Inside the study of Lishan Martial Hall.
The glow of sunset streamed through the window, casting light across the entire Sand Table.
Yet the sight within the Sand Table was utterly devoid of beauty.
Lin Tuo stood motionless, his face frozen in disbelief.
His mind spun with question marks and exclamation points.
"What happened?!"
"I was only gone for a little while—how could it end up like this?"
"Who tampered with my Sand Table?!"
Before his eyes, thick clouds of dust blanketed the Tark Continent, nearly blotting out the sun. The land lay in shadow, devastated and bleak.
Tilting his view to avoid the swirling dust clouds, he peered at the surface. Where once there had been vitality, now only scorched earth remained.
Outside the cities, fields that should have been green now stretched in sickly black-yellow, as if smothered by ash. Vegetation withered lifelessly.
The cities themselves were even more desolate.
Collapsed buildings sprawled across empty streets. Train stations and avenues lay deserted, factories abandoned as though silent for years.
The great river that cut west to east through the land ran murky green-black. Even the sea was a sickly gray-blue.
Looking westward, destruction only deepened.
The western mountain ranges—once vast forests—now burned.
Flames swept across the entire range. With accelerated time, they flared briefly, then vanished, leaving only ash.
Even the earth's crust bore scars. Volcanoes erupted, lava poured forth, black smoke billowed skyward.
Yet with time hastened, the eruptions soon stilled, leaving behind a sky filled with black-gray snow.
The ash fell thick, covering the land until, in the blink of an eye, the world lay cloaked in ghostly white.
The entire continent—a wasteland of scars.
"Adjust the time ratio!"
Lin Tuo jolted, hurriedly disabling the acceleration and resetting the flow to 1:1.
He had noticed it—the collapse of human civilization had caused complexity to plummet, accelerating the Sand Table's time.
By rough calculation, years—perhaps decades—had already passed since the "catastrophe."
With the adjustment complete, the images within the Sand Table finally steadied.
Lin Tuo exhaled, closed his eyes, and forced himself to calm.
Moments later, he reopened them, staring at the ravaged world with rising unease.
"Was it natural disaster… or man-made?"
The scene defied reason. With the civilization so near Earth's own era, the time ratio was already very slow.
In the short time he'd been absent, the Sand Table should have progressed only a few years at most.
Yet in just those few years, the world had been reduced to this.
Checking the virtual interface, his expression darkened further.
[Current environmental Ether concentration: Low]
As expected!
With human society in collapse, Ether levels had plummeted.
"Open the operation log."
Suppressing his dread, Lin Tuo summoned the log, searching for the cause.
The interface unfurled, revealing dense lines of text.
Normally he kept it hidden—it cluttered his vision and disrupted daily life.
Even if it had been open earlier, while he was eating, he would've been too late.
The operation log recorded history after it occurred.
Yes, it had noted the development of the Annihilation Bombs—but who could have foreseen a deranged Emperor building three thousand of them, and detonating them all at once?
Enough to annihilate the world's entire ecosystem.
No, there was no regret. Such a disaster could not have been prevented.
He read on carefully:
[Year 740,106,500 of world evolution: The first Emperor of the New Dynasty detonated three thousand Annihilation Bombs in the Western Continent central laboratory in an attempt to destroy the barrier—failure.]
[…The explosions triggered a chain reaction, shattering the world's ecosystem. Dust clouds shrouded the sun, temperatures plummeted, the environment collapsed, life withered…]
[…Human society collapsed. Civilization regressed. Volcanoes, earthquakes, endless winter, famine, wars followed one after another…]
[…Radiation from the blasts poisoned the soil, corrupted life. Countless plants and animals died or mutated. Human society crumbled. Global population reduced by ninety percent… The Cataclysm Era began.]
Lin Tuo's face shifted as he read.
When the last line faded, he rubbed his face hard, letting out a bitter laugh.
"So this is it? If you don't court death, you won't die?"
His feelings were tangled.
Not natural disaster. Man-made calamity—one beyond belief.
So irrational that even ordinary logic could not explain it.
A ruler, abandoning reason, dragging his entire people into ruin.
Lin Tuo sighed deeply, his face grave.
He knew it too well—this Sand Table wasn't a game. It was a real world. Its civilization, its tens of millions of humans, were all living beings.
Each person had their own life, their own joys and sorrows.
That was why he had always been so cautious, avoiding interference unless absolutely necessary.
Yet in the end, it was not him—but a mad Emperor—who brought ruin, taking all with him.
"And the worst part is… he actually succeeded."
Shaking his head, Lin Tuo tried to sort through his thoughts.
"What's done is done. It can't be reversed.
But according to the operation log, humanity wasn't completely extinguished. Quite a number still survived…"
"In other words, civilization's spark still exists. It's not utterly lost. Maybe… it can still be salvaged."
"For now, the first step is to understand the situation within the Sand Table. Only then can I respond properly…"
He instinctively moved to release a clone—then remembered.
His clone was still sitting at the hotpot restaurant.
"…Sigh."
Shaking his head, he sank back into the recliner, closed his eyes, and shifted his consciousness.
"Sir? Wake up—are you all right, sir?"
As Lin Tuo entered his clone, voices reached him, tinged with worry. Someone shook his shoulder.
He slowly opened his eyes. A waitress stood before him, face tense.
Behind her, two other staff had hurried over.
It seemed his "absence" had been mistaken for a medical emergency.
"I'm fine… just dozed off a little," Lin Tuo forced a smile.
The servers sighed in relief. "That's good. Sorry for disturbing you."
"No problem. I'm done eating. Please clear the rest." Lin Tuo rose to his feet.
A short while later, leaving the restaurant, he found the sky dimming. Traffic thickened on the streets.
Glancing about, he avoided cameras, slipped into a secluded alley, then recalled his clone back through Observation Mode.
Back in the Martial Hall study, he restored his clone and lit the room.
Gazing once more upon the ravaged land, the faint chill seeping through the Sand Table, Lin Tuo drew a deep breath.
He searched for any trace of human settlement.
"There. That will do."
Moments later, Lin Tuo raised his hand and reached into the Sand Table.
Through his clone—
He descended once more, into the wasteland.
(End of Chapter)