Hulu Port had turned into a complete mess.
The entire city was without power, traffic had collapsed, and strange phenomena erupted. Some people ran out of their buildings to escape, others abandoned their cars and fled, while some followed the crowd to the police station, causing a traffic jam, chain accidents, and stampedes in the process.
After such long periods of peace, no one ever expected an accident to happen so close to them. Hulu Port, which had never experienced natural disasters, was filled with people who had no idea how to handle such emergencies.
As a result, a crowd of panicked people formed, not only blocking the military reinforcements but also trapping the police station, making it impossible to help. Hospitals were caught in a predicament where ambulances couldn’t get out, and the wounded couldn’t get in. The collapse of order was just half an hour of pure chaos.
Fortunately, the military was strong and quickly took control of Hulu Port with iron discipline. They cleared the surrounding areas layer by layer and managed to open up some of the city’s vital routes, allowing Hulu Port to gradually start functioning again.
This clearing continued until dawn, and the subsequent investigation, reassurance, and reporting tasks were massive, unimaginable. They hadn’t even figured out what to say about the strange phenomenon and had to put up a temporary “under investigation” sign.
But compared to the physical chaos of the big city, the ordinary people who had witnessed the incident were already in a state of mental collapse.
In the early hours, on the outskirts of the road, Si Nuocheng and the others waited for Jiang Qining to wake up, but he didn’t stir. At first, they thought this unlucky guy had been scared out of his wits, but when Ji Si moved to check on him, Jiang Qining unexpectedly started snoring lightly.
His breathing was long, relaxed, and comfortable, his body curling up naturally for warmth. One hand unconsciously groped out as if looking for a blanket. Before long, the restless hand landed on Si Nuocheng’s leather shoe.
Jiang Qining shifted his body, rested his head on the leather shoe, and muttered, “This bed is too hard…”
Everyone: …
The crystal-clear drool from his mouth trickled onto Si Nuocheng’s shiny, expensive shoe. In that moment, the half-blood, who was braving the cold wind, really didn’t dare look at Si Nuocheng’s darkening face.
Si Nuocheng took a deep breath, forcing a smile, and turned a trusting gaze toward the half-blood. “Could you kindly help him wake up in a more… ghostly manner?”
In the second when their eyes met, it was as if the signal on a platform connected. The half-blood understood, nodded slightly, and said, “Just so happens I need a stress ball to calm down. So…” He cracked his knuckles and shouted, “Urah!”
The half-blood charged forward like a bear, using his bear-fighting techniques to wake the slumbering “princess,” Jiang Qining.
Amid Jiang Qining’s cries of “Who the hell hit me,” “It’s you, you idiot,” and “I’m gonna fight you, you idiot,” the two fought for thirty rounds, and the battle ended with Jiang Qining’s tragic defeat.
Ji Si: …
After the fight, they both yelled insults at each other, completely ignoring the harmonious atmosphere they had in the café. But soon enough, they were back to being good brothers, staring intently at Ji Si with the vigilance of guard dogs.
Ji Si chuckled lightly and casually grabbed the staff from Si Nuocheng’s side. The moment his palm touched the Cosmos Heart, it felt like a key turning in a lock, tightening, sealing his abnormality completely.
His silver-white hair turned as black as crow feathers, and the swirling starry river around him fell, the radiance disappearing. The sense of distance closed, as if a godlike figure from a high place had been infused with humanity, gradually becoming vivid and alive.
Jiang Qining, still confused, couldn’t quite process it, while the half-blood seemed to snap out of his daze.
It was as if he had remembered something and asked, “In the country where my mother lives, they acknowledge the existence of spiritual mediums. Even now, there are many shamans working in Qianding City. Are you… one of them?”
He doubted it was possible since he had never seen any so-called shamans in Qianding City who could trigger a large-scale nuclear explosion with a mere gesture.
But he still asked, because what he really wanted to confirm was not Ji Si’s identity, but whether Ji Si was the same kind of “person” as them.
Ji Si replied, “Yes, and no.”
Everyone fell silent, waiting for the next words, but Ji Si gave an answer that left them perplexed: “You can think of me as a tree, and shamans, Taoists—are just the flowers and fruits that grow from this tree.”
“They are me, but not me; I am them, but not them.” Ji Si took a step, turning away as his voice became ethereal, “The divination doesn’t predict everything, the way of heaven is ever-changing, you’ll have to understand it with your own wisdom.”
His voice, though light, lingered in their ears, echoing softly. Si Nuocheng glanced at the ruins, without a hint of nostalgia, and walked on. The half-blood grabbed Jiang Qining, pulling him to make sure he didn’t fall behind.
They crossed the road marked by deep, jagged cuts, which had almost changed the landscape. Fortunately, they were on the outskirts. Had this happened in the city, with so much damage, who knew how many lives would be lost.
It was truly terrifying…
The concrete road, which could withstand hundreds of tons of trucks, had been cleaved apart, shattered into countless segments. It took great effort just to walk from one end to the other, and by the time the outside world could search and investigate, the gasoline might have already dried up.
It was clear that the dangerous ghostly creature that appeared wasn’t something humans could handle.
If it weren’t for Ji Si’s unimaginable strength, they might not have survived today. Or perhaps, the horror of the road would become the future of Hulu Port. Even with the iron-fisted army by the coast, they couldn’t have withstood the creature’s deceptive attacks.
They had experienced it firsthand—those instant attacks were impossible to follow with the eyes! They could only recognize where the gaps appeared by the sound, realizing too late that the attacks were aimed directly at them!
Honestly, it wasn’t Ji Si fighting the ghostly being—it was humanity fighting against the unknown…
They didn’t dare to think further.
After walking for three hours, their legs started to ache, and the road had no more gaps. Ji Si finally stopped by a roadside post. In front of the three of them, he stretched out his finger and lightly poked forward.
With a crisp “crack,” they saw a layer of white ripples appear in the air, cracking like pieces of a mirror, forming an egg-shell arc that spread toward the sky, shattering and falling like raindrops, causing all three to raise their hands to shield themselves.
However, the shattered debris turned into “snowflakes” midway through the air, drifting down and disappearing completely. Having witnessed the horror of the ruins, the swirling white flakes looked almost dreamlike and beautiful.
Soon, the cold wind hit them, bringing them back to reality.
Si Nuocheng, mimicking Ji Si, extended his hand but couldn’t feel the barrier: “What did you just break?”
“A node of overlapping multi-dimensional space.” Ji Si explained, “You can think of it as a ‘protection circle’ set up by the ghost, or the ‘hunting ground’ the ghost marked.”
Jiang Qining blurted out: “It’s this big?”
Ji Si delivered a crushing blow with one sentence: “It’s barely visible.”
He had seen the largest hunting ground before, the domain of the demon Abaddon. There, darkness covered the entire star domain, and every inch of the land was guarded by powerful monsters.
Even with the full team deployed, they fought for countless years to breach that place. But breaching it didn’t mean clearing it.
Reflecting on this, Ji Si added, “In the future, these ‘barely visible’ hunting grounds might appear many times.”
Jiang Qining: … Brother Cheng, I’m sorry. I used to think you weren’t human, but compared to this guy, you’re really an angel among normal people!
“Future?” The half-blood caught onto the key point.
Ji Si nodded, offering no further explanation, simply saying, “Entering the ghost’s hunting ground is like entering another layer of space. It’s like the ‘haunted houses’ and ‘ghost mansions’ in your world. They are also kinds of hunting grounds.”
For instance, the nonexistent thirteenth floor of a haunted building, the extra stairway in an old school building, or the infamous haunted house in Sakura Country—whoever enters, dies…
“Once humans step inside, they are surrounded by strange magnetic fields, entering a dimension where reality and illusion overlap.”
“Want to return alive from the hunting ground? You’ll be injured, if not killed, but if you manage to survive, you’ll likely awaken some special ability.” Ji Si looked at Si Nuocheng, smiling, “How does it feel to turn imagination into reality?”
Si Nuocheng narrowed his eyes: “Satisfying, and very strange.” He looked at his fingertips. “I remember the feeling—it’s like my blood boiling as it flows through my body, then something gathers and spreads out along my fingers.”
“But it doesn’t work anymore…” He said bluntly, “I’ve been moving my fingers while walking for these three hours, and the further out I go, the weaker the sensation becomes. Once you broke that node, I can’t get that feeling back.”
Jiang Qining and the half-blood felt the same. It seemed that once they left that dimension, they had returned to being normal, powerless humans.
“Normal,” Ji Si continued, “The deeper you integrate into the hunting ground, the faster you’ll progress. But many people are consumed before they can advance. So, don’t go to places you shouldn’t, like graveyards.”
Si Nuocheng casually lowered his hand: … Did you install surveillance in my mind?
The half-blood looked at the sky, the ground, anything but Ji Si.
Jiang Qining was blunt: “Fine, we’re alive this time, I’m never walking at night again. Who the hell would run to a graveyard? Wait, what’s with your expressions… No way. Are you two even human? Is this the choice a human would make? Are we all going to die?”
“Did you not hear the word ‘future’? What if you don’t walk at night, but ‘night’ comes for you? What then? It’s better to prepare early.”
“Prepare what? Leave the car there, and the police will find us before ‘night’ does! Once we’re locked up in the detention center, forget about walking at night, we won’t even be able to walk on the street in the daytime.”
Behind them, the arguing continued, and Ji Si smiled lightly.
Light and shadow crossed, memories overlapped. For a brief moment, he felt as though he had returned to his former team.
Under the night sky, the captain was tallying the income and expenses in his ledger, the Nine-tailed Fox was chewing on a roasted chicken, dripping with grease, the nurse was counting her silver and golden needles, and the Sword Immortal walked beside him, asking, [High Priest, if one day the cycle of reincarnation collapses, where will the end of the Chosen Ones lead?]
Where does the end lead?
Ji Si gazed at the starry sky, his eyes filled with the sea of stars.
There are no coincidences in the world, especially for Chosen Ones of their caliber, every choice they make follows their own path.
Reincarnation is not an end, but merely a beginning.
And this is the reason he came to this world.
He is like a tree, the deeper his roots go into the soil, the more nutrients he absorbs, and the more the magnetic field integrates into the universe. Once the world truly accepts him, his roots can reach from one side to another.
The greatest benefits can only be gained in the greatest crises. When that time comes…
Ji Si smiled: “If they take you, just tell them the truth. I’d actually prefer it if they found me by their own strength.”
…
Days later, the Qu Kang team barely managed to gather about 300 children under the age of ten who could draw.
God knows how they managed to communicate with higher-ups, schools, parents, and teachers, exhausting their energy just to make sure there would be no issues before gathering them.
This is Zhongzhou, where anything related to children comes with such high hurdles that not even the King can clear them. It only took a few days to work through the bureaucracy, which is truly remarkable. But… a bunch of old men sat around in the office, their energy half drained.
Honestly, they’d rather be on the frontlines fighting with rats than dealing with kids! The former might cost them their lives, but the latter would definitely kill them. One child equals five hundred monkeys jumping around, and 300 kids? Forget it…
In the end, they had to rely on Jiang Ziying to hold down the fort. They dispersed in classrooms, gave the kids paper, pens, and fabric dolls, and spent 72 hours just to get some information.
They took pictures of the monsters rushing toward the building’s rooftop, pixelated them, and hung them on the wall, asking the kids to look and see what was on the rooftop.
They also took overexposed pictures of the rooftop and posted them on the wall, asking the kids to see what was hidden inside.
Surprisingly, the kids really came through!
Out of the 300 kids, nine of them actually drew different things. Among them was a drawing of a mysterious figure standing on the rooftop—black hair, white clothes, holding a staff.
“On average, three out of every 100 kids can see this, and they’re all under the age of seven,” Shen Yunting said. “We need to record the information of these nine kids and communicate with their parents, asking them to cooperate with the police.”
“Parents won’t agree…”
“There’s one, as long as one is willing to cooperate,” Jiang Ziying threw a pile of drawings onto the table, “We can’t intervene in these supernatural phenomena, we need the kids’ help. Otherwise, I bet no one in Zhongzhou will find this mysterious figure!”
But when they thought about contacting the parents, even a whole team of tough men who had fought drug lords and human traffickers turned pale and weak like noodles.
Just as they were about to send a “scapegoat” to handle the communication, an unexpected phone call reached the police station, and the news spread inside and out.
Last night, near the coast of Hulu Port, a major malicious “vengeful spirit attack” occurred, with as many as 100,000 witnesses.
Yes, they weren’t hallucinating. The words “vengeful spirit attack” were clear and legible, though their brains were a bit rusty, making them feel like they were reading a script for a horror movie.
Then a stack of photos came crashing down, knocking them into a daze.
High-definition aerial shots from a helicopter, showing large black cracks on the ground over a few kilometers around Hulu Port’s outskirts! Among them, two cars were stuck on the road, one with its windshield shattered, the other split in half!
The cuts were clean, unimaginable by human hands.
“This is…”
The voice on the other end of the phone sounded exhausted: “Do you remember the prophecy on the scarf? Three locations resonating, opening the ghost realm. I really didn’t want to believe it, but now I have to.”
“I’ve contacted Lingdong, and now I’m reaching out to you. If you have any clues, please let us know. We’ve already sent people to find the car owners, and we’ve started looking for the prophet.”
It was only at this moment that the task of finding the High Priest was truly put on the agenda.
Once the major incident hit, after the buffer time passed, reality slammed the sense of crisis in front of them. No one could keep pretending that everything was peaceful. Some problems could only be faced, and they had to face them.
“This road’s location was struck by a powerful beam of light last night. After the light, the entire city lost power, the strange phenomena vanished, and the coastal storm was quelled. According to the defense footage, the beam of light went out to sea, and we don’t know what it hit, but that’s a key point we’re interested in.”
“But more than that, I’m more concerned with where the light came from.”
“We tracked the direction from the footage, and the place we found is the one in the photos… Well, it’s a ruin, we don’t know what happened.”
“I’ve been working on cases for thirty years, and I always feel finding the ‘light’ is important.”
“We need to find it…”
[Go find him.]
[Find him…]
Shen Yunting paused, then spoke, “If possible, our team wants to go to Hulu Port…”
※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※
PS: The child shook the adult’s hand: “Police uncle, it’s this person!”
Ji Si: ????
PS: The half-blood: “When will I ever get a name?”
Si Nuocheng: … You should have a Chinese name, use that one.
Half-blood: No way, my mom gave it to me, I can’t use it!
Si Nuocheng: What’s it called?
Half-blood: It carries her hopes, it’s called “Chi Niuzhuang,” do you think I can use it?
Si Nuocheng: …
