Cyber supernatural?

Licheng.

Yellow sand filled the air, obscuring the daylight and casting the entire city in the gloom of a doomsday twilight.

A young girl stood atop a pavilion on a hill, clutching a pink bow and practicing her archery from a distance of several hundred meters.

"Yu Yu, I've buried the relatives in the woods. The fifth and fourth floors have been cleared out as well," Ling Shaomei said as she walked over.

Yu Yu nodded, continuing to practice her archery.

Suddenly, as Yu Yu drew a breath, a strange aura drifted in from the outskirts of the city. She immediately turned around and looked toward the city's perimeter.

"What... what is that?" Ling Shaomei also saw the bizarre sight outside the city.

The aura grew thicker, as if a massive tomb had been opened, and the stench of decay—the kind found only on the dead—poured into the city.

"Where did such a tall mountain come from?" Ling Shaomei asked, stunned.

Gazing into the distance, the yellow sand and the light wove together into a strange curtain of shadows. A silhouette as massive as a mountain range towered into the clouds.

The problem was, there were no such mountains outside Licheng!

Yu Yu stared intently at the "void mountain range." As the hazy yellow sand dispersed slightly, a magnificent ancient city appeared on the phantom mountain. It looked just like an ancient mural exhibited in a museum, but the tiny figures busy with their livelihoods in the painting had all come to life, vividly reenacting their daily routines from thousands of years ago!

"It's a Mirage," Wu Yingting's voice rang out from behind them.

"Oh, oh, so it's just caused by sand and light refraction... it's fake, right?" Ling Shaomei said.

"No, a Mirage is essentially a projection, but there is no such ancient city in our world!" Wu Yingting shook his head.

Yu Yu frowned slightly. She caught the strange scent again; it gave her a sense of unease.

"Then where is this Mirage being projected from?" Ling Shaomei asked.

"From the Otherworld Desolate Dust..." Wu Yingting said with certainty.

Suddenly, Yu Yu grabbed the corner of Wu Yingting's clothes, signaling him to return to the safe house immediately. There was something dangerous nearby.

Wu Yingting didn't hesitate. He knew his daughter was already an Awakened; she could perceive dangers that ordinary people could not.

"Shaomei, check every entrance and exit carefully," Wu Yingting instructed before rushing toward the safe house with Yu Yu.

Ling Shaomei nodded. To ensure their survival, she was naturally dedicated to fulfilling her duties as a housekeeper.

She checked every floor thoroughly, and after confirming that everything was tightly sealed, she ran to the first floor.

On the first floor, there was a display case made of floor-to-ceiling tempered glass. People outside could see the exhibits inside, and to ensure air circulation, there was a ventilation duct there.

Check the ventilation shaft too!

Ling Shaomei locked the vent and finally let out a sigh of relief.

Drenched in sweat, she instinctively sat down inside the display cabinet, her gaze peering out through the tempered glass.

It was this look that made her spring up as if electrocuted, her tear ducts bursting open in an instant!!

Outside the tempered glass, a man covered in mud and blood was pressed against the display window, a pair of dead-fish eyes peering into the cabinet!

"Ah!!!!!!!"

Ling Shaomei could no longer control herself, letting out a scream of terror!

If that had been a disaster victim, Ling Shaomei would never have reacted this way...

The problem was, Ling Shaomei remembered clearly that she had buried him in the woods not long ago!!

This person was her third uncle, the third uncle who had been disemboweled by an Insect-Eyed Half-Human. He was clearly dead; he was the relative she had buried in the soil with her own hands!!

"Bang~~ Bang~~ Bang~~~~~"

The tempered glass display was being heavily pounded. Several more figures appeared in the sand fog; some were maimed, others had exposed white bones—they were human corpses that had just crawled out of a graveyard!!

Old Man Ling heard his daughter's scream and ran over in a panic.

But when he looked outside the display window and saw those relatives of his standing neatly outside, he began foaming at the mouth and fainted on the spot!

Weren't they all dead???

He and his daughter had buried them one by one!

Why had they crawled out of the dirt themselves!!

Locust Evil Degree.

On a giant sand dune, Captain Qin had already reached a temporary agreement to travel with that fourteen-person team.

Once they joined forces, key information had to be shared, and if a weak member of the team encountered danger, the combat-capable members had to intervene and save them unconditionally.

Wu Hen could also see that the team, whose average strength was at the Night Nether Crown Realm, had a clear division of labor. Some of them hadn't even undergone Spirit Awakening, yet they carried a very complete set of tools and combat weapons...

"Thank you for sharing the information that the Spirit Crown is being absorbed. Then, we will follow your method: two people will take turns releasing the Spirit Crown to ensure the entire team's survival time..." said the captain of that wandering Spirit Awakening team.

Their captain was not very old; at first glance, he looked like the head of a merchant caravan. Most of their attire was no different from that of a desert caravan, and they also kept their bodies wrapped up very tightly.

"We have 21 people in total. Excluding those without Spirit Awakening and those whose strength hasn't reached the Night Nether, there are sixteen people who can release the Spirit Crown. That makes eight groups of time," Qin Sheng said.

"No need for so much trouble. We have the Spirit Candle. With the crown, it stays lit; without it, it dims. If we prepare eight Spirit Candles, we'll know exactly how long we can survive," said the wandering captain, Cai Jinlin.

The crown recovered at an agonizingly slow pace.

Although they could technically survive a little longer than the duration of eight Spirit Candles, they had to leave time for everyone to say their last words. Take Wu Hen, for example—if he knew for certain he was going to die, he would definitely take the opportunity to do something, leaving no regrets behind.

"I... I'll take the Spirit Candle..." A stutterer took out a spherical glass cover, placed the Spirit Candle inside, and held the life-timer in his hands.

"That's all you're good for anyway," said a burly man with a black headband in the wandering team.

"Time is short, so don't hesitate. The longer we stay out here, the easier it is to be mentally dominated. We must find a way to break the situation and get out of this hellhole as soon as possible!" Captain Cai said.

Everyone knew that there was no escaping this.

Only by biting the bullet and stepping inside, searching for the laws of this alien dimension, was there any possibility of survival.

Before them stood nothing but a white mausoleum gate.

No wonder it was called Yin Province; this gatehouse didn't look like it was built for the living at all—it looked more like a grand entrance to a tomb!

Upon reaching the white mausoleum gate, their feet began to move forward uncontrollably.

A cold wind whistled, chilling them to the bone. To be honest, Wu Hen didn't feel like he was walking into some ghost market Mirage Pavilion; it felt more like he was stepping into the gates of the underworld!

They weren't the only twenty-one people entering this Evil Degree Yin Province. Ahead and behind them were long, massive lines of teams. At first, Wu Hen didn't know how to describe such a scene, but now he had a concrete term for it: companions on the road to the afterlife!

What a Yin Province. This gate was clearly a passage to the netherworld!

Wu Hen's heart was already pounding.

He subconsciously looked at his left hand...

As expected, whenever it came to times like this, the Holy Father would go completely silent!

There was no need to be this realistic. Even if he was just bait for you, you could at least give him a tiny bit of courage.

The left hand was a bust, so he checked his right...

Threads of the Xuanyao Mark slowly emerged and then faded away, like a steady, rhythmic breath.

Fine, it had to be the right hand after all!

"Duo duo duo duo duo duo~~~~~~~~"

A very faint sound came from all around. The moment Wu Hen stepped into this "ghost gate," he heard countless such noises.

The sound was hard to describe; it was as if countless locusts or rats were gnawing at the walls, or perhaps a massive number of gears were turning...

In front of them, there was actually only one door, and nothing else.

They had expected to enter another dimension upon stepping through, but space did not distort. Instead, a scene appeared before their eyes that was both incredibly bizarre and utterly absurd!!

White particles, as fine as grains of millet.

Wu Hen had seen a similar scene before in the square of Jueyin Town: the drying of bones.

But the sight before them now was even more grotesque and terrifying, because these bone particles were actively moving, stacking, connecting, and covering...

There was no path behind the tomb door.

Yet, these white particles paved an ancient road.

And it wasn't just an ancient road; as Wu Hen continued to step forward, the dense white particles on both sides rapidly outlined several white bone pavilions of varying heights!!

"They are Yin Ants," the one-eyed tough girl said.

She had activated her spirit vision. To others, they were just white bone particles, but in her sight, they were individual white-boned Yin Ants!

"What are they doing?" Wu Hen asked, not understanding.

"Keep walking and you'll know." The one-eyed tough girl was quite bold, taking the lead for the group.

She walked forward for about fifty meters.

The white road changed again; a horizontal alleyway rapidly formed, and the walls within the alley were also "constructed" on the spot.

From nothingness to streets, ancient pavilions, a side alley, and towering walls... the entire process took only about ten seconds to fully manifest!

Every one of the twenty-one people in the team had astonishment written on their faces, their pupils filled with both tension and bewilderment!

Wu Hen was deeply shocked!

What was going on??

Did it mean they had stepped into an invisible "ancient market," but one where the layout and scenery only emerged in real-time as they walked?

Were those massive numbers of white Yin Ants acting like dynamic sand, sensing the people who had entered and rapidly rendering the scene within a few dozen meters??

Eerie, grotesque, cyber-supernatural?

It felt like playing a low-budget, shoddy game where the dungeon scene was temporarily rendered as you walked, with a ten-second delay in the rendering process, forcing the player to wait for the code to run and the textures to load...

Yet, the moment he realized their "pixels" were bone particles—living Yin Ants—he couldn't help but feel a chill run through his entire body!!