Before Chen Hao had even opened his eyes, a whooshing sound already enveloped his hearing, desolate and lonely.

Then, a gust of wind that seemed to carry both the heat of summer and the chill of winter rushed into his nostrils, immediately filling them with the taste of sand and dust, which was also desolate, lonely.

Without needing to open his eyes, Chen Hao guessed that he was in the midst of a desert—the scroll world sealed by the Spiritual Power of the Ancestor of the Nether King.

"Yuqiao didn't come to stop me, could she really not care about me anymore?" Chen Hao murmured, his face filled with disappointment. With a sigh, he slowly opened his eyes.

As he had thought, he was standing in a desert. The wind slashed at his clothes and long hair; sand caressed his face like the rough kiss of a demon.

"Whoosh! Whoosh!" Successive gusts of wind howled past, merciless and indifferent.

"Is this really the world inside the scroll? It's incredible." Chen Hao exclaimed, looking around. He hadn't expected that a scene merely static in a painting in the real world could feel so real, as if it really were reality.

In the distance behind him, where sand danced wildly, Chen Hao faintly saw a city.

"Am I to confront the demon from the painting in that city?" he pondered. He wasn't in a rush to eliminate the unknowing painting demon; he was waiting, waiting for Ye Yuqiao to come find him. If Ye Yuqiao didn't come, he would spend his lifetime in this scroll.

Although he felt somewhat petulant for acting this way, Chen Hao's heart had no more leanings, and wherever he was felt like wandering. Living in that real world, in that familiar city, would only make him more sentimentally pained.

He was running away, not out of fear, but out of despair.

Amidst the howling wind that sounded in his ears, Chen Hao seemed to hear his inner solitude. His heart, just like the desert he was in, was desolate.

However, to Chen Hao's surprise, the city that seemed to be just a fifteen-minute walk away ultimately took an hour to reach.

Even before entering the city, Chen Hao heard the bustling noise; the "clang clang" of the blacksmith's hammer, the hawkers' shouting, and the sound of galloping horses.

A minute later, Chen Hao entered the city. Suddenly, the originally lively market turned silent, and all the people stared at Chen Hao with astonished gazes, dumbfounded.

These people were all dressed in hemp robes that looked ancient. To them, the ordinary school uniform Chen Hao wore was bizarre and outlandish.

"Who goes there?" At that moment, a stern shout came from ahead, accompanied by the urgent, flurried sound of horse hooves.

Chen Hao looked up to see a group of soldiers in stone armor, mounted on horses, have arrived in front of him, with their spears and bows aimed at him.

"Don't kill me, I'll go with you!" Chen Hao said with a light chuckle, thinking to himself, if he were to be captured and treated like a criminal, perhaps he would get food and shelter; he wondered what the meals were like in the scroll.

Then, two soldiers dismounted, tied him up with rope, and started escorting Chen Hao towards the city center.

Twenty minutes later, after walking along the long, straight path of celadon tiles, amid the murmuring of the onlookers, Chen Hao was brought to the main building in the city center. Looking up, he saw the three-story building was the tallest in the city, the only one with three floors.

After being brought into the second-floor hall of the main city building, the soldiers untied the ropes from Chen Hao's body, seated him, and even brewed him a cup of tea.

How would the tea from this scroll taste? Chen Hao couldn't wait to lift the teacup to his lips. After taking a light sip, a look of utter disgust immediately spread across his face.

"Haha!" Just then, a middle-aged man with a face as long as a horse's and a mustache walked in and sat down directly beside Chen Hao. "I suppose the taste isn't to your liking, is it?"

Chen Hao looked at the middle-aged man somewhat bewilderedly, wondering if he was naturally sociable and extroverted.

"I know who you are!" the middle-aged man's voice suddenly became very cautious and soft, "You're not from our world."

Chen Hao's eyes revealed shock, and he silently acknowledged the man's self-awareness.

"Aren't you curious? How I came to know you're not from this world?" the man asked further.

Chen Hao nodded.

"Because, in the past few hundred years, there were a few people like you who came here, claiming they wanted to help us defeat the Sandrock Demons. Later, they..."

"What happened to them?"

"They all died! Probably swallowed by the sands, buried deep by rocks, or torn to shreds by the Sandrock Demons and turned into sand," the man said with a laugh that seemed somewhat gloating. Before Chen Hao could react, he eagerly added, "They all told me that our world is just a painting in the eyes of you people from that other world!"

"Indeed, it is so!" Chen Hao responded expressionlessly, pondering whether this man was particularly bothered by this, as his face seemed quite angry. "I arrived here from a scroll of a painting."

The man snorted angrily, clenched his fist, and slammed it down on the table with a resentful expression, "Have you ever considered that the world you live in might also be nothing more than a painting in the eyes of beings from another world?"

"That's right!" Chen Hao experienced a sudden epiphany, his eyes lit up. Thinking that everything is relative, his supposedly real world of Chen Hao might well be unreal.

"You don't seem too objectionable," the man's tone and expression both eased slightly, "The others who came before, each one of them arrogant and presumptuous, always thinking they were better than us. You seem to understand reflection and acceptance better. They failed to realize that a moment in their eyes could be an eternity in the eyes of others."

"A moment in my eyes, an eternity in someone else's?" Chen Hao murmured, savoring the words in his mind and finding them profoundly philosophical. After pondering for a while, Chen Hao looked at the man and counter-asked, "So, according to you, are you suggesting that the painting is actually changing, it's just that we can't see it?"

"Hehe!" The man laughed, "Young man, what is your name? I quite like you, smart and insightful!"

"Chen Hao!"

"I am Liu Xuan, the City Lord of Yanluo City!"

..

At noon, after having lunch with Liu Xuan, Chen Hao changed into a coarse cloth robe and went downstairs alone, heading towards the marketplace.

Indeed, after changing his clothes, Chen Hao no longer attracted the astonished and curious gazes of the locals.

As Chen Hao reached the intersection of an alley, a delicate hand suddenly grabbed his and yanked him into the alley.

By the time Chen Hao came to his senses and looked back, his eyes popped in shock...

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