Chapter 180 - 177: The Dark Age
"Weren’t we just in the conference room?"
Count rubbed his arms. His thin t-shirt offered him no warmth.
"That’s not the point. The point is, where are we?"
Mo Shaoge stood up, took off his short-sleeved shirt, and draped it over Cui Ying. His body was wrapped in bandages, so taking off the shirt didn’t leave him bare-chested. In fact, he felt the cold less than the others.
Some of the eighteen people were at a loss, while others also stood up.
Mo Shaoge left his seat and walked toward the edge.
"Shaoge!"
Cui Ying’s worried call sent a sweet warmth through Mo Shaoge’s heart.
"It’s fine, I’m just going to take a look!"
The grass, stones, and mud underfoot; the biting cold of the wind; and the feel of dry grass whipping against their bodies—it all told them this was real.
"Where’s Monkey King? And that person from Dawn? Why aren’t they here?"
"I bet this is what she meant by an ’exclusive interview’!"
A few people murmured amongst themselves.
"So what is this place? A three-dimensional projection?"
By now, no one could sit still. They all stomped their feet, rubbed their hands, and huddled together for warmth.
"This is no 3D projection. They probably transported us to some godforsaken wilderness!"
Count took the opportunity to rub Little Sister’s hands while looking around everywhere.
"RUMBLE~~"
Peals of thunder rolled from the horizon.
The sound was close, as if a downpour was imminent, but there was no lightning.
"Holy shit, talk about kicking us while we’re down. A downpour out here in the middle of nowhere would be a disaster."
"Yeah, it’s so cold. We couldn’t handle getting soaked by rain! Don’t tell me we’re near the North or South Pole?"
While the others were complaining, Mo Shaoge and Zhao Xing had already crept to some higher ground.
They couldn’t see anything from one side of their conference table, so they had to check the other direction.
The two of them clambered slowly up the rocks and soon reached the top of a stone slope. They poked their heads out to take a look.
"RUUUMBLE~~~"
The rumbling was coming from that very direction.
"This... this isn’t thunder at all..."
Mo Shaoge whispered to Zhao Xing, who covered his mouth and nodded.
The two of them quietly pulled back.
Down below, the other sixteen people were making a racket. Someone was even about to gather dry grass and branches to start a fire with a lighter. The thought made both men break into a cold sweat.
They hurried down to stop the others from their suicidal foolishness.
Seeing the grave expressions on their faces, everyone instinctively obeyed them, fell silent, and then slowly followed them up the stone slope.
Eighteen heads peeked over the top together, and they finally saw the scene in the distance.
"RUMBLE~~"
That wasn’t thunder at all, but a roar—the roar of some bizarre creature that was neither animal nor beast.
It was shaped like a giant, winged serpent, but it flickered between shadow and solid form, extending countless tentacles tipped with maws.
Beneath it, the ground was stained crimson, littered with the corpses of countless animals, beasts, and even humans.
Each time a tentacle snatched a corpse, tossed it into the air, and the creature swallowed it with its giant mouth, the Snake Monster would let out that thunder-like "RUMBLE" sound.
The eighteen of them froze, unsure of what to do. For now, they could only watch. A gust of wind blew past, carrying a stench of rot mixed with the cold that made them want to vomit.
The Snake Monster seemed to prefer human corpses, followed by those that were more decomposed. It rummaged through the pile of bodies, searching for those that met these two criteria.
Cui Ying and the others didn’t know why their vision was so good in this dim, gray environment; they could even make out the faces and clothing of the humans in the distant corpse pile.
Though tattered and torn, some were dressed in animal hides, while most wore crude garments like linen.
"RUMBLE~~"
The Snake Monster rumbled again.
Just then, something in the corpse pile moved.
"AH—"
Little Sister started to cry out, but Count clamped a hand firmly over her mouth. The others tensed, but luckily, the Snake Monster didn’t seem to hear.
It was a person in the corpse pile, someone whose legs were broken.
As one of the Snake Monster’s tentacles lashed out near him, he suddenly swung a crude-looking weapon in his hand and severed it.
"ROAR~~~"
The Snake Monster roared in pain and rammed its massive head toward him.
BOOM! The impact sent a spray of blood and gore several meters into the air from the corpse pile and knocked the man aside. He was clearly unable to move anymore.
"You... you filthy monster... Your days are numbered! Our world..."
His voice cut off abruptly as the man in the animal hide was swallowed.
"ROAR~~~~~"
The Snake Monster’s roar shook the heavens, and the members of the editorial department trembled in fear.
The language he spoke wasn’t any modern tongue, yet they understood its meaning perfectly.
"’Hiding won’t work for long. We need to get out of here, fast!’"
Even if they considered this might not be real, who would dare to take that gamble? They all began to creep back down.
But before they could get far, the ground suddenly shook violently. Almost simultaneously, a loud "BOOM~" erupted from the Snake Monster’s position.
Driven by curiosity, they crawled back up to look.
They saw two massive rocks falling from the sky, striking the Snake Monster from two incredible angles and slamming its huge body to the ground.
"BOOM~" "BOOM~"
"ROAR~~~"
The sounds of the impacts, the Snake Monster’s roar, and the vibrations from the ground came one after another. Dust and grit trickled down from the stone slope.
"THUD," "THUD," "THUD," "THUD," "THUD"...
They were heavy, rapid footsteps. A figure, seemingly cloaked in a hurricane of sand and dust, was fast approaching from the distance. Whenever it encountered a large rock, it would kick it, sending the stone flying toward the Snake Monster.
"ROAR~~~"
"AHHHHHHHH~~~"
Like a Meteor striking a mountain, the roaring monster and the screaming man finally clashed.
Sand and dust filled the sky behind the figure, and broken stones shot out in all directions, forcing the editorial department staff to duck and cover their faces.
The roars and ground-shaking tremors continued unabated. After what felt like an eternity, everything seemed to quiet down.
"HUFF... HUFF... HUFF..."
Heavy, exhausted breaths could be heard.
Everyone peeked out again. The Snake Monster was so mangled it looked like it had been dismembered. Wispy, soul-like phantoms were flying out from its corpse in all directions.
The figure who had fought it was kneeling in a pool of blood, gasping for air.
"I... we! We’ve finally obtained it... this power!!"
Crying. What came next was unexpectedly the sound of crying, but it was not a voice of weakness.
Just as they were wondering whether they should go down and greet him, the scene abruptly changed. They were once again seated at the conference table, but the setting was no longer a wilderness. It was the shore of a large lake.
Now, they were slowly beginning to understand their situation.
Sure enough, the lake was teeming with transparent, Ghost-like water monsters. They would fly out, and moments later, return with countless creatures drowned within their bodies.
There were birds and beasts, as well as humans—men, women, old, and young.
Thunderclouds gathered in the sky. BOOM! Bolts of lightning struck down, hitting one or two of the water monsters and dispersing them. But the scattered droplets quickly reformed into slightly smaller monsters. The humans trapped inside them, however, fell from the sky, bursting into a mess of blood and pulp on impact.
But the lightning grew more and more intense, until it was almost denser than the rain.
The editorial staff wanted to get away from the lake but didn’t dare move too far from the conference table. They all instinctively hid underneath it, watching the ’thunderstorm’.
For an unknown length of time, the entire lake was ravaged by electricity, transforming into a pool of light.
But no dead fish floated to the surface; they must have all been eaten long ago.
When the storm stopped, all the water monsters were gone. It seemed they were all dead.
A person fell from the clouds, plunging straight into the water. They had no strength left to struggle to shore and drowned from sheer exhaustion.
The editorial staff wanted to rush into the water to save the person time and time again, but they were too afraid of the water monsters to dare.
The feeling of watching someone drown right before their eyes was unbearable, as if they themselves were the murderers.
...
On plateaus, on seashores, at the foot of mountains, in canyons, even in subterranean spaces...
There were horrifying monsters everywhere.
Some were corporeal, some flickered between tangible and intangible, and others were simply like phantoms.
Most of them devoured life, while a few released various toxins to terraform the environment. Countless animals and humans were fragile and helpless before them.
A Superman-like being didn’t appear in every location, nor was every struggle successful.
Blood and tears were the main theme of everything they saw.
The world was always dim and gray, and accompanied by a sickening stench. With each shift of the conference table, what they saw most of the time was corpses, corpses, and more corpses!
Occasionally, a "CRACK" like shattering glass would sound from the sky.
The editorial department staff had developed a conditioned reflex. Whenever they heard it, it meant the scene was about to change again, and they would experience another grand spectacle of nausea and terror.
The more times they heard the sound, the darker the world’s sky became, as if the sun had abandoned the Earth. The weather also grew increasingly colder.
The acts of resistance they had seen frequently at first became rarer. Those powerful, transcendent humans seemed to be dwindling, and even the numbers of humans, plants, animals, and all life on Earth were constantly decreasing. This was despite their reproductive rates being inexplicably high during this period, to a degree unimaginable to modern people.
But this was a painful way to continue their existence, a desperate struggle for a hopeless survival.
An extreme sense of oppression settled in everyone’s heart.
PS: Thursday’s second Chapter.