Demon Cultivator in Abyssal Era

”Stay alert.”

Chu Xiu left a word behind, and with a wave of his large hand, a Demon Energy Barrier formed around him.

His actions caused the other three to be slightly stunned, but their expressions quickly turned grave.

As the Flying Corpse descended, getting closer to the base, everyone gradually realized something was amiss.

Here it seems... too quiet.

Quiet is not meant in the physical sense; the Awakened’s superior senses allow them to hear the roar of industrial machines, the faint ”zzzz” sound of high voltage when the automatic anti-air turrets rotate.

But the issue is... there are no human voices.

Not a single person.

The agricultural area, industrial zone, and even the residential district were void of people.

Even when the Flying Corpse completely landed in the base, no one was seen.

As they ventured further into the residential area, more strange occurrences unfolded.

In the residential area, steeped tea was on the table, the hot water in the insulated cup hadn’t cooled yet, the electric stove had burned the pot red-hot, and the stew inside was completely scorched, clothes were still hung on the balcony.

Everything brimmed with signs of life, yet there was no one.

It was as if everyone hurriedly evacuated in an instant, so hurried they didn’t even turn off the burning gas.

”What happened here... was it attacked suddenly? But...”

Aurora glanced inside a residential home where rifles were neatly locked in a weapon cabinet.

What kind of attack led these people to leave without even taking their weapons?

The most suspicious point was that most of the doors were closed.

In such a rush, did they still take the time to shut the doors?

”Don’t worry about it, our target is the ammunition, what happened here is none of our business.” Chu Xiu said.

Aurora looked at him with some confusion but didn’t say much.

Since Aurora had been here before, the four quickly arrived at a place where weapons and ammunition were stored. Here, a heavy anti-explosion iron door was firmly shut, and they still hadn’t seen anyone on the way.

”Why don’t we first check the core shelter? If there’s anyone, they would surely be...”

Before finishing her sentence, copious amounts of demonic qi surged out from behind Chu Xiu, transforming into dozens of gigantic swords that pierced into the ammo depot door!

”Boom!”

The next moment, those gigantic swords exploded like bombs towards all directions, directly blasting open the two-meter-thick giant blast door!

”Mr. Chu, you...”

Under Aurora’s puzzled gaze, Chu Xiu said calmly: ”There’s no time to slowly look for people; the sooner we grab the ammunition and weapons, the sooner we can return.”

Listening to Chu Xiu’s explanation, Aurora’s brows furrowed even more in confusion instead of relaxing.

Why does she feel... like Chu Xiu seems to know there’s nobody here?

Sensing the puzzled gaze, Chu Xiu didn’t explain further but urged instead: ”Move quickly.”

Indeed, he knew exactly why this was happening.

Qin Xiang once explained to him that the Abyss’s principle of devouring worlds is [complete data simulation]; as long as everything can be simulated, time loses its meaning, the Abyss can instantly predict changes of millions of years ahead, swiftly fast-forward a world to its endpoint.

The only force capable of pushing the Abyss back is civilization.

The connection between people, the collision and interplay of thoughts and logic, exponentially increases the difficulty of the Abyss’s data simulation.

Simulating a stationary, silent weed is easy; knowing the soil and weather allows its growth state to be roughly recreated.

Simulating beasts that only know sleeping and hunting isn’t hard; their behavioral patterns are simple, even if they reproduce through many generations, still following natural laws to procreate on this land.

But once civilization is born, it spreads like wildfire, unstoppable; how long has humanity been around? Yet it’s evolved such incredible culture!

The trajectory of civilization is unpredictable; no one knows if a seemingly trivial sentence in a book might spark a genius into developing groundbreaking theories; no one knows how a precious painting might offer the viewer an ineffable experience.

Civilization is entropy-increasing; it naturally expands, bearing resplendent fruit.

”This trial, after all, involves ’retrospection’, and retrospection consumes energy; the boundary of roughly four hundred kilometers attests to this.”

”Since civilization still exists here, even a mere thirty-day simulation might cost the Abyss greatly, so these ’civilization fire seeds’ irrelevant to the mission were simply erased.”

If Chu Xiu’s deduction is correct, not only here but those settlements in the wild, those wandering hunters, will all be erased, now only mission-recognized ’civilization fire seeds’ remain in this trial ground.

Even...

Chu Xiu recalled the sights he scanned earlier with his Divine Sense.

At that time, he felt the camp’s people seemed somewhat ”dazed.”

Thinking back now, perhaps even these ”civilization fire seeds” only had primary ”characters” fully backtracked, while others were merely stripped of their past, simply simulated ”NPCs.”

Yet he cannot say this; if those powerful Awakened discover they’ve actually died, that everything now is just meaningless simulation, their morale would likely collapse instantly.

Thus, Chu Xiu could only urge verbally, keeping them focused on the task, not allowing minds to wander.

And the tactic proved very effective; soon everyone was engrossed by the ammunition-filled warehouse.