Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 616 Vultures, Centaurs, and the Wasteland
In a daze, Sun Hang felt as if his perspective had been pulled to a great height, but upon closer inspection, it seemed as if he was standing on a tall tower. Below the tower was a city built like a fortress, exuding an indescribable atmosphere of deathly stillness.

Many vulture-like bird-like creatures circled overhead, emitting sharp, ear-piercing cries.

In the blink of an eye, the leaden sky above shattered like a broken mirror, and the buildings below seemed to lose the support of the earth, beginning to fall into the dark abyss.

Everything in sight began to crumble, and on the edge of the collapse, many "1"s and "0"s could still be vaguely seen. These fragmented numbers were like thin snowflakes exposed to direct sunlight, appearing only briefly before quickly melting away and returning to nothingness.

The next instant, the scene shifted, and Sun Hang's perspective abruptly appeared on a battlefield strewn with corpses.

A centaur, hundreds of meters tall, stood in the center of the battlefield. It was covered in heavy armor, and in the parts not covered by armor, its body had a translucent texture that was somewhere between a slime and a ghost.

“A spirit-like… strange creature?” Sun Hang’s gaze moved downwards until he saw the centaur’s four pairs of hooves, which were highly symbolic.

Sleptyl, an eight-legged horse, is the mount of Odin, the Allfather, in Norse mythology.

The problem is that this thing is not a pure horse. Its upper body is clearly a fully armed giant, holding an exaggeratedly shaped giant scythe. Odin's weapon is the eternal spear Gungnir. As for the scythe, apart from Cronus in ancient Greek mythology and the Western god of death who was "personified" in later generations, it seems that no god has ever used this thing.

So this is a special monster produced after a "mythical hybrid"?

Sun Hang shifted his gaze from the conspicuous centaur to the surviving soldiers on the battlefield.

From the perspective of the battlefield environment, excluding this giant monster, this battle seems to be an ordinary battle drawn from World War I. However, judging from the soldiers' uniforms and weapons, this is obviously an alternate world that does not match any point in time in Sun Hang's knowledge.

Or you could call it a parallel world.

In short, the technology tree of this world seems to have gone completely astray—soldiers in metal armor wield old smoothbore muskets, power plants on the backs of fantastical humanoid armor spew out scorching steam, and shield-shaped emblems resembling noble family crests can be seen on the burning wreckage of airships…

The word "steampunk" popped into Sun Hang's mind almost instantly.

The soldiers' expressions of utter horror slowly froze, and the image distorted and blurred once more...

When his vision cleared again, Sun Hang found himself floating in space, with a desolate, ravaged planet beneath his feet. A giant spaceship, resembling a UFO, was slowly descending.

The friction between the ship's hull and the planet's atmosphere ignited a dazzling flame—such a massive ship did not disintegrate due to the planet's gravity during its descent, which is clearly beyond the capabilities of current human technology. Otherwise, Professor Ouyang's team would not have been stuck on these technical challenges for so long without making any progress.

Aliens? A future world?

Is the Sphinx implying that humanity will flee Earth in the future to escape strange creatures?

But why did that desolate planet below give Sun Hang such a familiar feeling?
Faintly, Sun Hang seemed to hear a faint yet clear cracking sound.

It sounded like ice cracking, and then a bright red color spread from the planet's poles, quickly covering the entire planet.

Immediately afterwards, Sun Hang saw countless fragmented images, which flashed by like slides, so fast that even if Sun Hang activated bullet time, he could not catch any details.

He felt as if billions of years had passed, with one worldline after another being destroyed and restarted, and the vicissitudes of life compressed into a single moment, finally returning to an infinitely small cosmic singularity.

For some reason, Sun Hang always felt that the cosmic singularity suspended in the void was like a constantly flashing cursor.

Just as he was thinking this, a line of text actually appeared in front of the bouncing cursor: "Do you think this world really exists?" Do you think this world really exists?
Sun Hang felt a chill run down his spine, and he involuntarily shivered, waking up from this bizarre dream.

He opened his eyes, and right in front of him was Wang Xiyi's face, with soft blankets and quilts under his body.

"Wow, you're finally awake," Wang Xiyi said with a smile. "This is the first time I've ever seen you sleep so soundly."

"Wasn't I in the Primordial Palace?" Sun Hang looked around in confusion. This room was his private rest room in the Tian Shu Tower, connected only by a corridor to the office that Pei Zongjun had left for him.

“You fell asleep in the Primordial Palace and were brought back by the robots,” Wang Xiyi said. “They gave you a thorough examination and confirmed that you were just asleep… To be honest, you slept really soundly; you didn’t even wake up after being tossed around like that.”

"..."

Sun Hang sat up in bed and looked around.

The surroundings weren't exactly familiar. Sun Hang hadn't lived here for very long, and if he had to choose an emotional connection, he still felt more at home in the Hunter's Villa in Tianfu City.

"Does this world really exist?" Sun Hang couldn't help but mutter to himself.

"What are you talking about? What do you mean by 'real' or 'existent'?" Wang Xiyi couldn't help but flick Sun Hang's forehead. "Are you still half asleep?"

Sun Hang stared at Wang Xiyi for more than ten seconds, until Wang Xiyi's expression became somewhat unnatural, before he reached out and touched her cheek.

The smooth, soft skin and the hard, cold scales, the sensation from the palm of his hand was so real, along with the warm breath and the faint fragrance of her body—Sun Hang's brain kept telling him, "This is real, all of this is real."

"What's wrong with you?" Wang Xiyi frowned. "You seem strange since you woke up... What exactly happened to you on your trip to Egypt?"

Sun Hang didn't say anything, but instead flipped over and pinned the other person down.

"Hey! It's daytime now—"

But Sun Hang did nothing; he simply buried his head in Wang Xiyi's neck, breathing deeply her scent.

Wang Xiyi's tense body gradually relaxed. She gently stroked Sun Hang's back and said in a rare gentle tone, "It's okay...it's okay...no matter what happened, I'm here, I'm by your side."

She didn't know what had happened to Sun Hang, but she could clearly sense that Sun Hang seemed to be in a state of extreme confusion.

This state was even more bewildering than when Sun Hang first woke up from his coma and knew nothing about anything.

This made her vaguely uneasy, but she didn't know how to help Sun Hang.

"I'm fine," Sun Hang said sullenly, burying his head in Wang Xiyi's neck.

"It's good that you're alright," Wang Xiyi said softly. "You almost scared me to death."

(End of this chapter)