Chapter 1 The Cave Entrance

The cave entrance leading to the other dimension was located within the quarry, on a rock wall almost perpendicular to the mountain. A "人"-shaped (ren, meaning "person") crack, over ten meters high, split the hard granite rock face. The widest part of the crack was wide enough for three people to enter side by side. Around this rock wall, a large amount of collapsed rubble and dirt could be seen, with some damaged machinery scattered haphazardly across the open space. This should be the result of that "small-scale collapse."

"The management of this place is becoming increasingly problematic," Hesperiana said, shaking her head as she looked at the scene of the accident. "Even with the vast influence of the Hesperiana family, we can't avoid the trouble of poor control over these guys who are far from the imperial court. The supervisor of this area was originally a reliable fellow. I gave him some vampire power, extending his life by nearly a century, but now even that guy has become lax."

Two young vampires followed behind Hesperiana. The female one asked, "Chieftain, should we replace the supervisor here?"

"No, not for now. Pero is still loyal, and from an accident perspective, the main responsibility for this matter still lies with the quarry foreman. Pero's subsequent handling didn't have any major flaws. His main problem was using people poorly and insufficient supervision. You guys remind him a few times later, and I believe that kid will know what to do," Hesperiana said, shaking her head. "But if it continues like this, then we'll have to replace him."

There was no lighting in the cave. The sunlight coming in from the entrance was quickly left far behind, leaving only darkness ahead. Since the accident, no humans had entered this cave again. The vampires of the Hesperiana family were responsible for the subsequent investigation. They didn't need any lighting in the dark environment, so the cave maintained its original state, without even a miner's lamp installed.

Although darkness was not a problem for Hao Ren and his group, an overly dark environment made it easy to miss some details, so Lily summoned her happily flaming claw blades, using the bright firelight to illuminate the way forward.

"Up to here, it should all be fissures caused by normal mountain cracking," Vivian said, carefully observing the nearby rock walls as she walked. "Dry... no traces of plants or animals, the rock patterns match each other, it's a whole piece of rock that has cracked."

"This would require a lot of force, definitely not something a 'small-scale collapse' could cause," Loli said. "I just used magic to detect the strength of the mountain rock, and combined with the observation of the crack just now, I can confirm that the scale of the external collapse was indeed small, so the 'source' that caused the mountain to crack should be deep inside, and the energy was concentrated, with an instantaneous burst."

Vivian nodded: "The connection point between the other dimension and the real world seems to be directly inside the mountain. The shock caused by the spatial tremor was enough to produce this effect."

Hao Ren took out the data terminal and had it perform high-precision measurements of the environment here. The terminal floated in the air in front of the group, constantly projecting blue beams to scan the surrounding rock walls and rubble. So far, it had not detected any spatial distortions.

But it had already detected abnormal changes in the gravity readings ahead.

"This is a typical 'continuous space warping'," the data terminal said. "There are no obvious spatial cracks in the cave, but as we go deeper, the boundary between the other dimension and the main material world gradually becomes blurred. Everyone be vigilant, and prepare any protective spells you have – we should already be partially inside this other dimension."

The cave within the rock wall wasn't very deep, and it was almost a straight path. Soon, the group reached the end. Here, Hao Ren realized that the surrounding space had already been separated from the main material world to a considerable extent.

The end of the cave was a large cavern, about dozens of meters high and a hundred meters wide. The floor of the cavern was quite flat and covered with a layer of fine yellow sand. Stepping on it, one could almost feel the dryness and warmth from the desert. The surrounding air carried a coarse, dusty smell, which was completely different from the previous coolness.

This cavern was obviously not formed naturally by mountain cracking. There was only one explanation for its appearance here: this place was already part of another dimension.

Hao Ren quickly found the entrance to the "Lost City." It was deep within the cavern, where an arched crack appeared, with chaotic light spreading out from it, as if with a strange texture.

He checked his shields and then came to the crack, peering inside.

In the next second, his breath paused for half a beat.

Across the rock wall was indeed a vast other dimension—a lost ancient city!

Boundless chaos enveloped the space behind the rock wall. The boundary of the other dimension seemed to be shrouded in swirling yellow sand, forming countless terrifying vortexes. Inside this chaotic boundary, a magnificent ancient city with an overall earth-yellow tone could be seen quietly sleeping. The ancient city seemed to be built of granite, with temples, halls, and buildings all carrying a color like yellow sand.

Most of the buildings in the ancient city were four-sided prisms, wide at the bottom and narrow at the top. Some of the more ornate buildings also had sculptures and pillars resembling religious totems at the top. The most important building in the city should be the temple—or palace—located in the center. It looked like a building composed of several pyramids, somewhat similar to the Egyptian style, but also very different from the Egyptian pyramids in the real world.

Hao Ren's gaze slowly moved across this lost city, striving to take in every detail, just as Hesperiana had said, the city was built on the skull of some enormous creature.

That skull was located below the city, supporting all the granite buildings above. When it was complete, it should have been roughly oval, but now it was almost impossible to see the shape of a "skull." Most of it should have collapsed. The remaining part was just a huge arc-shaped bone plate. The front of the bone plate was connected to three deep eye socket cavities, and behind the skull, one could vaguely identify several vertebrae that were probably connected to the spine. In Hao Ren's limited knowledge, he couldn't tell what kind of creature's remains these were, and could only marvel at the creature's incredibility.

This was definitely not a species that could have been born on Earth, and it was unlikely to be a carbon-based life form, because the biological tissues of carbon-based life forms couldn't support such a huge body at all – unless it had some other supernatural power to assist it.

And Hao Ren also quickly confirmed another situation that Hesperiana had mentioned before:

This other dimension was constantly collapsing, and the disintegration of the "Lost City" was only a matter of time.

The chaotic boundary surrounding the other dimension was shrinking inward, crushing everything inside into elementary particles. Those sandstorm-like vortexes were truly tearing at the edges of the city. Large chunks of city walls and houses could be seen peeling off from the city at any time, being swallowed and decomposed by the chaotic boundary's "sandstorm vortex." Even the huge skull beneath the city was undergoing the same disintegration. Its tough physical structure had no resistance to the spatial collapse. Large chunks of bone fragments fell off the city base and disappeared into the vortexes of the other dimension's base in the blink of an eye.

"Wow...wee..."

Lily's exclamation brought Hao Ren back to his senses. He turned his head and saw Lily's head swaying back and forth beside him, her pair of furry, pointed ears twitching. It turned out that the husky girl, seeing her landlord standing in front of the crack for a long time without moving, finally couldn't suppress her curiosity and came over to join him. She saw the situation in the other dimension and was immediately deeply shocked.

Although it couldn't compare to the spectacle of traveling through the eldest son's body, this lost city, which was gradually being swallowed by the vortex, also had a thrilling aspect.

"It looks like even if we don't blow this place up in the end, it will disappear on its own in a few days," Hao Ren patted Lily's head. "The main material world is rejecting this other dimension, and the other dimension itself doesn't have a long-lasting self-sustaining environment. It's like a ripple in normal space, and it will soon calm down."

Lily wagged her tail: "Landlord, why do you keep thinking about blowing this place up?"

Hao Ren: "...Yeah, why do I keep thinking about blowing this place up?"

Lily: "..."

"How's the situation ahead?" Vivian asked anxiously after Hao Ren and Lily returned.

"It's indeed another dimension inside, and it's gradually shrinking. If there are no accidents, it should be a deficient spatial structure that is about to decay, and the collapse process has been accelerated because the original closed state was broken," Hao Ren nodded. "There's an ancient city in the other dimension, the style looks very much like the ancient city-states of the desert regions, but it doesn't look like Egypt, and it's even less like the ancient Mesopotamian style. Also, just like Hesperiana said, the city is built on the skull of some enormous creature."

"But we didn't see any light curtain," Lily chimed in. "It's all sand-colored inside..."

"You have to enter the city to see that light curtain," Hesperiana said. "That's also what's puzzling."

Hao Ren waved his hand: "Optical discontinuity phenomenon, not uncommon."

Hesperiana rolled her eyes: "Alright, alright, you're knowledgeable, okay?"

After saying this, she turned to her two subordinates: "You two stay outside, I'll go in with them to check the situation. No matter what happens, you're not allowed to let anyone else approach this cave, and you're not allowed to come in either."

The female vampire asked with concern: "Chieftain, when will you come out?"

Hesperiana glanced at Vivian, who pondered slightly: "Three days at most. We'll come out once after three days, regardless of whether we have any results or not – other dimensions are mysterious and unpredictable, staying too long might lead to accidents."

After making all the arrangements, the group no longer hesitated. They passed through the opening and entered this lost world that seemed to be wrapped in a sandstorm.

A hot and coarse wind swept over them.

The other dimension was constantly collapsing inward, and the lost city in the center of the space was also disintegrating bit by bit. The "opening" that Hao Ren and his group had passed through seemed to be affected by this collapse. It was located hundreds of meters above the ground on the edge of the city, thousands of meters away from the chaotic border of space, but after passing through the opening, Hao Ren looked back and saw that the edge of the spatial crack already showed very obvious signs of distortion, and all the distorted lines were pointing to a large vortex closest to the city – this was not a good sign.

Izhaks frowned: "We have to stabilize this passage first, otherwise before the city collapses completely, this only exit will be crushed by the spatial collapse."

"Actually, it doesn't matter if the passage collapses, we can use space teleportation to get out," Hao Ren shrugged. "It's just more troublesome to come back."

Although he said so, the collapse of the space channel was still a bit of a nuisance, so Hao Ren rummaged through his personal space and pulled out a simple space stabilizer to set up near the exit – this thing couldn't prevent the collapse of the entire other dimension, but it could delay the spatial collapse near the exit channel.

After doing all this, the group walked towards the lost ancient city in the yellow sand.