Chapter 362

The Primordial Sacrifice Altar.

Wei Shan's series of actions within the small world were closely monitored by Qi Sheng throughout.

If successful, this would undoubtedly add a brand-new school to the player faction's system: the Summoning School.

Observing the entire process, progress had been extremely smooth.

However, the taxation process could not be omitted.

Just as with the "Principal," the president of the Kindergarten Society, who cultivated the Darkblood Legion, Qi Sheng would also take a 30% cut of the faith power gained during the process into his own coffer.

The same applied to Wei Shan's side.

Even though Wei Shan's plan was currently still in its initial stage of development.

Whether through the Nightmare Trial scenarios or subsequent fright points obtained from other channels, Qi Sheng would still extract 30% of the proceeds into the Sacrificial Power Pool.

After glancing at Wei Shan's latest earnings, Qi Sheng's vision shifted back to the Starfall World.

After fifteen days of effort.

Under Wei Shan's watch, the city of New Cassini had completely restored order.

The residents within the city could finally lower their guard and move freely throughout the urban area.

The territorial boundaries once carved out by gang occupations had vanished; there was no longer a need to pay tolls to gang thugs who suddenly jumped out.

When crossing the aircraft wreckage belt in the South District, one no longer needed to worry about stepping into persecution traps set by various gangs.

Children dared to chase and play on the cleared open grounds, and many residents finally ventured boldly out of the ruins to bask in the sun on the open spaces, chatting about which family had exchanged for more food in the Nightmare Trial Grounds.

The sounds of gunfire from gang conflicts had become a memory not too distant.

Some members of the incorporated gangs were dismissed, while those with capabilities were issued tools to gather and clear architectural debris from the city.

Broken steel bars were cut into standardized scrap, while shattered glass and concrete blocks were sorted and transported to landfills outside the city.

Pipelines and wiring within the city that could still be used were repaired by engineering personnel maintained by the various gangs.

Abandoned aircraft that had once clogged the streets were gradually dismantled; their metal frames were sent to furnaces and would become parts for new water purification pipes within a few days.

The city gradually regained signs of life.

Residents began setting up simple stoves on the cleared open grounds, cooking porridge with food exchanged from the Nightmare Trial Grounds.

Others partnered up to challenge the Nightmare Trials, obtaining rations for the next two days by proving their courage.

At this moment, Wei Shan stood upon his flying skateboard, gazing down at the flowing crowd beneath Nightmare Trial Ground No. 3.

The faces of those queuing still carried fear of the trial grounds, yet they also displayed a hint of stability.

This stability stemmed from an order governed by rules.

One would not become a target of persecution by gang thugs for inexplicable reasons.

When walking freely no longer came at a cost, and the hope of survival was no longer monopolized by the muzzles of gang guns, this city, which had once sunk into chaos, finally revealed a glimmer of rebirth.

During this period, Wei Shan had also reformed the Eight Great Gangs.

The seven leaders who could only solve problems with violence were all demoted to the lowest rungs to perform hard labor, while personnel capable of aiding the city's restoration project were promoted.

The price of disobedience was death.

Clearly, compared to death, they were more willing to scrape by and survive.

The city's operations had now entered the right track.

But Wei Shan knew he was about to Iron Face a new challenge.

This world did not consist solely of completely destroyed cities; there were still many cities capable of maintaining order and civilization.

The entire world was currently in a restoration phase.

Armies from other cities would connect with New Cassini in the near future.

This might become the spark that ignited his confrontation with the world.

But these were problems that would only arise in the future; for now, he needed no worry, and he decided to immediately initiate the next round of testing: the Proxy Cultivation Mode.

Without notifying the leaders of the Eight Great Gangs, he departed alone that night.

Riding his flying skateboard, he traveled eastward according to the markings on the world map.

The cobalt-blue exhaust trail of the flying skateboard sliced through the night sky, leaving a fleeting light track between the cloud layers.

When the horizon began to glow with the first light of dawn, Wei Shan arrived at his destination: Neon Harbor.

This was a coastal city adjacent to the sea; during the Demonic Dharma Race invasion event, warships had not yet advanced to this city before being crushed by the Virtual Rune Legion.

Thus, this city had been preserved.

Looking down from high above, the scene differed entirely from the ruins of New Cassini.

The buildings in Neon Harbor were all intact; the glass curtain walls of skyscrapers reflected the rising morning sun, and maglev trains flew along aerial tracks.

Pedestrians on the streets wore neat clothing, and even the patrol robots maintained a polished metallic luster.

Order here had never collapsed; it retained its completeness from before the apocalypse.

However, upon conducting an in-depth investigation of this city, Wei Shan discovered decadence permeating beneath its glossy surface.

For instance, he saw a group of young people gathered on the lawn of the city's central park, inhaling and exhaling clouds of smoke, with colorful mist drifting from the metal pipes in their hands.

Nearby speakers blasted piercing music.

Several scantily clad young girls twisted their bodies to the melody, their movements appearing abnormally manic.

Beside an automatic vending machine on a nearby street corner, someone had smashed the machine's glass, not to seize the supplies inside, but merely to vent emotions through action, until they were electrocuted and dragged away by a patrol robot.

Similar scenarios played out in various districts of the city.

The city's infrastructure was still functioning, with energy, food, and medical supplies maintaining basic provision, yet it seemed to have lost all vitality.

Filled with curiosity, Wei Shan asked the Guide what exactly was wrong with this city.

In response to the inquiry, the Guide explained.

Although the invasion brought by the Demonic Dharma Race had ended, it had not caused the residents of this city to regain motivation; instead, it had spawned a collective nihilism.

They used indulgence and venting to prove they were still alive.

They did not lack survival resources; what they lacked was a reason to continue living.

Various rumors about the apocalypse flew everywhere; no one knew when the next doomsday would arrive.

Therefore, they began to indulge and seek thrills within what they perceived as their limited lifespans.

They were like people trapped by invisible mental shackles, slowly sinking within a cage that appeared free.

When discussing the situation of this city, the Guide mentioned a period of history from Earth's ancient past.

It stated that during the 1960s and 70s, before the dawn of Earth's New Era, a similar social phenomenon had occurred.

The youth demographic had launched a counterculture movement known as Hippie Culture.

At that time, a powerful nation on Earth, after experiencing a golden age of rapid economic growth, enjoyed material abundance and an expanded middle class.

Mainstream society promoted consumerism, encouraging people to pursue material wealth and binding individual worth to social status and material conditions.

The younger generation, having grown up in affluent environments, felt suffocated by this "standardized" life, believing that society suppressed individuality and lacked freedom.

The spark that ignited this rebellious sentiment was a war occurring at that time.

Casualties, conscription, and the suppression of anti-war protests exacerbated social contradictions; young people expressed their resistance through methods such as evading military service and taking to the streets in protest.

Coupled with the influence of human rights movements of the era, society became fractured.

Hippie Culture was essentially a comprehensive rebellion against traditional values.

They resented the cruelty of war and the hypocrisy of society, attempting to reconstruct values through rebellion.

However, this rebellion gradually veered onto a path of spiritual hedonism and material supremacy, with young people becoming addicted to drugs, spiritual exploration, psychedelic rock, and so on.

The current state of this city bore many similarities to Earth's Hippie wave of those years.

Both were forms of collective nihilism born from confusion about the future.

The youth of ancient times were swept along by war and consumerism, whereas the residents here were trapped in the trauma of the Demonic Dharma Race invasion and the fear of when the next apocalypse would descend.

The former used rebellion to combat nihilism, while the latter used indulgence and thrills to combat nihilism.

Essentially, both were choices made when unable to find a spiritual outlet.

In such an environment, material abundance instead became a catalyst.

Questions of why one lived constantly surged forth.

Thus, they began to numb their nerves with drugs, just as the Hippies of those years used drugs to seek stimulation.

They vented emotions recklessly on the streets, much like the youth of that era used protest marches to break social shackles.

Although maintaining the shell of technological civilization on the surface, the interior had long been hollowed out by decadence.

The older generation clung to old orders, anxious and uneasy, while the young chose indulgence and carpe diem; the values of the two generations were like two parallel lines.

This social state was essentially spiritual confusion following the "disappearance of certainty."

Although the Demonic Dharma Race invasion had ended, this catastrophe that swept across the world was like a heavy hammer, shattering all people's presumptions of a "stable future."

Survival logics and value systems once believed without doubt became precarious under the impact of the apocalypse.

All thoughts ultimately converged on this: since the next apocalypse could descend at any moment, what meaning did current order, effort, or even civilization itself hold?

When tomorrow shifted from controllable to unknown, the people within the city would fall into extreme mental states.

Carpe diem was a way to dissolve anxiety; believing the future to be unknowable, they chose to seize immediate pleasures, using sensory revelry to combat existential nihilism.

This differed fundamentally from the "New Cassini" city Wei Shan had previously arranged.

The residents of New Cassini lived in a resource-scarce city; how could they dare to hope for a distant future? Living in the present was more important than anything.

But the harsh survival environment had driven them into a corner; scarcity of resources hung like a sword above their heads, forcing everyone’s attention to be tightly fixed on where their next meal would come from, whether they could find safe shelter tonight, and similar concerns.

They also had to constantly worry about the dangers brought by gang conflicts.

A single compressed biscuit and a bottle of purified water were enough to temporarily quell their hunger.

Every resident shared one clear goal: to strive simply to survive.

Thus, they harbored no nihilistic thoughts.

Yet while this city beneath their feet lacked no resources, it was saturated with spiritual hunger.

Physical needs were met, yet the soul could find no soil in which to take root.

When survival no longer required struggle, the meaning of life lost its most direct anchor.

Apart from indulgence, they could find no method more potent than indulgence itself to prove they were still alive.

During this period, the prevalence of doomsday rumors acted as an amplifier for this core condition.

Every rumor regarding the "return of the doomsday" only served to continuously reinforce their confusion about the future.

Consequently, society seemed trapped in a vicious cycle.

The more confused they became, the more they indulged.

The more they indulged, the harder it became to find meaning.

The harder it became to find meaning, the more they relied on indulgence to numb themselves.

Comparing the two cities, the residents of New Cassini were like people wading through mud, each step heavy and solid, their desire to survive serving as the fuel propelling them forward.

Here, however, the people drifted like astronauts in weightless space, seemingly free yet utterly unsupported.

In the former environment, "surviving" was itself the answer.

In the latter world, "why survive" remained the greatest dilemma.

Through the Guide's explanation, Wei Shan gained a relatively detailed understanding of this city's situation and finally comprehended why it appeared so decadent.

Next, he decided to search for agents within this very city.

The rain in Neon Harbor always carried a scent of rust; or rather, ever since the Dharma-Ending Clan had wreaked havoc, rain across the entire world bore this metallic odor.

Lex wiped the condensation from the glass with his sleeve, watching pedestrians outside hurry past under umbrellas, their holographic advertisements reflected on the canopy surfaces shattering into scattered spots of light within the rain curtain.

He operated the "Phantom Dream" Virtual Experience Hall, located in the city's new district.

Half a year ago, this place had been the city's hottest landmark; back then, virtual network technology was highly advanced, allowing people to don neural interface devices and experience various forms of simulated pleasure within the virtual world.

However, the invasion by the Dharma-Ending Clan had completely severed communication networks between cities.

Global servers collapsed, paralyzing all large-scale virtual projects requiring internet connectivity.

This included one of the most popular games of that era, "Civilization War."

Neon Harbor was relatively fortunate, escaping direct involvement in the invasion war, but its network model had shifted from global interconnection to a regional area network.

The games of those days, plagued by issues like data loss, had long become unusable.

Currently, the most popular attractions in Neon Harbor were short, fast-paced virtual experiences, with scene simulation fidelity generally hovering around thirty-nine percent.

For instance, the dungeon "Starry Night Whispers" he had previously constructed simulated an unpolluted night sky, allowing users to lie on virtual lawns and count the stars above.

But as social trends shifted, people now preferred experiencing thrilling content.

The most popular themes were those featuring violence and emotional release, centered around doomsday carnivals.

To adapt to the times, he had created dungeon scenarios allowing players to wreak havoc within virtual settings: demolishing buildings, hijacking vehicles, and engaging in confrontations with law enforcement teams.

These scenarios were far more stimulating than "Starry Night Whispers."

Yet even now, the game content remained incomparable to the virtual games that once prevailed.

Current virtual scene experiences could only be supported by local servers, rendering their content pitifully barren.

The youth of Neon Harbor now preferred pursuing simple, brutal thrills.

Drugs, alcohol, and underground fighting had become the norm; few were still willing to spend money on outdated, backward virtual scene experiences.

This resulted in fewer and fewer customers for his hall, while monthly energy costs and equipment maintenance fees loomed like a massive mountain.

That morning, he had already received a notice demanding rent payment; the red "Overdue" stamp filled him with profound helplessness.

Lex slumped behind the counter, swiping his smart device screen to pull up backend data.

Throughout the entire day, only one customer had arrived; the revenue wasn't even enough to cover a fraction of the electricity bill.

Lifting his gaze to the promotional poster still hanging on the wall, he saw the line printed upon it: "The Virtual World Holds All That Is Beautiful."

Yet now, he could barely hold himself together.

The anticipation he had felt upon opening stood in stark contrast to the disappointment he felt now.

"If it really comes to it... I'll list it for transfer tomorrow," he murmured to himself.

Though reluctant in his heart, he knew this might be the most correct choice.

Continuing like this, he would sooner or later be dragged down by this hall.

Ding-ling!

Just then, the hall's main door was suddenly pushed open.

Lex immediately lifted his head, rising reflexively, his professional habit forcing a smile onto his Iron Face:

"May I ask which project you wish to experience? We offer Doomsday Destruction and..."

Before he could finish speaking, Lex discovered no figure stood before him.

His smile instantly froze on his Iron Face; the wind chime at the entrance continued to sway, its crisp metallic clinking sounding exceptionally jarring within the silent hall.

He frowned, leaning out to peer beyond the doorway; the motion-sensor lights outside were illuminated, yet not a single soul was visible.