Chapter 37: They Found Us

Upon arriving in Ark Country and before stepping into the United Nations meeting, Yang Yi was in good spirits.

Because just now, Chris said he had already taken a private plane to Xincheng.

Why would he, who was on vacation resting at home, rush all the way to Xincheng? Without a doubt, it was for her, to see her.

This feeling of being missed was truly wonderful; a tiny expectation sprouted quietly in her heart like a tender bud. She took out her phone from time to time to check the messages he had sent, and her mood remained pleasant until the meeting began.

After the United Nations was bombed, they were urgently constructing a new United Nations building. Now the meeting was being held at the Kondra International Hotel; the United Nations had booked the entire hotel in advance. Learning from past experience, police now guarded the hotel inside and out in layers.

"Yang Yi!" Helen Beck waved from afar. Before Yang Yi could approach, she stepped forward a few paces to meet her. "It is so good to see you again. Last time we parted in haste; we never asked how you got out."

Yang Yi's joy instantly vanished. The heavy, stagnant atmosphere of the Misty Town otherworldly space seemed to cling to her nostrils. "You have embarked on an inevitable path," a voice from the void seemed to say.

How did she get out? Her thoughts returned to that day. Actually, it was simple. After she absorbed the Life Source, she gained some control over that otherworldly space. The unfamiliar place suddenly felt familiar, as if she had seen it somewhere before. She even smoothly grasped the fluctuation of that sliver of spatial rift and forcibly reopened it, returning to Earth.

"The spatial rift hadn't closed completely yet. I forcibly transmitted back; I almost died." Yang Yi forced a polite, courteous smile onto her face.

Helen said enviously, "When we came through, the rift had almost closed. You actually managed to forcibly open it..." She turned and shouted, "Daniel, come quickly, Yang Yi is here!"

Daniel Davis walked over from the crowd. His height was extremely conspicuous, reaching 190. When he heard Helen's shout, his gaze immediately locked onto Yang Yi, and a smile slowly appeared on his previously expressionless face.

"Hi—" He walked up to Yang Yi and asked with concern, "Do you feel better?"

"What?" Yang Yi was puzzled by his greeting.

Seeing Yang Yi's reaction, Daniel explained somewhat awkwardly, "It's just... last time inside the otherworldly space, your condition didn't look very good..." He still remembered how, at that time, her hands had gripped him like pincers, almost crushing him in pain. Her angry, hateful, hoarse roar seemed to be desperately suppressing something, distorting her delicate features.

He still remembered! Why did he remember these things? Had he discovered something?

A sudden chill ran down Yang Yi's back; an uncontrollable panic seized her.

What was his purpose in asking me? Testing? Could he see the Life Source? Before being thrown out of the rift, did he see that Life Source merge into my body?

No! No! No! He couldn't see it. If he could, they wouldn't have acted that way before. She tried hard to recall their behavior when they first entered the otherworldly space, recalling how they struggled desperately before the altar. Perhaps he was just asking incidentally, not testing her?

"I told you long ago, killing them would have cut off the trouble forever; there wouldn't be so many problems! It's your own indecisiveness; it's all because of your cowardice! Coward!" It screamed, hating that iron wouldn't turn into steel.

Yang Yi ignored it. She just looked seriously at Daniel, trying to discern his true intentions from his face.

Under Yang Yi's gaze, Daniel gradually became uneasy. He straightened his body, straightened his back, and even paid a little attention to whether his attire was appropriate. "What's wrong... is there something wrong with me?" He coughed and asked in a low voice.

Yang Yi found no threat in him as she had expected. Daniel's awkwardness and unease gradually relaxed her tense heart, and she felt regret for her own overreaction just now.

"Nothing." Yang Yi moved her muscles, forcing a smile: "Why? Why didn't you leave me behind back then? You know, at that time the rift was about to close immediately; you might really have never been able to return to Earth."

Daniel shrugged. "Before I awakened, I was a firefighter. We never leave any comrade behind."

This reason convinced Yang Yi well, resolving her doubts, and at the same time it made her feel some admiration for him. After all, not abandoning comrades even at the critical moment of life and death was a quality she wasn't sure she could achieve herself.

And for things she couldn't do but others could, she was often very admiring.

Helen watched them talking nearby, lost in thought.

In the center of the conference hall was a huge holographic projection. Camps from various countries sat around the center; the five permanent members naturally sat closest to the front. Reporters were all in a designated area. As soon as Yang Yi entered, the camera flashes formed a continuous sheet.

Even though she had already experienced this, Yang Yi still wasn't quite used to such a situation where everyone's eyes were on her. She walked quickly to the seat with her nameplate, sat down, lowered her head pretending to read materials, and covered her face in the process.

The meeting content had nothing new; it was almost the same as when she was in Xia Country: investigating whether the various planetary doomsdays they had seen were real, and if so, how to respond? Was Earth's doomsday method the arrival of dark matter or the invasion of alien creatures? And that various official governments should be vigilant against anti-human organizations like Vede, and vigilant against the opposition between ordinary humans and awakened ones...

"News received last night: The International Awakened Alliance Mobile Unit, Eagle Squad, discovered a spatial rift in the Buffalo City of Cape Province, Rainbow Country, Africa, and found a new altar within it." Jefferson Webb, Chairman of the International Awakened Alliance, said. Instantly, the conference hall fell silent; everyone looked at the holographic projection in the center of the hall.

This video was obviously shot in a hurry; the camera kept shaking, and the flashlight beam trembled constantly. But Yang Yi still saw the familiar patterns on the altar at a glance.

Coldness spread from her tailbone all the way up her spine. Since the Fire Demon incident, an invisible sword seemed to have been hanging over her head, and today that sword had fallen a bit lower. The sharp, biting cold of the blade made her hair stand on end.

She focused intently on the altar in the projection, searching for that ancient stone chair, but it was empty; there was nothing there. Perhaps, through the lens, the stone chair simply couldn't be seen. She thought calmly, this altar was exactly what Daniel and the others had seen in Misty Town.

"Eagle Squad risked entering it and discovered numerous corpses, all local missing civilians. Preliminary calculation puts the number at over seven thousand." Jefferson Webb paused in his tone here. "Their manner of death was the same as everyone in the Misty Town in Brazil; they all died completely dried up."

The camera swept over the layers of dried corpses on the ground. They surrounded the altar, heads facing the altar, prostrate on the ground like petals surrounding the flower's center.

Yang Yi clenched her fists tightly. The figure of the little boy in the red T-shirt somehow floated into her mind. Except for that nightmare right after she returned, she had almost deliberately forgotten that scene during this period.

"Quick! Quick! Leave here! The rift is starting to become unstable..." Someone shouted in the video. Then the camera shook and plunged into darkness.

Daniel and Helen exchanged a glance, and almost simultaneously turned to look at Yang Yi. Jane York of Canada and Hamid Ansari of India also exchanged glances with each other. Fear of what had happened showed in their eyes.

"... They found us..."

"Who found us?" Yang Yi, feeling irritable, asked impatiently. Then she immediately realized it wasn't "it" speaking, but "It".

At the same moment she realized this, an extreme hunger surged instantly within her body, almost making her collapse to the ground.