All Realms and Worlds: The Lost Home

Boom! ...

The ground shook violently, and debris and dust flew everywhere!

The giant butcher-like monster stomped its foot, and the entire dilapidated street instantly cracked with dense spiderweb-like patterns.

The cracks spread rapidly, expanding wildly in the direction Ning Ye and his companions were running!

That overwhelming sense of oppression instantly locked everyone's mind, and the chill of death permeated every limb and bone!

The entrance to the underground passage was just ten meters ahead, but the ground beneath our feet kept collapsing, as if we would fall into the abyss along with the soil at any moment.

The girl in the yoga outfit and Nancy, who were tightly held in Ning Ye's arms on either side, were violently jolted and their hearts were pounding.

The young man in the suit running alongside him was ashen-faced, sprinting desperately while screaming in despair.

"Holy crap! What's with this weirdo?! Is he crazy?!"

"They were chasing someone properly, but then they started destroying the ground! They're leaving no way to survive!"

The young man was completely devastated; he spoke rapidly, his voice filled with despair.

"I've watched countless horror and creepy videos online, and I'm sure there are rules governing this kind of eeriness!"

"Without rules to restrain them, they could kill indiscriminately, and humans wouldn't have a single chance of passing the level!"

"We must not have discovered the rules! Once we find the rules, we can survive!"

Upon hearing his words, the panicked group of people who were running around suddenly had a thought.

Yes!

The trials of the mysterious city, broadcast globally, must have a logic for passing them!

It couldn't have been a pure, indiscriminate massacre!

Above the sky, in front of billions of floating live-streaming screens, viewers around the world instantly calmed down and began flooding the screens with discussions.

[Holy crap! The expert was right! There are definitely rules!]

"No wonder the Slit-Mouthed Nurse was chasing us so relentlessly, but suddenly stopped for a moment. The rules must have been triggered!"

"Find the rules quickly! The killer has gone berserk; if we don't find the rules soon, everyone will be wiped out!"

"Ning Ye, calm down! Stop running! Look for clues!"

Countless people clenched their fists, their hearts aching for the four through their screens, trying their best to help them analyze the crisis.

Just when everyone was frantically thinking and eager to break the deadlock!

Ning Ye, who was frantically sprinting and desperately trying to escape, suddenly felt a chill run down his spine!

An intense sense of unease gripped his thoughts.

He subconsciously turned his head, glancing at the empty street behind him, his pupils suddenly contracting.

"wrong!"

Ning Ye suddenly spoke, his steps unconsciously pausing slightly.

"What's strange about that nurse?"

"It was chasing us really closely just now, less than ten meters away, relentlessly pursuing us. How did it suddenly disappear?"

In their haste to escape, everyone was focused on the escape route ahead and the threat of the butcher behind them, and no one paid any attention to the Slit Nurse's movements.

Only when Ning Ye pointed it out did everyone suddenly realize that something was wrong!

The slit-mouthed nurse, who had been relentlessly pursuing and ruthlessly killing, had vanished into thin air!

Without a sound, without a shadow, without any trace of escape, it simply vanished completely from the street!

Ning Ye's voice echoed clearly in the ears of the four people.

But the next second, something incredibly bizarre happened!

The girl in yoga clothes beside him, who had been panting heavily and trying to suppress her internal injuries, suddenly widened her eyes and stared intently at Ning Ye's face, her eyes filled with fear and confusion.

Her lips trembled, her voice filled with utter disbelief, and she cried out in a trembling voice:

"I! I saw it!"

Ning Ye frowned: "What did you see? The butcher's location? Or the nurse's trail?"

The girl shook her head frantically, her eyes growing increasingly confused and disoriented. She instinctively clutched her head with both hands, her words tumbling out incoherently:

"No...no! I heard your voice!"

"I saw it clearly! Your voice was white mist, floating in mid-air!"

"No! What's wrong?! My eyes... there's something wrong with my eyes!"

The moment those words were spoken, the entire room fell into a deathly silence!

The young man in the suit running on the far side suddenly stopped, completely stunned and frozen in place, his face blank.

"what?"

"Did you hear that middle-aged man's voice?"

"Sound is for hearing, how can it be seen with the eyes? Did you damage your brain by taking the brunt of the sword energy just now? Are you hallucinating?"

The girl in the yoga outfit panicked completely, her eyes glazed over, and she shook her head frantically.

"It's not a hallucination! I saw it clearly! It's absolutely real!"

"The moment he opened his mouth to speak, puffs of white mist floated into the air—that was his voice!"

Ning Ye was also speechless, feeling helpless and tense. He was both amused and exasperated, and a chill ran through him.

"No, is this the time to be arguing about this? Besides, I'm only in my early twenties! A vibrant young man! Who's calling me 'uncle'?! Can you please stop calling me that?!"

In a life-or-death situation, surrounded by eerie oddities, this person still insists on calling him "uncle".

The young man in the suit looked at Ning Ye with an absurd expression, and asked in a mix of laughter and tears:

"No, bro! Aren't you focusing on the wrong thing right now?"

"Even my older sister says she can see voices! You don't care about such a strange thing, but you care about people calling you 'uncle'?"

Ning Ye's lips twitched violently twice: "Isn't this a ridiculous oversight? I'm clearly not that old!"

The two's absurd conversation added a touch of humor to the tense and desperate atmosphere.

But this comical moment lasted only a moment before it was completely overshadowed by a deeper sense of eeriness!

The girl in yoga clothes covered her head, her eyes growing increasingly vacant and lost, her brows furrowed tightly, and she murmured softly:

"Wait... I think I've forgotten something very important..."

"Something crucial, something that could save my life... I clearly remembered it just now, how come my mind went blank all of a moment ago?"

"I forgot... what exactly did I forget?"

She frantically pounded her head, trying to recover her lost memories, her whole being thrown into utter chaos.

Ning Ye's heart tightened upon seeing this, and he immediately shouted in a deep voice:

"Stop thinking about it! Don't dwell on what you've forgotten!"

"Big sister, wake up! That fat butcher is still behind us! The ground has collapsed like this, he's about to catch up!"

"If we dawdle any longer, all four of us will die here!!"

Boom!!!

As if to confirm Ning Ye's words, the ground behind them suddenly collapsed at an accelerated speed, a violent gust of cold wind swept in, and the butcher's bloodthirsty grin grew ever closer!

The countdown to death has officially begun!

Just as the three were on the verge of collapse, their minds in turmoil and confusion.

Nancy, who had been held in Ning Ye's arms, with a numb and lifeless expression, suddenly moved!

A slender, fair hand gently tugged at Ning Ye's sleeve.

The force was very light, so faint as to be almost imperceptible, yet exceptionally firm.

Ning Ye immediately looked down at the little girl in his arms, his tone softening: "What's wrong, Nancy? Don't be afraid, your brother's here."

Nancy's empty, numb eyes slowly turned to the cracked ground beneath her feet.

She didn't speak, but simply raised her hand and pointed to the depths of the crack.

Ning Ye followed her gaze and looked down.

Just one glance!

Ning Ye felt every hair on his body stand on end, and his scalp tingle completely!

Cardiac arrest, blood almost clotted!

All that could be seen beneath their feet, amidst the crisscrossing, pitch-black fissures, were lines of pale, blood-soaked text that had appeared on the once dark and gloomy inner walls of the cracks!

The writing looked as if it were written in blood, or as if it grew out of the rock itself; the characters were twisted and crooked, exuding an endless sense of gloom and eeriness.

Each word seemed to be alive, wriggling slightly and exuding a chilling, eerie aura!

Rule 1: Don't trust your ears, trust your eyes.

Rule Two: Your eyes cannot hear anything.

Rule 3: Watch out for the laughing balloons.

Rule Four: You are safe when you see the rules.

Four rules, clear and unambiguous, are imprinted in the cracks of the collapsed ground!

In just four lines, all the strange and confusing things just now were instantly resolved!

This also plunged everyone into an even deeper sense of horror and chill!

Ning Ye's pupils trembled violently, his whole body froze, and he instinctively roared in a hoarse voice:

"Look down! What's that?!"

His roar instantly snapped the other two out of their reverie.

The young man in the suit looked down sharply and saw the blood-red characters inside the crack. His eyes widened instantly, his face filled with disbelief.

"Huh? Rules?!"

"There really are rules! There really are rules for passing the level! I was right just now!"

The girl in the yoga outfit suddenly snapped back to reality, her gaze fixed on the four bizarre rules, her chaotic mind instantly clearing up.

"This is what I just forgot! I vaguely sensed some clues about a pattern, but I completely forgot about it!"

"This is terrifying! This eerie city can actually alter people's memories!"

The young man in the suit stared intently at the four rules, speaking rapidly and analyzing them frantically:

"Rule number one: Trust your eyes, not your ears! No wonder the chasing sounds I heard earlier seemed to come from different distances—it was all an illusion!"

"It turns out that everything I heard was just an illusion, a deception from the ghost city!"

The girl in the yoga outfit felt a chill run down her back and instantly realized what had happened to her:

"No wonder I could hear sounds!"

"Rule Two states that the eyes cannot hear anything! In other words, our senses are completely malfunctioning!"

"Ears can see, eyes can hear? All the senses are completely upside down and confused!"

"My God! Who can resist this! It's so sensory-disruptive, I can't tell what's real and what's fake at all!"

Ning Ye stared intently at the four rules, his heart pounding, and quickly summarized in a deep voice:

"First, it's an auditory overload! The nurse's chase and the butcher's roar we just heard are most likely fake!"

"Secondly, it overturns visual perception! The eyes cannot perceive sound; the sound mist we see is a sensory distortion of the Ghost City!"

"Thirdly, a new unknown threat! Laughing balloons! From now on, we all must be especially vigilant about these balloons!"

"Article 4... Does seeing the rules guarantee safety?"

This rule was so bizarre and abnormal that it made the group hesitate for a moment.

The young man in the suit looked puzzled, scratched his head, and asked urgently:

What does it mean that seeing the rules guarantees safety?

"Is this rule reliable? The killer is still chasing us; it doesn't look safe at all!"

"Could this be a deceptive rule from the Ghost City, meant to lull us into a false sense of security before ambush and murder?"

The girl in yoga clothes was also tense, on high alert.

"The scariest thing about horror dungeons is the mix of real and fake rules!"

"If the fourth point is a trap, we'll surely die if we believe it!"

Ning Ye frowned, his mind racing as he reviewed all the strange details from just now.

"No... Think back carefully."

"The nurse's sudden and bizarre disappearance was definitely related to the triggering of the rules!"

"Before we saw the rules, we were being hunted down the whole time, our lives hanging by a thread."

"Now that we understand all the rules, don't we...?"

Ning Ye hadn't finished speaking!

An extremely cold and malevolent aura instantly dissipated completely from behind!

The earth-shaking tremors, the howling wind, and the butcher's roar suddenly stopped!

The entire room fell silent!

The four of them suddenly turned around to look behind them!

Just moments ago, this giant butcher monster was enraged and stomping its feet on the ground, determined to tear the four people to pieces!

The moment the four people understood the four rules, they vanished without a trace!

The dilapidated streets were deserted and empty.

No afterimage, no aura, no trace whatsoever!

The two top-tier supernatural beings that were hunting them down, the Slit-Mouthed Nurse and the Giant Butcher, vanished into thin air!

The entire venue was deathly silent.

The young man in the suit stared wide-eyed for a few seconds, then gasped sharply, his voice trembling:

"Is...it really safe?"

"The fourth rule is true! The moment the monster that was chasing us saw the rule, it vanished!"

The girl in the yoga outfit was drenched in cold sweat, patting her chest with lingering fear.

"My God...that was terrifying!"

"So this is the test of the Ghost City! It's not about brute force, it's about wits! It's about who can find the rules first!"

Ning Ye slowly released the two people in his arms; his back was already soaked with cold sweat.

He looked down at Nancy, who was still leaning against him obediently, her eyes slowly regaining a glimmer of light, and felt a deep sense of relief.

"Nancy saved us all."

"If she hadn't reminded us, we would still be blindly running for our lives, and sooner or later we would have been worn down by the strange creatures."

But this sense of relief lasted only a moment before a new chill enveloped his heart once more.

Ning Ye looked up at the empty street, his gaze growing increasingly solemn.

"But everyone, don't let your guard down!"

"Four rules, each one bizarre, and the most unknown third one!"

"Watch out for the laughing balloons!"

"Next, laughing balloons may appear at any time throughout the entire haunted city!"

"That's our biggest and most deadly crisis yet!"

As soon as the words fell, a faint, sweet, and eerie child's laughter drifted through the deathly silent streets of the eerie city.

Hehe...hehehe...

The laughter was ethereal and fleeting, its origin unknown, both gentle and sinister.

In the darkness at the end of the street, a brightly colored red balloon is slowly floating towards you.

A curved smiley face slowly cracked open on the surface of the balloon, which was extremely eerie!