A clear and bright sky suddenly revealed shadows reminiscent of mirages, looking like pieces of land tilting and falling. When Qianqian pointed them out to me, these shadows were still half-real and half-imaginary, their edges constantly trembling. But within seconds, the mirages became clearer and approached the ground at extraordinary speed: By this time, the reality of these "mirages" was beyond doubt; they undeniably existed.

And they were falling.

"Oh my god, what on earth is this?!" I cried out in surprise, almost jumping up, and everyone else reacted too, looking up at the sky. Each person had different reactions: Little Baobao and Visca clapped their hands, jumping and shouting with carefree joy; Qianqian stretched her voice in an "Oh——," as if her thoughts had wandered off somewhere; the Divine Clan’s Tiaozi Five remained unfazed, calm as if watching a swarm of flies approaching, only Bingdisi whistled loudly, clearly paying close attention to the event; Sayaka couldn’t help but exclaim as she struggled to adapt to this sudden scene, while beside her, Ji Shanshan calmly summoned a bunch of shields floating in midair in front of herself, boasting, "This king wants to see who can breach the king’s bulwark!" Pandora was the most mysterious one; she instantly set up a small anti-aircraft gun array on the ground, seemingly ready to shoot down everything in the sky: fortunately, I suppressed her in time.

Sandora furrowed her brow and said through a spiritual connection, "How many more bizarre spectacles does this world intend to throw at us?"

The land in the sky was fast approaching, and it seemed that if it continued to fall at this speed, it would collide with the fragment of the planet beneath us in one or two minutes. Thus, everyone prepared for impact: by opening shields to protect against any mess that might dirty the clothing. But the situation changed again; when the lands were only about one or two thousand meters from the ground, they began to decelerate, slowing down as they descended. We didn’t take action but simply watched quietly to see what would happen next, as it was wise not to abruptly interfere with local natural phenomena before understanding this world’s rules. This scene was undeniably breathtaking, with about a dozen enormous floating lands tilted as they slowly slipped down from the sky, and one of them clearly was set to land beside us. This immediate oppression and weight might suffocate those witnessing such a sight for the first time. It even reminded me of mythological tales: After being defeated by the New God, the old God’s Aerial Divine Realm burned with flames, constantly showering scorching sulfur, as it descended slowly from the clouds to the earth in the embrace of thick smoke, while the new Divine Realm was gently lifted by Holy Dad, Holy Mother, and Holy Daughter amid the praises of believers... Sorry, after reading so much of Lilina’s messy Bible, this scene indeed strikes quite a chord.

Perhaps back then, the demons of Demon Mountain faced an equally thrilling descent of Atlantis, but only one fell upon them, while a whole group is falling upon us now. By estimation, each isn’t much smaller than Atlantis...

"Brother, is this... okay?" As the floating continents steadily decelerated, seemingly to completely stop before touching the ground, Sayaka chose to hide beside me, asking cautiously, regardless of how brave she was during the world crisis back then; she was a bit unnerved in the current situation: Sometimes terror and oppression are not synonymous.

I patted this convenient little sister’s shoulder: "It’s fine, someone tall will hold up the sky when it falls..."

I was just babbling, and Pandora and Visca immediately looked over here with desperate eyes, especially the former, her emotionless gray eyes seemed almost on the verge of tears: These sisters belong to the group that’s safer than Bi Wudalang when the sky falls. I really shouldn’t have mentioned the word "tall" in front of them.

Aside from being a bit startled at first, I quickly calmed down, even though the scene was magnificent. Nonetheless, as someone who has reviewed the Eternal Level fleet’s launch ceremony at the Starport, believe me, the vast constructs built by the Empire, any of them starting up, could outdo this spectacular display by far. Immersed in the Empire’s world of giant ships and cannons every day, I’ve long become immune to things associated with "gigantic" and "powerful".

"It seems to be stopping." Qianqian pointed at the lands already quite close to the ground and called out, and seemingly responding to her words, the first dropping floating island came to a steady halt in midair: I even felt like I heard a brake sound...

The scene was simply too full of a sense of deja vu, continents falling from the sky, and they parked right in front of my nose!

Ultimately, more than a dozen colossal floating lands hovered very close to the ground, with the closest one less than a hundred meters high, making it seem like one could almost reach them by stretching out a hand. They hovered in the sky, blocking out the sun, casting enormous shadows on the ground. I thought that the center of those shadows must be as dark as dusk: if you’re bold enough to stand right beneath a floating island less than a hundred meters off the ground.

We looked around with curious eyes, but those landed lands from the sky were possibly spread across the entire continent. At this scale, the naked eye has limited visibility, plus these floating islands obscure each other, so once they landed, you couldn’t see all the islands, only judging from the previous sky images that about fifteen or sixteen land masses had fallen. They had quite odd orientations: Not all floating islands are in a normal upright position; instead, each one tilted at a certain angle to the ground. The floating land nearest us had an angle of about thirty degrees to the ground, coinciding with the tilt of its lower rock layers, so it nearly clung against the land beneath your feet, viewed from afar, it looked like a gentle slope: except this slope’s bottom was a dozens of meters high gash.

In a farther place, a land partially obstructed had formed a ninety-degree angle with the plain below, its surface was nearly vertical to the large plain.

"Sandora, let’s see what’s up with the gravity here this time?" I glanced at the golden-haired girl beside me, reminding her aloud.

Sandora was already doing so, her array of sensors was online twenty-four hours a day, upon hearing, she shrugged: "Messy, each floating island has its own gravitational structure, independent of the existing universal gravity of the planet fragment we stand on, this is genuinely the most chaotic worldview I’ve seen. The Divine Realm does have many floating lands, but at least they aren’t piled up in one place."

Bingdisi immediately grunted, seemingly someone’s evaluation of her homeland caught this female hooligan’s attention.

"Are we going up to take a look?" Qianqian excitedly pulled my arm, saying so while running swiftly towards the floating land nearest to us, which tilted at a thirty-degree angle to our land, "Looks like there might be something up there!"

Everyone knew Qianqian’s habit long ago, having no choice but to smile helplessly and follow closely behind.

Sandora was right; all these floating islands have their independent gravitational direction, though its intensity seems similar to the mainland below, slightly stronger than Earth’s gravity. When we entered a certain range above the nearest floating land, we suddenly felt a change in the direction of gravity, from straight downward to a thirty-degree slant. This abrupt shift reminded me of certain poorly designed deep space starships (I’ve seen examples on such ships in the Civilization Community Fleet of the Galaxy during those years), where the artificial gravity zones lacked effective planning, with no smooth transition layer between two gravity zones, requiring crew to cautiously switch to another gravity generator’s zone while holding signs and handrails — Oh, maybe thinking too far.

"Could this be the ’miracle’ Lilina mentioned?" Lin Xue landed on the hovering land mass with us, bouncing a few times to grasp the reality, "Something from another parallel space suddenly materializing then appearing in the current world."

"Looks like it," I leaned to look at the edge of the land and saw that less than eighty meters below was the large plain where we came from. Looking into the distance, you could see more floating islands nearly touching the ground, "Truly a spectacle, Sandora, do you have any guesses?"

"From the physical space perspective, the broken lands in the sky and the continent below share the same space, but they have independent gravity. It seems that apart from material exchange, everything else is also independent," Sandora blinked her sky-blue eyes twice, looking intrigued. "Maybe the overlap of two spaces resulted in an incomplete dislocation. Do you remember where we found Anwina back in the day?"

"You mean that Dalaran County Ghost House?" I immediately recalled. Anwina is a crucial member of our family, so I remember very well where we first found her: it was a ghost house that appeared on Earth, but its real location should have been in Azeroth. A certain dislocation of the worlds caused that ghost house to be sliced over and onto Earth, yet it still retained the material rules of the Azeroth world, completely out of place with the Earth’s environment: such as the undead power that supports the existence of ghosts and ghouls.

"They are somewhat similar, only the scale here is larger, and it seems these broken sky lands are not completely isolated from their original space," Sandora walked ahead first. "Look, something man-made! Behind that big tree, it seems to be a stone tower!"

This floating island is not barren; it has a landscape entirely different from the prairie below. There is a dense forest and vines that have grown for an unknown number of years. Just a few hundred meters in front of our landing spot is the forest entrance. It didn’t take Sandora long to spot something different between the vines and trees: man-made traces.

They are hidden behind the dense trees, still nearly a kilometer away by sight. If relying on human visibility, it would be impossible to discern even a trace of brick or tile through the gaps in the trees from here. Only Sandora could spot them at a glance.

Everyone, as if discovering a new continent, eagerly followed Sandora into the forest. The ground felt unusually soft underfoot, full of accumulated humus and relatively fresh fallen leaves from an unknown number of years, and there were vines crisscrossing all over, making it quite difficult to walk. Pandora swung two ship-slicing blades at the front to clear the path, and Visca also took out a blazing beam cannon to help but was sternly forbidden, as she might have burned down the entire forest. We soon found the man-made traces that Sandora had discovered: a stone totem, tilted and full of cracks, leaning against a towering ancient tree near the forest entrance. The top part has already merged with the tree trunk, showing its age. The stone totem is very large, with at least four or five people hugging around it, estimated to be over ten meters high. It has straight intersecting lines carved on it, but their meaning is inscrutable. The lower part of the totem is covered with moss, obscuring its base. I guess this thing should be taller than it appears, except part of it is buried underground.

"At least tens of thousands of years..." Qianqian determined how long it had been soaking in time by touching the totem but still looked puzzled. "Not necessarily accurate, as there are several time dislocations. It seems to have been pulled into certain static time spaces more than once."

Lin Xue had already run off in another direction to check things out and called from afar: "Look, there’s more here!"

What she found was a group of heavy stone slabs hidden under vines and fallen leaves. These giant slabs were almost completely buried, with only a few small corners exposed. I was convinced that Miss didn’t purely rely on eyesight to spot these things.

Pandora and Visca violently ’swept’ the vines covering the slabs. We discovered these might be fallen monuments: they rested on heavy grayish stone, which seemed like the original bases. These slabs, over human height, were carved from an unknown material, and the original etchings on them were already blurred, making it impossible to discern their meanings.

"This looks like an ancient relic," Qianqian stated the obvious as everyone quickly understood, "Ah Jun, do you think someone once lived on this island?"

I began to imagine: "Maybe there was a planet that once birthed a brilliant civilization, and then one day, the planet shattered, the continent became a heap of fragments, and thus the glorious civilization turned into these rubble in the forest. I just can’t figure out, with the planet in such shambles, how are these forests and rocks preserved intact—unless these floating islands were inherently like this, naturally fragmented like those floating continents in the Divine Realm, or after these continents broke, an ecological even intelligent civilization emerged anew. I feel both guesses aren’t quite plausible."

Qianqian said ’Oh’, squatting down to continue probing and poking on the slabs. I couldn’t help but recall her father is an archaeology expert, and Qianqian, influenced by him since childhood, seemed quite interested in these unearthed broken bricks and tiles. Soon, she preliminarily judged that the civilization here was roughly equivalent to the late slave society, and the civilization that built these relics had already mastered sophisticated techniques for mass stone cutting, indicating they had large tools. She inferred this information from the blurred patterns on the stones and the way a few giant rocks were stacked, a skill that commanded my respect and made me worry deeply that Qianqian might awaken an interest in digging up old graves...

"These stone materials definitely weren’t produced on this floating island. Large stone materials at least need large-scale quarries to supply," Lin Xue expertly analyzed. "So these relics should have been constructed before the land shattered, or else we’d have to believe the ancient people who built the relics mastered the technology to airlift giant stones between several floating islands... which seems even less plausible."

We studied the relics here with great interest for a while, but after all, none of us were experts, and Qianqian’s fervor lasted about five minutes. We soon found this gloomy, damp, and dirty forest relic uninteresting and decided to return to the grassland. Sandora had almost figured out the oscillation rules at the space’s edge, and perhaps in one or two hours, we could forcibly break through the space and reunite with Sister and the others. But just as everyone was about to leave, Sandora suddenly frowned: "Wait, I didn’t notice earlier... it seems there’s someone on this island."

"Someone?" I was suddenly taken aback, instinctively looking around. All I saw was a dense forest. "Are there still people living in these forest relics?"

"I don’t know... Let’s go and see. Pandora, put away your ship cannons. Not every person can be a target for you." Sandora flicked her finger on the head of ’Shorty’, who immediately went into battle mode hearing about people, and led the way into the forest depths.

Although Sandora had sensed people deep in the forest, they were still far from us. After advancing for a dozen minutes, we first discovered some fresh signs of human activity: a small temporary campsite located on the top of a huge, flat rock in the forest. Traces of a campfire were found there, along with a pair of battered, unusable leather gloves discarded. The campfire’s embers had cooled, but Qianqian judged that it had been extinguished within the last few hours.

We continued forward for a while and suddenly heard a loud noise from a distance, sounding like an explosion, even shaking nearby leaves down. We exchanged glances and immediately quickened our pace forward.

Soon, we found the site of the incident: there was a large clearing with sparse vegetation in the forest depths. The shrubs and smaller other plants around the clearing had been torn apart by the explosion’s shockwave, and in the center of the clearing was a massive explosive crater. The black, soft soil had been thrown up by the explosion, falling across hundreds of meters, where we saw broken stone slab fragments. It seemed there were quite a few relics here too, which were now violently destroyed.

Lin Xue scratched her head: "So... could the people we’re looking for have already uniformly dispersed in this big pit..."

This girl’s mouth is incorrigible.

Just as she finished speaking, I suddenly saw the dirt move from afar, and then two dusty people emerged from it. (To be continued. If you like this work, please visit Qidian (qidian.com) to vote, your support is my greatest motivation.)