Mirage Pavilion in Yin Province

"Was that white-hatted man who gave orders to the Order Guardians and the patrol team at Azure Haze level?" Wu Hen asked.

He'd looked pretty powerful. When faced with the moving hills of locusts, he'd even driven them away all by himself!

"Yes. He's among the top tier of our human race, though he's probably still a long way from reaching true Heavenly Radiance. Give me a little time, and I'll surpass him soon," Ming Yi said with unusual confidence.

"What about me? Can you tell what level my crown is?" Wu Hen proudly showed off his tall, sturdy frame, hoping for some recognition.

"Firefly Glow. What else could it be? You've only just become a Desolate Dust Lifeform. Even if your soul is actually at a very high level, you'll need some time before it fully shows," Ming Yi said.

"Oh, I see..." Wu Hen scratched his head. He'd thought that after Xiao Yi evolved into Jade Profound Silk, he'd be at the same level as these pioneers.

"Don't be discouraged. If I get the chance, I'll find you another Yuan You tonic so you can reach Night Gloom as soon as possible. You're my first little disciple, after all. I won't let you suffer!" Ming Yi said.

"Thank you, beautiful little master," Wu Hen said.

"Xiao Wu, we recruited you not for your fighting ability, but because of your Auditory Sense..." Captain Qin finally spoke up, unable to hold back any longer.

He didn't dare say anything to Ming Yi, so he turned to Wu Hen instead.

Wu Hen immediately understood. They hadn't brought him here to amuse Ming Yi.

Auditory Sense was also a rare ability among the Awakened. From his conversations with Ming Yi along the way, Wu Hen knew that not every human Awakened had senses that had undergone a major transformation. Some were only one or two times more perceptive than ordinary people.

Wu Hen's hearing, however, had already reached ten times the human norm. Ming Yi had called it second-stage Auditory Sense.

Almost no unusual sound around him could escape his ears.

"Nothing unusual for now," Wu Hen answered with certainty.

"Really? Isn't it a little too quiet?" Captain Qin grew uneasy.

By "too quiet," he didn't mean there were no sounds around them. The locusts eating and crawling were as loud as a vast, thundering tsunami.

But to Wu Hen's ears, that was just "white noise," not an unusual sound. As long as the Soul Crowns on their group continued to shine, they wouldn't be attacked.

"Captain, something's wrong," the one-eyed woman said suddenly.

"There's nothing up ahead," Captain Qin said, puzzled.

"Our crowns are fading," she said seriously.

"How is that possible?" the White Peacock Man exclaimed.

Ming Yi seemed to realize something, too. She closed her eyes and began to sense her own power.

Just as the one-eyed woman had said, she could clearly feel her strength waning!

"Look around you..." the Pale Thin Man suddenly pointed toward several other sand dunes.

One figure after another had appeared atop those locust dunes. They stood in long lines, like worshippers on their way to pray at the Holy Temple, yet every one of them had vacant eyes and stiff movements. They were almost indistinguishable from the Lost Ones!

Among these endless lines of worshippers were many Nuwa People who had been bewitched by Evil Breath.

The Order Guardians were keeping watch at the Pure Land, but they still couldn't completely stop the Evil Breath from slipping through. More and more people were inexplicably leaving the Pure Land and heading into this terrifying desert!

They all walked in the same direction, eventually crossing a towering sand dune.

"There must be something behind that giant dune. They're all heading there," the one-eyed woman said.

"The locust Evil Degree is draining our Soul Crowns. The longer we stay here, the more we'll become ordinary mortals. Then these Otherworld Locusts will devour us until only our bones remain..." Captain Qin quickly assessed the situation.

Every patch of Evil Soil and every Evil Degree had its own laws. Outsiders and those who wandered in were gradually consumed, no matter how powerful they were!

"So our lives are on a countdown, like sand running through an hourglass?" Wu Hen offered a fitting comparison.

"Could it be that we only think we're exploring, when in fact we're walking in a specific direction just like the Lost Ones?" the Pale Thin Man said.

A chill ran through all seven members of the patrol team!

He was right. The dunes stretched on and on, each one almost identical, with no landmarks at all. Why were they so sure they were heading deeper in? Once they'd left the Pure Land, dunes surrounded them in every direction. Could they even be sure that the way behind them led back to the Pure Land?

"Don't waste your crowns. Stay close together and use your companions' crowns to keep moving!" Captain Qin said.

"Whatever you do, don't get separated. One person's crown won't last long!"

At that moment, the Spirit Crown inside each of them was like a torch,

lighting only a small area in the cold, dark desert night.

Once the torch burned out, the beasts that feared its light would swarm them, and the team would be wiped out in an instant!

That was why, when everyone carried a torch that would eventually burn out, the wisest thing to do was stay together and take turns using their Spirit Crowns.

That way, they could extend the time they could travel and survive in the locust Evil Degree!

Wu Hen tried listening, hoping to hear what lay behind the giant dune.

But he heard nothing. Perhaps the place really was silent, or perhaps something there was beyond the reach of his spiritual senses!

After they began taking turns using their Spirit Crowns, Captain Qin soon noticed another problem.

Their crowns recovered very, very slowly. There had to be some high-level Evil Breath in this Evil Degree that suppressed the Awakened, one their entire team was unable to sense.

In a way, they had been tainted, too.

They had no choice now. Like everyone else under its control, they could only head toward the other side of the giant dune.

With their lives on a shared countdown, a shadow of gloom settled over everyone. Even Ming Yi, who had been lively and cheerful until now, grew serious and focused.

The crowd was larger than they'd imagined.

It seemed that not only people from the Nuwa Pure Land were heading toward the other side of the giant dune. The native people of the surrounding Desolate Dust and the Lost Ones were going there, too...

Unlike the feeling Wu Hen had when the Nuwa Divine Terminal guided him, this guidance felt more like a command, an order pressing down so hard that he couldn't think. The slightest doubt or defiance brought a mental lash!!

Wu Hen was shocked. Even in Zai Wu's territory, he'd never been tainted so forcefully!

The vast procession stretched across dozens of locust dunes like a marching column. They were all living people, yet none spoke to one another. They looked like citizens of an evil kingdom whose thoughts had been completely erased, gathered to celebrate an Evil Dynasty!

Among the tens of thousands, some had strong enough wills to resist.

They fought back and struggled.

But the moment they tried to "walk against the flow," the countless locusts at their feet crawled onto them and devoured them completely in front of everyone...

Most terrifying of all, even after only a skeleton remained, the Otherworld Locusts burrowed into the bones, then imitated the movements of a person walking. Step by step, they continued toward the other side of the giant dune!

So, amid that immense procession, a bizarre and eerie sight unfolded before everyone: every few dozen people, one or two skeletons walked among them!

What lay behind the dune??

They might die when they got there.

But if they died, they would surely still arrive!

"There should be other Awakened besides us. If we can, we should join forces with them and share our crowns," Captain Qin said, quickly coming up with a plan.

The Evil Soil and Evil Degrees of the Desolate Dust all followed some kind of "Otherworld Law." If they could cleverly find the pattern and sense its true nature in advance, they'd have a good chance of escaping...

Breaking this Otherworld Law required plenty of time to observe and think. Captain Qin knew exactly how to maximize the team's chances of survival!

"I'll open my spiritual senses and see who else is using their crowns," the one-eyed woman said.

With that, she removed her eyepatch, revealing another eye like a Flower Crystal. It swept across the long procession, and soon a smoky haze appeared around each person it passed.

Most people were shrouded in black auras.

But she soon spotted another group about one dune away from them. There were around thirteen or fourteen people, and their crowns shone at the Night Gloom level.

"They haven't realized their crowns are weakening yet," the one-eyed woman said.

"We'll slow down a little and try to join up with them," Captain Qin said with a nod.

No matter how slowly they went, the group eventually reached the top of the giant dune.

From there, they looked down the vast slope, and all seven were deeply puzzled.

In the broad basin below, there was only a single shadowy building. From afar, it looked like an ancient set temporarily built at a film studio. It gave off not the slightest hint of terror.

Yet people had already entered the desert mirage, disappearing inside that solitary building...

The building was neither huge nor imposing. At least several hundred people had gone inside, yet it remained a silent, empty shadow, with not a single living person in sight!

"Could this be Yin Province?" someone from the other group of Awakened, the one with more than a dozen people, asked.

It was clear that even the patrol team of the Nuwa Divine Terminal knew very little about the Desolate Dust. The ones who recognized this place were instead a group of outsiders!

"What's Yin Province?" Wu Hen asked without hesitation, living up to his reputation as a social recluse.

"Huh, you can speak? Are you an Awakened, too?" asked the man who'd just spoken.

"In the desert, an oasis is called a province of life. In the same way, the desert also has ghost-market mirages, and they're called Yin Provinces."

Recommended: a new book by the great urban fantasy author Lao Shi.