Otherworldly Rift

At last, after Su Ran had flipped through several pages, an inconspicuous purchase listing posted two days ago caught his attention.

[Long-term purchase at high prices] Old objects, unidentified fragments, and incomplete contract vessels related to skeletons and undead summoning.

Requirements: must possess a perceptible fluctuation of undead energy. Price depends on the item and will definitely exceed the market price for ordinary materials.

In-person transaction; basic appraisal available. Contact: send a private message; details provided after verification.

The poster's ID was a string of garbled characters, with no history at all, like a throwaway account registered for temporary use.

But the purchase description pointed quite precisely to items like the Skeleton Summoning Token.

Su Ran's gaze lingered on the listing for a few seconds.

The buyer wanted old objects, unidentified fragments, and contract vessels, and emphasized that they had to possess a perceptible fluctuation of undead energy.

It didn't look like a request for ordinary materials. It was more like a search for specific, unconventional items, perhaps for research, or perhaps to complete some task.

The promise to pay more than the market price for ordinary materials might be bait, or the buyer might genuinely know their value.

An in-person transaction carried risks, but it also avoided leaving too many traces online. The offer of a basic appraisal suggested the buyer had some ability to identify items.

A potential buyer, a chance to dispose of his spare token, obtain much-needed funds, and test the market at the same time.

Of course, it could also be a trap.

Su Ran closed the light screen and leaned back against the somewhat worn seat. Outside the window, the shifting light and shadows of the wilderness flickered across his face.

He needed to be more cautious.

At the very least, he should first visit the forum's black-market warning section and discreetly check whether the garbled ID had any bad history, or whether similar purchase listings had ever led to disputes.

In the swaying bus, Su Ran was studying the purchase listing, his finger sliding unconsciously along the edge of the light screen as he rapidly weighed the risks and rewards of various ways to test the buyer.

Suddenly...

The sensation beneath his fingertip vanished.

It wasn't a physical disappearance. Rather, the pale blue light screen before him had been rubbed out as if by a ruthless stroke of an invisible eraser. It went dark and broke apart in an instant, leaving only a black screen that made his heart palpitate.

My personal terminal... crashed?

No, that's not right. Almost simultaneously, every lit screen in the bus—the small screen up front scrolling through cheap advertisements, and the terminals on the other passengers' wrists or in their hands—

All went dark at once. The few dim rune lamps embedded in the walls for nighttime illumination flickered twice, struggling like candles in the wind, before going out completely with a soft pop.

The bus, which had been filled with the engine's rumble, the low hum of equipment, and human whispers, plunged abruptly into an eerie, near-vacuum silence.

Only a few stifled cries and breaths that had suddenly grown heavy remained.

Su Ran's heart jolted.

Signal loss? A simultaneous equipment failure? No, that's impossible.

Personal terminals connected to network base stations that covered the globe—or at least the areas under human control. Unless one ventured deep into a dungeon or a deathtrap, there were virtually no areas without any signal at all.

Let alone every device failing at once!

This was no technical malfunction.

The instant the thought arose, the bus beneath him let out a heavy groan, as if its throat had been seized, and jerked to a halt!

Momentum hurled him forward, but he reacted quickly and braced his hands against the seat in front. More cries and sounds of collisions rang out inside the bus.

"What's going on?!"

"Driver! What the hell?!"

"The lights! Why did the lights go out?!"

Amid the brief chaos, the engine's low roar also faded away.

It had stalled completely.

Dead silence. Only outside the bus... No, that's not right.

Su Ran whipped his head toward the window.

Outside should have been the familiar evening wilderness, somewhat desolate but with a clearly defined road and the distant glow of the city.

But now, beyond the window was a suffocating darkness so thick it would not disperse.

No, it wasn't pure darkness. By the light of... some extremely faint, bleak glimmer from an unknown source,

He could dimly make out the silhouettes of dark, abnormally thick branches, twisted and tangled together, and layer upon layer of heavy shadows that seemed ready to devour everything.

Is that... a forest? A forest impossibly dense and steeped in an ominous aura.

They had stopped on a muddy path that looked like a forest trail. The bus's headlights had also gone out at some unknown point,

Leaving only a faint glimmer on the metal of the bus itself to barely outline the shadows of several gnarled tree trunks nearby.

"Damn it... where are we?!"

"Weren't we on Route 7?!"

Panic flooded the bus like an icy tide. Some people rushed to the windows and beat futilely on the glass; others tried to start their terminals, only to be met with darkness.

Up front, the driver turned the key in vain, the engine answering with only a few feeble clicks.

Su Ran's heart sank, and a chill crawled up his spine.

No signal, no power, and a drastic change in their surroundings.

Combined with the fact that his personal terminal and all electronic and psionic devices had failed at the same time...

He understood.

This was no accident, no malfunction.

This was an Otherworldly Rift. And an extremely active spatial anomaly, one capable of dragging a moving bus and everyone inside it into its sphere of influence in an instant, without any warning!

Warnings from the forum and horror stories told by veterans flooded into his mind: living rifts that appeared at random, devoured areas of reality, and forcibly dragged living beings within their range into environments governed by otherworldly rules.

They had no fixed entrances, and their appearance was often accompanied by severe interference from the rules, such as the failure of psionic and electronic devices.

Unless they eliminated the otherworldly creatures at the rift's core or found an extremely rare and unstable return point, those caught inside would remain trapped in this warped otherworldly region until they died.

They were the ones trapped now.

"Calm down! Everybody, calm down!"

A hoarse voice roared. It was the burly driver in sunglasses. He had left the driver's seat, his face ashen, but he was trying to remain composed. "We may have... run into one of those things."

His words were like a bucket of ice water, silencing the chaotic bus for an instant. Then came an even more stifled, more desperate uproar.

"A rift... we fell into a rift?!"

"We're done for... it's all over..."

"Help! Let me out!"

Su Ran forced himself to take a deep breath, suppressing the fear churning inside him. Panic wouldn't solve anything.

He quickly surveyed the bus. There were around a dozen passengers, most of them Awakeners dressed like him, from the bottom of society. Two or three looked like ordinary civilians. All of them were pale now.

An Otherworldly Rift, changing rules. We have to find the core creature...

His gaze turned to the dark, eerie forest outside the window. Danger lurked on every side, but it was also their only way out.

Unless they killed the otherworldly creatures in this warped region or found that elusive return point, none of them would get out.