The livestream chat filled an entire screen with the same messages—
"When I heard that sound, I froze completely."
"I was wearing headphones. I blanked out for a full three seconds."
"What was that?? A psychic attack??"
"I don't think it was an attack. It felt like its normal call, except humans couldn't handle it."
"A flying whale two hundred meters long. What else does this world have?"
"That's ten thousand times scarier than those man-eating trees and rats. If that thing were aggressive..."
Chen Siyao stared in the direction where the sky whale had disappeared, taking a long while to look away.
She noticed that her brother's expression had remained unchanged the entire time. He had even yawned.
Fine, then.
They kept going.
The light in the forest began to dim—not because of the canopy overhead, but because the day was drawing to a close. The sun had sunk much lower.
This world had a day-and-night cycle too.
They had not gone far when Chen Siyao noticed something strange.
She was talking to Yang Wanqing.
Her lips were moving. Air was flowing out of her throat. But... there was no sound.
She could not hear her own words.
Nor could she hear footsteps, wind, or anything else.
The world had suddenly gone silent.
Yang Wanqing noticed it too. She looked at Chen Siyao with her mouth open, gesturing with her hands. Her lips kept moving, but nothing came through.
Then Chen Siyao saw the cause.
Clusters of black shapes hung from the branches overhead.
Bats.
They were small, each only the size of a palm. But their numbers were terrifying... dozens hung upside down from every branch, packed together. Their folded wings wrapped around their bodies, making them look like floating clumps of dark shadow from a distance.
They