"Has the original territory really become this desolate?"
After bidding farewell to the One-Eyed Dragon, Leylin finally arrived at the previous signal location.
However, compared to the landscape when he had teleported here to the laboratory before, significant changes had occurred. The vast stretches of jungle had vanished entirely, with only the undulating terrain still giving Leylin a faint sense of familiarity.
As for where the laboratory had originally stood, it was now long swallowed by vast amounts of seawater, and the rank six spider he had encountered before had long since vanished without a trace.
"Where are Gillian and the others?" Following the maps stored in his memory and his Chip, Leylin easily located their previous gathering point, but it was already completely deserted.
The clay pots and iron implements on the ground were all steeped in decay.
"To this degree?" Leylin picked up an iron sword — a gift he had personally bestowed last time, forged from the finest refined steel and craftsmanship of the Central Continent.
But now, the entire sword began crumbling to powder in his hand, decaying and disintegrating inch by inch.
"Only three hundred years have passed, yet judging from these objects, it's as if millennia have elapsed… Could this be the effect of the Dream Power when it was still active?"
Leylin stroked his chin and made his way to the former residence of Gillian and his daughter.
No! The place could now only be described as "ruins." The old structures had long since weathered and rotted away, with only faint traces remaining on the ground.
"The sediment of time shall reveal all truth before my eyes…"
Leylin's gaze deepened as he spoke those words, almost as if incanting a spell.
As beings of Rules, Wizards had already begun to transcend incantations and magical templates, reaching directly toward the most primordial sources of magic — achieving effects where words alone could command reality.
Rustle!
The soil parted in waves, and rocks sank downward, revealing crumbling ruins and even some decayed vessels and the like.
"It seems that after I left, Gillian survived here for quite a long time…"
As time rewound, Leylin's understanding of this gathering point grew ever deeper.
Hum! At that moment, the subsidence of the ground reached its limit, and a burst of black light, enveloping several fragments that looked like tattered, rotting cloth, rose directly into the air.
On the tattered cloth, there were also some fragmentary symbols that had long become unrecognizable.
"This is… the notebook I once gave to Gillian?" Leylin's eyes flickered. According to the Chip's pattern analysis, these cloth-like fragments were actually numerous pages fused together and compressed into a strange state under tremendous pressure.
"Reveal yourselves!" Leylin swept his hand over the remains, and soon, layer upon layer of fine text projected outward from the fragments, rippling with different hues of light in midair.
The Chip quickly absorbed the information, rearranging it in chronological order.
[Today's luck was good. Father and the others trained many excellent clansmen using the methods Uncle left behind. We accepted the allegiance of other tribes, and the gathering point keeps expanding. It's just that Uncle still hasn't returned, and Gillian is very worried…]
At first, the notebook had only recorded mundane daily life. But after receiving Lei Lin's support and assistance, Gillian's tribe had grown at an astonishing pace.
However, between the lines of the notebook that followed, a thick sense of dread began to saturate every word.
【First came famine! Then plague! Has this land also been cursed by the Lord of Calamity — must we abandon it? Father is at a loss, because none of the explorers he sent out have brought back promising relocation targets. It's as if the entire world was flooded with famine in a single instant…】
" The beginning of the decline? Hmm — the timing is… still before the recession of Dream Power?"
Lei Lin's eyes flickered.
After that, the notebook's contents became extremely disorganized. It was clear that its owner had little heart left for record-keeping.
Only scattered fragments remained, each one a word for death or despair.
【During this time, many clansmen's bodies began to change — they grew terrifyingly powerful out of nowhere, but at the same time their reason seemed to vanish along with the arrival of that strength. To restrain them, the camp suffered tremendous casualties. Oh God — please, I hope I won't become like that…】
That line of text was brimming with fear, yet it piqued Lei Lin's interest enough that he reread it several times.
【All the crops have failed completely. We must abandon this place, no matter how severe the disasters to the north are — anything would be better than the camp now… I will leave this notebook behind, hoping that whoever comes after can find it, especially Uncle…】
On the last page of the notebook, the handwriting had already become extremely sloppy. The author must have been writing in great haste.
"Famine, plague, war, and finally destruction…"
Lei Lin recalled the contents of the entire notebook.
Now it seemed that the camp that had originally been here had long since relocated, and Gillian's band of natives in particular seemed to have undergone a very peculiar transformation.
"Grew terrifyingly powerful out of nowhere, and most of them lost their reason? Was it a deliberate infusion of Dream Power? I didn't expect them to stumble upon those odds…"
The Dream World was filled with eerie strangeness. A caterpillar today could become an entity on the level of an Evil God by tomorrow.