The core of the pale giant brain was taken away by Hu Jiu, as if the power source that kept the massive machine running had been cut off. The area that was suspended in the sea of data let out its final lament.
The stable structure, maintained by countless nerve bundles, lost its central control and began to collapse instantly.
The rules that supported this space collapsed with a deafening roar, like a tower whose foundation had been removed.
The churning data, now freed from its restraints, transformed into a raging torrent, frantically tearing apart and devouring the fragments remaining after the giant brain's annihilation.
Those faces, representing the suffering of countless players, embedded on the surface of the giant brain, were silently reduced to dust in the frenzy of the space shattering completely, erasing even the last trace of their existence.
This collapse was not isolated; the Pale Giant Brain is the true nerve center of the Horror Game. Its death was like detonating a bomb at the core of a neural network, and the shockwave swept through the entire Horror Game system instantly along the invisible connection channels.
In the ongoing beginner dungeon, players watched in horror as a massive crack appeared in the sky, revealing an unreal, chaotic landscape beyond.
The light in the "safe zone" of the dungeon went out, and the originally set logic of monster behavior completely broke down, becoming violent and disorderly, and even began to devour each other.
In the simple puzzle instance, the walls and floor begin to crumble and peel away like poorly made puzzle pieces, revealing a bottomless void below.
Countless novice players were swallowed up by the suddenly collapsing ground or torn apart by raging monsters amidst their desperate screams.
Inside the A-level dungeon "Blood-and-Flesh Furnace," a team of players who were struggling against the final boss suddenly heard the boss unleash a deafening roar of pain.
The BOSS is a living mountain formed by the fusion of countless flesh and metal. Its massive body convulses violently, and the chunks of flesh and metal that make up its body peel off and dissolve in large pieces as if losing their adhesiveness.
At the same time, the high-temperature magma in the entire furnace space began to backflow, and the solid alloy floor softened and collapsed. The team's proud tactics and top-notch equipment were as fragile as paper in the face of the collapse of the rules.
The captain only had time to issue one last desperate command, "Escape!" before the entire space was like a crumpled piece of paper, along with the players and the devastated BOSS, instantly swept into the raging torrent and vanished without a trace.
One after another, all the dungeons exploded, mercilessly engulfing surrounding buildings, vehicles, and even players who couldn't escape in time, leaving behind a huge, collapsing hole in the space.
All players, regardless of level, experienced an instant surge of power granted by the Horror Game within them. This energy, now unrestrained by its source, ran rampant through their bodies like a wild horse.
A-level players might be instantly burned to a crisp by their own out-of-control fire abilities; players skilled in mind control might have their brains blown to smithereens by their own mental power; and physical enhancers might have their muscles and bones twisted, exploding in extreme pain and dying.
The city streets were suddenly littered with countless corpses, their deaths bizarre and gruesome.
The items that players rely on for survival have now become the most dangerous bombs. The light shield of defensive items may suddenly collapse inward, crushing the user into a pulp; healing potions may instantly turn into deadly poison; offensive items may automatically activate indiscriminately and explode without warning, instantly reducing the owner and everything within a dozen meters to nothing.
Meanwhile, the real world is also collapsing.
Hu Jiu and Du Zhong emerged from the forcibly torn spatial passage and returned to reality. However, the scene before them stunned them.
Their landing point was atop the ruins of a skyscraper. Looking out, the once bustling city had been reduced to a wasteland emitting thick smoke and eerie flames.
But these ruins are not as "natural" as destruction in the physical sense.
The sky was a murky, leaden gray, covered with charred lines like those left by a giant burnt-out circuit board and dark red cracks that flickered and pulsed with gibberish. A huge, distorted, translucent "ERROR" lettering, flowing with data, floated like a ghost in the broken sky.
The scene on the ground was even more bizarre. The collapsed skyscrapers did not have the roughness of reinforced concrete at their breaks, but rather a crystalline, pixelated sense of fragmentation, with dark green data flowing inside.
Overturned and burning cars littered the streets, their metal shells sometimes clear, sometimes blurred into a mosaic of colors. In some areas, the ground resembled poor-quality 3D textures, endlessly repeating the exact same patterns of cracks and rubble.
The air was filled with the smells of burning ozone, data overload, and a strong stench of blood.
Even more chilling were the "survivors." Some of them were running and howling in the ruins, their bodies exhibiting unstable, flickering, jagged outlines. Their movements occasionally showed noticeable stutters and teleportations, like low-frame-rate, low-quality game characters. Their faces were filled with genuine fear and pain, but this realism was built on a false, collapsed stage.
"This is... Earth Onlion?" Du Zhong's voice was filled with disbelief.
Hu Jiu's powerful perception instantly scanned the area, then he nodded. "It's semi-digitalized. The normal world we saw before was a holographic projection covering the ruins, a semi-virtual, semi-real world constructed by that pale brain using its power. Now that the pale brain is dead, the world has returned to its original state."
Du Zhong's pupils swept across the collapsing scene before him. "This world was originally a ruin?!"
Hu Jiu said, "To be precise, it's more like a wasteland after the apocalypse."
"Doomsday?" Du Zhong raised an eyebrow; he was particularly sensitive to this word now.
A sudden disaster swept across the world, and ordinary people were the most bewildered and helpless lambs in this collapse. One second they were complaining about the power outage and network interruption, and the next second they saw the sky crack open with flowing code, the people around them flickering and lagging, and the ground under their feet turning into a repeating texture.
The immense cognitive shock caused many to suffer mental breakdowns, standing frozen in place uttering meaningless ramblings. Many more fled blindly in panic; some rushed into building entrances flashing with garbled code, only to be instantly swallowed by the distorted space; others tried to escape in cars that appeared and disappeared intermittently, only to crash into pixelated invisible walls, resulting in fatalities.
Cries, screams, and prayers echoed among the ruins, merging into a symphony of despair.
The surviving players were reduced to trapped beasts struggling in the disaster. A few Lucky Ones survived the backlash of the uncontrolled power, but they were also extremely weak. They watched in horror as the power they depended on for survival dissipated like the receding tide, or became extremely unstable, and could backfire again at any moment.
The guild organization completely collapsed, and former comrades, in despair, distrusted each other and fought over the few remaining supplies or items that still seemed usable.
Some attempted to escape using their remaining spatial abilities, only to find that the spatial structure was as fragile as cracked glass, and those who tried to force their way through were often torn apart by the spatial turbulence.
The official command system, communication network, and even weapon systems gradually collapsed. The remaining troops fell into chaotic fighting. Commanders stared at the "404 NOT FOUND" or blue screen errors constantly popping up on their screens, futilely shouting into their unresponsive communicators. Soldiers stared blankly at their weapons, which would sometimes disappear and sometimes reappear, their morale completely collapsing.
The collapse was accelerating. Cracks in the sky spread like a spiderweb, and more huge "ERROR" characters and unreadable data packets crashed from the fissures, causing explosions on the ground or leaving behind areas of continuously burning code.
Pixelated blocks spread through the city like a plague, distorting and assimilating the forms of matter wherever they passed. Digital buildings, as if erased by an eraser, silently disintegrated from the bottom up into scattered digital specks, revealing the true apocalyptic ruins hidden beneath—a vitrified ground after a nuclear explosion, decaying skeletons entangled in deformed vines, and bottomless chasms...
Hu Jiu stood atop the wreckage, coldly gazing down at the rapidly collapsing world below. Du Zhong stood behind him, his face devoid of pity, displaying only an almost fanatical focus as he meticulously recorded every detail of the world's destruction, as if observing the final stages of a grand experiment.
"At this rate of collapse, it is estimated that this semi-digitalized virtual world will completely disintegrate and revert to real-world ruins in 3.7 standard days," Du Zhong said.
Hu Jiu asked, "Can you figure out what type of apocalypse this world is?"
Du Zhong shook his head. "I only saw traces of nuclear bombing, but it's definitely not an ordinary physical Disaster; there must be some extraordinary factors involved."
Hu Jiu agreed with this point. The existence of that pale brain was like the last remaining strong person in the world resurrecting it in an alternative way after the world was destroyed, turning all the original life into data.
Hu Jiu's eyes reflected the Hell scene below, and a chilling smile slowly curved his lips. "Too slow."
His voice was like ice rubbing together, "Since it's going to be destroyed, let's make it... more dazzling."
Without the slightest hesitation, he raised a finger, and Supernatural power surged forth like a raging torrent.
A terrifying shockwave, like a boulder thrown into a calm lake, spread out instantly. The pixelated blocks that had been slowly decomposing suddenly erupted like a powder keg, bursting forth with blinding white light!
Wherever the white light passed, all the buildings, vehicles, and even the "survivors" whose bodies flickered at the edges, simulated by data, were silently and completely annihilated, like snowflakes thrown into strong acid.
The world-destroying feast is about to begin again.
Hu Jiu's voice was devoid of any warmth, "It's time to go."
Du Zhong immediately followed, and a huge rift tore open in front of them. On the other side of the rift lay an endless void, cold and silent yet full of infinite possibilities.
Hu Jiu took one last look at the world below that had been completely swallowed up. Without a trace of lingering attachment, he took a step forward, his figure disappearing into the crack.
Du Zhong followed closely behind.
The spatial rift suddenly closed behind them, like a giant beast shutting its mouth, completely isolating them from the stage made up of data and ruins.
In a world gradually being destroyed, Qin Lang stumbled and fled, his mind filled with a jumble of chaotic memories as he fled.
He is the chosen one of this world.
He is the last savior...
Pfft--!
Qin Lang fell.
He did not die. He saw a crack appear in space, and behind the crack seemed to be another world. Many survivors jumped into the crack.
Qin Lang stood up, also wanting to jump into the spatial rift.
Unfortunately, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get in.
Everyone else escaped so easily, why couldn't I?!
In the depths of my mind, a voice echoed: As the chosen one, I should live and die with this world!
Hu Jiu and Du Zhong traversed the space-time rift, but before they could pinpoint the coordinates of the new world, they found themselves on an ordinary street.
Bustling with activity, a constant flow of traffic.
Upon seeing the two people who suddenly appeared, the passersby were not afraid at all; instead, they all stopped and looked at each other strangely.
"What are you looking at? Haven't you ever seen a time traveler before!" Du Zhong shouted.
"I've seen men like him, but never one this handsome," a young woman said, covering her mouth with a laugh.
Du Zhong paused for a second, "Are time travelers common?"
The young woman who had spoken earlier kindly explained, "About half a year ago, many transmigrators started appearing in this world one after another. They come every day; after seeing so many, we naturally get used to it."
"They weren't taken away for dissection and research?" Hu Jiu asked.
The young woman smiled, "That's for sure!"
Faced with the sudden appearance of time travelers, all countries in the world were on high alert. Several major powers immediately took action, arresting all the time travelers and placing the areas where they appeared under martial law, designating them as military restricted zones.
The first few groups of time travelers were interrogated by various countries, and after the results were obtained, they were dissected alive without hesitation.
The various countries were astonished to learn from the time travelers that the other world shared remarkably similar histories, writing systems, civilizations, and languages.
After dissecting the transmigrators, it was discovered that these transmigrators were actually human, with genes completely identical to those of humans in this world.
The time traveler also revealed information about the "apocalypse".
This intelligence caused considerable panic.
As the number of transmigrators increased, their existence could no longer be concealed, and within just six months, everyone knew about them.
Ordinary people weren't affected much; it just provided some topics for conversation. But the underground bases of the government and the super-rich were under construction at an accelerated pace, with ten or eight Noah's Arks being built and countless resources being stockpiled.
"Seven days ago, the apocalypse struck," the young woman said shyly.
Hu Jiu and Du Zhong were both a little confused. Was this reaction a bit off?
The two looked left and right, and everything seemed harmonious; there was not a trace of "apocalypse" to be seen.
"Excuse me, what exactly is this 'doomsday' you're talking about?" Du Zhong asked in a strained voice, resorting to his charm to extract information.
The young woman opposite him smiled broadly and said readily, "The apocalypse is all about rules. As long as you follow the rules, you'll be safe; otherwise..."