Infinity: Kill your way through the movie world.

Some people were knocked to the ground, got up and continued to charge, while others were hit on the knee by iron pipes, staggered to their knees, and were then stepped on by those behind them.

The crowd at the breach grew larger and larger, like a dam that had been breached, with water constantly pouring in through the gap, completely disrupting the original order of the post station.

Raymond stood up on the platform.

His movements were slow, like a rusty old machine being restarted. He held onto the edge of the table, closed the booklet, and looked down at the bustling crowd below. There was no fear in his cloudy eyes, only an almost numb calm.

He stood there for a while, then slowly spoke: "Go ahead and make a scene, but you'll still have to wait after you're done making a scene."

His voice wasn't loud, but it was carried by the wind to the ears of several people nearby.

Some people heard it, some didn't.

Those who are still rushing forward have not stopped, because stopping would mean being re-entered into that never-ending order. They have waited enough, they have waited their whole lives.

Meanwhile, on the far other side of the continent, in an abandoned coastal city, another riot was brewing at the same time.

This city was once the largest port in the old civilization, with deep-water berths and giant cranes, as well as a network of railway lines and underground pipelines.

But after the disaster, seawater flooded the low-lying urban areas, leaving only the ruins of high-rise buildings and the dock area filled with rusted containers.

Those containers had been pried open countless times, and were now empty except for some unidentifiable debris and dried oil stains.

The lottery platform in Gano was set up on a cleared cement platform in the port area, surrounded by abandoned cranes and collapsed warehouse walls. Behind the platform was a half-collapsed lighthouse, its tower leaning like a finger about to break.

The lottery station in Gano was more crowded than the station in Raymond, because it was one of the main passageways to hell.

Those who couldn't wait in line, those who couldn't wait for the devil, all flocked here to wait for the lottery.

However, the odds of winning the lottery have become so low that they are almost humiliating. Those who have no money will draw a useless lot every time it is their turn, while those who spend their last bit of money to exchange for a lottery number can win the lottery one after another.

After more than ten rounds, more and more people below the lottery platform began to question in hushed tones. The voices of doubt gradually grew louder and eventually rose in large numbers.

A thin man huddled in the shadow of a shipping container stared intently at the lottery station, his gaze like two grains of charcoal embedded in his eye sockets, dark and deep, yet burning intensely.

His name was Dom, and he had been loitering around the lottery station for nearly twenty days. He was wearing tattered work pants with the legs rolled up to his knees, revealing half of his calves covered in festering old wounds.

He used to be a dockworker, but he fell into disrepair and was kicked out of the docks, where he wandered among the ruins for who knows how many years.

He had long forgotten how old he was; all he knew was that he had waited long enough.

He didn't win a single time in twenty days.

He had nothing to exchange for a ticket, so he could only stand at the back of the crowd, watching those who handed over their valuables walk past him, climb onto the platform, and jump into the crevice, while he remained in the same spot.

There were more than a dozen people standing behind him, all of whom also had nothing to offer, and their eyes were equally dull.

No one spoke, and no one left; they just stood there, standing for so long that they had run out of energy to complain.

Dom suddenly asked in a hoarse voice, "How much longer do we have to wait?"

No one answered him; the wind made the rusty metal of the container creak.

In front of the lottery platform, Gano was preparing to start a new round of lottery.

He leaned against the railing of the high platform, placed the wooden crutch beside his legs, and reached into the cloth bag to rummage through the wooden sticks.

Several subordinates stood behind him, all of them looking tired. Some were leaning against a pillar, some were squatting on the ground, and some were already dozing off.

He grabbed a wooden stick, raised it above his head, and was about to read out the number on it when a hoarse shout suddenly erupted from the crowd below: "Stop shaking! We've shaken enough!"

The speaker was a bald man with a deep old scar across his face.

Holding up a crushed fragment of a wooden stick, he shouted, "They're all fake! You picked these sticks yourselves! We'll never win!"

The people nearby shouted, "We've been waiting too long!"

More and more people surged out, and Gano subconsciously took a step back. His men behind him began to block them, but there were just too many people rushing forward.

Some people kicked over the lottery box, some pushed over the wooden stakes by the platform, and some squeezed through the broken pieces of wood to get below the platform and reached out to grab Gano's cane.

Gano's cane was yanked away, and he stumbled, nearly falling off the platform. The wooden cane was thrown to the ground and broken by someone stepping on it.

Dom was also in the crowd. He didn't shout; he just pushed forward with the flow of people, like a piece of rotten wood being swept up by the tide, without direction, just being pushed along.

His feet trod on wood chips and gravel, on broken shards of a divination slip, and on dark red stains that had solidified on the ground.

The young woman next to us screamed, "Let us jump in! We'll jump ourselves!"

Dom heard the voice, but he didn't turn around or respond. He squeezed to the edge of the platform and climbed up.

The platform was now empty; Gano had been helped away, and his men had dispersed.

Dom stood on the edge of the platform, looking down at the dock floor below, then looking up at the huge crack. The jagged edges of the crack were particularly clear in the grayish-white light, like a half-open iron door waiting for someone to walk in, or as if it was hesitating whether to close it or not.

The riots in the coastal cities did not last as long as those in the post stations because the people there had a simpler purpose: they just wanted to jump into the crack.

The collapse of the platform and the crushing of the wooden crates were just the prelude; what followed was even more direct—the throngs of people pushed down the railings on both sides of the passage, jostling and pushing each other toward the open area below the crack.

There was no queue, no lottery, and no number.

Below the crack, there was no longer any order; only the ever-flowing crowds and the rising and falling shouts.

The crack was wide enough for many people to approach at the same time, but there were just too many people pushed to the edge of the platform. Some people were pushed to the edge of the crack, lost their footing and fell, and were then swallowed up by the darkness behind them.

Others were still trying to get closer to the crack. They pushed aside those in front of them, squeezed themselves into the opening, and jumped in. Those behind them followed closely behind, without hesitation or stopping.

Farther away, deep within the ruins of another continent, a third uprising is unfolding. This entire area was once an underground refuge of an old civilization, built hundreds of meters deep within rock strata, its structure robust and its area vast. After the cataclysm, the refuge was occupied by a group of death-seekers who used the existing ventilation system and underground pipes to construct a sealed enclosed settlement.

Demons rarely come here because the passageways on the surface are narrow and low-ranking demons cannot easily pass through. However, occasionally high-ranking demons will burrow underground through the ventilation shafts. The people seeking death there do not flock to the post station or the lottery platform like people on the surface. They stay underground, waiting for the demons to appear on their own and then send themselves up.

But demons are appearing less and less.

The high-ranking demons were also overfed by the massive army on the ground. Some were stuck in the upper areas and no longer moved, while others had their souls swelled up to the point that they could no longer pass through the underground passages.

The people in the underground shelter grew increasingly anxious, like fish trapped in a tank where the water level was dropping and the space was shrinking.

At the end of a passage deep within the shelter, a woman knelt beneath a ventilation shaft vent, covered with a tattered blanket. Her hair had fallen out, revealing large patches of blackened scalp.

She had been kneeling here for days, waiting for the demon to appear. But she had waited so long that she no longer believed the demon would ever come.

She started scratching at the metal plates inside the ventilation shaft with her fingernails, until her nails cracked and a dark red liquid oozed out.

She scratched for a long time before finally standing up. She cut her arm with a piece of rusty iron, smearing the blood and bits of flesh on the ventilation shaft opening, hoping to attract the demon with the smell.

Her companions gathered around; some remained silent, some shook their heads, and some whispered behind her, "It's no use, the demon isn't coming down anymore."

She didn't stop; she continued cutting, applying, and waiting.

That fragile sense of waiting eventually crumbled.

Someone set fire to the stockpiled hay and wood deep inside the shelter. The fire illuminated the entire passageway, and the smoke spread through the ventilation ducts to the upper levels, pushing the last remaining demons to the brink of collapse.

The drifting, dark mist surged wildly under the firelight, its souls forced to scatter and flee, pouring out of the various exits of the shelter and onto the ground, leaving empty passages and shadows standing in the passages, silently watching the firelight.

Riots from different continents and in completely different forms fermented, erupted, and spread at the same time.

The riot at Raymond's post station was more chaotic and disorderly, the riot at Gano's lottery station was more direct, while the fire in the underground shelter was quieter, like a layer of old paper that had been burned.

The trampled wooden signs, overturned wooden crates, and burning hay lit up simultaneously at different latitudes and longitudes, like three parallel underground rivers, rushing in their respective channels and converging in the same direction.

They haven't converged yet, but their flow direction is already evident.

The fire at Hunter Station was the first to start.

The moment Luca threw off the rag and stood up, all the patience he had left snapped. He didn't know why he stood up; he only knew he had been squatting for far too long, so long that his festering flesh was hardening bit by bit, so long that he felt he had grown into that pile of hard earth.

When he stood up, his knees made a dry, clicking sound, as if something had shifted out of place in his bones.

He pushed aside the people in front of him, without saying a word, and just kept walking forward.

The people in front of him didn't turn back, and he didn't stop either. He pushed aside those equally hunched, festering, and shaky shoulders as he moved toward the high platform.

Eric stood up too.

He knelt for a shorter time than Luca, but when he stood up, half of his body was numb.

He didn't know what he was thinking; he only knew he didn't want to wait any longer. He followed behind Luca, without shouting or complaining, just walking.

The young woman with half her face ulcerated was still walking at the front.

She kept walking, past the crushed wooden signs, past the overturned registration desk, past the scattered fragments of license plates whose numbers were no longer legible.

Without shouting or turning back, she simply walked straight toward the platform.

The thugs blocked her way.

The tall man in the lead held the broken knife horizontally in front of his chest again, the blade pointing towards the young woman, his voice tight and rough: "Take another step forward, and I won't be polite."

The young woman didn't stop; she continued walking forward until the tip of the knife was pressed against her chest. The broken blade tore through the tattered outer garment, pierced the dry scab on her skin, and left a thin, dark red mark.

She didn't lower her head or back down; she simply tilted her body slightly, letting the knife slide over her shoulder blade, then gripped the back of the blade and pushed it outward with force.

She didn't twist the knife off, nor did she try to snatch it; she simply pushed it away.

The tall man staggered, the hilt of his knife slipped from his hand, and the broken knife fell to the ground with a clatter.

After that instant, all the silence was shattered.

Those who had waited for years or even decades suddenly pushed open the fences on both sides, not moving them, but knocking them down, kicking away the hard soil and gravel under their feet.

The fence on the north side of the post station collapsed first, then the fence on the south side collapsed as well. The successive sounds of breaking were like a row of dominoes being pushed over, continuous and dense.

Those who had been waiting for so long began to surge forward, stepping over collapsed railings and climbing over broken wooden stakes, heading towards the high platform and the demon-gathering area.

No one shouted slogans, no one took the lead; they simply walked, becoming a trend, a dark gray wave, carrying the smell of broken wood, broken bones, and dried pus, surging toward the borders that had once blocked their way.

The thugs initially tried to stop the people in front of them with iron pipes and broken knives, but for every one they stopped, five more would rush up from behind.

Some people were hit on the forehead by iron pipes, staggered and fell into the pit, and were then submerged by the crowd; others gave up resisting, threw down the sticks in their hands, retreated to the side of the platform, and disappeared into the shadow of the ruins.

Raymond stood on the high platform, watching the dark gray tide surge toward him.

His legs trembled slightly, so much so that it was almost imperceptible to onlookers. He clutched the tattered booklet, its pages fluttering in the wind, the crossed-out names brushing along the edges like rows of withered old inscriptions.

He watched as people crossed the fence, stepped over the registration desk, and squeezed through the passageway. His lips moved a few times, his voice dry and hoarse, as if he were speaking to himself: "Go... go... don't come back."

His voice was extremely low, so low that only he could hear it, like the last faint sound of a candle wick that was about to be extinguished.

Then he placed the booklet on the table, flipped to the last page, glanced at the names that hadn't yet been crossed out, and closed it without lingering for a moment.

He descended the side staircase from the platform, his steps slow and deliberate, the wooden steps clattering softly, one step, then another, until he disappeared behind the gap in the crowd. (End of Chapter)