A squad of strange, unknown soldiers suddenly emerged from the mist.

They wore silver-white light armor adorned with green patterns, and similarly silver-white winged helmets. Their average height was nearly two meters. They didn't carry the usual swords and weapons of common armies, but instead, pairs of special metal gauntlets—gauntlets that glimmered with a faint light, seeming to conceal hidden mechanisms.

Aivena stared wide-eyed at the soldiers emerging from the mist. The patterns on their armor and their overall equipment style were completely different from the soldiers of any nation she knew. Furthermore, their average height of two meters didn't seem like a normal human army, which greatly intrigued her.

But the guards on the other two wagons felt something beyond simple curiosity. To suddenly encounter them at this distance meant concealment was pointless. Their previous experience being attacked by imperial soldiers made them wary of these soldiers suddenly appearing in the Black Pine Forest. So, the moment they met, all the bodyguards placed their hands on the weapons at their waists. Even Charlemagne couldn't help but activate several magical items he carried to bolster his confidence.

However, the strange squad of soldiers seemed to completely ignore the caravan before them. Facing the tense guards, they chose to maintain a forward gaze, expressionlessly continuing down the road.

"Everyone, calm down," Hao Ren said, breaking the deadlock (or rather, the guards' one-sided deadlock). "These soldiers probably aren't real."

As he spoke, the strange soldiers came before the caravan and passed between the three wagons like phantoms.

"Illusions?" Aivena asked, her eyes wide. "But they look so real..."

"Still between reality and illusion..." Leia's slightly childish voice rang out. "These are another layer of scenery in the Black Pine Forest, like the mists from before—things that failed to manifest in the real world. But now we've escaped the influence of the false world, so these things are just phantoms to us and won't physically interact with us at all."

"What if we hadn't escaped the influence of the false world?" Lily asked curiously.

Leia blinked. "Then we'd be fighting right now, of course."

As she spoke, the squad of soldiers passed through the caravan and continued down the forest path. Hao Ren glanced back at them, just about to suggest following these "phantoms" to see what would happen, when suddenly, the squad stopped.

They seemed to have discovered an enemy. In an instant, they all stared warily into the dense forest. One person, who looked like a commander, made a gesture, and the other soldiers immediately formed a defensive formation and struck a battle-ready pose. Hao Ren saw them tap their faintly glowing gauntlets together, and instantly, a photon shield large enough to protect most of their body extended from the left gauntlet of each soldier, while an energy blade radiating a cool, bright light extended from beneath their right wrist guard.

Hao Ren was dumbfounded. "What the... This art style doesn't fit the local worldview..."

Before he could finish his exclamation, a whistling sound suddenly came from the dense forest, and then a massive creature shrouded in black smoke crashed through the undergrowth and pounced from the trees!

The monster shrouded in smoke was also clearly a phantom, and its appearance made Hao Ren couldn't help but think of the Mad Claws he had once faced—rotting, overgrown limbs, an unidentifiable, mutated torso, countless eyes and mouthparts covering its body, tentacles extending from festering, cracked skin, writhing madly in the air, and blasphemous roars echoing directly from the monster's abdomen. This chaotic and deranged monster was the antithesis of all reason and order; seeing it, hearing it, touching it would drag one's spirit into a maelstrom of madness and darkness.

The monster almost made Aivena cry out. She let out a short, stifled scream, then clamped her mouth shut and bit down on her teeth, barely managing to keep herself from making any more noise. The guards didn't fare much better—even battle-hardened warriors had never seen such a profane and hideous creature. They were trembling all over.

The warriors with their light swords and photon shields were also startled by the sudden appearance of the monster, but they were only startled for a moment. The commander began shouting orders, arranging attack and defense positions, and the warriors quickly reorganized their formation and launched an attack on the monster from all sides.

All the signs indicated that this wasn't the first time they had encountered this kind of monster.

The melee erupted. Phantom warriors and phantom monsters fought in a chaotic mass on the broad path in the Black Pine Forest. The monster clearly had more than just brute strength; it could spit corrosive energy balls and create some kind of laser beams to attack its opponents, while the tall warriors used their photon shields to defend themselves and constantly sliced off the monster's limbs with surprisingly skilled martial techniques. Finally, the tall warrior who seemed to be the commander suddenly roared, and the light blade in his hand extended and transformed into a long whip, directly binding the monster and dragging it to the ground. The other warriors swarmed forward, using their light blades to hack the enemy to pieces.

The battle ended. The warriors, panting heavily, watched the monster's flesh rapidly turn to ash under the corrosion of the black mist. A soldier broke the silence, speaking in a language unknown in Lahrien: "They're appearing here too."

"Go tell the Warband Leader about the situation here," the squad commander said. "The rest of you, come with me to the next checkpoint."

Then he looked up at the sky, as if talking to himself, and said, "So this day has finally come... again..."

All the phantoms froze at that moment and gradually dissipated into the air.

"What did they say at the end?" Aivena asked, looking dazed. She and Charlemagne didn't have translation plugins and were completely confused. "It doesn't sound like a Draconian Empire dialect..."

"They seemed to have expected this monster, and they sent someone to notify a person called a Warband Leader that something had happened here," Hao Ren said, thinking for a moment. He decided to translate what he had heard for Aivena; maybe she would have some insight. "Can you think of anything?"

But Aivena was still confused after listening, and shook her head. "No... I can't think of anything. I don't recognize the insignia on those soldiers, and I've never heard of any country's military having a 'Warband Leader' position."

"Are these also possibilities from the false world?" Vivian looked at Leia. "I keep feeling like something's not right here."

"I don't know either," Leia said, looking equally puzzled. "Logically, these unrealized timelines should be especially fragmented and disorganized; it's impossible for them to have any logic..."

Hao Ren glanced at Leia, and a thought vaguely surfaced in his mind.

"Perhaps... what we're seeing isn't just the future possibilities of this world, but also its past."

Lily scratched her head. "What do you mean?"

"Don't forget, this world isn't just on its first run," Hao Ren said, shaking his head. This time, he spoke in a Terran language. "If it's experienced destruction and rebirth, then what happened in the past can be considered a 'false timeline' for the current history."

With that, he looked at Leia. "Do you have any memories of this Black Pine Forest? Before Lahrien was destroyed, did this planet have anything similar?"

Leia thought hard, then gently shook her head. "I watched Lahrien for many years back then. I knew every corner of this planet very well. I'm sure there was no Black Pine Forest. Unless... it suddenly appeared on this planet in the last moment before I fell asleep. But how is that possible?"

"Is that so..." Hao Ren murmured, noncommittal.

Charlemagne and Aivena exchanged confused glances. Hao Ren and the others had suddenly started talking in a language they didn't understand. This was clearly a secretive act, but considering the secrets they were carrying themselves, they were embarrassed to say anything, so they felt a little awkward.

Fortunately, the awkwardness didn't last long. Hao Ren quickly turned back to them. "We don't have any conclusions either—if there are no problems, let's continue on our way."

The two siblings nodded together. "Okay."

The caravan continued, advancing along the forest path into the depths of the Black Pine Forest, and finally reached the first fork in the road.

However, this fork didn't appear in any records.

Looking at the fork in the road, which had neither a sign nor the imperial insignia, Charlemagne slowly took a breath. "It seems... we've come to a place in the Black Pine Forest that no one has ever reached before."

Aivena frowned as well. "But theoretically, that's impossible..."

The Black Pine Forest was vast and mysterious, but the roads within it were limited and fixed. During the long years of exploration, the Draconian Empire's explorers and national surveying teams had measured and recorded every road in the forest—at least every road with an entrance and exit from the forest's edge—and had placed signs and rest stops at all the forks in the road. At some of the larger forks, there were even guard posts manned year-round. Therefore, theoretically, as long as one entered from the Greenway entrance and never left the forest road, every fork encountered would have guidance markers.

An unmarked fork in the road meant only one thing: the travelers had entered an undiscovered, unfamiliar area of the forest, and this area had no intersection with the known forest roads.

"Theoretically impossible, but we just experienced something beyond theory," Hao Ren said, raising his eyebrows. "When we were in the mist before, the caravan was traveling on a road that had no end for a long time. Maybe that's when we entered the unfamiliar area."

"Entering an unfamiliar area isn't important in itself," Vivian said, looking at Leia, who was sitting beside her. "What's important is... this process deceived Leia's eyes."

Leia blinked, and a smile suddenly appeared on her face. "No, perhaps it's the opposite. Perhaps all those who successfully passed through the Black Pine Forest before had their eyes deceived, and we... are the first group in history to be on the correct path."

(Happy New Year, everyone!! Also—double monthly tickets!! Oh my god, I just noticed there are double monthly tickets! This might be the last double opportunity before the end of the book, so please vote if you have any tickets~)