Disaster Descended

Li Xianfeng was drenched in sweat, his mind racing as he tried to regain control of his body. But the eerie "hee-hee" laughter only grew louder, filling the minds of everyone in the room.

Little by little.

His body began to disobey him, trying to perform the same dance as the fishermen.

Everyone else in the room began making the same movements.

Just then, however, the mirage suddenly blurred, finally dissolving into an indistinct, mosaic-like pattern.

As the image became impossible to make out, the eerie "hee-hee" laughter in their minds vanished.

Li Xianfeng emerged from his daze and regained his senses. His heart hammered as though it would burst straight out of his chest, and huge beads of sweat soaked his clothes.

"Did you... did you hear that laughter just now?"

He realized his voice was terribly hoarse.

"Yes. I couldn't control my body at all. It started moving on its own."

"I practically stopped thinking. There was nothing but confusion and fear."

"But when the mirage blurred... we... seemed to be protected."

The experts gasped for breath, looking at one another with their hearts still pounding.

The bizarre scene lay completely beyond human comprehension.

Li Xianfeng wiped the sweat from his forehead, deeply worried. Hundreds of millions of people around the world might have witnessed what had just happened!

The panic it caused could be immeasurable!

Human civilization was, in fact, built on "expectations." Humanity had survived as a collective through faith that this life, the next life, and the lives of future generations would eventually improve.

This was the foundation of humanity's ability to organize, and the main reason an army with convictions could cross countless mountains and rivers, while a corrupt, degenerate force crumbled at the first blow.

If humanity lost those hopeful expectations, if people knew destruction was inevitable in the foreseeable future, and that even their descendants and their next lives would not be spared, humanity would collapse at once.

"Thank goodness the mirage blurred in time. Is there really... some unseen deity?"

What exactly were these mirages?

Were they truly meant to bring humanity revelations?

Li Xianfeng swallowed, gathered his courage, and once again looked at the mosaic-like image of Mirage 15.

The dozen or so fishermen kept flailing their limbs and twisting their bodies. There was no enemy, no external disaster. They had simply gone mad without warning.

Perhaps it was excessive tension, or perhaps bewildered fear of the unknown, but the room was deathly silent. The researchers were all drenched in cold sweat, yet their professional dedication drove them to keep analyzing everything they had just witnessed.

"Did any of you spot an unidentified life-form in the footage? Or could there be some kind of parasite?"

"So far... no."

"Zone 15 was attacked by this laughter, wasn't it? They're probably done for."

"How are we supposed to avoid the risks of looking directly at a mirage? There could be plenty of dangers like this in the Mysterious Zones."

The fishermen writhed for half an hour before finally exhausting all their strength. One by one, they fell to the ground, rolling about like oversized maggots.

Slowly, ever so slowly, they wriggled into the jungle.

The soundless mirage was like a horror film on mute.

In this age of information overload, the horror of these images was actually tolerable. The world had plenty of more frightening, man-made horrors.

But remembering that this had really happened, combined with that eerie laughter just now... made it difficult for the humans sheltering on Earth to accept.

And then there were the potentially grave consequences once every survivor in Mysterious Zone 15 died...

Li Xianfeng wiped his forehead and said quietly, "These people are from Great Ang, right? Even if they die..."

"They are indeed from over in Europe... As for whether there'll be any effects, we have no way of knowing."

Li Xianfeng began making one phone call after another, preparing for any disaster that might strike.

Everywhere around the globe where a mirage had appeared had been affected by the "laughter."

He had no idea what misfortune humanity was about to face. He only felt as though an unknown fate had seized his heart in a vicious grip.

The weight of it left him struggling to breathe.

Beginning with shaping clay, humanity had come to recognize its extraordinary ability to create all things. Birth was like the shining of light, death like the descent of night. From understanding the world to understanding themselves, humans had paid far, far too much.

But now, everything had been torn down, forcing them to start over.

The reason humanity took such pride in was worthless before the unknown.

Another ten minutes passed, and news of the disaster...

Really arrived!

It really had come from Great Ang!

Satellites overhead had detected seismic data.

The experts talked over one another as they worked out a series of chain reactions, their faces all grim.

"In the Great Britain region of Europe, the North Sea oil fields have been struck by a powerful magnitude 9.7 earthquake. The geological strata have sustained severe damage, and enormous quantities of oil have leaked into the ocean."

"From the North Sea gas fields, approximately six hundred billion to one and a half trillion cubic meters of natural gas, along with various toxic gases, could escape into the atmosphere. The methane released in this incident is one thousand to two thousand times the amount from the Nord Stream pipeline leak."

Li Xianfeng trembled all over. "What are the consequences? How will this affect us?!"

The gray-haired expert swallowed and explained without hesitation, "Methane's greenhouse effect is a hundred and twenty times that of carbon dioxide. As earthquakes become more frequent, more and more methane will leak out. Global warming is now inevitable. The polar ice caps will melt faster, and sea levels will rise sixty meters over the next ten years."

The atmosphere in the office turned cold.

A sixty-meter rise in sea levels meant the world's wealthiest coastal cities would be completely submerged.

Great Xia, naturally... had no chance of being spared!

The expert continued, "Put it this way: our eastern regions will become a vast ocean. Shandong's terrain is unusual, so it will become two islands. At that point, Shenzhen will be the only one of our first-tier cities to survive. The loss of huge swathes of the east will affect not only our economic development, but also our food supply. Rice will become a luxury. Everyone had better prepare to live on sweet potatoes and potatoes."

"Inland Soviet Russia will experience blizzards, with snow potentially piling up more than ten meters deep. The eastern United States and other regions will be ravaged by hurricanes and tsunamis, while other areas will become uninhabited deserts."

Someone abruptly asked, "Can the wor-

"-ld still feed this many people?"

Only after a long while did someone answer, "It'll be difficult. Very difficult."

"If it can't feed them, then the population will have to be eliminated."

A breath caught in Li Xianfeng's chest. Suddenly, he could not say a word.

Humanity's great dignity had been defeated by this disaster.

The apocalypse had descended without a sound.

Now, anyone who genuinely believed that "humanity could rest easy as long as it had nuclear weapons" could only be called hopelessly naive.

Nuclear weapons might well be used in wars against their own kind.

He could only clench his fists. Beyond silently cursing this damned era, there was nothing he could do. All the strength in his body drained away at once.

He turned to glance at Mirage 16. Zhang Ming was still happily laying crab meat out to dry on the beach, brimming with energy.

Without realizing it, he felt a trace of courage return.

"He survived even in such miserable conditions."

"We're just facing a little more difficulty. There's no reason to lose hope."