I'm not a drama god

At this moment, Chen Ling's thoughts seemed to freeze.

He only snapped back to reality when he confirmed that the distant outline was not an illusion, but something real...

How could a human realm appear now?

Moreover, if Chen Ling remembered correctly, even if it were the time when the human realm should have appeared, this location should correspond to the mortal realm...

But wasn't the mortal realm hidden by Su Zhiwei inside a flower?

What are those towering city walls?

Countless questions flashed through Chen Ling's mind. He set off for that place, and as he got closer, a tall and magnificent wall came into view.

The city wall was much larger than Chen Ling had imagined, standing over a hundred meters high. He tentatively tapped on the wall, and judging from its sturdiness, it seemed to be able to withstand a large portion of the attacks from low-level calamities.

At this moment, the outer surface of the city wall was covered with black bloodstains and scratches, as if it had suffered many calamities. When Chen Ling looked up at the wall, four huge characters, each over a hundred meters high, came into his view...

Upon seeing these four large characters, Chen Ling's pupils suddenly contracted!

——【The Prison of the Mortal World】.

The mortal world... prison?

Prison?

If the sudden appearance of the city wall only puzzled Chen Ling, then the four large characters in front of him almost made him lose his composure... As he looked at those four characters, an unprecedented sense of absurdity rose in his heart.

The mortal world is a prison... Who can call the mortal world a prison?

Chen Ling had a bad feeling. He didn't waste any more time and directly used [Breaking the Wall] to become a two-dimensional shadow, flashing past the city wall.

Inside the city walls was not the city Chen Ling had imagined, but rather layers upon layers of secondary city walls resembling onions, and thick steel pillars rooted in the earth. These pillars supported the various layers of city walls and watchtowers like bird nests, forming an impregnable super fortress.

Meanwhile, numerous figures were evenly distributed atop the watchtower, some of them monitoring the gray realm outside the city walls...

Some were inside the city walls under surveillance.

Behind countless secondary city walls and watchtowers, one can vaguely see parts of human living areas: fields, streets, houses, markets, and areas that resemble a meticulously planned beehive, orderly and well-organized.

Chen Ling's figure emerged from the edge of the living area like a ghost. He looked around, then lightly tore at his chin with his fingertips, instantly transforming into an ordinary young man...

He walked step by step toward the market.

Numerous figures strolled leisurely through the streets, mothers holding their children's hands, couples walking side by side, chatting and laughing all the way, creating a lively atmosphere.

Chen Ling stood at the crossroads, staring blankly at everything before him. The scene before him felt utterly disconnected from the mortal world he had imagined.

The city before us, surrounded by city walls, has a larger population than the mortal realm. Its housing, streets, and daily necessities all seem to be far superior to those of the mortal realm. If the original mortal realm was a small town in Jiangnan, then what is before us is a county town that has been heavily developed.

This place... is definitely not the mortal realm.

Chen Ling grabbed a pedestrian and asked in a deep voice:

"where is this place?"

The pedestrian was taken aback, "Water Sleeve Street..."

“That’s not what I meant,” Chen Ling continued. “Is this the mortal realm?”

"The Mortal Realm?"

The passerby looked Chen Ling up and down suspiciously. "This is the outer city of the Mortal Realm Prison. People from the Mortal Realm are imprisoned at the lowest level of the prison... Are you going there to visit relatives? Do you have a pass?"

Chen Ling's brows furrowed deeper and deeper. As if realizing something, he suddenly asked:

What year is it this year?

The pedestrians' expressions grew increasingly strange, and their gazes towards Chen Ling were now filled with wariness.

"It's the year 369 in the Gregorian calendar... Are you out of your mind? Who exactly are you?"

hum-

Chen Ling's mind went blank.

369th year of the Gregorian calendar?

The Gregorian calendar is a new system of chronology that humanity began using after the Great Cataclysm. 369 years in the Gregorian calendar means that 369 years have passed since this system was first officially put into use…

Chen Ling clearly remembered that in the previous world, the time she "traveled" to Frost Street was the year 379 of the new calendar.

That is to say...

Now, the world is more than three hundred years after the Great Cataclysm.

Moreover, it was only ten years earlier than when he "traveled" to Frost Street in his previous world!

How could this be...? The last time he entered the archive of the era should have been at the very beginning of the new calendar. How did it suddenly become more than three hundred years later??

Chen Ling's mind flashed back to An Qingyu's last words before she returned from beyond this world:

"Alright, you'd better leave now, or... you'll regret it."

At the time, Chen Ling thought that An Qingyu's "regret" was just that he had missed the opportunity to safely ascend to a higher dimension... But now it seems that his and Jiang Er's repeated reminders that the two had different time flow rates were already a very strong hint.

I only stayed outside this world for a few tens of minutes, yet more than three hundred years have passed here?!

No... it shouldn't just be a matter of the flow rate difference between global barriers.

When he was crossing the barriers between worlds, he also felt that time and space were completely disordered. He was spending a lot of time in the process of entering and leaving, but he was not aware of it.

Seeing Chen Ling standing there like a strange person, and the pedestrians looking at him with extreme vigilance, he subconsciously took a step back, and then prepared to turn around and call the police...

But as soon as he opened his mouth, an invisible python had already climbed onto his shoulder and bit down hard.

The pedestrians froze on the spot, as if they were statues.

behind him,

Chen Ling clenched her fists tightly...

As if remembering something, he trembled as he reached into his pocket and opened the old-fashioned flip phone.

The familiar electronic screen lights up, and as Chen Ling's signal is reconnected, a flood of notifications pops up like a tidal wave!

[Missed calls from Lu Xun (128)]

[Missed calls from Yang Xiao (214)]

[Missed calls from Su Zhiwei (149)]

[Missed calls from Wen Ruoshui (98)]

[From...]

Those messages that were not delivered because they were out of service area, at this moment, traversed more than three hundred years and poured into Chen Ling's palm... Through these countless missed calls, Chen Ling seemed to see anxious, confused, and worried faces tossing and turning behind the screen.

Almost every one of Jiu Jun's acquaintances tried to dial Chen Ling's number countless times, but none of them were able to get through.

And almost everyone's last missed call occurred at the same time:

2025 1 Month 5 Day.