The Great Terror! Acid Rain Disaster!

Drip, drip, drip-drip... As the night deepened, all things fell silent.

Flocks of black-feathered birds beat their wings across the land, then dove downward.

The wind that had been roaring across the plains seemed to calm. It was as though a black veil had descended over the world.

The red moon's light began to fade as well, gradually hiding behind the dark clouds.

"Water!"

"It's water! We're saved! We have water!"

"Thank God, thank Jesus, thank the New Birth."

"."

As the sound of the raindrops grew louder, tiny flames gradually began to flicker to life in countless pitch-black shelters.

The next moment, some people excitedly rushed out of their shelters and stood beneath the sky, wantonly enjoying the caress of the "water."

Boom! A bolt of lightning that pierced the heavens and earth appeared in the sky, suddenly illuminating the land—and the frenzied expressions on those people's faces.

The thunder that followed sounded like a warning, shaking the heavens and earth.

Crash!

As time passed, the sparse drizzle suddenly became torrential. In the pitch-black night, the sound of rain became the only solo.

The parched earth greedily absorbed the nutrients falling from the sky.

The ground, cracked open by days of scorching sun, gradually began to heal beneath the rain's caress.

All things seemed to regain their vitality.

But then—

"Ah! My face! How did my face become like this?!"

When crater-like holes resembling the effects of concentrated sulfuric acid corrosion first began appearing on someone's face, the people who had recklessly rushed outside were instantly dumbfounded.

In a fleeting glimpse illuminated by the lightning,

those standing in the rain suddenly discovered:

The exposed skin on their bodies had already been burned black, with tiny holes appearing across it. It didn't hurt—instead, there was a strange numbness.

Most terrifying of all was that everything had happened silently.

At that moment, countless meteorologists and chemists who had crossed over also noticed the abnormality of the acid rain in World Channel.

"Everyone, be careful! Don't let the rain fall on your bodies for too long. Contact lasting more than a minute will cause corrosion. There's something abnormal about this rain!"

"It might not be sulfuric acid. I ran an experiment, and it has no corrosive effect on wood or soil. Anyone with the means can collect some and study it with me."

"Professor Li has used up his messages for today, so I'll speak for him: Professor Li says this acid rain may contain a kind of Neuro-Corrosive Acid. Never let your body come into direct contact with the acid rain for too long. If you get caught in it, wipe it off quickly."

"I only took a ten-minute bath, and now I've already lost feeling all over my body. Please, save me! I don't want to die!"

"Mom, I want to go home. I want to drink water. I don't want to stay here. Can you save me?"

"My stomach hurts so much. I drank a little rainwater just now. It hurts, it hurts so much!"

"."

More and more numb messages filled World Channel, bringing with them a deathly silence and apocalyptic panic.

In the dilapidated huts, water had begun seeping into the poorly sealed underground shelters. Potholes in low-lying terrain were rapidly filling with rainwater. More and more people began to understand what this disaster meant.

It wasn't merely a disaster for a small group of people.

It was a disaster that would destroy everyone!

Acid rain—it was actually this terrifying!

"Woof, woof woof! Woof! Awooo!"

In the dim shelter, Su Mo opened his tired eyes. Seeing Oreo barking frantically beside the bed, he instantly lost most of his drowsiness.

"What's wrong?"

Bracing himself with one hand against the bed, Su Mo sat up in a flash and rubbed his chest.

After several days of hard work, combined with the injuries he had suffered while entering the ruins, he had finally recovered considerably as time passed.

Following Oreo's gaze, Su Mo suddenly noticed that a considerable amount of water had already seeped in beneath the shelter's stone door, wetting a patch of stone floor.

"Damn it, there's something wrong with this rain!"

Seeing Oreo's bared teeth, Su Mo immediately felt his scalp go numb.

Instinctively, Su Mo put on his clothes while opening the Game Panel to check World Channel.

As the Game Panel opened, a series of notification sounds began ringing out.

Record: "All players, take note. All players, take note. All players, take note."

Record: "The First Disaster—Acid Rain—is about to arrive (Beginner Protection). All players, please treat it with caution. Do not be careless."

Record: "This disaster will last thirty-six hours."

Record: "Please note: System announcements will cease operation after the First Beginner Disaster ends."

Record: "Congratulations, player Su Mo. Your shelter's disaster-resistance attributes currently rank first worldwide. Would you like to make the leaderboard data public and simultaneously activate a shelter livestream of the disaster?"

Record: "Please note: Activating the livestream will not broadcast the inside of the shelter. Instead, an aerial, surrounding livestream will be activated above the shelter, allowing other players to observe only the surface structures!"

Record: "By keeping the livestream active for at least fifteen cumulative minutes and successfully surviving the disaster, you can obtain one random Survival Airdrop."

Record: "Activate?"

The chaotic notifications exploded beside Su Mo's ears like the humming of a hundred birds.

"The disaster has already begun? And there's a livestream too?"

It took Su Mo only a few seconds to sort out his current situation.

The acid rain disaster had indeed begun. The water that had seeped into the shelter was undoubtedly acid rain.

Yet even his already-leaking shelter ranked first. Su Mo couldn't imagine how terrible the conditions in the other shelters must be by now.

Setting aside the system's notifications, Su Mo chose to check World Channel first.

The moment he entered, the flood of messages in World Channel seemed to have returned to the scene from the First Day after everyone had crossed over.

"My shelter is about to be flooded! When will this rain end?! I hate it, I hate it, I hate myself for not digging a drainage ditch!"

"My feet! My feet were corroded away by the rainwater! I don't have feet anymore! Aaaaaah!"

"Remember, don't let your skin come into direct contact with the rainwater, or your nerves will be corroded immediately. If you have the means, use plant fibers to absorb the water whenever possible. Don't let the water touch you!"

"This isn't a natural disaster. This is a baptism. Only in the heavy rain can humanity find the path forward! Amen!"

"God, can your believers go to your heaven after they die?"

Countless numb messages occupied ninety-nine percent of the chat window.

Su Mo only looked for three to five seconds before being left speechless with shock.

As terrifying as acid rain on Earth was, it still had discernible causes, and its chemical composition was perfectly clear.

However, judging from what people were saying in World Channel, the acid mixed into this rain did no harm to objects. The moment it touched a human body, though, it caused intense corrosion—and did so silently.

"It's actually neural acid!"

His face filled with shock. For some reason, Su Mo suddenly thought of the Black Dog he had encountered in the ruins.

The surface of the Black Dog's skin had been covered in countless disgusting, rotting patches, yet it had been completely unaware of them. Even when Su Mo had stabbed it with his spear, it had shown no reaction.

After closing World Channel, he opened Area Channel.

The number of members in Area Channel seemed to have been stained bright red, making it difficult to accept.

Before going to sleep yesterday, Su Mo had deliberately remembered the number of survivors in Area Channel. At the time, there had still been 645 people.

In just one night, half of them had vanished into the curtain of rain.

The remaining three hundred people were also in grave danger.

Those who had chosen ground-level shelters were better off. As long as their terrain wasn't too low-lying, they at least didn't yet have to face the hellish scene of acid rain flooding into their shelters.

The clever ones used wooden shovels and buckets to carefully ensure that water wouldn't flow back into their shelters.

The less clever ones simply made crude raincoats and umbrellas from plant fibers.

Wearing raincoats and holding umbrellas over their heads, they climbed onto the roofs of their wooden shelters. They then made wooden boxes and planks, barely constructing small attics where they could hide from the disaster.

Those who had planned to drink their fill of the acid rain remained forever in this wasteland, never breathing again.

After observing for a while, Su Mo closed the Game Panel, his gaze sharpening as he looked toward the leaking area.

If the rain outside really was that terrifying, then it made perfect sense that his shelter ranked first.

As an underground shelter, there wasn't even a puddle underground at present.

With the stone door's excellent seal, there was a great chance of surviving the first wave of disaster!

"Oreo, don't touch that water!"

After calling to Oreo, who was baring his teeth at the leak, and making him move farther away, Su Mo took out the scraps of cloth he had stored before the disaster and began studying a way to keep out the rain.