The undead have descended upon the world? I possess a sword that can cleave the heavens once more!

In the real world, in Lanhe City, Xilin Province.

In a milk tea shop on a corner of a commercial street, three people were sitting by the window.

Wu Jing and Lin Xinmai sat side by side on the same side, while Xia Yu sat opposite them.

Three cups of milk tea, still steaming, were placed in front of each of the three people. The straws had already been removed from their packaging and inserted, but only Lin Xinmai's cup was half-empty, while the other two cups were barely touched.

"Wu Jing, are you really sure you want to choose Yinhua Martial Arts Academy?" Xia Yu held the milk tea cup in both hands, tapping the cup lightly with her fingertips, her eyes filled with seriousness.

Wu Jing nodded.

Xia Yu immediately gave a "Great!" look, her voice brimming with barely suppressed surprise: "Great! We can go to school together now!"

She paused, a layer of cautious reminder surfacing beneath her initial surprise: "However, besides its proximity, the Silver Flower Martial Arts Academy has no other advantages. Its resources are far inferior to those of the West Forest Martial Arts Academy."

Are you really sure about this?

Wu Jing shook her head: "Being close to home is enough."

Xia Yu's eyes lit up, and the sense of relief that "I'm sure I can rely on someone powerful" was clearly written on her face.

She didn't ask any more questions, just nodded vigorously, then took a big gulp of milk tea, her cheeks puffing out and then shrinking back in.

Lin Xinmai, who was standing next to him, remained silent.

She was biting a straw, her eyes glued to her phone screen, her thumb occasionally swiping upwards as if she were scrolling through something.

She didn't participate in those two sentences of conversation because she knew Wu Jing's real reason for choosing Yinhua Martial Arts Academy.

Suddenly, her thumb, which was swiping the screen, stopped, and her pupils contracted slightly. She turned to the side and handed the phone to Wu Jing, lowering her voice by half an octave: "Xiao Jing, look."

The moment Wu Jing's gaze fell on the screen, her pupils also contracted sharply.

It was a video: a huge, luminous pillar of light rose from the ground, the ground beneath it was baked white by the high temperature, the pillar of light went straight up and disappeared into the clouds, and the halo at its edge spread out a bright white circle at the bottom of the clouds.

Then the scene shifts, and near the base of the pillar of light, several figures dressed in black trench coats are locked in combat with several ferocious-looking monsters.

One of them conjured a fireball between his palms and threw it out, while the other's eyes glowed blue, his lips moved slightly, and a semi-transparent barrier materialized in front of him, blocking a monster's attack.

There was another, even faster, wielding a long sword and weaving among the monsters, leaving behind afterimages wherever his blade struck.

The video is titled "Shocking! Monsters and mysterious superhumans appear in Cangyin City!!!"

Seeing their reactions, Xia Yu, sitting opposite them, couldn't help but lean over and say, "What are you looking at? Let me see too—"

He stopped mid-sentence.

The images on the screen froze her in place, her mouth agape, her milk tea cup tilting slightly, a few drops of milk tea leaking from the straw onto the table.

"Holy crap!" Xia Yu's voice rose a half-octave, "There's a monster!"

Wu Jing and Lin Xinmai exchanged a glance.

They saw it more clearly—those in black trench coats were government officials, and those twisted monsters were the Corpse Race.

Cangyin City is a prefecture-level city in Lincang Province, located several counties away from Lanhe.

Without hesitation, Wu Jing took out her phone, opened her contacts, and sent a short message to a contact named "Sister Lin".

She didn't make a phone call directly because Hua Linlin left in a hurry this morning, and based on the video we've seen, it's very likely she went to carry out a mission.

In that situation, making a phone call is likely to disturb the other party, while sending a text message can at least minimize the disturbance.

She turned the screen off and waited for about two minutes, then turned it back on and glanced at it again, but there was no reply.

Two more minutes passed, but there was still no reply.

Her fingers tightened slightly as she looked at the empty chat window, a hint of worry flashing in her eyes.

"Wow! Look!" At this moment, Xia Yu suddenly turned her phone over and faced the two people.

The screen displays the homepage of a video website, filled with various related videos—mysterious beams of light, superhumans, monsters—with a wide variety of titles and different styles of images, but all pointing to the same kind of thing.

The videos were all released within the last few minutes, as if information had finally leaked out from every crack and formed a tidal wave on the internet.

However, Wu Jing noticed that those videos would be displayed as "This video has been taken down" within just a few minutes of being refreshed.

Clearly, someone is cleaning up this information at an extremely fast pace.

She refreshed the page again, quickly scanning several screens in the last two seconds before a video was taken down.

The beams of light were densely distributed in different street corners of different cities. The monsters were more diverse in form than those seen in the first video. The number of black trench coats was also increasing. In some places, helicopters even flew by in the corner of the screen.

She put her phone back on the table, lowered her eyes, and thought for a while.

The images of the monsters from those videos were still swaying slightly in her mind.

Those grotesque and strangely powerful monsters heightened her sense of urgency: another large-scale monster attack had occurred, and it seemed to cover an even larger area than before.

Her fingers tapped lightly on the table, and the thought in her mind became even more firm:

I need to become stronger as soon as possible! Otherwise, I won't be able to protect myself from those things, and not my family either!

. . .

Yunshang Province, the deepest, darkest realm.

On the city wall of the stronghold, Wu You and Elder Wei stood side by side. Neither of them spoke, but simply gazed silently at the churning dark fog ahead.

However, at this moment, the fog was extremely unstable, sometimes thick and sometimes thin, sometimes disappearing and sometimes appearing.

At this moment, Wu You suddenly spoke up: "That tremor seems to be weakening?"

Old Wei was stunned for a moment.

He tilted his head slightly, focusing his attention on sensing the ground beneath his feet and the surrounding space.

Indeed, the tremors that were coming from all directions were slightly less intense than before, with smaller amplitude and a slightly lower frequency.

A hint of surprise flashed in Old Wei's eyes: "It has become weaker!"

"It must have been our comrades in the real world who took action!"

But in the next instant, Wu You's pupils suddenly contracted.

He didn't respond to Old Wei's words, but instead stared intently at a certain spot on the edge of the dark fog in the distance.

At the edge of the thick fog, a faint outline is slowly emerging!

Stone bricks, city walls, teleportation portals, etc.

If he wasn't mistaken, that should also be the style of the city walls of the stronghold that the Investigation Bureau set up in the Deep Dark Domain!

In other words, it was a deep, dark stronghold!

Old Wei once told him that each stronghold retained the power of Lord Li, and was the absolute suppression core in the deep dark domain.

Now, the two strongholds, belonging to different deep dark domain regions, are beginning to converge in space!

They are being dragged together from their original coordinate positions!

The implications of this phenomenon are enough to send chills down one's spine without needing to think about them too much.

Just as Wu You was staring at the outline, the hoarse voice in his mind suddenly sighed and then said out of the blue, "So fast? Looks like they really went all out this time."

So fast? They went all out? What does this mean?

Then, before Wu You could ask, the voice said directly:

"The weakening you feel is not a weakening of the cohesion."

"But—"

"The aggregation is about to complete!"