Ghost Sand

“Cluck, cluck, squawk!!”

With a sharp shriek, a large—no, a massive—chicken-like demon beast collapsed to the ground, its pristine white tail feathers stained with blood.

“Director Qin is awesome!!”

“That's one huge chicken. It should last us a few days, right?”

“I was practically crying after eating nothing but energy bars for the last two days...”

The members of Team One swarmed forward, skillfully turning into butchers as they stripped the feathers and removed the long beak.

The valuable parts were kept, while the meat was tested for toxicity; once cleared, it was prepared for eating.

Although they carried energy bars—a small portion of which could sustain an adult for an entire day—the Huaxia people's deeply ingrained instinct to “eat hot food” could not be suppressed.

After all, wasn't the basic requirement for a field army's cooking squad to be able to caramelize sugar for braised pork right on the battlefield?

The massive demon beast was carved up, and thick chunks of chicken meat were skewered on tree branches to roast.

Over a carefully dug smokeless stove, a small stainless steel pot bubbled with chicken soup.

Their food problem was finally solved.

Qin Yue wiped the flecks of blood from her face and took a soft breath.

This was already their fourth day inside the secret realm.

There was no sunlight here, and no sense of direction.

There was no distinction between day and night, nor was there any concept of time.

The sky was a perpetual, suffocating gray.

All electronic devices had malfunctioned: communication equipment was useless, GPS devices had failed, and satellite receivers could not pick up any signals.

This confirmed yet another point:

The secret realm was indeed a unique, isolated space that did not exist anywhere on Blue Star.

Fortunately, they could still communicate with one another using flare guns.

Over the past four days, the members of Team One had gradually reunited. Aside from Nan Zhi, who was still missing, everyone else had sustained injuries of varying degrees.

Lyu Dongfang and Liu Guansheng had appeared in an abandoned school. They had been targeted by the vengeful ghosts haunting the place and only managed to survive after a desperate, grueling struggle.

Hu Manni, on the other hand, had been relatively fortunate. Upon entering the secret realm, she had landed directly in a dense forest.

She had utilized the advantages of her fox immortals in the forest to the absolute fullest. Not only did she successfully locate the main group, but she had also discovered traces of Ghost Sand.

It was completely transparent, with each square-shaped grain about the size of a thumb joint. It looked remarkably like clear crystal, though its texture felt slightly different when squeezed.

Qin Yue retrieved a palm-sized detector from her storage bag. She carefully compared the crystal in her hand against a photo in her reference guide, which experts had modeled and reconstructed based on Nan Zhi's verbal description of Ghost Sand.

The Yellow River Secret Realm had yielded a bountiful harvest. They had not only obtained a large amount of precious spirit herbs and demon beast specimens, but they had also filled in many blanks in Blue Star's understanding of secret realm flora and fauna.

To ensure they did not miss any rare spirit herbs, every team member was equipped with a portable detector.

Although the database was not yet comprehensive, it made it easy for them to perform one-to-one comparisons and gather spirit herbs.

After a brief moment, Qin Yue smiled faintly.

“It really is Ghost Sand. Manni, you've done a great job.”

For this expedition, the expert panel had prepared various contingency plans, including backup protocols in case team members became separated.

“Really?!!”

A flash of pleasant surprise crossed Hu Manni's face, and she couldn't help but bite her lip. “This time... I actually helped everyone, right?”

Ever since the setback in the Yellow River Secret Realm, where she had lost two of her fox immortals, Hu Manni had been consumed by self-blame.

Even though it was not her fault, Qin Yue could faintly sense the lingering knot in her heart. It was as if she were holding her breath, desperate to prove herself to someone.

“Yes. The mission for our two exploration teams is to locate the source of the Ghost Sand and leave electronic landmarks to facilitate large-scale harvesting in the future.”

Qin Yue smiled and said:

“Since you've found the Ghost Sand, more than half of our mission is already complete. We can signal Team Two to meet up with us as soon as possible.”

A red flare shot into the air, trailing a crimson streak across the gloomy, gray sky.

Ten minutes later, a similar flare lit up in the distant sky.

“Team Two isn't far from us. Lyu Dongfang, Liu Guansheng, and the others will stay here to rest and wait for them to arrive. Hu Manni and I will head out first to confirm the location of the Ghost Sand.”

Seeing the familiar red fireworks, Qin Yue nodded and immediately turned to assign tasks to the other six members:

“Nan Zhi also has a specialized flare with her. If anything goes wrong, she will signal for help. The fact that we haven't seen a signal means she isn't in immediate danger. She's likely just held up by something and unable to break away. My orders are to assist her with the harvesting as much as possible while completing our primary objective. Until we return, you are to stand by.”

Although this exploration had been organized in a rush, they were by no means unprepared.

Each of them was equipped with antidotes, energy bars, individual first-aid kits, and tactical gear—including AKBQ submachine guns, tactical knives, RGD-5SLD hand grenades, Biological Spiritual Energy Magnetic Field Devices, spirit-locking shackles, spiritual energy detectors, and several micro-explosives.

Qin Yue's storage bag even contained several rocket-propelled grenades and man-portable missiles, specifically brought along to deal with colossal demon beasts like the Golden-Winged Flying Centipede.

Her storage bag had been gifted to her by Nan Zhi. It had a volume of about five cubic meters. Huaxia scientists had analyzed its operating principles in an attempt to replicate it.

However, it was impossible to decipher its underlying mechanisms without sacrificial samples to work with.

Even though the researchers in the laboratory stared at her storage bag with deep resentment every single day, Qin Yue had never relented or agreed to let them use this sole precious specimen for destructive testing.

Some scientists had already suggested that the technology embedded in the storage bag was far beyond the current reach of Blue Star's science.

Or rather, its existence pointed to an entirely new path for the stagnant Huaxia scientific community.

—Under this new paradigm, devices like the Biological Spiritual Energy Magnetic Field Device, the spirit-locking shackles, and the spiritual energy detector had been born.

Instead of closing themselves off, they had rapidly embraced these changes and mastered their underlying laws.

Qin Yue firmly believed that even if the secret realms truly triggered a massive shift in the global landscape as many suspected, Huaxia would not fall into chaos.

...

In the chaotic environment of the Ghost City of Ultimate Bliss secret realm, compasses were useless. Along the way, Qin Yue and Hu Manni relied entirely on the guidance of the fox immortals to navigate.

Oddities lurked around every corner, forcing the two of them to proceed with extreme caution.

As they emerged from the dense forest, they were greeted by a dense, jumbled cluster of buildings from various eras and architectural styles.

Modern hospitals, ancient taverns, abandoned shopping malls, crooked wooden buildings, stone villages, and cracked asphalt roads overgrown with weeds...

Modernity and antiquity overlapped like a pile of discarded historical garments thrown together in a heap, left to gather mold in this desolate wasteland.

There was a hospital from Manggu that had been demolished in the last century.

There were ancient Siamese structures that otherwise only existed in old photographs.

There were unadorned bamboo huts, thatched cottages, dilapidated color-coated steel houses, and slums.

Qin Yue couldn't help but speculate on the connection between the secret realms and reality.

Ma Guniang had indeed been right.

When the cultivation world shattered all those years ago, it had likely left fractures in reality.

The Ghost City of Ultimate Bliss secret realm must have landed right on Manggu, existing there silently for thousands of years.

This was why the secret realm contained both ancient architecture and modern high-rise buildings.

Huaxia's future demand for Ghost Sand would certainly not be small, but she had no idea how the authorities would go about securing it.

Qin Yue paused, standing on a hillside and looking down.

What lay before them was a vast, dilapidated ancient burial ground overgrown with wild grass.

This burial ground was incredibly jarring, nestled amidst steel and concrete like a glaring bald patch in a forest of skyscrapers.

Across the potholed ground, coffins were strewn in every direction. Their rotten lids were riddled with wormholes and falling apart.

Some coffins jutted awkwardly out of the soil, their lids thrown wide to reveal skeletal remains inside.

Other coffins, once buried deep underground, had been clawed out by some unknown animal, leaving messy scratches on the lids. The owners of these coffins were nowhere to be found.

Human bones lay discarded everywhere. Yellowed skulls rested by the wayside, with gray slugs crawling out of their hollow, black eye sockets.

Their wet slime dripped onto the ground, leaving glistening trails behind.

Wherever the slugs crawled, the accumulated slime piled up to form tiny mounds of earth. Atop these mounds grew a plant of a highly peculiar shape.