The whole nation: You're put to survive on a desolate planet, you'll be running an alien b

The night rain poured down on Donghai City, shrouding the entire city in a hazy, chaotic mist. Meanwhile, in the Dragon Shield Bureau's underground archives on the other side of the city, a deathly silence contrasted sharply with the torrential rain outside the window.

Su Wan held her breath, her fingers flying across the keyboard, the clicks ringing out crisply in the empty server room. As a former technical advisor for Dragon Shield, although her privileges had long been revoked, some backdoors were deliberately left behind as a precaution. They were "keys" she had kept for herself, and now, those keys were unlocking the door to the truth of hell.

The blue light from the screen illuminated her pale face as code flowed down like a waterfall. With the final line of code typed, a bright red warning box popped up in the center of the screen—[Access Restricted: Requires S-level or higher authorization].

"I knew it wouldn't be that easy," Su Wan muttered to herself, a cold glint in her eyes. She pulled a pre-prepared decoding chip from her pocket and inserted it into the interface. This was the communication key of a high-ranking member of Dragon Shield that she had inadvertently intercepted during a previous mission, and it was her last gamble.

Those few seconds felt like an eternity. Finally, the warning box disappeared, revealing a list of countless folders marked "Top Secret".

Su Wan quickly entered the keyword "ancient bronze mirror" into the search bar.

Pressing the Enter key caused the screen to flash briefly, followed by a cold system notification: [Related records have been physically destroyed or encrypted and locked; only incomplete image data remains].

Su Wan's heart sank. Undeterred, she clicked on the only remaining attachment. A few seconds later, a blurry black-and-white photograph slowly loaded.

The edges of the photo show signs of scorching, indicating it was salvaged from a document that was about to be destroyed. The image quality is extremely grainy, conveying a sense of antiquity. The background appears to be a huge, deep pit, surrounded by rudimentary excavation equipment, suggesting a construction site from decades ago.

In the very center of the deep pit, a huge ancient bronze mirror stands prominently.

Su Wan zoomed in on the image, her pupils instantly contracting.

There was no terrifying monster in front of the mirror, nor was there the altar one might have imagined. There were only people there—countless excavators in overalls. They were huddled together, like a group of pilgrims, kneeling and worshipping before the bronze mirror.

But this wasn't what chilled Su Wan the most.

What truly sent chills down her spine were the workers' postures. In the photos, everyone was contorting their bodies at extremely bizarre angles; some were gripping pickaxes tightly, smashing them against their temples; others were clutching their necks with both hands, their faces contorted in agony; and still others were even gouging out their own eyes with rusty screwdrivers…

Their faces showed no pain, but rather a near-manic, ecstatic smile.

That was the madness that came after being completely "assimilated".

The date of the photo, clearly written in the lower right corner, is November 14, 1974.

"Fifty years ago..." Su Wan felt a chill creep up her spine. So all of this had already happened. Back then, D.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't sealing away some unknown monster, but rather covering up a massive suicide tragedy. They destroyed written records and encrypted the footage, thinking that this would bury the evil deep in the ground.

"So, the things in the mirror never need to crawl out," Su Wan murmured to herself, staring at the eerily smiling corpses on the screen. "They just need humans to walk in."

Just then, the lights in the archives flickered without warning, emitting a crackling electrical sound. Su Wan turned around abruptly, but there was no one behind her; only the indicator lights on the server rack were flashing wildly, as if the entire system was trembling.

……

Meanwhile, inside an abandoned safe house on the outskirts of the city.

The air seemed to solidify, heavy and suffocating. Lin Mo sat cross-legged on the mattress in the corner, her hands tightly clutching her head, her body convulsing violently. Beneath her skin, blue veins bulged like a spiderweb, pulsating slightly with each heartbeat.

Li Haotian stood to the side, his knuckles white from gripping the gun so tightly, his brow furrowed. He tried to step forward to check on Lin Mo, but was forced back by an invisible wave of energy.

"No...don't come any closer..." Lin Mo's voice was hoarse and broken, like two rusty pieces of iron rubbing against each other.

Suddenly, Lin Mo abruptly raised his head.

At that moment, Li Haotian was horrified to discover that Lin Mo's eyes had turned completely grayish-white, with no pupils or whites, only a deathly, chaotic void.

Immediately afterwards, an ancient, obscure language, completely unlike any other language in the human vocal system, rolled out from the depths of Lin Mo's throat.

"Nyarlathotep... fhtagn... nglui..."

The voice was deep and resonant, with a strange rhythm, like a wind blowing from an ancient abyss, or the murmur of some enormous creature in its slumber. With each syllable uttered, the surrounding air trembled.

"What kind of nonsense is this?" Little Black whimpered in fear, tucking its tail between its legs and shrinking under the table.

As Lin Mo chanted, the electronic devices in the room began to completely malfunction. The portable tactical computer screen on the table instantly shattered into countless static dots, followed by a plume of black smoke, rendering it completely unusable. The energy-saving light bulbs overhead emitted a piercing crackling sound, and shards of glass fell like raindrops.

Li Haotian raised his wrist to check the communicator, only to find that the digital clock on it was jumping wildly, the numbers rapidly scrolling from 00:00 to 99:99 before the screen went black and went completely out.

The entire safe house was plunged into darkness in an instant, with only the occasional flashes of lightning outside the window illuminating Lin Mo's eerie and distorted face.

That's not memorizing, that's resonating.

Lin Mo seemed to have transformed into a humanoid signal tower, receiving and broadcasting some kind of frequency from the world in the mirror.

"Lin Mo! Wake up!" Li Haotian roared, rushing forward without regard for anything else, trying to cover her mouth and stop the eerie chanting.

However, just as his hand was about to touch Lin Mo, a tremendous repulsive force erupted. Li Haotian felt as if he had crashed into an invisible wall, and was thrown back, slamming heavily against a wall in the distance.

"Cough cough..." Li Haotian struggled to his feet, spitting out a mouthful of blood. He looked at Lin Mo, who was still reciting, a deep sense of fear and heartache flashing in his eyes.

At this moment, fine cracks began to appear on the ground around Lin Mo, and the direction of those cracks vaguely pieced together the shape of a giant eye.

"She's summoning something..." Li Haotian gritted his teeth, enduring the excruciating pain as he stood up. "We must sever this connection immediately, or this entire building will collapse!"

Inside the archives, before Su Wan could even copy the horrifying photograph, the large screen in front of her suddenly went completely black. Then, a line of blood-red text slowly appeared in the darkness, like a death sentence:

You've crossed the line.

Su Wan abruptly pulled out the chip and rushed towards the exit. She knew she had touched the biggest taboo in the world.

What D.H.I.E.L.D. covered up was not just a tragedy, but a piece of history that had been "deleted." The souls of those workers who died in front of the mirror never left; they remained on the other side, waiting and gazing, until this moment, through Lin Mo's words, they once again extended an invitation to the world.

The torrential rain continues to rage, but an even more terrifying storm is just beginning to take shape in the darkness.