The wilderness was silent, the sky like a curtain of night.
The howling wind swallowed the sounds of their hurried footsteps.
It was not even two in the afternoon, yet their surroundings resembled a sharply defined stretch of night. The Safe Zone behind them had already merged with the darkness.
The buildings looked like gravestones enclosed within walls, their occasional flickering lights as faint as ghost fires. A gradient of darkness surrounded them on every side.
With Aroro on his back, He Zheng followed close behind Ye Lin, glancing left and right from time to time.
Fortunately, they all had enhancements, so the faint light was just enough for them to make out where they were going.
Whether it was the low temperature or his own imagination, he felt a growing unease.
"Hey, Lin Yu, do you know what a celestial crisis is?"
"What the hell is blocking the sun? I was thinking, could we start with that if we want to complete the question?"
As they ran, He Zheng could not help looking up at the sun, tossing questions at Lin Yu between strides.
For some reason, Ye Lin seemed to be studying something. He had not spoken the entire way.
"A celestial... crisis?"
Lin Yu was struggling to keep up and took a breath.
"Sorry, He Zheng. This is my first time encountering a setting like this, too."
"But my guess is that whatever's blocking the sun probably isn't a star or anything like that. We... we've been here for quite a while now, but the sun has looked like this the whole time."
"We suspected a solar eclipse at first. When the moon moves directly between the sun and Earth, it briefly blocks the sun. But then we realized that whatever was blocking it wasn't moving, so