Night of Despair

Having decided to see if it could be repaired later, Yu Hong said goodbye to Old Li and returned to the safe house to begin practicing the Heavy Leg Skill.

Perhaps it was because he heard good news today, or perhaps he had been holding back and avoiding speaking for several days, finally he could chat normally now.

Yu Hong felt much more relaxed as he trained, and the gathering of inner Qi within his body was significantly faster than before.

It hadn't even been ten minutes since he started training.

A new strand of inner Qi quietly gathered and flowed into his lower abdomen.

The eighth strand of inner Qi was successfully acquired. The next step was the ninth strand of inner Qi, and once it was complete, according to the description of the Heavy Leg Skill, he would be able to fully enhance his entire body with nine strands of inner Qi and qualify to enter the Second Layer.

Yu Hong was quite looking forward to this.

After all, so far, the Heavy Leg Skill had only improved his low sweeping leg strength, leaving him with many other vulnerabilities.

If he didn't have equipment protection, he probably couldn't even beat a regular soldier with a gun.

Of course, he had a gun now, so it was just a matter of who was faster and more accurate. Practicing the Heavy Leg Skill was utterly useless.

Gulp, gulp, after downing a large glass of water, Yu Hong set down the cup, feeling his body growing stronger and his mood much improved.

In recent days, he dedicated all his time to fortifying the Large Pyroxene Stone and the Talisman Array to defend against the voice beings. He even enhanced two silver talisman arrays.

Now that the fortification was complete, everything had returned to its previous state, and he finally had the mental space to try out his earlier ideas.

Sitting by the door, Yu Hong picked up a Red Value Detector.

He placed his hand on it.

"Enhanced Red Value Detector direction: higher detection intensity, better sensitivity, greater durability."

Just enhancing it for the specific purpose of dealing with the voice beings was too cost-prohibitive. There were bound to be other hidden troubles in the future, so he thought improving the overall sensitivity of the detector was better.

This was Yu Hong's thinking.

Soon, a black line flowed out, and a countdown appeared on the detector.

"5 hours and 12 minutes."

"Not bad," Yu Hong nodded slightly.

Just as he was about to confirm the enhancement, a thought flashed through his mind.

He paused, withdrew his hand, and got up to fetch a piece of white paper, part of a batch supplied by Old Li's group.

He had bought a thousand sheets in one go, enough to last a long time.

With the paper in hand, Yu Hong swiftly wrote a title with a charcoal pencil.

"Strategies Against Voice Being Attacks."

Then, he quickly jotted down all kinds of information he had gathered from Li Rushan, line by line.

"First, the voice beings' attacks will fully erupt in the final stage, so it's necessary to prepare a large amount of luminous stone items to offset the explosive threat."

"Second, the voice beings' attacks primarily use sound and specifically take the form of conversations; the specific process can be outlined as: hearing the sound, giving a response, and successful infestation by the voice beings."

"Third, the voice beings require a corpse as a medium and select targets to attack within a certain range around the body...."

Soon, all the content was written on the paper, densely packed and quite comprehensive.

Yu Hong set down the pen, checked it over, and confirmed there were no mistakes.

Then he reached out, placing his hand on the paper.

"Enhance the methods to combat voice beings. Direction: fill in method details as comprehensively as possible."

*He felt a sense of eager anticipation, thinking that if the enhancement could be completed this time, then in the future, when facing any threats, he could...*

Just then.

A black line flickered.

"Inadequate completeness," the Black Mark's feedback echoed in his ear.

Yu Hong's heart skipped a beat. He removed his hand and looked at the paper, recalling when he initially enhanced the Heavy Leg Skill.

Thinking it over, he simply stopped specifying the direction's content, instead giving only a vague mental direction for enhancement.

Thus, he stretched out his hand again, pressing it onto the paper.

"Enhance methods against voice beings."

He no longer provided direction and merely established in his mind the desire to enhance, then quietly waited.

Soon, a black line shot from the back of his right hand, coursed through his fingers, and merged into the paper.

"Enhance methods against voice beings?" The Black Mark got through!!

An uncontrollable smile instantly appeared on Yu Hong's face.

He watched as the countdown appeared on the paper: 3 hours and 56 minutes.

Only four hours!

He immediately responded.

"Yes!"

Sss.

The countdown on the paper began ticking down, the number decreasing by a minute, signifying the start of the timing.

Yu Hong let out a sigh of relief and carefully picked up the sheet, placing it away from the fireplace and securing it with two talisman array boards to protect it.

Then, he quickly dressed and went out to collect firewood and dig up wild vegetables.

Four hours wasn't long. After he returned and sorted the firewood and wild vegetables, the time was almost up.

In eager anticipation, he took out the paper, placed it flat on the wooden table, and quietly waited.

The final one-minute countdown on the paper remained motionless.

Soon.

Soon he'd be able to truly determine whether this method could yield the desired result.

Yu Hong was filled with anticipation.

*If this method proved feasible, it would mean that he could completely utilize the Black Mark to gather and integrate various information and methods to find a more comprehensive and better way to solve the Black Disaster!*

*

*

*

On a road not far from the post office.

The sunlight was chilly, and the breeze carried a faint scent of dry leaves from afar.

Five buses had turned to charcoal, sitting silently by the roadside, blackened.

The interiors were empty, with no bodies present.

But on the high slope on one side of the bus.

In a hidden patch of weeds, two already decomposed male corpses lay quietly.

They lay side by side in the grass, wearing concealed grass capes. They had their eyes open and smiles on their faces, as if they had been extremely calm and happy before they died.

Their faces were directed toward the five buses on the road.

Li Rushan and Yu Hong had also searched here before, but due to the extensive search area, they could only conduct a rough sweep. It was likely some peculiar force had distorted their vision, and they hadn't noticed the disguise on the two bodies while searching.

So, they were completely unaware that two bodies killed by voice beings were hiding nearby, unburnt....

*

*

*

The stone house at the post office.

Li Rushan had gone out to gather vegetables and hadn't returned.

Aisena was left alone in the stone house, sitting at the wooden table, somewhat bored, playing with a wooden figure on the table.

She kept twisting the wooden figure's arms, as if it were spinning in circles.

Squeak.

It turned one circle.

Squeak, squeak.

It turned two circles.

Squeak, squeak, squeak.

It turned thr--

Suddenly, Aisena's hand stopped.

She stared at the wooden figure, realizing she hadn't turned the wooden figure's arms at that moment.

But... where did that sound come from?

Thinking of this, she lifted her little face and looked out the window.

There was nothing outside.

So Aisena quickly jumped off the stool, ran to the bed, and draped the luminous stone blanket over herself, clutching the wooden figure, and shrunk onto the bed to hide.

She fully wrapped her head with the luminous stone blanket, remaining silent and composed, waiting for time to pass.

Ten minutes later.

There was still no anomaly outside.

Aisena did not pull off the luminous stone blanket, remaining hidden inside.

But just then, she heard footsteps, the sound of footsteps coming from outside the house.

The sound grew closer.

With the protection of the luminous stone blanket, Aisena couldn't hear the shadow's voice, so she knew the sound wasn't made by the shadow.

But she still didn't move, remaining calmly hidden.

Tap, tap, tap.

The footsteps approached, stopping at the door.

Then came the sound of a key being inserted and turned in the lock.

With a soft click.

The door opened.

Then it closed with a bang and was locked again.

"Nana, I'm back!" her father Li Rushan's cheerful voice rang out.

"Daddy!!" Aisena suddenly flung off the luminous stone blanket, a smile on her face, calling out as she jumped off the bed.

Silence.

But the scene inside the room made the smile on her face slowly fade.

In the stone house, there was no father, no sound.

Only the light streamed through the cracks in the window, forming beams that illuminated the floating dust.

The room was silent.

"Dad?" Aisena called out cautiously.

*

*

*

Under the light.

Yu Hong stared closely at the now-blurring paper.

The text on the white paper briefly blurred, then became clear again.

Line after line of new text appeared, smaller, denser, more neatly written.

The title remained the same.

"Strategies Against Voice Being Attacks."

Below were details, plus the few lines Yu Hong had written earlier.

The difference was that these lines now had many more details added to them.

For example, the specific Red Value range of a voice being's outburst, with an upper limit of ten thousand and a lower limit of three thousand.

For example, the voice being's medium could actually radiate across a three-kilometer area, randomly causing voice being infections, not just within the one kilometer Old Li had mentioned.

For example, the voice being's attack sequence didn't just involve inquiry and response; anyone who made a sound within five seconds after the voice being's sound would be deemed to have met the infection condition.

Holding the paper, Yu Hong read on with increasing gravity.

Until the very end.

There was a bloody red warning at the bottom of the paper.

"Warning: Voice beings will evolve after killing over ten thousand medium to large life forms. They will assume a second form. The second form will emerge simultaneously once all carriers within a certain range have been destroyed. Its manifestation will be...."

Reading this, Yu Hong suddenly remembered the information Li Rushan had conveyed.

".....This time, Yuhe City suffered terribly. The sudden outbreak of voice beings' Evil Shadows killed at least over two hundred thousand people, and the entire Earth-level city of Hope City turned into a dead city within days!"

Over two hundred thousand people!!?

"That's not right! Two hundred thousand should have definitely reached the second form! But why didn't we encounter the second form after we burned the buses!?" Yu Hong suddenly realized something was amiss.

In an instant, his scalp tingled, and a strong sense of crisis surged in his heart.

"The second form surely appeared after all carriers were destroyed, and the fact that we didn't encounter it means...."

"Not all the carriers were burned!!!"

Something bad was coming!!

Yu Hong jumped up, pressed the paper down with a board, grabbed a silver talisman array, and prepared to run to warn Li Rushan.

No matter what, if Li Rushan died, Yu Hong would be left alone. Then, supply coordination, engagement with supply teams, and external communication would all be cut off!

And Aisena—regardless of having seen so many dead people, Yu Hong ultimately didn't want a cute little girl who liked him to die because of their oversight.

Bam.

He shut the wooden door behind him, grabbed all the talisman arrays, and rushed towards the post office with the Wolf Fang Club in hand.