Bai Luo walked across the deathly silent land. With vegetation dying off in great swathes, even a faint breeze could roll up clouds of dust. And with the plants gone, the once-stable ecosystem had completely fallen out of balance. The weather gradually turned extreme, gales whipping up waves of dust as they raged without end.
Sometimes, Bai Luo wondered when the world had suddenly become like this—or rather, when it had changed into this, step by step.
At first, it was merely the strange behavior of certain herd animals, and no one paid it any mind. Later, only some fragile lifeforms began dying without warning. Some people thought of environmental pollution, but that was all they did—think of it. For countless years, green mountains and clear waters had been traded for mountains of gold and silver. Environmental protection had always been more of a business than a genuine love for this beautiful world. Later still, species after species began to vanish. The more precious a species was, the rarer it tended to be, which also meant it was most sensitive to environmental changes. When more and more endangered species went extinct, humanity finally began to take it seriously, yet they could not find a single problem.
Because the virus had not come from the material world, but from the information world!
Until one day, countless people suddenly began posting online that they were experiencing hallucinations. Terrifying beings that had once existed only in human fantasies and imaginings appeared before them in the form of hallucinations—horrific in exactly the ways humanity had imagined them to be.
At first, everyone watched for the spectacle, assuming it was another massive joke. But when more and more IDs never lit up again, when all kinds of rumors began spreading that so-and-so nearby had been