As Zhuang Fan ran, he realized he had oversimplified things, because the field of jagged rocks before him covered an enormous area. It was like a vast maze; breaking out of it in a short time would be very difficult.
Moreover, at the center of the rock field, there was actually a massive underground karst cavern, its structure even more intricate and tangled.
Even the Vulturefolk inhabited less than one-tenth of the space. The remaining areas were all shrouded in black mist, and no living creature dared set even half a foot inside.
The Vulturefolk poured out in full force, wheeling and screeching in midair. A small number noticed Zhuang Fan, this unidentified intruder.
“There’s a human over there?”
“It’s an egg thief! Tear him apart!”
Seeing this, Zhuang Fan hurriedly jumped down into the cavern entrance and ran toward the deepest part. Before long, he vanished into the black mist.
“Another one going in to court death. Just wait.”
The Vulturefolk chased him to the cavern entrance, but none dared go deeper. One by one, they stood guard outside and waited patiently.
Black mist swirled around him, drastically reducing his range of vision, accompanied by waves of low murmuring. But Zhuang Fan had already grown used to hearing it.
He walked slowly forward. Bones covered the ground, cracking beneath his feet with every step.
The Vulturefolk’s punishment for intruders was simple and direct: throw them into the black mist. Basically, there was no possibility of survival.
By the faint glimmer of light, Zhuang Fan surveyed everything around him. He kept feeling that this place was wrong somehow, strangely familiar.
The cavern had not formed naturally. From the dilapidated rock walls, abandoned steel plates and electric cables were exposed in places, while on the flat ground stood man-made bunkers and concrete barricades.
Looking again at the huge circular lake in the center, it seemed like some abandoned underground refuge, giving him an inexplicable sense of familiarity.
He continued downward along the shelter passage. Because the bottom had been without sunlight for years, it too was filled with a great amount of black mist and had become a forbidden zone.
Zhuang Fan walked straight in, continuing to sense where this strange familiarity was coming from.
The shelter’s main door had already been destroyed. Industrial waste lay scattered all over the floor inside; scavengers had likely visited this place before.
With the slightest touch, a tabletop that had still looked intact turned to dust. The other equipment was the same, corroded by the decaying mist until only empty shells remained.
Zhuang Fan was not quite willing to give up. He explored along the smooth walls and arrived before a high platform. Gently wiping away the dust on it, he revealed a line of red numbers: XR-662.
Hiss, this number...
In an instant, Xu Renyi’s memories were triggered. This time was different from before; a vast amount of information surged into Zhuang Fan’s mind.
He stood in place and digested it for quite a while before gradually coming to an understanding.
So this was an abandoned military shelter, built 120 years ago. Its owner was Xu Renyi.
The direct reason it had been abandoned back then was that a nuclear bomb had detonated here, destroying more than half of the shelter while it was still under construction.
As for who had detonated it, Xu Renyi guessed it was the opposing faction within the group, and it had carried a hint of warning as well.
Why issue a warning?
This involved a massive engineering project spanning several hundred years, personally funded and built by Xu Renyi.
In the old man’s original grand aspiration, he would build several hundred super-large shelters across the entire wasteland, each capable of accommodating 100,000 people. In the wasteland world, that was equivalent to a small or medium-sized city.
These large shelters would also be connected to one another through tunnels, forming a tightly linked underground city network.
In addition, there would be large numbers of outposts, automated factories, safe houses, underground fortresses, and other facilities to supplement and extend this grand plan.
What made this grand plan special was that it had to completely bypass Nuclear Group and set up an entirely separate system—in other words, it had to be built in secret.
The old man’s motive for doing this was entirely to prepare for a rainy day. He was worried that after changing into a brand-new body, the company’s shareholders would not acknowledge him and would thereby strip him of all his power.
So he had to make sure he possessed enough capital to rise again. If combined with the previous “Primordial Plan,” the old man actually held a great many cards.
The problem now was that the “Primordial Plan” had fallen through, while the shelters the old man had secretly built in the wasteland had an overall completion rate of less than 60%. The shelters were isolated from one another, and even the underground tunnels had not been dug through.
Zhuang Fan was puzzled. What was going on? Had the capital chain broken, or had the project simply been left unfinished?
After understanding the old man’s habit of preparing multiple escape routes, his head hurt a little. This did nothing to resolve the terrible predicament he was facing.
He had completely inherited the old man’s memories, and even possessed control authority over the group’s mainframe. This was a semi-public fact. He was Xu Renyi, and Xu Renyi was him.
Whether in terms of emotion, reason, or profit, Nuclear Group would do everything in its power to strangle Zhuang Fan, preventing any accident from occurring.
So from the moment he stepped out of the shelter, he would have to face the pursuit of this colossal entity. It was no different from a mantis trying to stop a chariot.
Putting away some of his scattered thoughts, Zhuang Fan tried to calm his mind and sense things, but he could not obtain the locations of those shelters.
He could only sense the nearest outpost, which was twenty kilometers away.
Let’s go. Time to set off.
He had just risen when he noticed a strange creature deep in the corner. Its appearance was very similar to the Vulturefolk, but even more bizarre and ferocious.
[Ripper, Vulturefolk, secondary mutation, mutant monster. Specializes in digging out hearts. No edible flesh.]
With only these few lines of information disclosed, Zhuang Fan roughly understood the Ripper’s characteristics. Compared to ordinary Vulturefolk, they had no rationality, and were more brutal, more terrifying.
But its condition at this moment was not right. Instead, it had curled into a ball, trembling all over, unable to make any sound.
Around it, large masses of black mist were colliding and tangling together. The situation was extremely intense. In the end, there seemed to be a victor, and the largest mass of black mist flew into the Ripper’s body.
After a while, its back was torn open. A lump of black matter forcibly squeezed out from within, then turned illusory and mist-like, floating in midair.
As Zhuang Fan looked at this floating thing that resembled neither a human shape nor a ghost, the old man’s memories were immediately activated.
[Eldritch demon, shadow form. Can possess and control mutant monsters. Limited intelligence. Responsible for producing eldritch mist. Fears fire and explosions.]
Zhuang Fan frowned. He seemed to have discerned one of the true functions of the eldritch mist: it probably caused humans to mutate, then incubated eldritch demons from them.
In Xu Renyi’s memories, humans and eldritch demons had fought for several hundred years, through three eras in succession, until even Earth itself had been battered and crippled.
However, over the past few centuries, eldritch demons had gradually disappeared from human sight, as if they had suddenly hidden themselves away without a trace.
This newly born eldritch demon seemed not yet adapted. After lingering and circling in midair for quite a while, it finally used the eldritch mist to manifest a new appearance.
Its facial features were blurred, its skeletal frame twisted, its limbs withered and blackened. It was also draped in a black cloak, giving off a rotten, hollow aura, extremely sinister.
Zhuang Fan fell silent for quite some time. Why did this eldritch demon’s appearance look a bit like a Dementor?
At the very least, it had captured the right vibe. It was scary enough.
He could clearly sense that the eldritch mist spilling from the eldritch demon’s body was extremely pure, containing none of those strange impurities.
According to the old man’s memories and analysis, pure eldritch mist made up the vast majority of what was found in the wild. Once infected by it, a person would become a walking corpse.
If it was eldritch mist emitted by mutants themselves—for instance, the Vulturefolk’s eldritch mist—it would mutate normal people into Vulturefolk, giving them racial traits.
If Vulturefolk continued to be infected by eldritch mist, they would undergo a secondary mutation into Rippers, becoming mad and irrational, and then gradually incubate eldritch demons inside their bodies.
“...”
Zhuang Fan and it stood frozen in place. Neither moved first.
Zhuang Fan knew that eldritch demons had no rationality, but the other party also did not take the initiative to attack him. It was still trying to distinguish just what kind of existence this creature living in the black mist before it was.
Zhuang Fan sensed a trace of confusion from it. He gave a light cough and tentatively greeted it, but the other party did not react.
A thought occurred to him, and he tried absorbing the eldritch mist from the eldritch demon’s body to see how it would respond.
The result was extremely smooth. Eldritch mist streamed endlessly away from the eldritch demon, as if the other party were a blood pack.
“Zzz—!!!”
The eldritch demon was frightened. It retreated at extreme speed, trying to hide itself. In the end, it simply fled in a flash of smoke and never came back.
Zhuang Fan did not understand what had happened. Was it because he had absorbed its pure eldritch mist, so it had become angry out of embarrassment?
Mm, in any case, it was not exactly a polite thing to do.
South City was located to the south of the Hanling region, with a straight-line distance of one hundred kilometers between the two places.
The city lord was Karl, a forty-five-year-old middle-aged man with brown hair, a broad face, and a slightly weathered look.
He wore a black nanotech combat suit. The surface of the suit had a bright silver sheen, with ripples occasionally spreading across it, and it could even assemble itself into nanotech tentacles outside his body.
After reading the intelligence report, Karl said with interest, “Xu Renyi is dead. Is the source of the information reliable?”
“My lord, the information is accurate. He died in the laboratory, and not even his bones remain.”
“Cause of death?”
“Some say he was killed by the rebels. Credibility is seventy-two percent.”
Karl gradually grew serious. “What do you think of the wanted order Nuclear Group just issued? It’s fine, speak freely.”
The intelligence officer considered for a moment. “My lord, an ordinary drifter could not possibly kill the founder of a major corporation. It seems more like a smokescreen, hiding some important secret.”
“Mm. So that is the suspicious point.”
Karl issued a new order. “You need to focus your attention on this wanted criminal. It would be best to capture him first. Then we’ll know all the tricks involved.”
“Yes!”
After the intelligence officer left, the adviser beside him said slowly, “He is very likely a Demon Seeker.”
Karl nodded. “Mm. Old Devil Xu was greedy for life and afraid of death his whole life. For him to stumble this time, it must be related to a Demon Seeker.”
The adviser pondered for a moment. “My lord, I’m afraid this person needs to be found as soon as possible. Once the nanotech combat suit begins to backlash, its speed will only grow faster and faster.”
Karl lowered his head to look at his nanotech combat suit, his expression calm. “They swallowed another portion of my organs. No matter what, they can never be fed enough.”
The Zhuang Fan of this moment did not know that another group had set their eyes on him. But with so many people watching him already, he would probably get used to it.
As evening came and the sun set, the sky gradually darkened. He had hurried along for most of the day, heading north by his rough sense of direction.
A vague unease lingered in his heart.
There was always a chilly feeling of something poking at his back, making him turn around frequently, but he saw no living thing. In any case, it felt a bit uncanny.
After night fell completely, all sorts of wraiths and demons began holding their outdoor team-building activities, and Zhuang Fan’s sense of unease grew especially intense.
He once again confirmed that there was nothing following behind him, so he judged that the thing must be coming from underground. That was the only possibility.
After running for an entire day, he truly could not move his legs anymore. He simply climbed up a large tree, first using eldritch mist to surround the area and hide himself well.
After two or three days of practiced exploration, he had discovered the trick.
As long as he compressed the light mist into dark mist, there would be no side effects when controlling it. Using dark mist in daily situations was already enough.
As for black mist, it could only be used at the most critical moment. It was also very easy to exhaust his strength, so he could not use it lightly.
Moonlight could hardly penetrate the overwhelming eldritch mist. Lying on the tree trunk, Zhuang Fan could see very clearly through the branches that a small corner of the moon truly was missing.
That small corner displayed clear torn crater marks. Even from very far away, Zhuang Fan could feel the lingering force of that explosion.
In Xu Renyi’s memories, the “Meteor Shower Incident” had not been activated. He only knew for certain that it was related to eldritch demons.
After eating the last energy bar, he was just about to rest when a familiar tremor came from the ground. He thought it was a corpse tide attacking.
“Boom—!”
The soil completely collapsed, and a giant long worm more than two meters in diameter and over thirty meters long drilled out, frightening Zhuang Fan badly.
Its entire body was brownish, its surface covered in thorny spikes. When it opened its abyssal maw, rows upon rows of sharp hooked spines could be seen inside.
[Thorn Sandworm, burrowing subterranean creature. Large bulldozer. Body length forty meters. Maximum diameter can reach three meters. Those who see it basically have no way to live.]
Zhuang Fan was completely certain that it was this giant sandworm that had followed him all the way. It wanted to take advantage of the deep night to launch a sneak attack.
The thick worm body quickly wrapped around the tree roots, swiftly climbing upward, determined to swallow Zhuang Fan whole.
When had he offended it? Could it be that eldritch demon?
Zhuang Fan had no room to think further. He used all his strength to jump down from the tree. After taking a heavy fall, he scrambled up and fled madly forward.
The sandworm twisted its body, chasing relentlessly behind him.
As its body scraped over the sand and stones on the ground, it made a hissing sound. Like a cat playing with a mouse, it began to toy with the prey before its eyes.
Zhuang Fan tried to use eldritch mist to drive it away, but it had little effect. In the end, he cut a miserable figure as he hid in a crevice between rocks for the third time.
The Thorn Sandworm was very particular about cost-effectiveness when hunting. It would only come out of its hole when it had absolute confidence in victory, after all, every movement consumed an enormous amount of physical strength.
But this sandworm was different. It had locked onto Zhuang Fan alone and was determined to swallow him into its stomach.
It had definitely been possessed by an eldritch demon and had come seeking revenge...
Zhuang Fan held his dagger in front of him, cutting off the tentacles that reached inside, but it was no use.
Seeing that even the rocks could not block the corrosion of the sandworm’s mouthparts, and that the rock layer was being worn thinner and thinner, his situation was extremely dangerous.
Suddenly, a laser searchlight shone over. An airship flew in from ahead, and the two rapid-fire machine cannons mounted on it madly poured bullets at the sandworm.
“Bang, bang, bang—”
In an extremely short time, the latter half of its tail was completely severed, spilling green pus all over the ground.
The sandworm, in pain, decisively abandoned Zhuang Fan and began frantically burrowing on the spot. Its entire body soon vanished into the rock and soil.
Zhuang Fan was still shaken and took quite a while to recover.
When he crawled out of the rock crevice, the intense searchlight made it almost impossible to open his eyes.
“Stop!”
Facing the two machine cannons aimed at him, he stood in place and did not dare move recklessly.
After the airship slowly landed, more than a dozen fully armed soldiers got off and began setting up defenses on the spot.
The masked soldier in the lead came before Zhuang Fan, first looking at the information on the wrist display, then asked, “Zhang Dafan. That should be you, right?”
A woman’s voice. Her tone was slightly softened, sounding ethereal and clear.
Zhuang Fan could sense a trace of goodwill from her, but he still instinctively shook his head. “Who? Never heard of him.”
She picked up a scanner and confirmed the contours of Zhuang Fan’s face, then said softly,
“Mm. It’s you.”
Zhuang Fan had just been about to speak when he was hit by an electric shock gun, and his entire body collapsed in front of the woman.