Cyber Supernatural Horror?

Licheng,

Yellow sand filled the air, blotting out the daylight. The entire city was shrouded in the gloom of a doomsday dusk.

A young woman stood atop a building on a mountainside, a pink bow in hand. Hundreds of meters away, she practiced her archery.

"Yu Yu, I buried my relatives in the woods. The fifth and fourth floors have both been cleaned out, too." Ling Shaomei walked over and spoke to Yu Yu.

Yu Yu nodded and continued practicing her archery.

Suddenly, as Yu Yu drew in a breath, a strange presence drifted in from the city outskirts. She immediately turned and looked that way.

"Th-what is that?" Ling Shaomei had also spotted the bizarre sight beyond the city.

The presence grew stronger, as if a vast mausoleum had appeared. The stench of decay that clung to the dead seeped into the city.

"Where did a mountain that tall come from?" Ling Shaomei said, taken aback.

In the distance, yellow sand and daylight wove together into a strange curtain. A mountain range loomed within it, its peaks rising into the clouds.

The problem was, there were no mountains like that outside Licheng!

Yu Yu stared fixedly at the "illusory mountain range." As the wind scattered some of the hazy sand, an incredibly magnificent ancient city appeared atop the distant phantom mountains. It looked like an ancient mural displayed in a museum, except the little figures going about their daily lives had come alive, vividly reenacting what life had been like a thousand years ago!

"It's a mirage." Wu Yingting's voice came from behind them.

"Oh, oh, so it's caused by dust and the refraction of light... It's fake, right?" Ling Shaomei asked.

"No. A mirage is essentially a projection, but there's no ancient city like that in our world!" Wu Yingting shook his head.

Yu Yu frowned slightly. She had caught that strange smell again. It made her uneasy.

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

"From the Otherworld Desolate Dust..." Wu Yingting replied firmly.

Suddenly, Yu Yu grabbed Wu Yingting by the hem of his clothes, urging him to get back to the safehouse at once. Something dangerous was nearby.

Wu Yingting didn't hesitate. He knew his daughter had become an Awakened and could sense dangers beyond the reach of ordinary people.

"Shaomei, check every entrance carefully," Wu Yingting instructed. Then he ran with Yu Yu toward the safehouse.

Ling Shaomei nodded. To survive, she was naturally doing her best to fulfill her duties as a housekeeper.

She carefully checked every floor, making sure everything was tightly shut, then hurried down to the first floor.

There was a display window on the first floor, made entirely of floor-to-ceiling tempered glass. People outside could see the exhibits inside. To ensure air circulated, it had a vent.

The vent had to be checked, too!

Ling Shaomei locked the vent, then finally let out a breath.

Drenched in sweat, she instinctively sat down by the display window and looked outside through the tempered glass.

The sight made her spring up as if she'd been electrocuted. Her tear ducts burst open in an instant!!

A man covered in mud and blood was pressed against the glass outside, peering into the display with dead-fish eyes!

"Ah!!!!!!!"

Ling Shaomei could no longer hold back. She screamed in terror!

If it had been a disaster victim, Ling Shaomei would never have reacted like this...

The problem was, she clearly remembered burying him in the woods not long ago!!

He was her third uncle, who had been disemboweled by an Insect-Eyed Half-Human. He was supposed to be dead. He was a relative she had personally buried in the ground!!

"Bam~~ Bam~~ Bam~~~~~"

The tempered glass rattled under heavy blows. More figures appeared in the sandstorm. Some were missing limbs, others exposed bare bones. They were corpses that had just crawled out of their graves!!

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

But when he looked outside and saw all his relatives standing in a neat row beyond the display window, he promptly collapsed, foaming at the mouth!

Hadn't they all died???

He and his daughter had buried them one by one!

Why had they crawled out of the ground on their own!!

Locust Evil Degree.

Atop a gigantic sand dune, Captain Qin had reached a temporary agreement to travel together with the fourteen-person team.

Once they joined forces, they had to share key information. If a weaker member of the group encountered danger, those capable of fighting also had to come to their rescue without question.

Wu Hen could see that the team, whose average strength was at the Night Nether Crown Realm, had clearly defined roles. Some of them weren't even Awakened, yet they carried a full set of tools and combat weapons...

"Thank you for sharing the information that the Spirit Crown is being absorbed. We'll follow your method, with two people taking turns releasing their Spirit Crowns to ensure the whole team survives..." said the leader of the roaming Awakened team.

Their leader was young. At first glance, he looked like the head of a merchant caravan. Most of the others were dressed much the same as desert traders, wrapped tightly from head to toe.

"There are twenty-one of us in total. Excluding those who aren't Awakened and those below the Night Gloom level, sixteen of us can release our Spirit Crowns. That gives us eight shifts," Qin Sheng said.

"No need to complicate things. We have Spirit Candles. When there's a crown, they'll keep burning; without one, they'll go out. Prepare eight Spirit Candles, and we'll know how long we can survive," said Cai Jinlin, leader of the roaming team.

The crowns recovered very slowly.

In reality, they might survive a little longer than eight Spirit Candles would last, but they had to leave everyone time to say their last words. Take Wu Hen, for example. If he knew he was certain to die, he'd surely take the opportunity to do something and leave no regrets.

"I... I'll hold the Spirit Candles..." A Little Stutterer took out a spherical glass cover, placed a Spirit Candle inside, then held this life timer in his hands.

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

"Time is short. Don't hesitate. The longer we stay out here, the easier it'll be for our minds to be controlled. We need to find a way out and leave this damned place as soon as possible!" Captain Cai said.

Everyone knew that running away was impossible.

They had to grit their teeth, venture inside, and find the Otherworld Law that governed this place if they wanted any chance of survival.

All that stood before them was a white mausoleum gate.

No wonder it was called Yin Province. Even the gatehouse didn't look like it had been built for the living. It looked more like the entrance to an imposing tomb!

When they reached the white mausoleum gate, their feet began moving forward against their will.

A cold wind whispered through the air, chilling them to the bone. Honestly, Wu Hen felt less like he was entering some ghostly mirage and more like he was stepping through the gates of hell!

They weren't the only twenty-one people entering this Evil Degree in Yin Province. A vast procession stretched ahead of them and behind them. At first, Wu Hen hadn't known how to describe the scene. Now he had the perfect phrase: We're keeping each other company on the road to the underworld!

What a fitting name for Yin Province. This gate clearly led to the netherworld!

Wu Hen's heart began to pound.

He reflexively glanced at his left hand...

Just as he'd expected, Holy Father had gone completely silent at a time like this!

Did he really have to be so realistic? Even if Wu Hen was only there to serve as bait, Holy Father could at least give him a little courage.

His left hand was no good. He checked his right...

Strands of Xuanyao Mark slowly appeared, then gradually faded, like the rhythm of a steady breath.

Fine. His right hand was still the reliable one!

"Clickclickclickclickclickclick~~~~~~~~"

A faint sound came from all around them. Wu Hen had heard countless noises like it as soon as he stepped into this "gate to hell."

The sound was hard to describe. It was like countless locusts and mice gnawing at walls, or a mass of gears turning...

There was only a single gate before them. Nothing else.

He'd thought that once they passed through it, they would enter another space. But the space hadn't changed at all. Instead, an utterly bizarre and absurd sight appeared before them!!

White grains, tiny as millet.

Wu Hen had seen something similar on the square in Jueyin Town: bones spread out to dry.

But what he saw now was far stranger and more horrifying. The Bone Grains were moving, piling up, fitting together, and covering the ground at astonishing speed...

There had been no road beyond the mausoleum gate.

But these white grains had laid out an ancient road.

And as Wu Hen kept walking, dense white grains on both sides rapidly sketched out several white bone pavilions of varying heights!!

"They're Yin Ants," said the one-eyed, tough-looking woman.

She had activated her spirit sight. To everyone else, they were white Bone Grains, but to her they were White Bone Yin Ants!

"What are they doing?" Wu Hen asked, since he didn't know.

"Keep walking and you'll find out." The one-eyed tough woman was bold, too. She headed to the front of the group.

She went about fifty meters ahead.

The white road changed again. A cross alley quickly took shape, and even the walls inside it were being "built" on the spot.

From empty space to streets, ancient pavilions, a cross alley, and towering walls... The whole process took about ten seconds. Everything appeared before their eyes!

All twenty-one members of the group wore astonished expressions, their eyes filled with both tension and confusion!

Wu Hen was utterly shocked!

What was going on??

Did this mean they were walking through an invisible "ancient city," with its layout and scenery only appearing as they reached each place?

Did the vast numbers of white Yin Ants act like dynamic grains of sand, sensing the people who had entered and rapidly rendering the scenery within a radius of several dozen meters??

Bizarre, uncanny—cyber supernatural horror?

It was like playing some cheap, low-budget game, where the dungeon only rendered as you reached each area. The rendering took ten seconds, so the players had to wait for the code to run and the textures to load...

But the moment he remembered that their "pixels" were white bone grains—living Yin Ants—he couldn't help shivering all over!!

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