Rescue in Desperation

When the last flush of red vanished from the horizon, true "darkness" descended.

It was not pure black, but a living, tangible entity, viscous as ink.

Staring at the surging Dark Matter, everyone felt a fear rising from the depths of their hearts.

People used torches in place of light, illuminating their surroundings.

Yet within those indistinct shadows, something seemed to be stirring.

The shadows beneath their feet began to stretch and twist uncontrollably. No longer did they faithfully follow their owners; they tried to break free from beneath their feet instead.

"Ah!!"

A scream suddenly rang out amid the crowd.

Then came the sounds of swallowing and chewing from within the darkness.

Everyone knew what had happened, but no one dared to check. Instead, they quickened their pace.

"Elder Li, it's already dark. What should we do now?" A middle-aged man in the crowd looked solemnly at the old man beside him.

The old man appeared exceptionally vigorous, without the slightest hint of the frailty typical of old age. His muscles were firm and well-defined, stretching his clothes taut.

"We can't stop. We need to move even faster. Only by finding a shelter can we possibly survive. So many people camping in the wilderness will only attract more Dark Creatures. When that happens, everyone will die."

Li Zhouhai took a deep breath. The air was frigid to the bone and filled with an eerie stench of rust mingled with rotten flesh, as though it would seep from his flesh into his bones.

As the only Ability User in the group, Li Zhouhai forced himself to stay alert, trying to shake off the whispers that kept surfacing in his mind.

Yesterday, he had fought a D-Rank Anomaly Calamity. Though he had successfully driven it back, his mind had also been contaminated. Now, the voices of his dead family members constantly echoed in his head.

In his hazy vision, he saw his wife, son, and daughter-in-law standing before him, reaching their hands out to him from afar.

Li Zhouhai instinctively wanted to reach out and take their hands, but at that moment, Guan Teng's voice suddenly rang out and jolted him awake.

"Elder Li! Are you alright?" Guan Teng looked at Li Zhouhai with a trace of worry on his face.

Li Zhouhai suddenly came to his senses.

There was no one in front of him. The hand he had raised had actually been about to throw away the torch.

"I'm fine. Keep moving!" After calming himself slightly, Li Zhouhai blinked his bloodshot eyes and spoke in a heavy voice.

But the very next second, a fishy wind swept past them, accompanied by the dense, countless sounds of insects crawling nearby.

Suddenly, a Black Insect with a glossy black body and savage mandibles appeared, plunging headfirst into the firelight formed by Li Zhouhai's group.

"Puff~"

The instant the Black Insect entered the range of the firelight, its body seemed to be ignited by some searing heat, turning into a wisp of black smoke and vanishing.

But it was not over yet.

Immediately afterward, dense swarms of insect shadows, like raindrops, crashed into the range of the firelight.

They were like moths unafraid of death, hurling their lives at the crowd and ultimately dissipating into wisps of black smoke.

This seemingly meaningless behavior set off alarm bells in Li Zhouhai's mind, and a horrified expression appeared on his face.

He noticed that the area illuminated by their group's torches was gradually shrinking.

The flames on the torches were being continuously suppressed. Some people at the edge of the light failed to notice in time, and Black Insects crawled all over their bodies. Before long, they fell to the ground, never making another sound.

More than ten seconds later, the Black Insects left, leaving only a skeleton on the ground.

"Good heavens, are they forming a Black Tide?!"

Guan Teng sucked in a cold breath, as though a bucket of icy water had been poured over him from head to toe.

These insects were called Black Insects. They were the most common Anomaly Calamity of the Dark Age, and also the most terrifying.

Individually, they did not even reach E-Rank Crystal level. But Black Insects almost never appeared alone; they always came in vast swarms, flooding in like a blanket over the sky.

As the firelight moved, the Black Insects moved with it.

Before long, the area lit by the torches shrank even further.

Yet Li Zhouhai's gaze was fixed on a strange-looking stone by the roadside.

He quickened his pace and approached it, only to discover that the strange object was actually a Shrine.

Dark Creatures would never make such a thing. Judging from the carving marks on the Shrine, it had not been carved long ago.

"Move faster. There might be a shelter ahead!"

Hope immediately flared in Li Zhouhai's heart, and he urged everyone to pick up the pace once more.

But when he raised his head, he discovered that the road they had just been able to see had vanished.

Within the range the light could reach, a dense wall of fog had appeared.

The fog wall surrounded them completely. The firelight could not penetrate it, and anyone who approached would be seized by a pale arm and dragged inside.

At the same time, his voice failed to reach those behind him.

Because that area had already been completely swallowed by viscous darkness.

A torch was violently knocked to the ground, its light extinguished. Within the roiling black fog emerged countless pale arms, twisted faces, and indescribable outlines of limbs.

"Darkness has only fully descended for so long, and an Anomaly Calamity of this level has already appeared?!"

Li Zhouhai's heart sank.

The lowest rank of Anomaly Calamities was E-Rank, while the highest was S-Rank, but that did not mean Anomaly Calamities of the same rank were equally powerful.

For example, the creature within the black fog before them was a D-Rank Anomaly Calamity called the Devouring Worm. It was far stronger than the Anomaly Calamity that had attacked him last night.

At that thought, a trace of grief flashed through Li Zhouhai's eyes. The wrinkles on his aged face trembled violently, while his body swelled as though filled with air.

He was the most common kind of strength-type Ability User. The energy born within his body could fill his entire form and magnify his original strength.

At the same time, a layer of white vapor resembling black mist would appear over the surface of his body. It was manifested from the energy within him and could harm Dark Creatures, the mark of a D-Class Ability User.

At that moment, Li Zhouhai's entire body brimmed with explosive power as he suddenly threw a punch at the Devouring Worm.

His fist tore through the air, whipping up a fierce gust.

Bang!

His massive fist slammed into the fog wall, sending ripples spreading across it.

Yet it failed to drive the Devouring Worm back.

Pale hands climbed up and grabbed Li Zhouhai's arm. Bone-chilling cold eroded his skin, leaving bluish-black handprints across it.

Li Zhouhai had not expected the Devouring Worm to try to drag him into the fog wall as well, and he struggled with all his strength.

But the Devouring Worm's strength was not inferior to his in the slightest; it was even greater. Those hands were like steel clamps, firmly locking down his arm, impossible to break free from.

"Ah!"

"Waaah!!"

Screams, sobs...

As Li Zhouhai was slowly dragged into the fog wall by the terrifying Anomaly Calamity, the crowd fell completely into chaos.

Guan Teng wanted to take Li Zhouhai's place and stabilize the situation, but no one listened to him at all.

The creatures in the darkness took the opportunity to leap out, killing, gnawing on, and dragging people one after another into the Abyss.

Li Zhouhai watched this scene, tears unknowingly filling his aged face.

Could it be that even heaven did not want people like them to live?

They had clearly already seen a glimmer of hope.

Li Zhouhai's spirits darkened, and the strength behind his struggle gradually weakened. It seemed that even he no longer wanted to resist.

After struggling to survive in this era for so long, was he still unable to escape the fate of death in the end?

So be it!

The whispers in his mind grew clearer and clearer, and his dead family appeared before him once more.

At this moment, perhaps he truly was about to go see them.

But just when everyone's hearts had fallen into utter despair, unable to see any hope.

The ground suddenly trembled. A gnarled tree arm reached out from the darkness, its enormous palm slamming down and smashing the Devouring Worm's entire body into the earth.

Li Zhouhai's life flashing before his eyes had not even finished playing when his consciousness was forcibly pulled back.

He opened his eyes and saw that, within the darkness above that gnarled tree hand, an oil lamp shone blindingly bright. Like the blazing sun at noon, it transformed into roaring flames and shone into people's hearts.

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