Chapter 315: A New World, A Lost Isolated City

A world, boundless to the eye, shrouded above its land by a grey mist like a sea of fog, appeared before him,

beneath wisps of light wind, the grey sea of fog churned ceaselessly, trailing threads of black, evoking an indescribable feeling, as if some terrifyingly enormous creature lurked below, thrashing about and stirring the fog-sea into motion.

Baichuan raised his gaze, straining to peer into the distant horizon—what was—

"Snap."

At that moment, a black shadow abruptly appeared and struck, and one of his avatars shattered in an instant.

Baichuan paid it no heed, controlling the sole remaining avatar and straining his focus toward that distant horizon—the next instant—

"Snap!"

The image vanished right after.

The scene before his eyes returned to the starry sky, darkness interspersed with specks of starlight, but Baichuan was still immersed in the image he had just witnessed; that scene seemed to have been etched into his heart and mind.

In that final moment, he saw it!

Rising from the endless sea of mist, a crystalline green presence that seemed as though it would pierce the boundary between heaven and earth!

Was that a great tree? Or a vine?

Baichuan could not tell, for that crystalline green was far too vast!

Within his current understanding, only the purple half-remnant star he had just seen could barely compare to it.

He could not distinguish at all where the vines ended and the tree began.

Added to that, the distance was far too great, hidden within the wind-whipped, surging mist.

But he thought, the Tongtian Jianmu of myth was probably no more than this,

from but a fleeting glimpse, he knew this was a world vast beyond his imagination,

bounded by star systems… no, judging from that hurried glance, where even straining his gaze he could not see its full extent, it might be larger than an entire star system!

In such a vast world, there should presumably exist powers at the Planet True Immortal LV6 level.

He just wondered what the situation was like on the land below?

It seemed he would have to try whether he could send an avatar into it.

Not only to rescue the little lizard, but also to find out why it had gotten trapped here; if he could not understand, he would likely find it very hard to leave normally, and beyond that, there might be a power within that could make him stronger.

After all, the larger the world, the stronger the power it possessed, and the greater the help it could bring him.

Of course, he did not plan to risk his true body; with the situation unclear, he had only one life, and that would be far too dangerous.

If he had no other options, such risk-taking would be understandable, but right now he was no longer in a state of having nothing, and his Bi'an body also needed to continue being strengthened; the abilities currently loaded were still too few, almost equivalent to a blank slate.

Musing over his next plans, Baichuan looked inward at the world within his body, drew out a few ordinary people who were on the verge of death or had just encountered life-threatening peril, along with some ordinary beasts or those just beginning to possess extraordinary power, and then took them out.

He wanted to check whether the black shadow's attack was because the aura on him was too special and he was being targeted, or whether it treated all living beings equally.

And now these ordinary people and beasts who were going to die anyway were "luckily" chosen as his pathfinders; without his intervention, they were going to die anyway, so going to scout might even give them a chance to survive.

After giving some of these ordinary people and beasts small Gold Fingers to distinguish them.

The next instant, under the familiar ripple, the water-surface opened once more.

Baichuan once again hurled an avatar along with these humans into it.

The familiar scene appeared once more; within less than two seconds of entering, the familiar black shadow struck again.

"Snap snap…"

Amid the continuous bursts of blood, in the final moment Baichuan saw that the black shadow only attacked him, as well as the ordinary people and beasts carrying the power he had given them, while those who carried nothing,

ordinary people and beasts who had nothing to do with him, were completely unaffected, plummeting straight down into the sea of clouds and mist below.

It seemed he was indeed being targeted.

Perhaps because of the aura of some ability, or perhaps he had truly been judged to be one of those Outer Realm Heavenly Demons.

Recalling the earlier changes, Baichuan slowly summarized.

But since those ordinary people and beasts could enter, it meant there were certain loopholes and mechanisms within.

As long as he kept researching, there would come a day when he thoroughly figured it out.

He hoped the little lizard could hold on a little longer.

……

Ten years later, still near the invisible water-surface.

The Bi'an, flickering with lightning, fixed its gaze on the object spinning nimbly in its claws—a Blood-colored Crystal, less than thirty meters across and looking plain and unadorned; with his current vision, he could not see it clearly without focusing.

But despite its small size, it gathered all of Baichuan's efforts over this period, intended as an invasion weapon to penetrate the world's interior!

Over the past ten years, he had tried every method he could think of, but unfortunately none had succeeded in invading.

Of course, that statement was not entirely accurate, because he had once successfully entered by attaching his Consciousness Projection to ordinary mortals and beasts.

But unfortunately, because the bodies of ordinary people and beasts were too weak, and he was a Consciousness Projection that brought along not a shred of power, very often he had just entered and landed on the ground when he encountered various crises and died.

Either, as a tiger, before he could even begin, he was accidentally stomped to death by some mysterious giant beast, or he was out in the wild and killed by various poisons, or he fell straight into a river and was swallowed in one gulp by a shadow beneath the water,

or he merely heard a tremendous roar and lost consciousness, or while walking, his vision would suddenly go black and he'd be gone,

he even recalled his first landing, because he forgot he carried no power at all, so during the fall he smashed into a puddle of flesh…

It was practically a compendium of a thousand ways Baichuan could die!

It also made him sigh involuntarily—was he just too unlucky, or did ordinary humans and creatures in that world live too miserably?

After so many attempts, he basically understood nothing about that world before dying.

The only gain so far was discovering that the southwest corner of the cloud sea below was somewhat safer than other places; of course, it was only a tiny bit safer—that world was far too dangerous and chaotic, and ordinary people or creatures without any power found it extremely hard to survive.

Beyond that, there was the Crystal condensed from the power of the blood worms, which relatively speaking would not suffer such heavy attacks.

This might be related to the fact that the blood worms' abilities were mostly mutually beneficial with the world, making the world more perfect—counting as the good side of the alignment spectrum?

But it was only a slight reduction in intensity; in the end, it was still a foreign object.

Of course, this was enough for him to try and see if he could grind out a relatively perfect opening.

Reflecting on his experiences during this period, Baichuan also let out a sigh, then gathered his focus and prepared once more to open a gap in the water's surface. This time he would no longer consider starting with ordinary animals or humans; he meant to see whether he could bring down even a little bit of support — even a single thread would do.

The very next instant, the water's surface split open, and Baichuan seized the chance to hurl the Blood-colored Crystal carrying his Consciousness Projection through it.

"Whoosh—!"

In an instant, the Blood-colored Crystal transformed into a small meteor trailing a bloody light, plummeting from the horizon.

Yet no sooner had the bloody meteor appeared than, the next moment, a terrifying black shadow came streaking in!

This mysterious shadowy entity — even after Baichuan had tried for ten whole years, he had never truly managed to make out its form; perhaps this was not something a mere Heavenly Venerable-level avatar could see clearly.

In only an instant, the black shadow swept through to above the meteor, about to smash straight through it.

But after dealing with it so many times, how could Baichuan have been without any preparation?

'I've been waiting for you all along!'

Baichuan roared inwardly. At the critical instant, a dark force was born within the bloody meteor, which then violently split into two halves. One half, borrowing this force, tilted and dodged aside, falling toward another direction — precisely the far western lower corner he had previously scouted out.

The remaining half of the crimson meteor, having evaded the black shadow's strike, continued to plummet downward.

Yet just as Baichuan thought he had dodged it, in less than five breaths, a tremendous roar like thunder boomed out.

A colossal shadow swept across the firmament like an eclipse, trailing an intense sonic boom, then clawed at the remaining half of the Blood-colored Crystal!

What was that?!

Never expecting such an unprecedented mishap at such an altitude, Baichuan had no time to dodge and could only face this terrifying claw strike head-on. In that instant, he went all out, squeezing out his very last ounce of strength.

The remaining half of the meteor split apart with a boom — but this time it was not splitting again. So be it if it were the black shadow, but did some nameless beast dare to bully him as well?

Rows upon rows of fang-like protrusions sprouted out, as if transforming into a great gaping maw—

Then it snapped viciously at the master of that shadow!

"Screeeech…"

A sharp scraping sound, like fingernails across glass, erupted, trailing a string of sparks.

"Crack—"

A strange, enormous boom rang out, stirring violent tremors in the air.

Immediately after, Baichuan felt that the fang-like portion of the Crystal to which his consciousness was attached seemed to have shattered once more, and the part carrying his consciousness appeared to have scraped something off, falling toward another unfamiliar direction.

And with the Crystal's successive shattering, it could no longer sustain Baichuan's consciousness in remaining awake. In his final moment, he could only see that, at some unknown point, a massive and incongruous deep pit had appeared upon the earth below.

From within that incongruous deep pit, a vast, unfamiliar city bristling with towering buildings slowly rose up from underground…

……

A rainy night,

"Plop—"

A pebble-sized Blood-colored Crystal rolled and tumbled along the eaves, finally coming to rest in a puddle by the roadside.

Before long, a tabby cat with slightly damp fur hopped over, took a curious look, and stuck out its tongue for a lick—

But the instant its tongue made contact, the Crystal vanished as if it had melted away!

"Meow?"

"Mimi, why are you running so fast?"

A petite figure, whose features were obscured by a full-body raincoat, ran over panting.

"Quick, get back into the bag…"

"Meow—"

"…How on earth did you get out of the bag… Big Brother should be waiting…"

On the rainy night, the petite figure gradually receded into the distance, and the voice mingled within wind and rain grew ever fainter.

……

Ping City.

Under a grey, hazy sky, the heavy rain hung like a curtain in unbroken sheets,

Much like Zhou Yun's mood.

"Squeak—"

The floorboards creaked and groaned, giving off a sharp, unpleasant sound that, within this somewhat empty and silent building, seemed all the more eerie.

It jolted Zhou Yun out of his reverie, his heart pounding furiously. He instinctively glanced toward the door outside, saw that it was still firmly locked, and then looked at his sister, who was hugging the kitten and curled up in a corner. She had likewise been scared half to death, clutching the little kitten tightly to her chest.

"Damn it, which little bastard is looking to die!"

"If you want to die, don't drag this old man along!"

Before he could speak, from the direction of the door, a burly man cursed and muttered a few lines in a voice that didn't match his image.

"S-sorry, sorry…"

A soft voice of apology sounded — it seemed to be a timid young man.

But Zhou Yun was no longer in the mood to pay it any attention.

He lowered his gaze, staring blankly at the coffee table before him.

That burly man's voice from outside the door — he recognized it.

Surnamed Li, given name Dazhuang, one of his housemates, normally hot-tempered and prone to throwing his weight around thanks to his broad, burly frame.

In the past, this burly man would have been cursing at the top of his lungs loud enough for the whole building to hear, but times had changed — this was now the fifth day Ping City had lost contact with the outside world.

Yes, lost contact!

They might no longer be in the world they had been in before!

They had transmigrated!

Before all this, who could have imagined such a theatrical scene befalling him.

He vaguely recalled, a month ago, a rather unusual piece of news he had happened to catch sight of:

The hottest short-video platform suddenly went viral with a clip: at night, half the sky on the horizon suddenly lit up a fiery red, followed by a violent rumble that made people panic, thinking it was a missile strike. Then the very next day, an old man made the news, claiming he had picked up a meteorite.

At first, no one paid it any mind, assuming it was just an ordinary small meteorite impact — until…

On the seventh day after that, a picture suddenly spread online — a picture of nothing but a giant deep crater, captioned: "Shocking! The city where the mysterious meteorite landed has vanished!"

It sparked a flood of discussion online. Back then, he too assumed it was fake.

But too bad — if only it really had been fake.

Unexpectedly, just one month after the meteorite landed, he discovered that his own city had also made the news with a meteorite impact. Then on the seventh night, a fog suddenly rolled in overnight, and a tremendous roar — like some kind of explosion — rang out. Immediately after, the entire internet went completely dead, cutting them off from the outside world!

And on the second day of being cut off, he saw, within the fog-shrouded city, one figure after another of every description beginning to drift through the streets — some human-sized, some as tall as skyscrapers.

They strolled leisurely through the city, yet had no effect on anything else around them, like phantoms that didn't exist.

Until someone cried out in alarm, claiming they had spotted them!

In an instant, disaster struck!

Those faint grey phantoms froze in place. Their eyes began to turn a blood-red, and a smile that split open to the corners of their mouths appeared as they lunged at each of the screamers.

In the blink of an eye, those strange phantoms sank into those people's bodies. Immediately after, their behavior began to turn bizarre — they attacked frantically anything that moved within their line of sight.

In just five days, five out of every seven living people in the entire city were gone in an instant!

At that point, the whole city collapsed!

If it weren't for the fact that these "possessed" 'people' behaved rather rigidly — most of them only lunged and attacked when they saw something moving or heard a loud noise — the rest of them would probably have died too.

However, even though they hadn't died for the moment, the situation they were in now was honestly not much better.

……

(End of Chapter)