Night of Despair

"My stomach really hurts!" Li Rushan wrote quickly with a look of embarrassed annoyance.

"My leg is really sprained!" Yu Hong wasn't about to back down either, quickly jotting down and then patting his own thigh.

The two of them stood in opposition, neither willing to yield.

After half a minute, Li Rushan, still worried about his daughter, decided not to waste any more time and put on a stern face, deciding to go in first.

However, instead of going straight for the car door, he walked to the side of the vehicle and struck the window with a club.

Bang!

The car window shattered into pieces, but the boards nailed inside blocked the view, still concealing the interior.

Li Rushan said nothing further, taking out a magnesium rod, lighting a piece of rag he salvaged from who knows where, and then stuffing it into the gap in the car window.

After stuffing it in, he turned and ran, not forgetting to signal to Yu Hong.

Yu Hong followed suit, and both of them ran a good forty or fifty meters before turning around to look at the bus.

At this point, the inside of the bus was clearly on fire, faintly glowing with red light.

"What kind of rag is that? So effective?" Yu Hong wrote out of curiosity.

"It's a special oilcloth, as long as it works," Li Rushan responded casually, but his eyes remained fixed on the bus.

As time slowly passed and the fire grew inside the bus, to the point where flames started to squeeze out the doors and windows, he nodded slightly.

"Let's go to the second one and do the same," he wrote.

"..." Yu Hong was speechless. Wouldn't it have been easier to do this from the start? Why pretend to check the bus?

He shook his head and followed Li Rushan as they burned bus after bus. Clearly prepared, Li Rushan stuffed extraordinary oilcloths into the smashed windows, lighting the wooden boards and igniting the fire, until it engulfed the entire vehicle.

For five buses, they set them all ablaze until they were completely on fire, without a single sound emerging.

The buses transformed into five torches, illuminating the surrounding mountains and forests brightly.

"Let's go," Li Rushan wrote. "As long as the carriers of the Spoken Ones are completely burned, we'll be safe, and we can communicate normally. The greatest danger of the Spoken Ones is being instantly infected through their words when we don't understand them."

Yu Hong nodded in complete agreement.

This was his situation; without understanding such Evil Shadows, almost no one could avoid this method of infection.

No wonder everyone who fled from Yuhe City ended up dead on the way.

The two stood by the fire, waiting for the flames to completely consume the buses, to burn m and utterly destroy all the carrier bodies inside.

There was no choice; the Spoken Ones were too dangerous, too hidden. Before erupting, they could easily make one think it was a mental issue, because the Red Value Detectors could not detect the spoken sound.

*'Perhaps I should reinforce the Red Value Detector. If it could detect the problem with the Spoken Ones' voices immediately, their threat would be greatly reduced,'* Yu Hong pondered.

Standing by the roadside, he quietly watched the blazing bus, suddenly growing worried about Stammering Yiyi.

If Stammering Yiyi encountered the Spoken Ones... with her intelligence, she would surely fall for it right from the start, just like him.

*The detector was now imperative, and the Silver Talisman Array was already struggling to withstand the strength of the Evil Shadows. Was it the Evil Shadows growing stronger, or were the Spoken Ones inherently stronger than the Withered Woman?* Yu Hong had no way of knowing.

He tossed this question to Li Rushan.

Li Rushan shook his head.

"Evil Shadows inherently elevate their strength through killing, constantly evolving, continually raising their danger level until reaching War Level, Nightmare Level, or even Despair Level. We even suspect that the so-called Evil Shadows are likely evolved from shadows."

He wrote a lengthy message, but the paper ran out as he finished.

He could only shrug helplessly at Yu Hong, stopping there.

The two of them waited for more than an hour, only turning back when they confirmed that all five buses were thoroughly burned.

"By the way, I have a suspicion about the Spoken Ones," Li Rushan suddenly remembered the scene when he first met Yu Hong, who was unaware of the paper ball thrown at him while standing in front of the stone house.

He felt he needed to remind him of this.

"It's about before," Li Rushan only got a head start in writing.

Boom!

Suddenly, a massive explosion came from behind them.

The two of them hurriedly dove forward, turning their heads to look back.

In the direction of the five buses, a brighter fire was blazing fiercely, clearly indicating one of the buses had exploded.

"This time it's definitely gone," Yu Hong wrote casually on the ground with a stone.

"...Yeah," Li Rushan nodded. Looking at the brightly lit direction, he suddenly wondered, was it truly the right decision to bring his daughter here from the safety of Hope City?

"By the way, what were you going to say just now?" Yu Hong wrote on the ground.

"Hmm... it was before," Li Rushan replied, also writing on the ground with a stone.

He recounted the scene he had seen earlier to Yu Hong.

"From the moment the Zhou sisters arrived, I should have already been visually influenced," Yu Hong confessed.

Li Rushan's reminder brought him back to reality, making him realize just how dangerous his situation had been.

Reflecting on it now, the time in the cave, his silent swinging of the Wolf Fang Club might have been due to not actually holding the weapon at all.

*The abilities of the Spoken Ones felt more and more dangerous the more he pondered on them.*

After a short while, the two of them rose and began retracing their steps.

They first arrived at Yu Hong's stone house.

"After destroying the carriers, how long before we can talk normally?" Yu Hong asked.

"About three days, bear with it," Li Rushan replied. "Alone in a safe house, you can speak freely, as long as you don't engage with outside words."

"Got it," Yu Hong nodded.

"Then, see you later," Li Rushan waved and headed back towards the post office, clearly eager to return, worried about his daughter's safety.

Yu Hong stood in the courtyard, watching him disappear into the woods, before climbing the steps and shutting the door behind him.

In these next two days, he'd have to expedite repairs on the Talisman Arrays in the safe house, restoring the Pyroxene Secret Room to its full state to get a good night's sleep.

Standing at the doorway, he glanced at the black, withered luminous stone grass outside and sighed.

Bang.

The door closed completely.

The next morning, Li Rushan came looking for Yu Hong, and the two went together to check on the convoy, confirming that the buses were completely burned. But strangely, the inside was empty with not a single body.

But without bodies, how had the buses arrived here?

The two of them couldn't comprehend it.

But confirming that there were no bodies inside relieved them greatly.

They searched the surrounding area to ensure nothing was amiss, no bodies were overlooked before feeling reassured and returning by sunset.

On the third day, it was the same.

Yu Hong gradually calmed down, of course, the reason wasn't just the eradication of the Spoken Ones, but also the repairs on all of the Talisman Arrays on the walls inside his safe house.

He had restored the integrity of the Pyroxene Secret Room in the safe house, once again achieving the secret room effect.

Simultaneously, under the stimulation of Inner Qi, luminous stone grass rapidly grew in the courtyard outside, forming a new patch covering the grounds.

Though the young luminous stone grass emitted weak radiation, it provided Yu Hong with a deeper sense of security.

Because luminous stone grass could drive away black insects, preventing ordinary shadows from disturbing his rest.

On the fourth day, the two still maintained their silent state, evidently shaken by the Spoken Ones, and did not come out.

They endured another cycle of three days of silence.

Until the day before the supply team arrived.

Early that morning, Li Rushan, carrying a large pack, arrived at the courtyard outside Yu Hong's place.

"Little Yu?" He knocked according to a fixed rhythm, whispering.

"Are you there?" he asked in a low voice.

Click.

Yu Hong opened the door, wearing his full gear, blocking the entrance to avoid letting him see inside.

"Can we finally talk?" he breathed a sigh of relief, writing on a board.

"Better be cautious. I just got news; Yuhe City's situation is tragic. The sudden outbreak of the Spoken Ones' Evil Shadows caused at least over two hundred thousand deaths, turning the entire Earth-level Yuhe City, into dead city within days!" Old Li lamented.

"Over two hundred thousand...." Yu Hong couldn't grasp the concept of such a number, but he understood it was a massive scale of casualties, measured in thousands.

On a plain, just over ten thousand people standing in rows could obscure the view, filling all sight.

And over two hundred thousand...

"If defenses are lacking, the damage potential of the Spoken Ones is indeed insurmountable..." he sighed in response.

"Yuhe City is completely gone now, pulling three neighboring Hope Cities into its disaster, countless dead and wounded. The United Army headquarters is in an emergency rescue operation," Li Rushan added helplessly. "Even the People's Army was mobilized, sacrificing many to form a large quarantine zone, halting the spread of the Spoken Ones."

"..." Yu Hong was left speechless. And this was merely an Evil Shadow case, a higher danger level relative to others, with three more levels yet undefined in their terror.

This world.... no one knew how long it could endure.

"Did you come by because you needed something?" he asked, knowing Li Rushan never visited empty-handed, usually meeting him, so Li's coming meant he needed assistance. It wasn't merely to deliver information.

"It's like this, due to excessive casualties and to curb the rapid spread of the Evil Shadows, they've set up more production lines from the Silver Tower, specifically producing Large Pyroxene Stones and mass-printing Advanced Array Pattern Talisman Arrays. So, I won't accept your Large Pyroxene Stones and Talisman Arrays anymore," Li Rushan stated seriously.

"Hmm?" Yu Hong was taken aback. Could it be possible?

"Of course, I still personally need them, but the buying price will have to be lowered. Given the clients for Talisman Arrays and Large Pyroxene Stones have died off in large numbers, more distant Hope Cities are receiving supply from above, it's impossible to offer the old prices anymore.

Previously, the supply team took Large Pyroxene Stones and Talisman Arrays from me to resell at a mark-up, but now the demand has significantly dwindled, profit margins can't even cover travel costs, so… you understand," Li Rushan said with a sly smile to Yu Hong.

"...If that's the case, I can repair advanced equipment, weapons, some small machines," Yu Hong considered and replied.

"That'll do," Li Rushan smiled. "I'm building a large underground temperature-controlled farm. I need a thermal air cycle system with a sterilization function. I've ordered a broken one from the supply team, you can check if it's repairable afterwards."

"....." Yu Hong was speechless. Was this guy intentionally buying broken ones for him to fix?