this infinite world

--No?
All he could perceive was emptiness. This was truly unexpected for Yang Yun.

Considering that Chu Hao was an unlucky fellow with absolutely no luck, who could be killed by a falling meteorite even while walking down the street, Yang Yun did not directly imprint the mark on the fragile mortal bodies of his team members to avoid any accidents. Instead, he chose a more stable medium—the Reincarnation Wristwatch, which was issued by the "God" and was almost a creation of the laws.

If we were to draw an analogy from online games, this artifact, crafted by the "God," undoubtedly possesses the characteristics of being "unbreakable" and "indestructible." It's not that Yang Yun is arrogant; as long as the mark he left behind remains, even across vast distances, or spanning several or even dozens of planes, he should be able to instantly detect the ripples of its existence…

Could it be that the Arctic team has been completely wiped out? In the brief moment when his main body was outside the Dark Souls world and he was controlling his avatar to descend?
No...not likely.

A cold thought silently surfaced, only to be completely extinguished by Yang Yun in the next instant.

This wasn't because Yang Yun blindly trusted the Arctic team's strength, or Chu Hao's intelligence and leadership abilities. In fact, after hearing Chu Hao's serious suggestion to "split the A-level side quests to exchange for Gauss rifles and return to the real world for research," Yang Yun had already fully realized Chu Hao's unreliability... As for why he believed the Arctic team was still alive, it was because the team itself couldn't, and couldn't possibly, be wiped out so easily.

As the saying goes, if a god-like person is the captain, then his teammates will inevitably have problems in various aspects, because the god-like person's partners are likely to be a group of gods as well, just like the law of cause and effect in the dark... With a primordial spiritual treasure to suppress her luck, and junior sister Luo Yinglong who is burdened with the destiny of "finding her senior brother", how could such a person easily perish in an unknown place and die silently?
Even assuming the worst, Zhang Heng still exists in the team—that oddball bearing the title of "comedic killer," whose essence is undoubtedly one of the fragments of the universe within this world. Good people don't live long, but evil ones live for a thousand years. With that guy's bizarre survival ability, tougher than a cockroach, even if the entire team is wiped out, he'll probably inexplicably survive to the end…

There must be some reason for this. If that's the case...

With his mind made up, Yang Yun no longer hesitated. He closed his eyes again, sinking his entire being into the depths of his perception. This time, he no longer attempted to directly sense the imprint, but instead approached it from the perspective of causality, meticulously analyzing every ripple in the void like a finely tuned instrument…

Although this avatar lacked the strength of the original body, resulting in computational abilities far inferior, Yang Yun, with utmost focus and free from all distractions, still managed to detect an extremely faint signal, seemingly on the verge of being severed. However, to his surprise, the source of this signal was not present; its trajectory pierced through the veil of time, pointing in a startling direction—

"……past?"

Even Yang Yun couldn't help but have doubts when he first came to this conclusion. After all, avatars are limited, and it's not impossible for their perception of such subtle areas as space and time to be flawed... Was it an illusion, or an abnormal disturbance in the time structure of this world itself?

So, Yang Yun calmed himself down again, and like calibrating a star chart, he checked the source of the signal once, twice, three times… repeatedly. Ultimately, all his senses pointed to the same undeniable conclusion—

The Arctic team is not here at this moment.

They exist in the past of this world.

"Is there such a thing?"

The moment he confirmed the conclusion was correct, a wry smile appeared on Yang Yun's face. Could it be that the God's teleportation mechanism had malfunctioned? Or perhaps… the speed at which his avatar descended was so fast that it even surpassed the God's timing in deploying the reincarnation team? "No, it might not be due to the God. It could be that this world itself has a distortion in the rules of 'time' that I am not yet aware of…"

Yang Yun's eyes flickered slightly as he gazed at the sun, which clearly looked rather strange. His thoughts had already turned to deeper possibilities. After all, whether viewed from outside the world or from within it, this world was certainly riddled with problems…

However, before that...

"Has it taken a little too long?"

Turning his gaze away from the dim sun, which resembled a chronically ill old man, Yang Yun, standing on a city wall, realized that he was surrounded by a large group of natives of this world.

Under normal circumstances, the people who would gather around would likely be the soldiers stationed in the city. After all, the falling blue meteor was quite a spectacle, and whether viewed as an auspicious omen or a calamity, it was inevitable that a crowd would gather to watch. But in this world called Dark Souls, the situation seems to have changed slightly…

At this moment, what surrounded Yang Yun were the "unique products" of this world: living corpses.

The undead are a form that emerges after an undead person has died multiple times. They have lost all reason and memory, becoming mindless walking corpses driven only by instinct, much like the zombies in Resident Evil... But compared to those slow-moving zombies that only pounce on you to bite, the undead warriors (swordsmen) (saints) who retain their own fighting instincts and can use weapons, tools, and even corresponding spells normally are much more difficult to deal with.

"I don't have time to play around with you guys."

Although these zombie soldiers, dressed in basic clothing, carrying daggers and broken swords, and some even leading several skeleton dogs, seemed to have not lost all their humanity and still remembered their duty to guard the city walls, Yang Yun really didn't take them seriously. Only the few knights in the zombie horde were worth his attention.

After all, these guys, clad in armor and helmets, with blood-stained cloaks on their backs proving their martial prowess and battle achievements, were clearly elite knights who had seen countless battles. If this were actually in a game, many players would probably die several times over in front of these knights.

However, no matter what, it's just a small monster that doesn't even have its own health bar.

"If my senses are working correctly... it should be there, right?"

Looking once more at the distant castle, still magnificent despite the ravages of war, Yang Yun slightly bent his knees, and the next moment…

It has already soared into the sky. (End of Chapter)