Chapter 161: Revelation

Although Wu Chang's spirits were high, as if seizing an earthly divine kingdom were as easy as reaching into a bag, Irene was not as optimistic as he was.

Irene did not want to pour cold water on Wu Chang, but she felt it was her duty to bring him back to his senses. She sighed and said:

"Your idea is good, but unfortunately, I can only see the occult rituals arranged here; I don't know how to modify them."

As her grasp of emotions gradually improved, she discovered that being able to sense others' feelings not only failed to promote communication, but actually made communication more difficult.

Not wanting to disappoint Wu Chang too much, she added: "If it's just destroying the occult rituals here, I can do that easily."

Wu Chang looked at the hesitant Irene, a smile on his face. He could sense the change in her.

When you think about how your words might affect the other person before speaking, it means you care about them.

She has me in her heart.

He had already decided—if it was a boy, he'd be named Wu Wei; if a girl, Wu Shuang.

Just as Wu Chang was about to fast-forward to naming the child, Irene waved her hand in front of his face.

"Wu Chang, are you alright?"

Wu Chang shook his head, snapping back. "Sorry, I drifted off for a moment. Where were we? That we can't modify everyone in the earthly divine kingdom, right?"

Irene said: "Unless you can control the opposing occult master, or find an occult master who can help you."

Wu Chang shrugged and said: "This matter can only be known by you and me. There is absolutely no room for a third person."

The reason was simple—he wanted to keep all the spoils for himself.

An earthly divine kingdom like this might be his greatest trump card in the future. He would never allow anyone else to know about it, nor allow anyone else to touch it.

"You don't understand the occult, and neither do I, yet we have to alter a massive occult ritual. Doesn't that sound unreasonable?"

Seeing Irene nod, Wu Chang laughed and said: "What the gods do is miracle. Miracles are by definition impossible and unreasonable—and that's exactly right! The day the earthly divine kingdom is completed, everything will become reasonable."

"Let's continue searching for the next node. We must thoroughly map out their arrangement. Think of it as a dry run for the eventual transfer of ownership."

Irene looked at Wu Chang's hand holding hers. When her emotions had dipped earlier, Wu Chang had seized the moment to grab her hand, and he hadn't let go since.

"I'm fine now. You can let go."

Wu Chang shook his head in refusal and said: "Didn't you see when you were out shopping during the day? In my realm, when a man and a woman go out together, they have to hold hands like this. It's local custom—you need to learn to blend in."

Irene's brow furrowed slightly. She hadn't learned that part, but her intuition told her Wu Chang was talking nonsense. Still, when his hand had held hers, she had indeed felt a force from his palm—a force that put her at ease.

Since she didn't reject it, she didn't expose Wu Chang's lie.

Irene searched for traces of the occult ritual, determining the direction of the next node. The two walked out of Wenchang Hall hand in hand, like a couple about to take an exam, coming to make a wish.

"Irene, actually our realm has many different local customs. I think you should try them all. For example, in the western countries, the cheek-kissing greeting is popular. Every morning when you meet someone, you have to touch cheeks first."

"There's a country called Fajie, where they even have the kiss-on-the-cheek greeting—you kiss the other person's cheek. Their country also has a tradition called the French wet kiss. I suggest you try that too."

"Sigh, I'm talking to you about culture—what are you pulling out the Light of Fortitude for? Wait, don't smash it!"

The two spent an entire night, almost circling all of Wanghai City, and found twelve nodes of the earthly divine kingdom.

Wu Chang marked all twelve nodes with Reality Anchors. Every two nodes completed, he received an attribute reward.

He had thought he'd stumbled upon a great opportunity to grind attributes, but once the Reality Anchors exceeded nine, he stopped receiving display rewards. Even after completing the twelfth anchor, no new attribute reward appeared.

It seemed five attribute rewards was the cap for Class Advancement Quest One.

All five attribute rewards followed the pattern of deducting Life and increasing other physical attributes. In total, Life decreased by 8 points, while Strength increased by 7, Agility by 5, Endurance by 3, and Energy by 10.

No wonder players who hadn't undergone class advancement had combat power worlds apart. Especially players with hidden classes—even the worst hidden class was no weaker than the strongest ordinary class advancement.

Setting aside the strength the class itself brought, Class Advancement Quest One alone granted 17 attribute points. If the entire quest chain were completed, who knew how many extra attributes there would be.

No wonder facing Sword Heart, he had felt such a massive attribute gap—it all came down to class advancement.

The twelve ritual nodes were not all the nodes of the earthly divine kingdom. According to Irene, whether intentional or accidental, the player who arranged the ritual had not activated the most central part of the earthly divine kingdom ritual.

If the ritual nodes weren't operating, their locations couldn't be detected.

It seemed like a good way to hide nodes, but what needed to be understood was that modifying or destroying an occult ritual that hadn't been activated was far easier than modifying or destroying one that had been activated.

This situation fit exactly what Wu Chang had been hoping for.

The framework of the earthly divine kingdom was already built—equivalent to the house being constructed, the property deed already issued, just waiting for the owner's name to be written in and stamped.

Whose name went in as owner depended entirely on the mood of the one who arranged the ritual.

Was it that this was the other party's first time arranging an earthly divine kingdom, worried about problems, wanting to make thorough preparations before activating it all at once;

Or was it that the other party's faith wasn't devout, and they were playing the field, waiting for the highest bidder among several evil gods?

Wu Chang couldn't say which case it was. He only knew that, in his eyes, the owner's column would ultimately read Wu Chang and Irene.

What he cared about was whether to change the original plan.

Previously, he had planned to let Tang Renquan do as he wished, waiting until he pushed the earthly divine kingdom to the final step before stepping in to snatch it.

But the current situation seemed to allow him to ask Tang Renquan to exit early. He would take advantage of the chaos to search for the unactivated core node, and find a way to directly name Irene.

They had already marked all twelve ritual nodes on the map of Wanghai City, and based on those twelve nodes, had locked down the general area of the ritual core.

As long as he borrowed the Management Bureau to eliminate Tang Renquan's group, it would only take one night, two at most, for him and Irene to find the ritual core.

What he had to do next was wait for Night Song's next event, and based on the event, decide how to deal with Tang Renquan.

Ever since the Erosion Instance appeared, the atmosphere in Wanghai City had become extremely tense.

Although the Erosion Instance would alter people's cognition, making them forget what happened inside the Erosion Instance and making all unreasonable phenomena seem reasonable,

the impact the Erosion Instance had on people had already seeped deep into their spirits, and was far from easy to shake off.

The citizens of Wanghai City, especially those within the Erosion Instance's affected zones, began becoming sensitive, irritable, and quick to anger.

One could often see large crowds staring up at the sky at the same time, muttering something as if reciting a chant.

One could also see people getting angry for no reason—a casual "what are you looking at?" on the street could turn into an invitation to a duel.

For a time, Wanghai City's crime rate skyrocketed, road rage was everywhere, and the prayer/blessing business and gambling industry boomed.

Ordinary crimes were still manageable—at most brawls, nothing too chaotic.

But some highly inspired individuals or those severely affected by the Erosion Instance could no longer restrain their twisted spirits with their will—they had become extremely dangerous.

In the past week, the number of missing persons in Wanghai City has exceeded the total of the past five years.

Almost every day, five or six disappearances occur; some bodies are found quickly, others vanish without a trace—alive, no one sees them; dead, no one finds their bodies.

And this number is only the reported data.

Including undiscovered cases, the number of missing persons must at least double.

Simply handling these sudden, violent incidents has left all city police officers running nonstop, with no time to spare for ordinary brawls.

The lack of police force has further worsened public order, a trend that cannot be reversed in the short term; the phrase "good children must come home before dark" has been revived.

While ordinary police in Wanghai City are busy, members of the Administration are stretched thin—each one forced to serve as two.

Individuals corrupted by the Eroded Instance tend to mutate into monsters, gaining strength beyond ordinary humans; only the Administration can deal with such monsters.

The Administration's personnel must not only handle ordinary people affected by the Erosion, but also guard against players outside the Administration taking advantage of the chaos. The most typical example is Tang Renquan—while the lingering issues from the Eroded Instance remain unresolved, these rats hiding in the sewers have all scrambled out.

Wanghai City is not a famous large metropolis, and the number of local players is small; under these conditions, they are even busier than ordinary police officers.

Only Wu Chang was given no other assignment by the Administration—only to keep watch on Yegē Bar and uncover Tang Renquan's true purpose.

This allowed Tang Renquan to lie low for several days, during which Wu Chang could openly slack off; Zhao Yan, who had worked overtime all day, still had to tell him, "Good job."

There are 28 hours left until the scheduled time of Yegē's event.

Wu Chang, like a detective lying in wait in a movie, found a residence near Yegē Bar on Administration property and moved in temporarily.

On the room's balcony, a specialized surveillance telescope was set up, allowing him to easily observe activity at Yegē Bar's entrance without stepping outside.

On the coffee table beside the telescope sat donuts, red bean bread, and milk—the atmosphere was perfect.

Wu Chang himself sat beside the telescope, scrolling through his phone.

His phone played a short video, filmed three hundred kilometers away in Wanning City; the video was only fifteen seconds long, but its content was shocking enough.

The phone's camera shook violently, indicating it was handheld; the frame showed a thick piece of gray-yellow fog, churning within which giant black shadows could be faintly seen drifting.

!

The video's audio quality was poor: only strong wind noise and faint electrical static could be heard.

If the volume were turned up to maximum, a faint chanting could be detected amid the wind noise—ethereal and melodious, not human in origin, more like the call of some special creature.

"I—I don't know if I recorded it, or if you can hear it. It's calling me. It's lonely."

Four seconds into the video, the filmer's voice first appeared, laced with heavy panting; from the camera's shaking, it was clear the filmer was running toward the fog.

"It's calling me. I can't just leave it behind. Can you hear it? Its voice is getting closer! I—I see it!"

Amid the filmer's excited shouts, the video froze at the moment the fog began to engulf the lens.

As if something had broken free from the fog and charged toward the filmer.

This short video came from the A-level Eroded Instance in Wanning City.

Six hours ago, electromagnetic interference surrounding the Eroded Instance suddenly entered a thirty-minute lull; a flood of short videos recorded by survivors inside the Instance appeared across major video platforms.

Since most posting accounts were low-following small accounts, the review system was extremely lenient; within just two minutes, videos tagged with #Fog were automatically pushed to trending.

This shift was too rapid, catching the Administration off guard; even though they manipulated reviews to delete posts and later shut down servers of major video platforms for a short time, some videos slipped through, were saved, and spread widely.

The video Wu Chang watched was one of them—and the most widely disseminated.

Not only was it saved and shared, but a kind-hearted person renamed it "Turn Up the Volume and Listen to the Whisper of the Universe."

At first, people thought it was a prank, but soon, due to the correct way of viewing it, tens of thousands of viewers were influenced by the voice within the fog and prepared to travel to Wanning City, just like the video's filmer, to rush into the fog.

The most direct evidence: within one hour of the video's release, all high-speed trains and flights passing through Wanning City sold out.

Even after all public transportation to Wanning City was shut down, countless viewers driving private cars blocked highway entrances and stormed military checkpoints.

Due to the emergency, the Wanning City Administration branch has requested assistance from all surrounding branches.

As the nearest neighbor, nearly all of Wanghai Branch's top experts have been dispatched, including Jian Xing and Shi Ning.

Wanghai City is now, for the first time in history, utterly empty—perfect for something to emerge.

Wu Chang watched the fifteen-second video repeatedly, pausing and analyzing frame by frame, until in the final frame of the fog, he faintly saw a horn-shaped pattern.

That's it!

After becoming an Explorer, his clearance level in the Administration increased dramatically; many common-knowledge records could now be freely accessed without spending Decayed Silver Coins.

Among these freely accessible records, information on the Evil God believers mentioned three currently most active Evil God cults.

They were the Tranquil Sect, the Bliss Sect, and Revelation.

The Tranquil Sect needs no explanation—it's Wu Chang's old acquaintance, its emblem a crescent-shaped vertical pupil.

The Bliss Sect, second only to the Tranquil Sect in activity, preaches indulgence of desires, ecstatic pleasure, and sensing the perception world through the flesh; its emblem is a four-armed, four-legged human, resembling Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.

If pressed, Wu Chang had also encountered the Bliss Sect—the villagers of Briver Island in the Silent Town Instance worshipped the Ganzhi Sect, a branch of the Bliss Sect.

They too promoted unrestrained freedom and pleasure, but due to Ailin, they shifted from the extreme of indulging desire to the extreme of restraining desire.

The third of the three Evil God cults, Revelation, is a force Wu Chang has never yet encountered.

Revelation's emblem is a twisted horn.

They differ from the other two Evil God cults: they worship the Evil God not for wealth or power, nor to satisfy personal desires, but to save the world.

They believe the end of the world is imminent—that all life will perish in a great catastrophe—and that their deity will grant them the Revelation, a guide to the future world; following its instructions, they will lead their followers through the apocalypse into a radiant future.

Revelation sounds selfless and pure in purpose—but the more pure it seems, the more convinced they are of their own righteousness, and the more certain they are that great deeds require no scruples.

They believe everything they destroy is a necessary sacrifice to welcome the light.

Precisely because of this, these fanatical madmen act with even less restraint than the other two sects, causing greater harm.

The A-level Eroded Instance in Wanning City is so difficult to handle precisely because of Revelation's involvement.

Any matter, once touched by these three groups, becomes extraordinarily troublesome.

Wu Chang put down his phone and continued watching Yegē Bar.

Unfortunately, Yegē Bar remained closed all day; until just before the scheduled time, he still saw no useful information.

At 9:30 p. m., Wu Chang's phone vibrated; he unlocked the screen and saw the pinned announcement updated in the Yegē chat group.

The announcement listed only one location: Cuihu Park, Haiyang Square in the Peace Zone.

Wu Chang raised an eyebrow—he knew this place well; one of the twelve surface Divine Kingdom ritual nodes he had surveyed last night was precisely at this location.

Moreover, Haiyang Square directly opposed Wenchang Hall, north and south, forming two major nodes.

Last night, he and Ailin had speculated that if the next event was set at Haiyang Square, it meant the other side could no longer wait and would soon perform the surface Divine Kingdom ritual.

He swallowed the transformation pill, hailed a taxi, and headed straight for Haiyang Square.

When he arrived, a third of the group had already reached the scene; they stared dazedly at the statue in the center of Haiyang Square, unconsciously whispering their wishes.

Haiyang Square was once the Dream Square from the corrupted Instance; after the corrupted Instance was broken, it did not vanish but merged with Wanghai City.

Residual traces of the Great Miracle's power still lingered here; influenced by the corrupted Instance, citizens who had visited the Dream Square would come here and unconsciously murmur their wishes.

Precisely because of this, Tang Renquan and others had selected it as one of the key core locations.

They did not wait long before they saw the manager of Yage Bar arrive with the Pilot Band; from their demeanor, it seemed they intended to hold an open-air concert here.

Unlike at Yage Bar, the manager was not wearing a conspicuous suit but a rather classical formal gown; behind him, the bar staff no longer wore bold leather jackets but instead donned gowns of the same style.

Their arrival lent an air of solemnity and sanctity to what should have been a passionate, wild open-air party.

This style was strikingly novel; many regular patrons of the bar immediately gathered around, asking where the gowns had been custom-made.

The bar manager smiled without answering, merely saying he would send everyone details later.

Compared to the uniquely styled gowns of the bar group, Wu Chang was more interested in the embroidery on their sleeves.

Every bar employee, including the servers, had a twisted horn embroidered on their sleeve cuffs.

(End of Chapter)