The mirage could not show nighttime scenes.
The "big-budget TV drama" had come to a temporary halt.
But the people in the shelters were all in high spirits, thoroughly satisfied with today's episode.
Those enormous crab legs would be enough for several hearty meals.
The young man stranded on the island was doing pretty well for himself.
"Crabs from the Mysterious Zone must be really chewy! I wonder how they taste compared to hairy crabs?"
At the Yunhai Shelter, Wang Fumin took his boxed dinner and opened it contentedly, releasing a cloud of steam. The mass-produced shelter food did not taste particularly good, but at least it filled his stomach.
He pushed half the meat in his dinner into his daughter's little bowl.
Before long, the little girl had grease all around her mouth. "Daddy, I wanna eat crab too!" she mumbled.
"I'll buy you some once I earn some money."
"Your mom will be back tomorrow, and Daddy has to go do volunteer work. Be a good girl while you stay here with her, okay?"
Wang Fumin picked through his dinner with his chopsticks. His daughter had been a picky eater before, refusing this and that. But her tastes had changed in just a few days. In this godforsaken place, snacks were out of the question. When she was hungry, anything tasted good.
"Our guy found himself some food."
"Guess what happened in Mysterious Zone No. 7. Go on, guess!" Lu Tuyu, his sparring partner from the other side of the wall, sidled over furtively.
With a smug look, he pulled out a piece of dried tangerine peel candy and handed it to the little girl.
"Thank you, mister!" The little girl smiled happily.
What happened in Mirage No. 7 had been far too horrifying. Partway through the broadcast, planes seeding rain clouds had dispersed it. Changing the moisture in the air was enough to make a mirage disappear.
For the sake of social stability, the government did not want people seeing anything too bizarre.
"What happened?" Fatty Wang asked.
"They're almost wiped out!"
"Huh? Seriously?" Wang Fumin was astonished. "Those Japanese guys are done for, just like that?"
"They really are almost wiped out!"
The Special Affairs Processing Department.
When Li Xianfeng saw that Zhang Ming had found crab legs, he breathed a sigh of relief, only for his nerves to tighten again.
Almost all his colleagues were in the office, staring intently at a large screen. In the silence, all they could hear were their own heartbeats and heavy breathing.
Inside Mirage No. 7, the situation was hanging by a thread!
"The Fusang people missed their chance. The monsters are going to kill them all."
His voice dry and hoarse, Li Xianfeng said heavily, "They probably wanted to wait for that thing to eat its fill and leave. But they never expected it to reproduce so quickly!"
There were fish in the Mysterious Zone too. The deep-sea fishing vessel would not run out of food anytime soon; energy was what it lacked.
So when the blue jellyfish devoured the fish, the crew did nothing.
They chose what seemed like a safer approach: hiding in the cabins and watching.
They wanted to wait for the blue jellyfish to eat its fill and leave on its own.
But they never expected the jellyfish to behave like a cell, splitting in two once it was full and multiplying rapidly!
When it first split in two, they hid in the cabins and watched.
When two became four, they tried to force the foreign laborers to attack.
But the team had never been particularly united. There was no way they would risk their lives fighting monsters. Instead, another round of infighting broke out.
They were no good at fighting monsters, but they were quite capable of fighting their own people.
Later, when the four blue jellyfish became eight and began corroding the deck and invading the cabins, the crew finally could not stand it anymore.
To deal with pirates and other emergencies, they had equipped the vessel with large water cannons, as well as explosives for blast fishing, so they did have a few options.
But the actual battle was entirely one-sided. It was not that human weapons were ineffective. Rather... their nerve broke.
The jellyfish's tentacles were highly venomous. Even the slightest touch would leave a person paralyzed on the spot.
They were also exceptionally mobile, moving at roughly nine meters per second.
Facing eight jellyfish surging toward them, about five people died, while harpoons and explosives killed three of the jellyfish.
At that casualty ratio, they could wipe out all the monsters at the cost of fifteen lives.
But some of the crew could not withstand their fear and began to flee. This quickly triggered a chain reaction, and more and more people ran.
In the end, everyone fled!
Their chance slipped away like that, little by little. Once the jellyfish reproduced again, the humans would have no chance left.
Like a silent film, the mirage cruelly revealed the total annihilation awaiting Mysterious Zone No. 7.
"This is the deserter effect. When one person runs, everyone wants to run. But if everyone flees and no one fights, they all end up dead. That's why deserters on the battlefield are shot on sight."
His heart pounding, Li Xianfeng watched the blue jellyfish search for humans, devour their corpses, and slowly multiply.
Everyone forced themselves to keep watching the large screen.
"Is there anything that can multiply this fast?"
"Bacteria, maybe... mushrooms might manage it too. But this thing is clearly a large organism."
"If it invaded the human world, could we hold it off?"
"We should be all right here. The Third World might be in trouble." That thought made their scalps prickle even more. If these things multiplied into hundreds of millions, or billions, then it would truly be...
When the jellyfish rapidly multiplied again, reaching twenty, the entire team was beyond saving.
The last survivor was the man with the invisibility ability.
But activating invisibility probably came with limits involving stamina, mental energy, and the like. After hiding for more than two hours, he finally exhausted himself and fell out of invisibility. The blue jellyfish found him, paralyzed him, and devoured him.
Mysterious Zone No. 7, day three: total annihilation!
They had made so many mistakes it was almost laughable, but it had already happened.
Before Li Xianfeng could go over their annihilation again, the telephone suddenly rang.
"All right, all right... I understand."
"Zhang Ming is doing well. He's physically and mentally healthy. Please don't worry."
After finishing the call, Li Xianfeng's expression shifted back and forth, and he almost stopped breathing.
An indescribable heaviness welled up inside him, shaking his entire view of the world!
There were plenty of staff in the room, but the air felt cold enough to freeze. No one spoke. No one discussed anything. Even the clacking of keyboards had stopped.
Just now,
They had received news of something that happened only a minute earlier.
Mount Fuji had erupted!
Fusang had suffered devastating casualties!
Mysterious Zone No. 7 had just been wiped out, and Mount Fuji had immediately erupted. What... what did that mean?
Was it coincidence, or some kind of inevitability?
Did gods really exist in this world?
Or was this some supernatural phenomenon humanity did not understand?
What did the sixteen Mysterious Zone teams represent?
Who would be wiped out next?
Before you continue