Three days earlier.
“Sang Sang, we’ve lost signal.” The moment they crossed that repulsive energy field, Qin’s father immediately noticed his phone had no service.
Hearing this, Qin’s mother quickly pulled out her phone and saw it too—no signal. She felt a little anxious. Even though they’d been told the energy here was chaotic and electronic devices would fail nearby, actually experiencing it still made her uneasy.
Qin Sang had already mentally prepared herself and remained calm. Losing signal wasn’t a problem—she’d learned about this issue yesterday and had printed out a map of the mountain in advance. But now, looking at the scene before her, she realized that map was useless.
The terrain before them was flat—nothing like the ruggedness of a mountain. When she turned to look back, the path they’d come from had vanished, replaced by nothing but barren loess.
Yes, beneath their feet was an expanse of loess earth. There were no large plants, only occasional patches of yellowed weeds. Other than that, nothing else was visible for now.
“Wh-Where exactly is this place?!”
Qin’s mother rubbed her eyes in utter disbelief. Qin’s father nodded in agreement. Just a second ago, the scene before them had been completely different.
Qin Sang gazed at the seemingly endless loess plain, breathing in the dry, scorching air, biting her lip without speaking. She released her mental energy, spreading it outward in all directions from herself. After a few minutes, she finally detected a faint energy fluctuation.
“What is it?” Qin’s mother asked immediately when she saw Qin Sang open her eyes.
Qin Sang: “Let’s go—that direction.” She pulled out a few electric scooters from her space.
When they’d entered, with the guard post watching, she hadn’t stowed their larger vehicles into the space—that wouldn’t have matched the spatial capacity of an ordinary person. Fortunately, she had other vehicles in her space. But in this unfamiliar loess zone, electric scooters were clearly more practical.
If her instincts were right, the person ahead was a spatial ability user—possibly one of the missing individuals.
—
Half an hour later, they found him. Looking at the crude dugout shelter before her, Qin Sang stared in surprise at the man in front of them.
He was filthy, with a scruffy beard—clearly having endured some hard days.
“Hey, hey, hey! You—you’re here to rescue me, right? Thank goodness!”
Ignoring their surprise, the man saw the three of them approaching on scooters and started jumping up and down with joy.
“Hey there, brother. Are you the only one here? How did you get in?”
Qin’s father stepped forward and struck up a conversation.
Hearing this, the man finally lowered his raised hands and scratched his hair awkwardly. “I… I’m alone.”
Qin Sang cut in directly. “Where are the others?”
The man, assuming Qin Sang was from the authorities sent to rescue them, immediately answered: “I don’t know where they are. At first, a lot of us from the village were together. But we ran out of water, so people gradually split up.”
Upon learning that this man was one of the villagers mentioned in the earlier intel, Qin Sang pressed him for details.
She learned that a week ago, one morning, the villagers had woken up to find themselves transported to this place. At first, they’d all stuck together, surviving on supplies from a few spatial users. But after two days, those spatial users refused to share anymore.
They’d realized that no matter which direction they walked, the place seemed endless. There was no food or water to find, and no way to contact the outside world. In the end, the spatial users formed several small groups and went their separate ways.
This man, however, had never revealed his own spatial ability, so no one had followed him.
“So, have you run into any official personnel?” Qin Sang asked directly.
The authorities had sent several teams in—over twenty people total. These were elite fighters with high survival skills, all of them spatial users. Before coming, Qin Sang had worried they might all be dead. Now it seemed they might be out there rescuing people across this loess land.
“I did. Ran into them once. That’s why I thought you were from the government too.” The man looked at the matching gear on the three of them and assumed they were official personnel.
“Besides the loess and weeds, have you found anything else here?”
The man shook his head without hesitation. “No, not me, anyway. After we split up, I’ve just been resting here. But…”
He hesitated.
“But what? Go on.” Qin Sang pulled out a 500ml bottle of purified water from her space and tossed it to him.
The man’s eyes lit up at the sight of the water. He handled it like a treasure, then quickly stashed it into his own space.
“But it’s best to stay buried in the ground at night. It’s not safe outside.”
Qin Sang: …
Just how unsafe it was—she found out that night.
—
“This…”
The Qin family was now huddled in a newly dug dugout shelter. It was crude, with only half a door exposed above ground, blocked by a few wooden planks. Through the gaps between the planks, Qin Sang watched swarms of insects occasionally fly across the night sky, utterly stunned.
These weren’t ordinary bugs—they were mutated insects brimming with energy. From a distance, she couldn’t make out their species, but without a doubt, they were all insects. Some were big, some small, and as they passed by, the buzzing of their wings filled the air.
“Sang Sang, if there are crawling bugs too, wouldn’t we be in danger?!” Qin’s father immediately realized the implication.
Qin Sang nodded and extended her mental perception again. She found no insects on the ground—only those flying in the sky. That was the strange part.
The young man next door, named Ye Fei, probably knew something about this but hadn’t told them. At that moment, he too was lying in his dugout, gazing up at the sky.
This scene of insects flying back and forth lasted the entire night. When dawn broke, not a single insect silhouette remained in the sky.
“Ye Fei, can you tell me why the insects only appear at night? And why are there only flying ones—none that crawl on the ground?”
Ye Fei was munching on a pack of crackers. At Qin Sang’s question, he chuckled sheepishly.
Qin Sang tossed him another 500ml bottle of purified water.
“Tell me what you know. If it’s solid, I’ll give you two more bottles.”
Ye Fei’s eyebrows danced with delight at the offer. Seeing this, Qin Sang couldn’t help but reflect—yesterday she’d thought this guy was simple. Now it was clear he was playing dumb.
“I really don’t know the exact reason. But this place is just like that. At first, we didn’t know, and some people went out at night to wander around.”
Qin Sang wondered—had they been killed by the insects?
But that wasn’t it.
“They saw all those bugs and said they were mutated insects. Everyone got scared and started discussing evacuating. But some wanted to head east, some west, some north…”
She got it. The villagers had split up because they couldn’t agree on a direction.
“So, do you actually know why these insects only show up at night?”
Ye Fei shook his head—this time, he looked genuinely honest. “I really don’t know. At first, we were terrified, but after a few nights, we realized they don’t actively attack. But…”
His expression flickered with fear.
“But on the third day, a guy from our village deliberately threw a brick at a flying insect. The brick was something we’d brought from outside. Then that insect swooped down in a flash, flew back up into the sky—and the guy’s head was separated from his body.”
Hearing this, Qin Sang was slightly taken aback.
That was some serious lethality. Last night, she’d carefully extended her mental perception to observe. The insects here were indeed mutated—but their energy levels were far higher than those outside. To put it in perspective: if an outside mutated insect’s energy core contained about 10 points of energy, the ones she’d seen last night had over 60 points.
That was a staggering difference.
With such lethal insects, who knew how many more lurked across this loess land? And if these creatures ever got out, they’d inevitably clash with humanity—who knew how many would die?
The thought sent a chill down Qin Sang’s spine.
Ye Fei had no idea how deeply Qin Sang was thinking. Right now, all he wanted was to survive. Seeing she hadn’t handed over the water, he reminded her.
Qin Sang tossed the bottles over and said bluntly, “We’re setting out to find people after breakfast. Are you coming with us, or staying here?”
Having an extra person would make it easier to get more information from the other villagers if they ran into them. Qin Sang had a hunch that this loess land held more than just the flying insects she’d seen last night—there were probably crawling ones too.
Ye Fei hadn’t expected Qin Sang to invite him along. Yesterday, after learning she wasn’t with the authorities, he’d resigned himself to waiting here to die—which was why he’d tried to squeeze supplies out of her.
Now that she was offering to take him with them, he felt a twinge of shame—but that quickly gave way to renewed hope.
“I’ll go! I’ll go with you guys.”
Qin Sang didn’t waste time. After breakfast, she pulled out four electric scooters—which made Ye Fei’s eyes light up.
“Alright, let’s move.”
She took the lead, heading toward an area with a high concentration of energy signatures. She had a feeling they’d run into a lot of people there.
They traveled for half a day. Just before sunset, they finally encountered people—or rather, a large group of them.
Some were injured, others filthy, huddled in small clusters as they dug dugout shelters.
Qin Sang’s attention was drawn to several individuals in uniform.
They, in turn, noticed the gear the Qin family was wearing. The others were just glad to see new faces.
Qin Sang approached the uniformed leader and exchanged a few words, confirming they were the previously stationed outside team.
“I can’t believe someone else actually came in.”
“Captain Qin, could you tell me everything you’ve experienced since entering? We need to find a way out—we can’t stay here forever.”
This Captain Qin was the leader of the uniformed group. They were military personnel sent to rescue the villagers, only to find themselves trapped after entering the mountain.
Then, Qin Sang heard an account far richer in detail than Ye Fei’s.
It turned out that Captain Qin and his team had gradually gathered scattered villagers after entering. At first, there were only a few—they’d run into one or two stragglers every other day. After a week, they’d formed this group of nearly a hundred.
“But why are people injured? I thought the insects here don’t actively attack humans?”
At that question, Captain Qin sighed.
“They don’t actively attack. But there are too many people, and not enough food or water.”
Qin Sang understood the rest without needing an explanation.
With nothing to eat or drink, they’d resorted to killing insects for sustenance. Naturally, the insects didn’t just sit still and wait to be slaughtered. Even before the apocalypse, if you tried to squash a cockroach with a slipper, it would run or fly away.
“And so, to survive, everyone started fighting individually at first. After a few deaths, they banded together—every time they caught an insect, they’d all swarm it at once.”
As for why they didn’t use the weapons they’d brought?
First, because most of their ammunition and supplies were already spent; what remained was kept as a last resort. No one knew what other terrifying things might lurk in this place.
“Anyway, after everything we’ve been through, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me there are bug monsters bigger than humans on this land. As for the way out—we’ve been searching all along.”
With that, Captain Qin stood up and raised his hand to rally everyone. “Hurry, hurry—grab your weapons. The sun’s about to set. The hunt starts soon.”
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