"Rumble--!"
"Splatter!"
Lightning flashed and thunder boomed as torrential rain poured down. The entire world was shrouded in mist, and visibility had already dropped to its lowest point.
Holding an umbrella, Jiang Qiao slowly entered Ninggu City.
It was evening.
And it was raining heavily.
There were no pedestrians left on the streets.
Fortunately, the inn was still open. Many customers were seated in the dining hall on the ground floor, and there was even a storyteller performing in the middle of the hall. It was far livelier than the lifeless Zhenbei County.
Affected by the atmosphere,
Jiang Qiao, who had traveled more than two hundred li, also relaxed despite himself.
The road had been anything but peaceful.
Along the way, he had passed several villages, all of which showed faint signs of supernatural disturbances. One village was completely empty, without a single person in sight. Yet the chickens and ducks kept in the various courtyards were still there, and the dogs still barked at people.
Only the living humans had all disappeared, and it seemed they had vanished only recently.
Jiang Qiao did not enter the village.
He detoured around it from a distance.
But there was no doubt that these troubled villages represented the spread of supernatural phenomena throughout this era.
"The troubled times are coming."
"The farther north I go, the more frequently supernatural incidents occur."
"However, judging from the state of these residents, they know about supernatural phenomena, but they don't know that they're spreading on a large scale. This means that although supernatural phenomena existed before, they remained within certain limits."
"Only recently have things started getting worse and worse, to the point that most people were caught completely off guard."
"They had absolutely no preparation."
Jiang Qiao found a table and sat down. He