The Town's Earlier Troubles

Shangbala Town was a small place, almost unknown to the outside world.

The tens of thousands of Miners living here had no voice at all and could not make themselves heard.

Then again, most Miners did not really care about that—whether Shangbala's name was well known or whether anyone knew of them. They cared about only one thing: whether they could receive their wages on time.

Before receiving their wages, they worked desperately. After receiving them, they squandered the money desperately, waiting until it was all gone before returning to work desperately once more.

It was a cycle, the normal state of life for many people in Shangbala Town.

If nothing unexpected had happened, this state of affairs would have continued for a long time. But an accident suddenly occurred and disrupted everything.

It began more than half a month ago. For some unknown reason, a rumor spread everywhere overnight.

The rumor was horrifying. It claimed that while mining, some Miners had accidentally dug open an entrance to the abyss and released the demons within. Once the demons emerged, they hid in the darkness and went on killing sprees every night. In just a few days, more than a dozen unlucky people had been killed.

At first, most people simply treated the rumor as a rumor and did not believe it, just like the many rumors that had circulated before.

For example, there had been a rumor that a prostitute north of Shangbala Town was a conjoined twin with two heads. One grew in the normal place, while the other grew from her back. Therefore, whenever she did business, she absolutely refused to let customers remove her upper garments, no matter how much they paid. In the end, one customer, driven by curiosity, offered ten times the usual price and