I Am Your Natural Enemy

He couldn’t begin to imagine how this damned place even existed.

He’d heard before that, counting all the regions of the Nanyang Union together, the number of people officially listed as missing was in the hundreds of thousands.

But that definition of "missing" didn’t mean they were all dead. A lot of so-called missing people had actually slipped away to other places, bypassing the proper immigration process. In the end, with no living person found and no corpse recovered, they were just filed as missing.

In recent years, quite a few tourists had gone missing in the Nanyang Union too, and the number kept rising.

The moment he’d seen that assembly line just now, Wen Yan had already had a bad feeling.

He hadn’t expected that even that was him being conservative.

The Ghosts here that still hadn’t dispersed might number two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand—he couldn’t tell, there was no way to count.

Now he understood why, even though all the Sorcerers on this island under his feet had already been killed off, there were still so many defensive measures in place.

If he hadn’t tricked the other side into lowering their guard, if he’d walked over one by one like before, openly and aboveboard, the other side would definitely have gone for broke, like a cornered dog.

He was still thinking it through when this underground space suddenly shook.

Dust and bits of stone started trickling down.

The two different scenes Wen Yan was seeing in front of his eyes both flickered.

Wen Yan flicked his fingers, and a stream of water shot out, breaking apart into droplets that spread over all the little ghosts in the space.

He closed his eyes and drew a light breath.

The General Director had said he could act at his own discretion; every move he made was authorized.

In that case, time to raise hell—flip the whole sky over.

Having seen all this with his own eyes, if he now turned around and walked away, he could forget about ever sleeping soundly again.

He jumped down from the steel platform, landing in the underground space.

He stretched out his hand and grabbed one Lost Soul that was reaching toward him. Flames began to burn over his body—scarlet-gold flames slowly rising, as the blazing Light of Yang Energy began to shine.

"Let’s make a deal.

I’ll lead you out and make the people who should pay the price here pay that price.

But you’re not allowed to hurt innocent people.

I don’t want this to turn into something completely out of control.

If you agree, then accept the Scorching Sun."

Scarlet-gold flames burned over him, his radiance slowly spreading, and everyone bathed in that light—

Was truly Blessed with Yang Energy; under the witness of the Scorching Sun, one mark after another was imprinted on every Ghost.

By the time the frame drops in the scene in front of Wen Yan’s eyes grew so severe it was stuttering, every last Ghost had been bathed in that light.

There was another flash, and Wen Yan could no longer see the other side’s scene; someone had forcibly cut it off by some means, destroying that junction.

But.

All the Ghosts that had been illuminated by that scarlet-gold radiance and had made a deal with Wen Yan followed him, crossing over from the other side into this underground space crammed with corpses.

From the passage Wen Yan had come through came a series of explosions; the passage collapsed completely.

The underground space itself began to cave in as well. Ghost after Ghost flew out, possessing their original bodies.

Vast resentment, Yin Qi, and corpse energy, bound together with pain, unwillingness, despair, and hatred, wove into a mass that propped up a pocket of space here, then kept digging upward at an angle.

If one failed, another took its place; they rotated endlessly, incredibly efficient.

Outside, on the surface, the sound of explosions never stopped.

Those who hadn’t made it out yet were driving like mad when the ground beneath their feet suddenly blew open.

The measures that had been set up here in advance were triggered by someone.

The junction was destroyed, and the fuel stockpiled in the oil depot here also began to burn.

A huge number of Lost Souls were blown apart, then recondensed in this space, where the Yin Qi and resentment were far too dense.

Raging flames burned, blocking the Lost Souls’ path forward.

In the distance, the roar of helicopter rotors sounded, and many vehicles were racing this way from the interior of the big island.

The explosions kept booming; several mounds of hills behind the industrial park, which looked like burial mounds, started collapsing downward.

Everything was being buried.

Everything was swallowed under firelight and black smoke; nothing could be seen clearly anymore.

In that room far away in the Nanyang Capital, the Boss listened to the latest report, his face dark as iron.

"What the hell is going on? Why did those things suddenly show up seventeen hundred kilometers away?!"

"Where were the alarms? The security? With so many people, did no one notice anything wrong?"

"Boss, we’ve already initiated self-destruction; everything there will be buried.

I’ve also informed a lot of people that those Lost Souls went berserk, started a massacre, and destroyed an industrial park.

People are already on the way there, and the local authorities have authorized the use of imported special weapons."

"Get the plane ready."

The Boss’s face was as black as water. Years of planning were on the verge of being inexplicably ruined.

He still had no idea why.

He of course knew what was down there. Right now he couldn’t even blame his subordinates; if they didn’t self-destruct and this got exposed, he’d be universally condemned on the spot.

Those people who’d been begging him just yesterday would immediately draw a clear line away from him.

He couldn’t wait anymore. He couldn’t wait for Old Meng; he had to start now.

On the other side, the explosions went on, black smoke billowed upward, and the flames shot into the sky, lighting the area up like broad daylight.

A helicopter flew over from afar. Sitting inside was a monk holding prayer beads, so old his skin seemed all bunched up. The monk gazed toward the distant flames, at the massive resentment there, his face full of worry.

"How am I supposed to transcend this... Just me alone, I’m afraid it’s nowhere near enough."

As he spoke, with another explosion, the collapsing hills heaved, earth rolling as tangible Yin Qi and resentment blasted skyward like a volcanic eruption.

The surrounding blaze was forcibly suppressed by this immeasurable Yin Qi.

Countless Lost Souls erupted from there, Yin Qi so dense it turned into a roaring gale that swept past.

The flames burning in that industrial park were forcibly snuffed out.

Right after that, thunder rolled across the sky and black clouds pressed low.

The Lost Souls surged out like a tidal wave, howling.

The old monk in the helicopter had a trace of despair appear in his eyes.

"The Great Era of Lost Souls."

"No need to go over... It’s useless..."

In that tide of Yin Qi, Wen Yan blended into the sea of Ghosts and stepped onto solid ground again.

The moment he emerged, he felt the change in the heavens and could clearly sense that the air now held something more.

Then he looked at those Lost Souls who, after bursting out, were rapidly growing stronger.

This time, he truly and tangibly felt that, after a long brewing phase, the Ghost version had now officially descended.

He didn’t know whether that was good or bad; he only knew that with this stuff here, there was no way anyone could stop it.

Because he remembered that across the entire Nanyang Union, places where methods like Qin Banliang’s had been set up numbered not just this island under his feet, but four more.

Right now, this still wasn’t the worst-case scenario—not yet. At least those Lost Souls who had died horribly in life, whose corpses were used as consumables and whose Souls were used as consumables after death, were being led out of their coffins by a living person.

Wen Yan didn’t even need to think to be sure that, in this Ghost version, under these circumstances, sooner or later, in the not-too-distant future, there would definitely be an extremely powerful existence born from among these Lost Souls, one with hatred and resentment that pierced the heavens.

If he hadn’t come early to blow up this massive buried bomb, then down the line, a World Boss would inevitably emerge—a Ghost, a World Boss born in the present world.