Shopping Mall

When he emerged from underground, the city still looked the same as ever.

The Blood Moon hung high in the sky, its crazed smiling face indiscriminately looking down upon everything around it. The city was deathly silent, as though everything within it had died together.

No, that was not quite right. There were sounds—faint noises from beneath the shadows of trees, from corners, from among the mutated flowers and grass. Sometimes they were indistinct groans; sometimes, the rustling of something crawling past; and sometimes, they were simply invisible whispers—the sounds did not even reach him through his ears, but rang directly inside his mind.

Even without encountering anything strange, anyone who remained in such an environment for too long could easily go mad. Zhou You had seen plenty of lunatics like that. They had basically lost all ability to communicate, wandering the streets day and night, unaware of hunger or thirst and never washing themselves. Their bodies were caked with excrement and garbage, and all they did was endlessly repeat words ordinary people could not understand.

Still, Zhou You was not entirely immune to it, but mostly so. This body might belong to someone else, but at least the soul was his own—after seeing so many demons and monsters, as well as the corrupted Heavenly Court and Spirit Mountain, he had built up some resistance to this sort of thing.

So, after finding an unoccupied corner that looked relatively safe, he slipped inside in a flash.

This time, he had not traveled with Luo Liangde. Ordinarily, scavenging required a group, but the mayor's bounty had drawn a massive influx of people into the Wasteland District, causing the strange creatures to enter their active period early. Under such circumstances, traveling in pairs was simply too risky.

Besides, Luo Liangde knew his