A Trap in the Depths of the Mist, the Reverse Robbery Begins

Deep in Mist Canyon, the concentration of dark matter pollution had soared to 60%.

The trees here had withered completely, turning an eerie, deathly white. Black flakes visible to the naked eye floated in the air, and a single breath made the lungs sting as if they were on fire.

If ordinary third-year high school students came this far, they wouldn't need exotic beasts to attack them. The pollution alone was concentrated enough to make their divine kingdoms collapse and drive them insane.

Yet Su Bai and his two companions walked on with unusual ease.

A battered red paper umbrella, stained with blood, floated above their heads.

It was a "low-grade Anomaly item" Su Bai had hastily cobbled together in the Forbidden Hospital using the bones and resentment of a few mercenaries.

The red paper umbrella gave off an intensely frigid aura of resentment, forcibly carving out a vacuum with a five-meter radius around them and keeping all the dark matter pollution outside.

"Brother Bai, your umbrella... is kind of creepy." Lin Que hunched his shoulders, his skin crawling as he watched dark red liquid drip from the handle from time to time.

"Creepy beats being polluted into an idiot," Su Bai replied casually, his eyes fixed on the path ahead.

According to the captured map, the nearest "diversion array" node was in an abandoned mine pit less than a kilometer ahead.

Along the way, they saw quite a few students' corpses.

Some had been gnawed to pieces by exotic beasts, while others had been killed with a single slash, clearly at the hands of mercenaries.

Shen Yueli's expression grew colder and colder. Though she was usually aloof, the sight of so many schoolmates dying horrible deaths kindled a blazing fury in her heart.

"There's movement up ahead." Su Bai suddenly stopped and raised a finger to his lips.

The three immediately softened their footsteps and, under cover of the mist, crept to the edge of the abandoned mine pit.

Peering over, they saw a group of people at the bottom.

A dozen or so vicious-looking members of the Blood Wolf Mercenary Corps were herding around twenty students in Linhai No. 3 Middle School uniforms toward the center of the pit like ducks.

Most of the students were injured. Some were even weeping softly, their faces full of despair.

A huge six-pointed star array had been drawn in the center of the pit with some kind of dark red pigment. A bone pillar radiating an eerie black light stood at each of its six points.

A man with a cross-shaped scar on his face stood in the middle of the array, watching the students coldly.

His name was Poison Wolf, the deputy commander of the Blood Wolf Mercenary Corps and the supreme commander of this operation—a beginner third-tier False God!

"Boss Poison Wolf, this batch of 'sacrifices' is good quality. They're all students from the elite class, and their divine power is very pure," a mercenary reported ingratiatingly.

Poison Wolf nodded, his voice as raspy as something rubbing against sandpaper.

"It's about time. Drive them into the array and slit their wrists. Use their divine power and life force to activate the diversion array at this node."

"Once the arrays at all four nodes are activated, the Mist Lord will awaken. When that happens, everything in this secret realm will be reduced to nothing. The task the Gu Family gave us will be complete."

When they heard they were going to be bled, the students broke down at once.

"No! Please, let us go! My dad is the richest man in Linhai City. As long as you let me go, I'll give you as much money as you want!" A chubby boy knelt on the ground, kowtowing frantically.

"Noisy." A flicker of impatience passed through Poison Wolf's eyes.

With a casual wave of his hand, an invisible wind blade flashed past. The fat boy's head flew off, and blood gushed out, splattering across the array.

The array absorbed the blood and erupted with an even more piercing black light.

"Ah!!!" The students screamed in terror and tried desperately to flee, but the mercenaries around them held them down and dragged them toward the array.

On the cliff.

Shen Yueli gripped her staff tightly, her knuckles white.

"We can't wait any longer, Su Bai. We have to step in and save them!"

Shen Yueli was just about to rise when Su Bai grabbed her shoulder and held her down.

"Don't rush, class monitor. If you charge down there now, can you beat that third-tier Poison Wolf?" Su Bai said calmly.

"Are we supposed to just stand by and watch them die?" Shen Yueli grew anxious.

"Of course not." Su Bai looked down at the arrogant mercenaries below, an old fox's smile curling his lips.

"Rescuing people takes strategy too. We're not just going to save them; we're going to claim the fruits of their labor for ourselves."

Su Bai pointed at the array flashing with black light in the center of the pit.

"See that array? It was set up using high-grade contaminated materials. The energy it contains is a great tonic."

Su Bai turned to Lin Que and Shen Yueli.

"Fatty, class monitor. I'll go down and draw their attention in a moment. You two stay here and act when you see an opportunity."

"Brother Bai, you're going down alone? That's a third-tier expert and more than a dozen second-tiers!" Lin Que turned pale with fright.

"Relax. What I'm best at is a group beating."

Su Bai patted Lin Que on the shoulder, then stood up and took a deep breath.

"System, bring out my big treasure."

At the bottom of the pit.

Poison Wolf was about to order the rest of the students bled.

Suddenly.

"Screech-!!!"

An ear-splitting screech of brakes, so piercing it seemed capable of tearing apart a person's soul, exploded above the pit without warning!

The sound came so suddenly, so eerily.

Not only the students, but even Poison Wolf and the dozen or so mercenaries felt their heads buzz and their hearts clench.

"What was that?!" Poison Wolf snapped his head up and looked toward the top of the cliff.

Rumble-!!!

Amid the deafening roar of an engine, a huge, battered black bus flickering with ghostly green flames actually soared off the top of the cliff and hurtled toward the bottom of the pit with crushing force!

Boom!!!

The Midnight School Bus slammed into the ground, the massive impact sending several nearby mercenaries flying.

The wheels scraped two trails of dark red sparks across the ground before the bus came to a steady stop between Poison Wolf and the diversion array.

Deathly silence fell over everyone.

They all stared wide-eyed at the hearse that looked as if it had driven straight out of hell, unable to believe what they were seeing.

The bloodstains on its body that could never be wiped clean, the ghostly green flames burning in its headlights, and the faint, bloodcurdling roars of evil spirits coming from inside the bus.

Every detail set the nerves of everyone present on edge.

"Wh-what the hell is that?!" A mercenary stumbled back in terror, barely able to hold on to his weapon.

Poison Wolf's pupils also contracted sharply.

As a third-tier False God, he had seen plenty, but he swore he had never in his life seen such an eerie vehicle radiating an aura of pure death and rules!

Just as everyone was staring in shock and suspicion.

"Hiss-"

The school bus's dented door slowly slid open to both sides with a piercing hiss of air escaping from its valves.

A foot wearing a clean Warrior sneaker stepped out of the bus.

Then a young man in a Linhai No. 3 Middle School uniform strolled off the bus, his hands in his pockets and a lollipop in his mouth.

Standing in front of the vicious-looking mercenaries, he looked like a passerby who had wandered onto the wrong film set.

"Everyone, holding a cult ritual out here in the middle of the night?"

Su Bai spat out the lollipop stick and looked around with a smile.

"Let me introduce myself. I'm Su Bai, a driver for the Didi ghost-hailing car service."

"I heard you've been looking for me everywhere? Sorry, traffic held me up, so I'm late."

At the name "Su Bai," Poison Wolf froze for a moment, then his eyes blazed with wild delight.

"You're Su Bai?! Hahaha! I've worn out iron shoes searching for you and found nothing! I was just worrying about how to find you, and you've actually driven this clunker right to my door!"

Poison Wolf burst out laughing, paying Su Bai no heed at all.

In his view, the bus might be strange, but Su Bai himself was just a high school student. How capable could he be?

"Brothers! Leave those useless students! Take this brat down! We'll split the ten-million bounty evenly!" Poison Wolf roared.

The dozen or so second-tier mercenaries immediately abandoned the students and summoned their respective dependents, pouncing on Su Bai like wolves and tigers.

Surrounded and attacked by more than a dozen experts, Su Bai didn't even blink.

He merely took a step back, returning to the step at the school bus's door.

Then he reached out and gently patted the school bus's metal body.

"Passengers, don't rush. Line up and board one at a time."

"School bus, pick up the passengers!"

Vroom-!!!

As Su Bai's words fell, the Midnight School Bus's core rule erupted instantly!