I Am Your Natural Enemy

Chapter 454: Chapter 187: Spoils of War, The First Night Parade of One Hundred Demons (5k)_3

Wen Yan turned around, with his back to Lin Jue, and kept on eating noisily. With that small bowl of stew, he polished off both the food and the soup all by himself.

After eating his fill, he leaned back in the chair to digest.

The last time a hot meal brought him this much satisfaction was several years ago.

These days, having fallen into the Netherworld, Wen Yan’s standards had dropped from wanting a place with water, internet, and air conditioning, to just being able to eat a hot meal.

No internet was still bearable. Reading more books wasn’t so bad.

Most importantly, there was so much free time here, he was bored to death. His progress practicing martial arts was much faster than outside. Now he somewhat understood why both martial artists and Taoists liked to go into seclusion all the time.

Improved cultivation efficiency was secondary—the main thing was tempering one’s willpower.

In modern society, anyone who can even quit their phone must have some ironclad will.

After resting for two days, Wen Yan told the steward that if Little Thief Fu Guangfei came by, he should pass on a message: tell them the Demon Kingdom’s main city has already been flattened.

Now he was going to continue clearing the remaining parts.

Now that he wouldn’t get lost anymore, Wen Yan started rampaging all over. He sprinted madly through the Netherworld, with the Demon Kingdom’s main city at the center, searching within several hundred kilometers around it.

In the end, he really did find a few leftover earth cities on the west side of the main city, and purified them all.

But he still had no idea if any Sacred Fire Sect War Souls would, with the help of players, reverse-descend into the real world.

...

Inside the Nanwu County Scorching Sun Department, Cai Qidong looked at the new intel Fu Guangfei brought back, and leaned back in his chair, frowning.

”You’re sure this is it?”

”Not a word off. The steward said my brother’s already gone to clean up the remnants, but he’s not sure if any War Souls have reverse-descended.

Because he couldn’t understand what those people said, and on top of that, they were violent and uncooperative, so he couldn’t interrogate them.”

Cai Qidong stared at the intelligence, face scrunched up almost into a knot.

Damn, he’d already flattened the Sacred Fire Sect’s main city, even wiped out their Sect Hierarch.

This rate of Wen Yan’s progress—was it always this outrageous?

”Alright, for now, limit your trips down there as much as possible. We’re still not sure if anything besides the Sacred Fire Sect War Souls can reverse-descend.”

Back in his office, Cai Qidong turned on his computer and checked the latest intelligence.

Divine Land maintained strict control, and there actually weren’t that many Netherworld players. The search engines had even blacklisted the word ’Netherworld’. They couldn’t do much about people using coded language in private chats.

But as soon as anyone touched on the core issues, they’d almost certainly trigger the Scorching Sun Department’s alert system.

Divine Land was still comparatively stable. Although, judging from recent data, the number of nether souls and reported ghost incidents was clearly ticking up, the overall situation was still manageable.

Divine Land was still stable, but just yesterday, Fusang next door pulled off something big.

According to present intel, the Netherworld game had started appearing in Fusang about half a month ago. Back then, people were still asking about it on Fusang’s social media.

Then yesterday, some Fusang high schooler—no one knows how—managed to stir up something huge. As a result, last night, in a northern city in Fusang, it was a Night Parade of the Hundred Demons, a carnival of chaos.

The number of ghosts there was already so massive that, once they gathered, it just naturally formed a Domain-like environment. Plenty of regular people with even a hint of spiritual sense started seeing those ghosts.

It continued until this morning, when the sun came up and things finally returned to normal. As for the specifics, even the Scorching Sun Department wasn’t clear yet.

Cai Qidong looked at the current intel and sighed inwardly.

Spiritual Qi Resurgence wasn’t just happening in Divine Land—the whole world was reviving.

They’d done plenty of preparation in advance, on guard against problems likely to crop up in the second stage.

They’d considered all sorts of scenarios, but always from Divine Land’s own perspective. After all, population density here was off the charts—throughout history, every dynasty was always fighting, only the intensity varied.

No one had considered that the first major eruption after the start of the second stage wouldn’t be in Divine Land at all.

But rather, over in Fusang.

Thinking about it, Cai Qidong recalled the overall cultural atmosphere over there, and somehow felt it wasn’t all that surprising after all.

Other people’s life and death wasn’t his concern; he just hoped nothing major happened in his own backyard.

In any case, as the Spiritual Qi Resurgence progressed, sea transportation was already heavily affected. Just the other day he’d heard that up in the northern Europa seas, a massive sea beast had apparently flipped a whaling ship.

Sea traffic over there was severely impacted. Lots of boats didn’t dare go near that stretch of ocean anymore.

Cai Qidong ignored this and kept reviewing Nanwu County files, especially recent developments in Virtue City—which he checked every day.

The street lamps in the north of Virtue City had way too many evil ghosts hanging from them, and seeing today’s tally hadn’t increased, Cai Qidong quietly breathed a sigh of relief.

Thank goodness, those ghosts weren’t being stubborn anymore for now.

But since the ghosts weren’t coming out of Old Zhao’s family, they’d definitely try to come out elsewhere. That was a headache too.

Checking briefings from other commanderies, he saw that Fengdu had a recent spike in ghost numbers and was already calling for backup.

Guanzhong County, which had always been the place with the most ghosts, was, weirdly enough, now the most stable—still nice and peaceful to this day.

Setting the reports aside, Cai Qidong began mobilizing personnel, assigning more people to customs, especially to keep an eye on arrivals from Fusang, whether human or cargo—all needed special scrutiny.

...

In a small town in Central Plains County, just as the sky was getting light, Chen Qimo got up to make herself breakfast. The meal she took most seriously every day was breakfast.

It was the fifteenth of the lunar month again. She placed fresh pastries and fruit before her grandma’s memorial portrait, and lit incense.

Then, following her grandma’s habit, she also lit incense to the other ancestral tablets and set a small bowl of rice before them.

After breakfast, she rode her bike to school.

Leaving the residential area, as she passed an intersection, a claw reached up from underground and grabbed for her calf.

A barely visible wisp of light flashed, and her Yang Energy bounced the claw away.

Feeling something, Chen Qimo turned her head for a look, but saw nothing.

After she’d ridden off, in the dim intersection, a blue-faced, fanged evil ghost quietly poked its head out of the ground. It stretched out a claw, only to find it had already been scorched pitch-black.