Anomaly Appears, Lightning Affinity!

Su Qingying walked along the path on the Back Mountain.

The more she thought about it, the angrier she became. She could not help lightly tapping her earpiece to connect with the liaison.

"I feel like someone's been playing me."

"Huh?"

The liaison looked utterly confused.

"Seriously, how could there be so many coincidences? Every time I get there, I'm always one step too late. This has to be deliberate, right?!"

"The time before last, that rabbit died. When I got there, I spent the whole night picking up chunks of corpse and flesh. Fine, I'll count that as being late."

"Last time, I squatted there all night. I only went out to buy a cup of milk tea, and when I came back, the person was gone. I spent the rest of the day planting flowers and digging dirt... With all those traces on the ground, my hands were shaking by the time I buried them. Farming down the mountain probably wouldn't even be this exhausting!"

"This time was even worse. I saw the breakthrough light with my own eyes. Five seconds, just five seconds! By the time I ran over, they'd already vanished. If that's not messing with me, then what is it?!"

As Su Qingying spoke, her voice began to crack.

What a miserable life. I don't want to live anymore.

The liaison on the other end fell silent after hearing that.

Always fair-minded, she felt that Su Qingying made a lot of sense.

How could there possibly be so many coincidences in the world?!

To soothe Su Qingying, she decided to change the subject and share some good news to distract her.

"Alright, alright, don't worry about that for now. Actually, I think staying outside to carry out missions lately is a good thing."

"Recently, Anomalies have appeared."

At those words, Su Qingying's pupils shrank sharply, and her expression instantly turned grave.

"Anomalies... have they appeared again?"

Her voice trembled faintly.

She would never forget those monsters. They were the dark undercurrent flowing through the city.

They were evil, strange, and brutal.

They loathed humans utterly, casually toying with human lives in the palms of their hands.

Those monsters were often hideous in appearance and cruel in their methods. They did not simply kill; they delighted in torturous slaughter. They had also benefited from the Great World Change, just like the Pioneers. The only difference was that they possessed Dark High-level Attributes.

Anomalies resembled the "demons" from certain film and television works. They were often immensely powerful and violently savage. The last time they appeared, the Spirit Qi Cultivation Association lost several Pioneers.

Su Qingying vividly remembered that Anomaly's ugly, bizarre appearance. Its body was shrouded in dark haze, exuding a foul stench that sent chills down one's spine. Its skin was as pale as a corpse's, covered in cracks and festering scars, burning with evil.

She had once met that Anomaly's gaze.

It was a scarlet pupil, flickering with endless darkness and ferocity, as though it could devour a person's soul!

That Anomaly's brutality had reached the extreme. It did not merely kill; it reveled in the pleasure of torture and slaughter. Whenever an Anomaly appeared, the air around it was forever thick with the scent of blood. Wails and the sound of bones breaking intertwined into a terrifying symphony of death. The very appearance of the word "Anomaly" represented endless pain and despair.

It had been a dark nightmare that kept Su Qingying from sleeping well for an entire month.

The liaison noticed Su Qingying's silence and comforted her.

"It's okay. Staying outside is a good thing too. At least you won't have to face Anomalies. But you still need to be careful, because who knows where those damned things are hiding."

Su Qingying's lashes trembled lightly.

"I understand. Thank you."

Before long, a light rain began to fall from the sky.

The rain gradually intensified.

Soon, the rain surged across the heavens like a thousand charging armies. Droplets wove a blurred picture like silver threads, obscuring the distant scenery and drowning out every sound.

From time to time, a blinding bolt of lightning tore through the night sky, followed by thunder that exploded like the earth's heart roaring in fury.

By the windowsill.

Fang Yi silently watched the scene outside.

He observed nature's violent fury, his gaze deep and the hair over his forehead fluttering.

"Was thunder always this terrifying?"

What mighty expert is undergoing a tribulation?

A trending topic had been pushed to the very top.

The video paired with that sentence showed exactly what Fang Yi was seeing.

The comments below refreshed every second.

"Bro has way too much life force, but this weather really isn't normal."

"This is ridiculously intense. Anyone claiming responsibility? If you dare say it, I dare believe it."

"My eighty-year-old grandpa says this is the thickest lightning bolt he's ever seen in his life. He's terrified now, saying the God of Thunder is angry. To shatter his feudal superstition, I told him the world was ending this year and we'd all die today. Just now, he fainted from sheer terror and was taken to the hospital by an ambulance for emergency treatment. Guys, did I do the right thing?"

"Above, I'm laughing so hard it's like thunder."

"The guy above the guy above is truly a filial grandson. If your grandpa really kicks the bucket today, he'll crawl out of his grave on the day of the funeral just to slap the life out of you!"

The tone of the comments gradually went off the rails.

Fang Yi looked away from his phone.

Boom!

At that moment, an absurdly massive bolt of lightning suddenly climbed across the sky. Its terrifying roar set the cars on the street blaring their alarms.

Fang Yi lightly tapped the glass with his fingers.

A speculation slowly arose in his heart.

"What dense Lightning Affinity. Violent, majestic."

Could this... be another Great World Change?

The thought had barely emerged when his phone chimed with a text notification.

Xia Kingdom Weather Forecast Reminder: Thunderstorms are currently occurring. The roads are dangerous. Please do not go outside.

That text felt like a dose of reassurance.

Fang Yi smiled faintly and immediately made up his mind.

He walked toward the door. Hanging on the clothes rack by the entrance was a waterproof black coat he had prepared long ago. Its tailoring was precise and its lines clean, accentuating his tall, slender figure with a faint sheen.

He had not bought new black cloth strips for the time being, so he abandoned the strips and hung the Tang Saber at his waist, concealing its shape beneath the coat.

Once he was ready, he pushed open the door and stepped into the pitch-black night of torrential rain...

Boom!!!

Lightning crawled through the heavens, unleashing a deafening roar as though the entire world trembled.

Like an enraged god descending upon the mortal world, its might was as vast as mountains and seas, inspiring an inescapable terror.

Amid the flashing electric light, it seemed as though one could see the furious eyes of the God of Thunder, burning with endless rage and about to reduce everything to ashes.

The text message had put it far too mildly.

In weather like this, it was not a matter of being advised not to go out—no one would dare go out at all.

The terror of that lightning lay in its horrifying sense of oppression. It was the profound fear of nature's disasters engraved in the bones of all living creatures. Before the thunder, they seemed so insignificant, as tiny and helpless as ants.

Rumble!!!

A bolt of lightning fell from the sky and struck somewhere on the Back Mountain.

Amid that earth-shaking crash.

Many people saw it.

"Oh my god! What was that?"

"Did lightning strike something? Thank goodness it was on the Back Mountain and not in a residential area, but that was still terrifying!!"

"Did you see that bolt that just came down? It was thicker than a python and struck straight down. That ancient tree on the Back Mountain that takes three people to encircle is probably done for."