As the words to channel his energy left his mouth, Yang Shuo ripped his clothes off, revealing muscles as hard as tempered steel.
Under the enhancement of his Word Soul, “muscles as hard as steel” was no longer a mere metaphor; his flesh had taken on a literal iron-gray hue.
With his physical body fortified, Yang Shuo stood like a giant at the edge of the crack.
He pressed his fingers together like two iron shovels and plunged them directly into the earth, then heaved upward with all his might along the fissure.
“Heave!!”
Yang Shuo gritted his teeth, every cell in his body seemingly straining. Amidst the teeth-gritting sound of shattering rock and soil, he forcibly wrenched open the heavy stone slab.
It looked as if he were lifting a massive manhole cover over ten meters in diameter.
“Whoa, it looks empty down here. Let me see what’s inside.”
His muscles taut, Yang Shuo propped up the slab with one hand while pulling out a floodlight with the other to shine it into the depths.
But in the next second, his smile vanished. The floodlight wobbled in his hand, and his body swayed so violently he nearly tumbled into the hole along with the light.
Thud!
The stone slab slammed back onto the ground. Yang Shuo’s face was deathly pale as he involuntarily stumbled back several steps.
“Be careful. What happened?” Wan Qianhong frowned, stepping to his side to check on him.
“Boss,” Yang Shuo swallowed hard, “over the years, how many people have gone missing from Dawn City’s Outer City?”
Wan Qianhong’s brow furrowed instantly as she realized what he meant.
She reached out and patted Yang Shuo’s shoulder, activating his blood to further bolster his combat strength.
“This isn’t your first day as a Scavenger. Don’t let your legs go weak now. Open it!”
Yang Shuo swallowed again, slammed his fists into the ground once more, and flipped the massive cover completely over.
The surrounding Scavengers gathered around, their various floodlights all pointing downward.
Beneath their feet lay a vast space, so large that the edges were barely visible.
By comparison, the stone slab Yang Shuo had just flipped was like a mere bottle cap.
And within this vast, seemingly endless space, there were nothing but corpses!
Complete or fragmented, they were piled together in a stack that seemed to have no end.
Bones and rotting flesh were heaped upon one another like shattered building blocks, skewering and piercing through each other.
Many details were impossible to distinguish, everything blurred together like melted human fat mixed with blood that had since recongealed.
Maggots writhed continuously over the corpses, tunneling in and out as if they had found their own personal paradise.
Staring at this boundless heap of bodies, almost everyone instinctively began to calculate in their heads—just how many were there?
Even these East District Scavengers, who were accustomed to all sorts of aberrations, turned pale, their legs trembling.
“Blegh!”
Ye Yu, the young lady from the academy, was the first to break. She turned away and began to vomit violently.
But no one mocked her. Even among the veteran Scavengers, several had begun to retch.
In fact, within Xu Mo’s mind, he heard Bai Feifei gasp sharply.
She was completely unprepared for the sight before her. If she had been in control of her body, she likely would have been vomiting right alongside the others.
“Those animals!” Wan Qianhong slammed a fist into the ground. Beyond the revulsion, a wave of intense, searing fury surged through her mind.
The sheer number of deaths and this cult-like method of disposal clearly indicated that something was deeply wrong here.
The crimes committed in this place were truly beyond words!
She had never expected that the most terrifying sight she would see in her life would come not from aberrations or anomalies, but from human hands.
“Whoa, that is pretty shocking, isn't it? Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
Just as everyone was struggling to process their emotions, a somewhat flippant voice rang out.
Xu Mo stood at the mouth of this “mass grave,” raising an eyebrow with a hint of surprise.
To be honest, this was also his first time seeing the sight with his own eyes.
The reason he had led them here was based on his previous game experience. Every time he explored this underground mining area, a massive, overwhelming number of aberrations would emerge at a certain point in time.
Those aberrations were transformed from these corpses, and their numbers were terrifying, as if they were appearing out of thin air from beneath the ground.
The horde was so massive it was practically a catastrophe, impossible to handle. Even the coal mine would be instantly destroyed, leaving nothing to be scavenged.
Players would be forced to retreat, at most using the opportunity to grind some levels.
A person might not fear a single cockroach, but what if a literal sea of them came rushing at you?
Fear wouldn't even be the main issue; survival would be the only priority.
After that event, this terrifying horde of aberrations would trigger a zombie apocalypse that would sweep through the entire Outer City of Dawn City, resulting in a horrific massacre.
That was why Xu Mo had said that the end of Dawn City wouldn't be far off once the coal mine began to act up.
This time, however, the disturbance in the Black Smoke Coal Mine had happened early, and things weren't as urgent. Plus, the start of this run had gone well, and Wan Qianhong had been quite kind to Bai Feifei.
So, on a whim, Xu Mo had used his past experience to try and find the potential source of these sudden aberrations.
That had led him to this empty patch of ground that looked suspicious, where he just happened to run into Huang Cheng and his suspicious group.
Thus, Xu Mo’s suspicion was confirmed.
His sudden inspiration had effectively ended a catastrophe before it could begin, changing the entire direction of Dawn City’s plot.
This was the first time he had ever unlocked this particular storyline.
Thinking of this, Xu Mo felt rather proud. He looked at Wan Qianhong, who was half-kneeling on the ground, and said smugly:
“Well? Do you see it now?”
“If we hadn't killed Huang Cheng, and he had thrown that aberration potion of his down into this pile of corpses...”
“Tsk, tsk. You still wanted to gather evidence? Find the mastermind?”
“Hey, hold onto that bottle tightly. It’d be real interesting if you accidentally dropped it down there now.”
Hearing “Bai Feifei’s” flippant words, Wan Qianhong shuddered. She quickly stashed the potion into her storage space, her face filled with lingering fear.
“A good kill!” she suddenly said, looking at “Bai Feifei” with an expression of absolute seriousness. “Death was too good for people like them!”
“Heh, what did you expect? Of course it was a good kill,” Xu Mo waved a hand dismissively. “I don’t just kill people for no reason these days, you know.”
Wan Qianhong suddenly stood up. She looked “Bai Feifei” straight in the eye and gave a solemn, ninety-degree bow.
“Bai Feifei, Dawn City will never forget your kindness!”
Xu Mo: ?
Rate on N.U.
