, but layers upon layers of secondary city walls like an onion, and stout steel pillars rooted in the earth. These pillars supported the various layers of city walls and watchtowers like a bird's nest, like an impregnable super fortress.

And on top of the watchtowers at this time, numerous figures were already evenly distributed. Some of them were monitoring the Gray World outside the city wall...

Some, however, were monitoring inside the city wall.

Behind the countless secondary city walls and observation towers, a portion of the human living area could already faintly be seen. Fields, streets, manor houses, markets. Area after area was like a meticulously planned honeycomb, well-ordered.

Chen Ling's figure was sketched out like a ghost from the edge of the living area. He looked around, gently tearing at his chin with his fingertips, instantly turning into an ordinary youth...

He walked step by step toward the market.

Numerous figures wandered leisurely on the streets. Mothers holding children, couples walking side by side. They talked and laughed along the way, extraordinarily lively.

Chen Ling stood at the crossroads, staring blankly at all this. Everything before his eyes compared to the Red Dust in his mind, had an extremely strong sense of fragmentation.

This city surrounded by city walls before his eyes had a larger population than the Red Dust Domain. Whether housing, streets, or living supplies, they all seemed to be a large notch better than the Red Dust Domain... If the original Red Dust Domain was a small Jiangnan town, then the one before his eyes was a county town that had been vigorously developed.

This... was absolutely not the Red Dust Domain.

Chen Ling directly grabbed a pedestrian, asking in a deep voice:

"What place is this?"

The pedestrian was stunned. "Water Sleeve Street ah..."

"I'm not talking about this." Chen Ling closely followed and spoke. "Is this the Red Dust Domain?"

"Red Dust Domain?"

The pedestrian suspiciously sized Chen Ling up a few times. "This is the outer city of Red Dust Prison. The Red Dust Domain is locked up at the very bottom layer of the prison... Are you going there to visit relatives? Do you have a pass?"

Chen Ling's brows furrowed tighter and tighter. He seemed to have realized something, suddenly asking:

"What year is it this year?"

The pedestrian's expression became increasingly weird. The gaze looking at Chen Ling was even already full of vigilance:

"It's Year 369 of the New Era... Are you sick in the head? Just who are you exactly?"

Weng——

Chen Ling's mind went entirely blank.

Year 369 of the New Era?

The New Era was the new chronology method humanity only began to use after the Great Cataclysm. Year 369 of the New Era meant that from the time the chronology method began to be formally used until now, 369 years had already passed...

And Chen Ling clearly remembered that in the previous world, the time he "transmigrated" to Frost Street was Year 379 of the New Era.

That is to say...

Right now, was already the world more than three hundred years after the Great Cataclysm.

And it was only ten years earlier than his "transmigration" to Frost Street in his previous world!

How could it be like this... The time he last entered the Timeline Save File should be the starting year of the New Era. How did it become more than three hundred years later in the blink of an eye??

In Chen Ling's mind, An Qingyu's final sentence before he returned from outside the world resounded once again:

"Alright, you should leave quickly, otherwise... you might regret it."

The Chen Ling at the time thought that the "regret" in An Qingyu's mouth referred to him missing the opportunity to safely ascend dimensions... But looking at it now, previously he and Jiang Er repeatedly reminding that the time flow of the two was different was already an extremely strong hint.

He only stayed outside the world for a few tens of minutes, yet more than three hundred years had unexpectedly already passed here?!

No... it shouldn't just be a problem of the flow rate difference of the World Barrier.

When he was crossing the World Barrier, he also had a feeling of time and space being completely disordered. Was it that he consumed a massive amount of time during the process of entering and exiting, it was just that he himself didn't perceive it?

Seeing this weirdo Chen Ling staying blankly in place, the pedestrian's gaze was vigilant to the extreme. He subconsciously retreated, and then prepared to turn around and call for police officers...

But he just opened his mouth, and an Invisible Heart Python had already climbed onto his shoulder, viciously taking a bite.

The pedestrian was instantly stunned in place like a sculpture.

Behind him,

Chen Ling's fists tightly clenched up...

He seemed to have remembered something, trembling as he reached his hand into his embrace, opening that Old-style Flip Phone.

The familiar electronic screen light turned on. As Chen Ling's signal reconnected, lines of prompts frantically popped up like a tide!

[Missed call from Lu Xun (128 messages)]

[Missed call from Yang Xiao (214 messages)]

[Missed call from Su Zhiwei (149 messages)]

[Missed call from Wen Ruoshui (98 messages)]

[Missed call from...]

Those messages that were never delivered because he wasn't in the service area crossed more than three hundred years of time at this moment, pouring entirely into Chen Ling's palm... Through these countless missed calls, Chen Ling seemed to see anxious, bewildered, and worried faces, tossing and turning behind the screen.

Almost every familiar Nine Monarchs tried to dial Chen Ling's number countless times, but not a single one ultimately connected.

And the last missed call from almost everyone stopped at the same time:

January 5, 2025.