Chapter 1723: The 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 was not a hallucination but something that truly existed that he came back to his senses in a daze...

How could a human domain appear now?

And if Chen Ling remembered correctly, even if it were the period when a human domain should appear, this location should correspond to the Red Dust Domain...

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

And what were those towering city walls?

Countless questions flashed through Chen Ling's mind. He set off directly toward that place. As he kept approaching, a tall and magnificent wall came into his view.

The scale of this city wall was much larger than Chen Ling had imagined, reaching over a hundred meters in height. He tentatively knocked on the wall; judging by its hardness, it seemed sufficient to withstand attacks from most low-level Calamities.

At this time, there were already many black bloodstains and scratches on the outer surface of the city wall, as if it had experienced many Calamity attacks. And when Chen Ling looked up at the wall, four giant characters over a hundred meters high came into his view...

The moment he saw these four characters, Chen Ling's pupils contracted sharply!!

——【Red Dust Prison】.

Red Dust... Prison?

Prison??

If the suddenly appearing city wall only made Chen Ling puzzled, the four characters before him almost made him lose his composure... He looked at the four characters, and a sense of unprecedented absurdity rose in his heart.

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

Chen Ling had an ominous premonition. He didn't waste any more time, but directly used [Wall-Breaking] to turn into a two-dimensional shadow and flashed over the city wall.

Inside the city wall, it wasn't the city Chen Ling had imagined, but layer upon layer of sub-walls like an onion, and thick steel pillars rooted in the earth. These pillars supported the walls and watchtowers of each layer like a bird's nest, looking like an impregnable super fortress.

And at this time, on the watchtowers, there were already many figures evenly distributed. Some were monitoring the Gray World outside the city wall...

Others were monitoring inside the city wall.

Behind the countless sub-walls and watchtowers, one could vaguely see parts of human living areas: fields, streets, houses, markets—areas that were as well-planned as a honeycomb, orderly and neat.

Chen Ling's figure outlined itself like a ghost from the edge of the living area. He looked around, lightly tore at his chin with his fingertips, and instantly turned into an ordinary young man...

He walked toward the market step by step.

Many figures were wandering leisurely on the street: mothers holding children, couples walking side by side. They were laughing and talking along the way, bustling with noise and excitement.

Chen Ling stood at the intersection, staring blankly at all this. Everything before him had a strong sense of disconnection compared to the Red Dust in his mind.

The city surrounded by city walls before him had a larger population than the Red Dust Domain, and whether it was housing, streets, or daily necessities, it seemed to be a big step ahead of the Red Dust Domain... If the original Red Dust Domain was a small town in Jiangnan, then the one before him was a county town that had been heavily developed.

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

Chen Ling grabbed a passerby directly and asked in a deep voice:

"Where is this place?"

The passerby was stunned. "Water Sleeve Street..."

"That's not what I meant." Chen Ling continued, "Is this the Red Dust Domain?"

"Red Dust Domain?"

The passerby looked Chen Ling up and down suspiciously. "This is the outer city of the Red Dust Prison. The Red Dust Domain is imprisoned at the very bottom of the prison... Are you going there to visit relatives? Do you have a pass?"

Chen Ling's brow furrowed tighter and tighter. As if he had realized something, he suddenly asked:

"What year is it?"

The passerby's expression became even stranger, and his gaze toward Chen Ling was even full of vigilance:

"It's New Calendar year 369... Are you sick? Who exactly are you?"

Buzz—

Chen Ling's mind went blank.

New Calendar year 369?

The New Calendar was a new dating method that humans only started using after the Great Catastrophe. New Calendar year 369 meant that 369 years had passed since the dating method was officially used...

And Chen Ling clearly remembered that in the previous world, the time he "traveled" to Frost Street was New Calendar year 379.

In other words...

It was already a world more than three hundred years after the Great Catastrophe.

And it was only ten years earlier than the time he "traveled" to Frost Street in his previous world!

How could this be... The last time he entered the Era Archive should have been at the beginning of the New Calendar. How did it become more than three hundred years later in the blink of an eye??

Chen Ling's mind recalled An Qingyu's last words before he returned from outside the world:

"Alright, hurry up and go, otherwise... you'll regret it."

At the time, Chen Ling thought the "regret" An Qingyu spoke of referred to him missing the opportunity for a safe ascension... But now it seemed that the repeated reminders from him and Jiang Er that the time flow was different were already a very strong hint.

He had only stayed outside the world for a few dozen minutes, and more than three hundred years had already passed here?!

No... it shouldn't just be the time flow difference of the world barrier.

When he crossed the world barrier, he also had the feeling that time and space were completely chaotic. It was that he spent a lot of time in the process of entering and exiting, but he didn't perceive it himself?

Seeing that the strange man Chen Ling stayed in place, the passerby's gaze was vigilant to the extreme. He subconsciously stepped back and prepared to turn around to call the police...

But just as he opened his mouth, an invisible Heart Python climbed onto his shoulder and bit down hard.

The passerby was instantly stunned like a sculpture.

Behind him,

Chen Ling's fists were clenched tightly...

As if remembering something, he tremblingly reached into his bosom and opened the old-fashioned flip phone.

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

【Missed calls from Lu Xun (128)】

【Missed calls from Yang Xiao (214)】

【Missed calls from Su Zhiwei (149)】

【Missed calls from Wen Ruoshui (98)】

【From...】

Those messages that were never delivered because they were out of service area poured into Chen Ling's palm across three hundred years of time... Through these countless missed calls, Chen Ling seemed to see faces full of anxiety, confusion, and worry tossing and turning behind the screen.

Almost every Nine Lord he was familiar with had tried to dial Chen Ling's number countless times, but not a single one had ever gotten through.

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

January 5, 2025.