The cold, chaotic spatial currents were like billions of rusty, blunt knives, endlessly scraping at Hu Jiu's Supernatural body.
He frantically surged forward in the bizarre and fantastical dimensional gaps. Each time he tore through the spatial barriers and forced his way into the next unknown coordinate point, it was accompanied by an unimaginable amount of energy expenditure. Fortunately, Hu Jiu was well-off.
Du Zhong was dragged behind him like a tattered sack; his humanoid body was shattered, revealing only his Brain in a Vat.
The two had long since lost the energy to argue, and simply continued to jump and traverse through space.
Time loses its measure here, and distance becomes meaningless.
The ultimate void behind them, called "Elimination," which was devouring the universe at an unbelievable speed, did not catch up with them.
After countless tearing and traversing, when even Hu Jiu began to feel overwhelmed, a faint but unusually stable "anchor point" sensation suddenly and clearly pierced his senses from the depths of the chaotic turbulence ahead.
"Found it." Hu Jiu's voice was as cold as ever, tinged with weariness.
Without hesitation, he activated the Supernatural within his body and fiercely probed the spatial coordinates he had sensed!
"Swoosh--Boom!"
This time, the tearing sound had a dull, tactile quality, like tearing through thick leather. A more stable, but also more "hard," spatial barrier was forcibly broken open.
A kind of... indescribable, chilling sense of deathly stillness surged in like a flood bursting its banks.
Hu Jiu dragged Du Zhong along, like two cannonballs launched by tremendous force, crashing into this new world.
The anticipated "atmosphere" of the new world, even if it was tainted by the Supernatural or filled with the clamor of life's struggle, never materialized.
What awaited them was an endless, suffocating... ruins.
Dead silence.
Absolute silence enveloped everything, as heavy as lead.
Hu Jiu stood amidst the ruins, his pupils instantly shrinking to the size of pinpoints as his field of vision expanded, scanning everything before him.
The sky was a murky, leaden gray, devoid of sun, moon, and stars. Only a thick curtain of dust, as if solidified with all despair, hung low, obscuring all light and shrouding the entire world in a morbid twilight.
The earth, as far as the eye could see, presented a strange, nauseating gray hue. There were no mountains or rivers, no forests or plains, only endless stretches of undulating, broken concrete and twisted metal debris forming a vast desert.
There was no wind; the air was stagnant, like glue, filled with a strong, acrid smell of dust and rust, mixed with a faint, almost imperceptible, burnt smell, as if it had been completely carbonized by an instantaneous high temperature.
Those twisted metal fragments still vaguely reveal the skeleton of the once magnificent building—the towering skyscraper is now just a broken spine, the huge dome is twisted and deformed like a crumpled piece of waste paper, and the crisscrossing pipes hang shriveled in the ashes like exposed giant blood vessels.
Hu Jiu did not sense the presence of Supernatural power.
"This, this is... a new world?" Du Zhong floated in mid-air like a jellyfish, his voice filled with astonishment and doubt. "Where is everyone? Why is there no one here?"
"This world seems to have become a wasteland destroyed by the apocalypse," Hu Jiu said calmly. "It's just unclear what kind of apocalypse it was."
Du Zhong looked around. "It shouldn't be Supernatural apocalypse. These ruins seem more like the result of firearms. Let's first check if there are any survivors in this world."
Hu Jiu nodded, and the next second, countless eyeballs sprouted from his body and flew in all directions.
Our horizons continue to expand.
There was nothing there.
Within a radius of hundreds of miles... thousands of miles... even further, wherever his senses reached, all he saw was a desolate wasteland.
"Why isn't there even a single cockroach?"
Just as Hu Jiu finished complaining, a living person came into his field of vision.
"We've found him, let's go see him." Hu Jiu grabbed Du Zhong and started to leave.
"Wait!" Du Zhong hurriedly called out, "Are you sure you want me to go out looking like this? People will definitely think I'm a monster!"
Hu Jiu didn't care at all. "We're not going there for friendly diplomatic relations. We can just use force to extract information."
Du Zhong said, "You seem quite confident in your abilities, but I must add a few words: this world may have already transcended the realm of 'Supernatural' and possesses other types of extraordinary powers."
"The ordinary or weak people you perceive through your Supernatural senses might actually be powerful figures from other supernatural systems, so you'd better be careful."
Hu Jiu was taken aback for a moment. "Thank you for reminding me."
He wasn't an unyielding stubborn person who wouldn't listen to advice; he would listen to anyone as long as it was in his own interest.
"I'll sculpt a shell for you first," Hu Jiu said, and began to work.
Du Zhong: "I'm a little skeptical of your aesthetic sense."
Hu Jiu: "What? Don't you like the incredibly handsome face I created?"
Du Zhong: "Aesthetic sense is a very personal thing. What you create is definitely what you like, not what I like."
Hu Jiu rolled his eyes, completely ignoring Du Zhong's protests, and forcibly dressed him in the skin he admired.
The two then set off for a location where humans were known to be present.
There's a tall building there, probably over thirty stories.
Since the top few floors had been destroyed, Hu Jiu didn't know the exact height of the building. Wild grass grew in the corners, swaying gently in the breeze, and occasionally a few plastic bags would be blown into the air.
"Look at you two, so carefree and nonchalant, are you both newbies?" A man's voice came from a dilapidated house without a door by the roadside. Then a young man in a gray windbreaker walked out of the house, leaning against the door frame with a roguish look.
Hu Jiu instantly flashed a clear, innocent smile, like a male college student. "What do you mean by 'newcomer'? We're both indeed new here. Where is this place? And who are you?"
Du Zhong was astonished; Old Hu had such a side to him!
The young man looked impatient and said, "Every time a new couple comes, they ask this kind of questioning. Since I'm in a good mood today, and you haven't been shouting or acting stupidly, yelling nonsense about being kidnapped, I can mercifully educate you."
Hu Jiu and Du Zhong pretended to listen attentively.
The young man said, "First of all, I have some unfortunate news to tell you: the reason you're here is because you two were chosen for the 'Horror Game'."
"A 'Horror Game'?" Hu Jiu's expression instantly turned extremely strange.
"That's right, it's a 'Horror Game'," the young man said. "The 'Horror Game' appeared at some point in time. It randomly selects humans from around the world to enter dungeons at irregular intervals. There are many types of dungeons, including combat, survival, battle royale, and puzzle games. Those who can complete a dungeon will receive various rewards, while those who cannot will die, dying in a reasonable way in the real world."
"Two newbies, you're really unlucky. Your first game is a survival game, and these kinds of game instances are very difficult. If you can't figure out the rules of death for this instance, you simply won't survive."
At this point, the young man smirked, his eyes already regarding Hu Jiu and Du Zhong as cannon fodder for scouting ahead.
"Duplicate. Death Rules?" Hu Jiu's tone also became strange. He, a world-destroying demon, was being asked to play a "Horror Game"?
Haha~, that's hilarious.
"What are the so-called 'rules of death' in this instance? Will you die if you do something, or will you be chased by ghosts?" Du Zhong asked.
"How would I know?" The young man rolled his eyes. "Even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you for free. You'd need to exchange something of value for it."
"What do you want?" Du Zhong asked again.
"What can you two newcomers possibly have?" The young man said with disdain, his gaze sweeping back and forth between the two men's faces with a direct mix of jealousy and malice.
"Smack!"
The young man was slapped to the ground by Hu Jiu. "Sorry, I felt your gaze was offensive just now, so I couldn't help it."
The young man was furious, but he forced himself to endure it and dared not retaliate. He was somewhat perceptive; the slap Hu Jiu had given him was incredibly fast, clearly not something an ordinary person could deliver.
Seeing his angry but speechless expression, Hu Jiu coldly said, "It's confirmed. He's a weakling, easy to bully."
After saying that, Hu Jiu showed no mercy and started fighting directly. Even if he killed someone, he had a way to pull them back from the brink of death.
The young man was beaten beyond recognition, blood gushing out, and he kept howling in pain. "Big brother! Stop hitting me! I was blind and didn't recognize your greatness! What do you want to know? I'll tell you everything, I'll tell you everything!"
Hu Jiu didn't stop at all. "You think you can just tell me after a couple of hits? Are you trying to trap us with half-truths and false information?!"
The young man suffered a massive hemorrhage, tears streaming from his eyes. Damn it, I misjudged him; this isn't a newbie at all, this is the dungeon boss!
Du Zhong, standing to the side with pity, advised, "Don't waste time, just kill him. After all, you can invade his consciousness and read his memories."
The young man was terrified. "I'll tell you everything, I promise it's the truth, not a single lie!"
Hu Jiu finally stopped torturing him.
The young man immediately told him everything he knew, but he was only a beginner, slightly better than a newcomer, and didn't know much.
"The killing rule for this instance is fear. If a player experiences fear, the object of that fear will materialize and appear within the instance, hunting them down. This information was obtained at the cost of my teammates' lives; it's absolutely true. Please, brothers, have mercy on me."
Hu Jiu scratched his chin. "Fear Manifestation? That sounds familiar..."
The young man looked at Hu Jiu with a fawning expression, and Hu Jiu lowered her head to meet his gaze.
Immediately afterwards, the young man felt his fear reach its peak in an instant. He hurriedly tried to calm himself down, but was shocked to find that his emotions were out of his control!
Then, just a meter away from him, the light and shadow in the air flickered slightly, and the image of a chainsaw killer, reeking of stench and oozing pus, gradually transformed from illusion into reality.
"Ah!" the young man screamed in terror, a scream haunted by his childhood trauma. "Help me! Someone help me!"
Fear overwhelmed his reason, and the surge of adrenaline made him Neglect the pain in his body. He picked up the broken bricks and stones on the ground and threw them at the chainsaw killer.
The bricks and stones fell on the chainsaw killer, but didn't even break his skin.
The chainsaw killer ignored Hu Jiu and Du Zhong, who were standing right next to him, and chased after the young man, hacking wildly at him.
The already injured young man was unable to escape the clutches of the demon and was cleaved in two vertically by a chainsaw, dying with his eyes wide open in disbelief.
At the moment of his death, the chainsaw killer also vanished into thin air.
"With the source of fear gone, the monster formed from fear will also disappear." Hu Jiu said with regret, "We didn't even have time to test its strength."
As Du Zhong examined the young man's body, he said, "If the Fear Manifestation entirely idealistic, and someone imagines something incredibly terrifying, you might not be able to defeat them."
Hu Jiu didn't quite believe this explanation, but he didn't object either. Without actually demonstrating it, no one could say for sure what the outcome would be.
"This man has absolutely nothing on him, he's dirt poor." Du Zhong stripped the young man's body naked, wanting nothing more than to slice it up, but all he found was a box of matches.
"These matches aren't ordinary; they seem to have special effects." Du Zhong tossed the matches to Hu Jiu.
Hu Jiu took the match and immediately sensed an unusual power within it that he couldn't understand through Supernatural.
"It's probably a prop from a 'Horror Game'?"
As he spoke, Hu Jiu opened the matchbox and found five unused matches left. He casually lit one, and the match emitted an orange glow. Wherever the light touched, a warm scene immediately appeared—a magnificent house, a sumptuous meal, and loving family members...
"Can it create illusions?"
Hu Jiu threw the match on the ground, but the match did not go out; instead, it continued to burn until the entire matchstick was reduced to ashes.
"This illusion is so poorly made," Hu Jiu couldn't help but complain.
Du Zhong: "Not everyone is like you, a master of creating Phantom. I'm considering something else right now."
Hu Jiu: "What's the problem?"
Du Zhong pointed to the young man's body, which had been split in two. "This is someone from Otherworld, yet we can completely understand his language and communicate with him without any problems. Isn't that amazing?"
Hu Jiu thought for a moment, "It's truly amazing that similar civilizations have arisen in different worlds."
Du Zhong shook his head. "This isn't just similar, it's almost identical. Actually, I had this question when I was impersonating a god in the last world. How could two different worlds have the same race, civilization, language, writing system, and even some of their histories be completely the same?"
Hu Jiu: "I've actually considered this before, and I've had a few guesses, but unfortunately, I lack relevant evidence..."