Chapter 1 Gloomy Jungle

The gloomy jungle was enveloped in an atmosphere of tranquility and eeriness. No matter which direction one looked, the field of vision was filled only with layers of black giant pines and wildly growing shrubs. Through the narrow gaps between the crowns of the trees, the sky was fragmented by the jagged, grotesque branches. The originally bright sunlight was somehow tinged with a strange, pale purple hue, and beneath the canopy, a mist that seemed to never dissipate gathered from all directions.

The caravan traveled along a forest road, a path seemingly coexisting with the black pine forest itself. It was fairly wide, paved with ancient and broken flagstones, and lined with neatly arranged, bizarre lampposts that seemed to be made of petrified wood. The road meandered through the forest, leading to the endless fog ahead, and behind... also endless fog.

It was not uncommon to lose one's way in the Black Pine Forest. Experienced travelers knew that as long as they followed a fixed path and strictly adhered to the signs at each fork in the road, they would eventually emerge from this strange forest. But now, this rule seemed to have failed.

There were no forks, no signposts, only an endless road underfoot, winding through the fog, stretching into the forest as if to drag the party into an abyss. And the forest itself was now eerily silent.

"Something's not right..." Charlemagne said gravely. "Soon after entering the Black Pine Forest from that gate, we should have encountered the first fork, with two roads leading north and west... but we're clearly not on either of them now."

Hao Ren frowned and tapped the data terminal on his shoulder. "Did we pass any forks before?"

The data terminal's response was brief: "Negative."

Vivian looked at Avenna. "How many times have you been to the Black Pine Forest?"

Avenna seemed a little uneasy. She shook her head gently. "Only once before, when I was very young, touring Grinway with the delegation and briefly exploring the edge of the Black Pine Forest..."

Hao Ren clicked his tongue. "Tsk, so you've got absolutely no experience operating here, huh? It's a wonder you dared to choose this road."

"Even Imperials rarely have experience traversing the Black Pine Forest, let alone the Isu on the other side of the planet," Avenna said a little stubbornly. "But we know a lot about the Black Pine Forest. Our country's adventurers personally measured and tested it all. Before we set out, we memorized that knowledge as a pre-selected plan..."

"Okay, naive little princess, now I'm going to tell you something: never overestimate your ability to adapt when facing the unknown," Vivian said quietly, looking at Avenna. "Your knowledge is useless now."

Avenna wrinkled her nose, but in the end, she didn't retort. Instead, she asked, "Should we stop the caravan now?"

"Don't stop yet. These vehicles have enough energy to run for the next millennium, and we have shields," Hao Ren waved his hand. "Terminal, record environmental parameters. Let's go deeper, maybe we'll find something."

This was undoubtedly a risky decision. Charlemagne and Avenna were rather critical of it, but Hao Ren had experienced countless more bizarre and dangerous things (such as snatching bones from the mouth of a century-old dog demon and standing and cursing at God), so he felt almost no sense of tension. Since the latter was the actual owner of this caravan, the prince and princess could only accept the decision.

"This mist is strange..." Avenna said, looking at the surrounding fog after the caravan continued on its way. "There are records of fog in the Black Pine Forest, but never such a large-scale and long-lasting fog. This fog gives me a bad feeling... like something is staring at me from within it."

"Is that why the Imperial soldiers haven't caught up?" Charlemagne had already grasped his sword at this moment, fully alert to the changes in the surrounding environment. Although the caravan had a powerful shield system, holding a sword gave him a greater sense of security than that transparent barrier. "If that's the case... then the situation could be very bad..."

"Don't be so nervous, be calm. Getting flustered over such a small matter doesn't fit your performance along the way," Hao Ren waved his hand and then looked at the terminal. "Anything?"

The surface of the data terminal flickered with light, a sign that the sensors were working. "Environmental parameters are normal. No signs of space folding or disorder detected. It's strange... this unit's radar can't find anything unusual, but we're just going around in circles inside this mist..."

Hao Ren frowned and thought for a moment. "Locate Nolan, test the change in our relative position to her."

"...Unable to locate. Can confirm Nolan's signal, but cannot determine relative positional changes."

"That's a bit interesting," Hao Ren looked at Lily. "Is your nose useful in this situation?"

Lily bared her teeth at him, but she still sniffed the surrounding air seriously. "Woof... I can only confirm that we're not going in circles, we're indeed going deeper along a one-way road. Hey, bat, isn't your sonar very good, and it can penetrate the mist, can you try it?"

"Don't be noisy, I'm trying," Vivian rolled her eyes at Lily and then frowned slightly. "Strange... I can only detect the situation within a few hundred meters around me. Beyond that, it's just chaos, as if there's nothing there."

Hearing Vivian's mumble, Hao Ren's heart suddenly stirred.

Then he focused his attention, focusing his vision on a certain direction in the forest, excluding all irrelevant interference and carefully searching for the "true face" of this world.

As he watched intently, the trees and roads in the distance became slightly blurred instead.

"Sure enough... we've fallen into a trap," he retracted his gaze and patted Leah, who was seriously spacing out, on the shoulder. "Leah, wake up, wake up, focus your attention over here – I need your help."

"Huh?" Leah looked at him in confusion. "What help?"

"Take a good look around."

"Oh." Leah agreed in a daze, and then transferred part of her attention from her main body to the mass projection.

She had originally only placed less than ten percent of her energy on this projection, so her thinking speed, observation ability, and even her own existence were about the same as Hao Ren and the others, but at this moment, as she transferred part of her divine sense, she suddenly frowned and "eh" softly.

And with her questioning sound, a sudden change occurred in the Black Pine Forest.

The endless fog around them quickly faded as if it had been washed, becoming a thin mist that was difficult to affect the line of sight. The layers of trees also seemed to be much more solid than before. The chaotic shadows that interfered with vision disappeared, and the sunlight scattered between the crowns of the trees, although still weak, regained some warmth. The road ahead of the caravan finally became clear.

A breeze blew through the jungle, and the sounds of various birds and animals were blown into their ears. Only then did Hao Ren suddenly realize how quiet this forest had been before - he didn't even feel the strangeness until a minute ago!

"What just happened?" Charlemagne and Avenna were confused throughout, "getting lost" inexplicably and then returning to the right path inexplicably. At this time, they only felt that the autistic child Leah in the team was becoming more and more magical...

"Between reality and illusion," Leah transferred more energy over, and her thinking became much clearer. She also took the initiative to speak, "I don't know what happened, but we were walking in the gap between the real world and the illusory world, and we were drifting more and more towards the illusory world. Fortunately, we discovered it early, otherwise..."

Even Charlemagne's composure caused him to break out in a cold sweat at this moment: although he didn't know what the illusory world meant, he knew how dangerous it was from the situation just now: "If we had discovered it later... what would have happened?"

Leah thought for a moment: "Then I would have had to say 'eh' several times before we could come out – that would have been so stupid."

Charlemagne Avenna: "..."

Hao Ren really wanted to remind Leah to pay attention to her way of speaking. Her actions could easily mislead Charlemagne and his sister about the difficulty mode of this trip. What if these two thought the world was in easy mode and ran off to challenge extreme survival and died?

At this time, Lily curiously asked, "What is this 'illusory world'? Is it different from a hallucination?"

"It's different," Leah shook her head. "Hallucinations are just hallucinations. They are various illusions that appear artificially or naturally, and they are essentially like watching a movie. But the illusory world is a completely different thing – the world does not only have one possibility in its operation. Sometimes it faces various diametrically opposed development results, but there is only one reality, or rather, for the observer, there is only one reality, so those unrealized possibilities become 'hypotheses', and that is the illusory world. Under normal circumstances, the illusory world covers the real world. It is transient, fragile, imperceptible, and is constantly in a state of disappearing and regenerating, but here I don't know what's going on... the illusory world has been strengthened to an unbelievable degree, and it can even appear parallel to the real world, dragging things from the real world into that unfulfilled history... this is a strange place."

Hao Ren nodded as he listened. He knew that there were similar concepts in the information grand unification theory, but Leah's explanation was clearly easier for ordinary people to understand, so he didn't interrupt. He was just very curious: why did such an anomaly suddenly appear in this Black Forest?

But in any case, the real road had reappeared. In theory, as long as they followed the road under their feet, they could reach a place with signs, so after appeasing the somewhat uneasy guards in the other two vehicles, Hao Ren ordered the team to continue moving forward.

But just then, a soldier responsible for observing the situation in the front suddenly issued an alarm, pointing to the end of the road, "Attention! There's an unknown team ahead!"

They saw that in front of the stone road, a team of soldiers of unknown origin appeared in the mist as if out of nowhere.