Natural disaster, calamity?

The rain kept growing heavier and heavier.

In just half an hour.

The stretch of highway where Fan Shang and the others had been waiting was swallowed by rainwater.

Everyone watched, shaken by how narrowly they had escaped.

"Th-thank goodness Captain Liu acted fast. Otherwise, we'd probably all be underwater by now, right?"

"No kidding. The rain sounded so quiet, but you know what? Once I looked outside, it was so loud I felt like the sound alone would drown me."

"You too? That... that's not right. Rain that heavy making so little noise? Something's wrong!"

"..."

But they didn't dare delay, sticking close to the convoy ahead.

Terrified that Liu Tie and the others would leave them behind.

Now that they had escaped the most dangerous area, Fan Shang couldn't help breathing a sigh of relief.

Terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.

Such a huge expanse of flat ground had been completely flooded in just half an hour.

Fan Shang didn't even dare imagine how he would have died if he had stayed there.

Because he could sense that this wasn't ordinary rainwater.

There was something mixed into it that unsettled him.

He had a feeling that even if he used Yin Soldier's Borrowed Road to flee desperately through that water, he would never escape.

Fortunately, they had already escaped the area most severely affected by the rain.

At that thought, Fan Shang glanced toward the SUV leading the convoy.

Only then did he speak, his expression grave.

"Captain Liu, what exactly is this?"

"And what did you mean when you said this wasn't ordinary rain?"

Fan Shang's questions came over the radio channel.

Liu Tie didn't answer directly.

Instead, he reached behind the seat, fumbling around a few times before pulling out a pack of cigarettes.

He took one out and lit it.

Only then did the grim tension on Liu Tie's face ease a little.

He looked out the window.

At the dark, oppressive heart of the storm in the distance, a tornado stretched from the ground into the sky, filled with countless densely packed black dots.

Each black dot was attached to a thin cord whose other end extended into the sky.

They swayed like wind chimes in the tornado's violent winds.

Liu Tie knew what they were.

They were human corpses.

And in the Weird World, this mass of dark clouds and its endless rain had a name of its own.

"A natural disaster."

"What?"

"This is... a natural disaster."

At those words, Zhou Ping went rigid inside the modified off-road vehicle.

He looked behind the vehicle.

When he saw those black dots, fear crept onto his face.

"It really... it really is a natural disaster!"

"A natural disaster..."

Lin Xue stared out the window at the tornado hung with countless black dots.

A flicker of sorrow crossed her small, expressionless face.

Her hand clenched, though no one knew what she was thinking about.

Fan Shang, meanwhile, was utterly confused.

So he decided to ask.

"Captain Liu, what's a natural disaster?"

Liu Tie exhaled a mouthful of smoke.

He straightened his back. At some point, cold sweat had soaked it.

Only then did he speak.

"A natural disaster..."

"Shang, you can think of it as a kind of calamity."

"Think back. Did you notice anything wrong while you were in the vehicle earlier?"

"Wrong?"

Hearing that, Fan Shang thought of the sound of the rain.

It had made him feel relaxed. Not only that, he had even...

Let his guard down and actually... fallen asleep!

At that realization, alarm bells went off inside Fan Shang's head.

Impossible. This is absurd.

I actually let my guard down?

Letting his guard down in this hellhole was no different from courting death, yet he had done exactly that simply because he wanted to relax for a while.

And then there was the rain that had seemed to ease, when in reality it was still pouring down furiously.

Fan Shang hadn't thought much of it at first, but now that he considered it...

Something was wrong. Everything about it felt wrong.

Yet he hadn't noticed a thing at the time.

The thought sent a chill down Fan Shang's spine.

"Something's wrong. There's something very wrong with this rain and its sound!"

"Shang, looks like you've figured it out too."

"Yes, something was definitely wrong. I didn't notice at first either, but maybe a year's experience surviving in this hellhole saved me. After sleeping for a bit, I wanted to look out the window out of habit."

"But you know what? I actually didn't want to look!"

Liu Tie was still shaken as he spoke.

He lit another cigarette.

They had already left the danger zone.

So the convoy had slowed down, and he no longer needed both hands to drive.

"The moment I realized that, I knew something was wrong, you know?"

"Even when I'm in the middle of doing something, I almost always stop to take a look. But this time, I was actually too lazy to bother?!"

As he spoke, Liu Tie almost laughed at himself.

"So once I noticed that, I pulled myself together, sat up, and took a look."

"And guess what? A natural disaster. It was actually a natural disaster!"

"It's only been a little over a week, and we've run into another one!"

"A little over a week?"

Listening to Liu Tie, Fan Shang immediately noticed something off.

That timing...

"Yes, Shang, it's exactly what you're thinking. The last time we encountered a natural disaster was when you first entered this world."

"!"

Before Fan Shang could ask another question, Liu Tie spoke again.

"And the cause of a natural disaster is simple. Every time a part of our world is swallowed by the black tide, a natural disaster appears in this damned Weird World."

As he spoke, Liu Tie looked toward the distant tornado.

Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought he saw something move within the curtain of rain.

"Shang, do you see that waterspout? Those black dots on it are..."

"People, just like us."

Liu Tie spoke calmly.

As though he were discussing something perfectly ordinary.

But...

Hearing that, Fan Shang felt an indescribable chill crawl relentlessly up his back.

Those were... people just like them?

"And what caused all this wasn't some natural phenomenon. It was a weird entity!"

"This curtain of rain was created by the weird entity Rain Man, drawn here by a city newly engulfed by the black tide."

"When enough of them gather, this is what happens. And in the Weird World, we don't call this thing a weird entity anymore. We call it a natural disaster!"

Boom-!!

A pale flash of lightning suddenly cracked through the dark clouds.

Fan Shang stared toward the waterspout. In the instant that lightning flashed.

He thought he saw it.

In the middle of the waterspout.

There seemed to be a massive black silhouette.

Its densely crowded form was tall and thin, almost human, and it held an umbrella. Yet somehow, Fan Shang saw dozens of bulges around its neck.

As though dozens of human heads were growing from its body.

A chill spread from the soles of Fan Shang's feet through his entire body.