Chapter 851: The Sea of Tomb Bones

She was insane.

Even just through the text, Ye Qiyan could feel that the woman who had written this suicide note was already insane.

She hadn't even left behind her own name.

Perhaps it was because doing so would leave more traces related to the [Golden Tribe], leading to the discovery of this map stored within a time-freeze artifact.

Several places on the letter were blurred and indistinct, some portions were nothing but garbled code resembling a mess of static.

Ye Qiyan knew what was inside those garbled sections.

Matters concerning the End, matters concerning the True Gods.

"Seven True Gods? If that's the case, then the number of True Gods in the Wasteland is greater than I imagined."

Back in Suoluo City, the End brought by [Wind], who he hadn't considered a [True God] at the time, had nearly destroyed the entire city if not for the existence of the Ring of the Hunt.

So then, what would an ultimate End caused by seven true Wasteland Species at the apex, beings like the Abyss and Death, look like?

The Golden Tribe was powerful, that much was easy to see from the artifacts he had obtained from them.

But even a race and civilization like that, one that clearly possessed the ability to contend with the End, still failed to survive that calamity.

What was it that had filled the Golden Tribe with such fear, that had shattered all their pride and confidence?

"The more I see, the more things I don't understand. Forget it, I won't think about these things."

Ye Qiyan gave up on pondering.

His greatest strength, as he saw it, was his ability to let things go.

Take it one step at a time, and if worse came to worst, he could always just run.

Unfolding the map, aside from this towering dead tree, all the other areas were completely distorted in shades of gray and white.

But its colors hadn't completely faded yet.

The map, dating back countless eons, still recorded the coordinates of various locations throughout this treasure vault world.

Even if it was already blurred, this gift that had traversed the ages, he would gladly accept it.

"If I ever get the chance to find your remains... well, there probably aren't any remains left. But when I get back to the Wasteland, I'll build a grave for you, erect a tombstone. Even if it doesn't mean much."

Ye Qiyan spoke to the map.

There was no response, nor should there have been.

Spreading out the map.

His current location was the southeastern corner of this entire world.

And the location of the Golden Tribe's treasure vault was, without a doubt, at the very center of this realm.

But to reach that area, he would inevitably have to leave the miasma of the giant tree and enter the world that had lost its color.

It was dangerous there, and he would definitely go.

Creak—boom!

The sounds from outside caught Ye Qiyan's attention. He walked out of the treehouse and saw dozens of eerie eye-satellites dancing through the sky at this very moment.

They had discovered the miasma released by the towering dead tree.

Beams of light descended from the sky one after another.

The colossal tree, already dead for countless ages, seemed to have fulfilled its final purpose, and could no longer hold itself up.

Its colors gradually vanished.

Corruption crawled across its surface.

Ye Qiyan returned to the train and personally witnessed this world transform into pure black and white.

The colors of the outside world had disappeared, like the silent black-and-white film playing on the cheapest old television set.

Sometimes it rippled and distorted, other times it sputtered out crackling black-and-white static.

Only the interior of the train remained unaffected by that fading power.

This wasn't just because of the protective force guarding the train. More importantly, the train itself seemed to be resisting that power as well.

It was just that his Train Level was far too low, so the effect wasn't particularly noticeable.

He silently watched as the giant tree toppled, corrupted, and with the disappearance of its color, gradually dispersed into the void of space.

They had vanished. They had died. They had, at long last, welcomed their end after countless years.

"Direction confirmed. Time to set off."

Since Boosted Derailment could only be triggered for one hour every twenty-four hours, without any tracks, the distance he could cover was relatively fixed.

Those eerie eye-satellites kept monitoring everything on the ground at all times.

To avoid tipping them off, the Pseudo-Space Mimicry Projection had to remain active at all times.

While maintaining the disguise, the train speed couldn't be too high either.

There were a few special markers on this map.

These were several notable, named locations within this treasure vault world.

Broken Sword Cliff, Pink Peach Sea, Spiral Inverted Mountain, as well as the Venus' Golden Fruit Tree King that he had just left, and the vault itself.

The locations were all connected to one another, as if they had been deliberately designed to lie along the same path.

Based on the Golden Tribe's style, these places were very likely sites they used for artistic creation and recreation.

However, Ye Qiyan hadn't forgotten what the first two of his three options had been at the Crossroads of Fate.

[The Falling Cliff] [The Sea of Tomb Bones]

One cliff, one sea.

Just based on the names alone, they matched perfectly.

From places of art to places of aberration, what they had become went without saying.

And if he wanted to reach the vault, all of these places were on the only route.

In fact, the Falling Cliff appeared to be nearly adjacent to the vault itself.

Without accounting for terrain changes, if he had chosen the first option, the Falling Cliff, he could have reached the vault much faster.

But he didn't regret his choice. Although he would have to travel a longer road, he had obtained this map, as well as that letter.

The letter still existed.

Ye Qiyan placed the letter into the Wall of Records, setting it alongside the broken statue of Venus.

There was no special meaning behind it. He just wanted to do it.

"Let's go!"

The train roared.

The disguise state continuously updated to match suitable objects of appropriate size in the surroundings.

And because the entire world was black and white, the disguise worked even more smoothly than before.

He traveled this way, stopping and starting, driving the train through the colorless land of despair during his one hour of travel time each day.

During these days of travel, he hadn't encountered any more of those corpses from before.

Thinking carefully about it, the owners of those corpses weren't monsters. They were merely lingering remnants of flesh that had survived under the final protection of the towering dead tree.

In fact, they couldn't even be considered corpses.

Their ability to exist until now was entirely a result of the power emanating from the giant tree that had just collapsed.

No wonder those satellites, upon seeing them for the first time, had unleashed a large-scale attack without caring in the slightest whether the dead lived or died.

After several days had passed.

Traveling with frequent stops, Ye Qiyan's train finally arrived at the first special location without being detected.

On the map: [Pink Peach Sea]

At the Crossroads of Fate: [The Sea of Tomb Bones]

The former was probably as beautiful as its name suggested.

And the latter was every bit as vivid as its name implied.

Ye Qiyan raised his head and gazed at the ocean current floating in the air, formed from countless corpses suspended within a black-and-white sea in the sky.

Tomb bones. Withered bones within a tomb.