The returning group was even more anxious than Shang Jiudi. The moment they arrived, one of them blurted out as if pouring beans from a bamboo tube, "We followed the route all the way there, but we were blocked when we got close to Yin City!"
"Blocked? Blocked by what?" Yang Tian fired off two questions in a row.
The others were equally baffled. What did they mean, blocked? What could possibly block a helicopter?
"Rain!" one of the returnees cried in horror. "Torrential rain! It was so heavy that the helicopters simply couldn't fly through it. It was like a waterfall. The moment we flew in, we were nearly washed down to the ground. And it was black torrential rain!"
"Rain?" Lu Yi froze, blinking without understanding.
The others stood rooted to the spot as well. They simply could not imagine from their description just how severe the rain had to be for the group to turn back.
And what was this black rain?
"Not only was the rain black, it never stopped. It was unbelievably heavy, even heavier than a downpour. It was like buckets of water were being dumped down everywhere!" the returnee said.
"Didn't you know to wait for the rain to stop?" Shang Jiudi blurted out anxiously.
"We did. We waited there for an entire day!" another returnee replied. "We split up as well. Half of us went down and tried to make our way through on foot, while the rest stayed in the helicopters and waited for the rain to stop. But it was difficult to get in from the ground too. When we reached the outskirts of Yin City, we encountered countless fissures in the broken ground. It seemed like there had been an earthquake."
"Then we circled around Yin City and found