"Don't try to fight monsters you can't understand."
Her ample experience led her to make the most appropriate choice.
If it had been an obviously intelligent creature, she might have tried to bargain or communicate. But this clearly abnormal situation made her choose to remain invisible.
Even after losing her sense of direction, she continued onward in silence.
With her abilities and the supplies she carried, she would have no problem lasting several days here.
"The fog isn't right."
With her speed, even without running at full force, several hours of high-speed movement while invisible should have brought her to the edge of this city.
So, aside from interfering with her senses and sense of direction, the "fog" had most likely used something like illusions to interfere with her vision as well.
"I've definitely been here before."
The scenery she had carefully recorded appeared again. Hua Xueyi was certain that she had probably fallen for it.
So she used the "Pathfinding Stick"—throwing out a stick and watching which way it fell—and left her direction to chance. Her vision might deceive her, but the direction the falling stick pointed toward would eventually lead her to a way out.
This time, it vaguely seemed to work. At the very least, the scenery no longer repeated itself.
At last, amid the mist, she noticed something clearly wrong.
"Cooking smoke and lamplight... There are actually people still alive here?"
She hesitated for a while. Based on past experience, "normal people" in an extremely abnormal place were often the most dangerous. But it seemed there was nowhere else to go.
She further diminished her presence and slowly approached her target.
She climbed up the outer wall to the rooftop, then carefully hung upside down to observe the lives within.
But she soon realized that she