When system cheat becomes rampant!

"Eh?"

Xiang Beifei examined the iron sword covered in rust and wrapped in dust. Brushing away the sand, he saw a character etched on the sword, but it seemed that due to the long passage of time, a corner was missing, and he could only faintly discern the character "禾".

After contemplating for a moment, the aura of "Return to the Original State" surged in his hand, restoring the iron sword. To Xiang Beifei's surprise, the restoration under the influence of "Return to the Original State" took quite a long time, very slowly, and finally took about half an hour to fully restore the sword.

This was unexpected, because usually restoring a damaged item would take only a minute or two. The more recent the era, the shorter the time needed to "Revert to Simplicity". This sword took half an hour, so how ancient might it be?

Once it was completely "Reverted to Simplicity", the missing part of the sword was clear to see. It bore the character "黎", a script definitely human, and not to be mistaken. But how far have they come from the Jiuzhou Continent, and who might have brought it here?

Xiang Beifei couldn't determine the age of the sword, but one thing he was certain of was that the material of the sword was very ancient. It was an ordinary sword, yet it seemed to have a trace of very strange energy within, an energy he didn't fully understand.

At this moment, Erha was fishing with its large tail, quickly pulling up several swords of the same material. Their conditions varied, but all were rusted. If restored, they appeared to be swords from the same batch.

After a while, Erha suddenly muttered to itself, then flicked its tail, and this time, it fished up a copper axe with a missing corner from the sand!

The whole axe was made of copper, its handle broken off as well. Despite being covered in verdigris, the pattern on it was faintly discernible.

With the tolling of the bells, the sand waves in front became increasingly turbulent. There was no need for Erha to use its tail to fish for them, as many damaged weapons were being swept up into the sand waves, bobbing up and down, half-buried, half-exposed.

"What on earth is this place..."

The more Xiang Beifei looked, the more bewildering it became; it seemed to resemble an ancient battlefield, yet these damaged weapons were clearly of human use.

He decided to go forward to check, immediately heading towards the grand stone bell. But just as he stepped over the yellow sands, the sword in his hand, restored moments before, suddenly decayed again as if affected by the years, and reverted back to a rusty, broken sword.

This turn of events deepened Xiang Beifei's confusion. He stored the broken sword and continued flying forward. As he neared the stone bell, the desert's windswept sands became more and more intense. The entire desert floor rose and fell tumultuously, and the airborne sands were ferocious, with nightfall making it almost impossible to see the path ahead, only a vague silhouette.

The sand here felt extremely bizarre, and even Xiang Beifei couldn't see it clearly. He cautiously landed on a dune, but the sand dune was constantly shifting, and stepping on it would cause him to sink, so he could only stay afloat.

At that moment, Xiaohei suddenly cried out in alarm, pointing to the right.

Xiang Beifei looked to the right and saw, a few hundred meters away from the stone bell, what seemed to be a corner of eaves rising, colored green and somewhat damaged. It appeared to be the eaves of an ancient building, buried under the yellow sand.

Then—Boom!

The trembling of the ground grew more violent, the dunes were being turned over, and something seemed to be crawling up from beneath the earth. Gradually, chunks of stone rose from the desert, the sand raining down, revealing the damaged eave's outline.

It was half a collapsed house, like a house with two walls destroyed, causing the roof to lean to one side, but the roof was not completely ruined and still maintained its collapsed posture.

Next to this house were several huge rocks scattered about, with the ruins of buildings visible. They were covered in sand and hard to discern clearly. But the ground continued to rise, lifting higher and higher until, at last, it even floated into the air!

From a distance, it looked like a giant island, supported by some mysterious force into midair, continuously ascending, rising about a hundred meters above the ground!

Not just this island, but from all directions, various islands rose into the midair. Counted carefully, there were exactly eight!

These eight large islands circled around the stone bell and then began to slowly move. After reaching a certain position, they stopped and did not move again, with only the yellow sand flowing down, falling from the ruins on the islands back into the desert below, like water.

Xiang Beifei gazed at the eight islands, thoroughly awestruck!

Each of the islands here was massive, no less than a thousand acres each; they obscured the sky like a dark curtain, and standing underneath, one could feel the impressive might of these islands—such gargantuan islands were actually suspended mid-air!

What kind of power could have created such a spectacle?

"Terrifying,"

he couldn't help but exclaim. Even with his advanced orifice-transforming strength, lifting such islands seemed impossible, even if he employed "Light as a Feather."

As he was marveling, suddenly a shadow flashed across the sky far away, darting out like a nimble bird, before vanishing into the desert.

Xiang Beifei wanted to check it out, but there was nothing, just the endless expanse of yellow sand on the right. The object darted too fast and disappeared from sight in an instant.

"What was that?" Xiang Beifei became alert.

"Awoo," Erha asked if perhaps some broken weapon had been swept away by the sand.

"Unlikely, it felt like a person."

Although the shadow was fast, as it darted across, it distinctly carried the fluctuations of human Spiritual Power, and Xiang Beifei was not mistaken about that.

But how could there be someone here?

Thinking of the howling and clashing he heard earlier, this made him suspicious. Immediately, he lightly touched his toes on the dune and soared up, descending towards the nearest floating island.

He stood on a piece of stone, and what met his eyes was a scene of ruins; there was a broken wall ahead, with its sand covering slowly fading away, revealing the traces of the broken wall. He reached out to touch the edge of the wall, which was clearly still quite new, as if it had just been destroyed recently.

It seemed that a fierce battle had taken place here, with deep cuts from various weapons on the walls, and faint traces of lingering Spiritual Power, as if the battle had occurred just a few hours before.

He carefully walked forward, attentive to his surroundings, even in these ruins there were trees that had been split, their branches and foliage destroyed, buried in the yellow sand for so long, yet still uncorroded, which was very strange.

Erha's gaze firmly fixated on those trees, as if sensing something, it let out a low "Awoo."

"You can't control these trees?" Xiang Beifei asked in surprise.

"Awoo." Erha quickly jumped onto the trees, scraping at the dead wood with its hooves, but the wood could not be awakened, which displeased Erha.

Xiang Beifei tried using his "Return to the Original State" to restore the withered tree, but soon realized that his "Return to the Original State" had no effect upon contact with the dry wood. In this ruin, there seemed to be an invisible force resisting his "Return to the Original State," preventing him from fully manifesting his abilities.

This was the first time he had encountered such a thing!

"Let's not worry about this now."

Xiang Beifei had a vague feeling that in the darkness, there seemed to be an unseen pair of eyes watching him, yet he just couldn't sense where this presence was.

He continued walking through the ruins but at this moment, a deep moaning sound faintly emanated from the darkness, making Xiang Beifei more alert. He saw that the moan was coming from behind a wall, so he carefully leapt up, landed on the other side, and then peeked out.