The sun rose as usual, but this time, it failed.
9:00 AM.
There was no morning light, no rosy dawn; only a bottomless darkness shrouded the earth.
On the streets, the streetlights emitted lonely halos of light.
Looking up, there were no stars in the firmament—only pure black.
The sun and stars hid their light, leaving only that moon suspended there, the sole light source in the dark canopy of the sky.
Everywhere the moonlight reached, everything was dyed with an unreal color. Shadows were stretched extremely long, like lurking monsters.
Investigation Bureau headquarters, Intelligence Department observation center.
On the massive panoramic screen was a suffocating simulated image.
The entire world was wrapped in darkness.
A physicist and researcher of supernatural phenomena spoke with a dry voice, pointing at the screen.
“It's confirmed. The problem is not the sun. All the sun's parameters within our detectable range are normal.”
“The real problem is the moon. From the far side of the moon, which we cannot see, a certain darkness has spread out, completely obscuring the sky. To put it simply, it's not that the day has turned to night, but that the sky has been covered.”
A deathly silence filled the observation center.
Covering the sky?
What level of power was this?
...
On the far side of the moon.
Yue Shi sat cross-legged on the ground. Floating before him was a crystal ball the size of a fist.
The Diviner had said he wanted to join him; surely he wouldn't mind staying by his side forever in the form of an object to serve him.
When he was thrown into the Decomposition and Synthesis Machine, the Diviner had screamed very loudly—he must have been absolutely delighted.
The crystal ball was the relic obtained after decomposing the Diviner: the Divination Crystal.
Yue Shi opened all three of his eyes simultaneously. In the depths of his eyes, infinity symbols (∞) slowly rotated.
He was using Destiny and the Divination Crystal to observe the future at the same time.
Stars seemed to shine inside the crystal ball as a massive influx of informational images bombarded Yue Shi's consciousness.
His face turned slightly pale, and he immediately made his head expand by another size, temporarily increasing his brain capacity to enhance his information processing ability.
Fortunately, he wasn't a real human; otherwise, his brain would have easily burned out while receiving countless pieces of information about the future.
A long time passed.
The light of the ∞ symbols in his eyes dimmed, and his golden vertical pupils slowly closed. A heavy expression appeared on his face.
He had seen it.
Among countless future possibilities, they all eventually converged on the same endpoint.
It wasn't civilizational decline, nor human extinction, nor the planet exploding.
It was something more thorough: the world reaching its end.
The very existence of the world came to a sudden halt at some future moment that could not be precisely locked down.
The heavens collapsed and the earth split, laws were annihilated, and all things returned to the void. Even the concept of the future itself lost all meaning, with no further continuation.
The apocalypse would descend without rhyme or reason.
What Yue Shi found even harder to understand was that among the countless images of the future, he couldn't find a clear cause for the descent of the apocalypse.
There were no omens; the end simply arrived with startling abruptness.
The apocalypse seemed unavoidable.
Yue Shi pondered alone for a long time, his gaze gradually becoming malicious.
Since the end was destined to be the destruction of the world, why couldn't the person who destroyed the world be him?
Before the real apocalypse descended, he might as well personally unleash a calamity, plundering everything of value in this world!
The moon in the sky symbolized the disaster he had proactively released to sweep across the world.
In any living being directly illuminated by the moonlight, the latent malice in their hearts would be awakened and amplified.
Suspicion would turn into murderous intent, greed into plunder, and anger into burning tyranny.
In this environment shrouded by Extreme Evil, committing evil itself would be rewarded.
Increased strength, biased luck, and wicked deeds would transform into pleasure.
Conversely, performing good deeds, maintaining order, showing mercy, and being honest—the very foundation stones of civilization—would instead invite misfortune.
The causality of good and evil was inverted; the foundations of order were being corroded.
Furthermore, the influence of Extreme Evil wasn't limited to direct exposure to moonlight.
Any form of observing the moon, whether witnessing it with the naked eye or seeing it indirectly through photos and videos, would result in interference. It was just weaker in intensity.
The seeds of evil would rapidly take root and sprout, warping human cognition and behavior.
Contamination was spreading rapidly across the entire world.
Amidst the eerie celestial phenomenon where the sun did not rise and the moon shone long, panic fermented quickly.
Evil thoughts grew under the catalysis of the environment.
As long as the first person in a crowd took the lead in breaking order and received positive feedback and power from their wicked deeds, order would rapidly collapse.
Attacking a passerby over a single look, former colleagues suddenly turning on each other with knives in the office, minor scrapes on the highway escalating into life-and-death struggles...
Chaos spread like a plague through a world that had lost its sunlight.
Even in a city like Yujing, which was tightly shielded by man-made clouds, malice was quietly germinating.
At the Investigation Bureau headquarters, emergency meetings were held one after another.
Reports from various places left the high-level executives exhausted.
All kinds of violent crimes were rising exponentially. The grassroots security forces in many regions had already paralyzed, and some had even joined the chaos.
Communication was intermittent, transportation had collapsed, and the flow of supplies had ground to a halt.
Most terrifyingly, descriptions like “the perpetrator displayed non-human strength” and “the criminal's power increased after the violent crime” began to appear in the reports.
“The escalation of panic and crime must involve supernatural contamination. The nature is unknown, but it's likely directly related to the moon.”
“The worst part is the change in temperature. Without sunlight, it won't be long before this world faces an extreme cold apocalypse.”
The conclusions from the analysis department made everyone's blood run cold.
“Immediately strengthen internal control and activate the highest-level emergency response plan. All field personnel are to prioritize suppressing riots in major cities and restoring basic order.”
“If the situation shows no improvement in the coming days, then headquarters will activate the final plan—abandoning the general public and only preserving the core sparks.”
The Minister gave the order with a grim face.
As his voice fell, the conference room became so quiet that one could hear a pin drop.
No one raised an objection. Facing a natural disaster of this magnitude, there would inevitably be sacrifices.
In any case, none of the people present were among the group to be sacrificed and abandoned. They were only slightly heavy-hearted before continuing to solemnly discuss how to deal with the intensifying chaos outside, how to allocate limited resources, and how to conceal information from the public.
Yet these high-level executives seemed not to have noticed that their own backyard was already catching fire.
Inside the headquarters base, the lights were bright and the defenses were tight.
But every person here, from the low-level clerks to the armed guards, from the researchers to the middle-level commanders, was also human.
When the moon first appeared, they too had observed that eerie moon out of curiosity or duty.
The seeds of Extreme Evil had long since been quietly planted.
It was only because the environment at headquarters was relatively orderly, the personnel were well-trained, and their willpower and resistance were higher.
The seeds of evil had not yet erupted on a large scale.
But subtle changes had already appeared: an increase in groundless friction and arguments in the corridors, increasingly sharp and aggressive language in meetings, and ill-concealed suspicion and dissatisfaction during the distribution of supplies...
The darkness beneath the lamp.
While everyone was staring intently at the waves outside, the hearts of those within the organization were gradually rotting in places unseen.
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