The survivors had climbed the mountains in front of them from different places when they had heard the instructions from the voice.

The cities at the summit of these mountains of all four zones were quite similar to the old cities on Earth, like Athens in Greece or Damascus in Syria.

The architecture of these new cities was the same but the cities were missing one thing. Advanced technology. To be precise the technology they were familiar with was nowhere to be found in these cities at the summit.

The people there wore plain cloth, a single sheet of cloth extended from their collar bone to their heels. Their houses were like big huts. This was how behind the people of entry mountains were either it is in their sense of fashion or dressing, or their house style.

It wasn’t like the survivors could complain. Just surviving through all the ordeals they faced was a blessing.

The survivors, after entering the city, met the citizens, that is, the people living in those cities. This was happening to all the survivors. No matter which mountain of the four zones they had climbed. These people guided the survivors.

***********

Year 01 of the New Era.

This was the First Year of The New Era which had already started since the mountains rose from the cracks and the World enlarged.

The survivors had already settled in the cities at the summit of these mountains.

They became familiar with the new World thanks to the citizens of the cities who were very accepting of the survivors of the Broken Earth.

Unlike what the survivors thought, they weren’t killed or hurt. Instead, they were just taught the basic knowledge of where they were, how to survive in this place, and the ‘rights and left~oops~ wrongs’ of this World.

First, they learned about this enlarged new world’s deposition.

The world now had four zones.

North-West Zone.

North-East Zone.

South-West Zone.

South-East Zone.

Each zone was covering 1/6th part of the New Earth.

An Plus ‘+’ shaped ocean was covering the 2/6th part of the World.

This ocean divided the four zones throughout the new world. It was impossible to cross this ocean at least by a ship. Thus this ocean was called the Dividend ocean.

The people of the zones called it the dead-end sea as whoever tried to sail through this sea never came back.

Each zone had mountain ranges. Every range had one entry mountain. The only entrance to these mountain ranges was through the stairs of the entry mountain. For normal people that is.

All the ranges had a formation set up at their bases. Whenever people entered a 10km radius of these mountains, the formation would activate. After activation, without knowing, the people who had entered, without their knowledge, would be moved in front of the entry mountain.

So no matter which location they enter from they would end up at the entry mountain after entering the range.

Each range had 12 mountains.

1 being the entry mountain which was at the forefront of a circle of mountains. The circle had 10 mountains. Each mountain had a city at the top. The smallest city was at the top of the entry mountain.

The 12th mountain was in the middle of that mountain circle. This mountain was the tallest. The comparison with the surrounding mountains was so simple that one could say that a grown man was surrounded by 11 babies. Ten of them making a circle around it. And the eleventh was guarding them.

That is how tall that mountain in the middle was.

Some even considered it the door to the heavenly skies. That was just a consideration of ignorant masses of mortals.

It was the mountain where all the greatest talents of the surrounding 11 mountains would study.

Back to the zones, it wasn’t like the zones only had mountains.

There were deserts, rivers, and even forests between different ranges of mountains.

************

Years passed and World kept a steady pace.

It was already the 5th Year of the New Era.

The survivors had already become so familiar with the lifestyle in the cities that it was hard to differentiate between them and the citizens.

Though none of them had set foot in the other cities. They all were still in the city of the entry mountain. While they were continuing with their peaceful lives,

Somewhere in the North-East Zone.

Three Mountain ranges were surrounding a place. The place in question was covering a few thousand miles. Each range was so far that it was impossible to guess the distance to those ranges. In the end, no matter which range of mountain looked closer, nobody could know.

This place was a desert. Famous for being the hottest desert in the North-East Zone. It was called the Sara desert.

One thing was weird about this Sara desert.

If someone looked at this desert from a high point, they could see a green patch in the middle of the desert.

There was a small forest in the middle of this scorching desert. This was indeed weird. As the deserts were formed after the mountain ranges came out of the cracks.

This forest had become insanely large in just 5 years. The people of the circling mountain ranges called it the Dread Forest.

The trees in this forest were quite thick and tall. All of them were taupe trees with their branches being on the darker side because of the sunlight.

In the middle of Dread Forest.

One of the trees was so tall that it could be called the ‘Giant’ of this forest. This giant tree was next to an empty patch.

Its trunk was very thick, tall, and straight. As if it was a soldier tree ready to march.

With a little crack right in the middle of the trunk at the ground level, this tree was truly an unsolvable puzzle. Nobody could answer the formation of crack there and the thing in the middle of that crack as the tree was whole above that crack.

There was an otherworldly light coming out from something in the middle of that crack. Even though no sunlight was reaching there but still the light from that thing had illuminated the surrounding area. That shine had a golden overshadow with greyish shine filling the golden boundary.

The Dread Forest had different beasts but none of them came close to that tree. That is how majestic that light was, which was coming out of that thing in the crack.

That thing which was the cause of this shine was a hilt of a weapon. This hilt was similar to that hilt of the sword that some random entity had thrown from the space.

It already had a tree growing around it. Or one could even say that the tree was growing on it. But that wasn’t the case. The reason that the tree had an enormous growth had something to with this sword.

Right under this tree was a basement. This basement looked like crap now. There was rubble everywhere. If one walked in these he could see that there were destroyed pieces of equipment under the rocks. It was the same lab in which Zhao Luo was trapped in.

The capsule was somewhere here buried under a mountain of rocks.

And it wasn’t empty as our sleeping beauty was still in there.

Zhao Luo who had already been awake in that capsule for the last 5 years had already achieved a breakthrough.

A different kind of breakthrough. The breakthrough he had achieved was in his mental capacity.

His mental capability of processing thoughts had increased to 9.

A person can only have a single thought at a time.

Consider a person who wants to eat fast-food, his thought would be something like

‘I want to eat a burger.’

‘or a pizza would do too.’

‘Slurp’, drooling.

He would be having one thought which will be like a flow or divided into three parts.

But if it was Zhao Luo he would be having these thoughts simultaneously. Not even he could tell which thought came first. As if the parts were overlapping each other. But this was just a simpler version of the mental capacity that Zhao Luo had achieved in the few years he had been awake.

Continuous thinking without sleeping for the last 5 years had helped him in increasing his mental capability to have 10 different thinking processes going on at the same time.

This would be beneficial for many people but not Zhao Luo.

As his mind had already turned into a battlefield.

Zhao Luo was sitting on a dark floor. This was his mind space. Dark surrounding with dark floor. But it wasn’t like Zhao Luo was alone in this dark imaginary space. 9 people in front of him were in a heated debate.

9 images of Zhao Luo were bickering with each other. These images were formed when the adjacent thoughts of Zhao Luo became free and separated themselves from Zhao Luo’s main Thought process.

One of them went,

‘I am the oldest of you all’

He continued,

‘So call me Senior 1’

He looked at others with a confident smirk waiting for them to agree with his comment.

The other images which looked just like the first one answered together at the same time.

‘No, I was created first so call me Senior 1’

After which they each looked at each other angrily and started fighting each other like girls.

One of them was trying to slap the other while the other was going for the hair. It was like a monkey’s royale rumble in a circus just that the monkeys were identical to each other, which is usually the case. As the fight continued one of the Zhao Luo punched another Zhao Luo.

After which the Zhao Luo who was punched screamed at some other Zhao Luo,

‘Punches weren’t allowed but you punched me now don’t blame me for taking this seriously’.

That Zhao Luo had no idea what this Zhao Luo was talking about as he received a punch on his face and fell.

Looking at his counterparts fighting with each other Zhao Luo couldn’t keep watching this shit show. As in the end no matter who hit who, Zhao Luo was seeing himself getting hit.

So Zhao Luo stood up and approached the other 9 of his images and opened his mouth.

‘STOP’

Zhao Luo commanded. All of the images of Zhao Luo looked at him and started fading right after hearing his command.

After they all disappeared, Zhao Luo was left alone in his Dark World.

‘This is getting boring.’

Zhao Luo exclaimed while having a sad look on his face.