After the terror and despair they had just endured, escaping this eerie bus was almost everyone's instinctive reaction. Yet, surprisingly... perhaps because they had helped one another twice already, the able-bodied passengers did not rush alone toward the freedom of the night. Instead, they instinctively helped those who were too weak to walk on their own.
Su Bai had already kicked open the rear door. An eerie scent of blood hung in the air, perhaps coming from the heart that had withered to a grayish husk.
Beyond the rear door lay the familiar yet unfamiliar Real World, moonlight spilling over the damp ground. It seemed a light rain had fallen in the Real World while they were in the Rift. The ground was wet, and the air blowing through the door still carried a trace of moisture.
This should have been the moment they had desperately longed for. Yet when a real exit appeared before them, many passengers did not immediately rush outside. Instead, they stood dazed in place, unable to take in how real it all felt.
Had they really been saved?
During that brief hesitation, Wu Heng pushed through the crowd and approached the "heart." No one noticed what he was doing. Every gaze was fixed on the exit.
At the front of the bus, the enormous, eerie-looking "heart" lay motionless. Wu Heng slowly raised his right hand, revealing almost inhumanly fine gaps between its joints and knuckles.
The next second, he plunged his hand into the "heart" without hesitation.
No blood splashed, and there was no resistance. That eerie mass of flesh seemed to have lost all vitality. Wu Heng easily drew a fist-sized crystal from within it. The crystal was a rich, deep crimson, with what seemed to be liquid radiance flowing inside, casting an uncanny