The plunder of the heavens begins with the Spirit Cage.

But someone else was faster than him. Hayes, with his canvas belt around his waist and a medical flashlight in his mouth, said, "I know where the insulin is. I'll go get it."

"How can this be done?" Ethan was not optimistic. Sending an old man to get insulin seemed unreliable no matter how you looked at it.

The old dean pressed his shoulder and shook his head: "There's nothing that can't be done."

We've been observing for so long, and those creatures have basically all left after they finished eating.

According to their biological habits, they cannot gather too much in the hospital without food.

You're a grown man; if something happens to me, at least you're more capable than me of taking them away.

Since the old dean had already said so much, Ethan had no choice but to give up. After telling him to be careful, he chose to meet him at the stairwell.

After about 10 minutes, a muffled thud was heard in the distance, followed by the sound of glass shattering.

Ethan gripped the pistol he had taken from the policeman and pressed it against the stairwell.

Before two minutes had passed, the old dean climbed up the wall, his white work clothes half-soaked in black blood, his left arm swollen to twice its original size and covered with purplish-black thorn marks.

"Dean, are you alright?!" Ethan quickly stepped forward to help him up after confirming that there was nothing unusual around them.

"It's nothing serious," the old man shook his head. "I was moving the cabinet to open the door and get the key to the freezer, and I didn't use the right amount of force. Something in the fog outside scratched me."

Where is that monster?

"It was just a small thing, and I've already taken care of it with one strike."

Alright, let's not talk about this anymore. I got the insulin and a lot of glucose too. We'll eat that in a bit to replenish our energy.

"Take the medicine and give it to that woman to inject."

Ethan helped Hayes back, and with his professional experience and skill, Clara successfully passed through the critical period.

After being given glucose for another half hour, Clara's twitching limbs gradually relaxed, her blood sugar dropped a little, and she was able to sit steadily against the wall and talk.

After swallowing two vials of glucose solution, Ethan turned around and began treating Hayes' wound.

Lifting the old dean's half-ripped work clothes, one could see that the purplish-black venomous veins had crawled from his arm to his chest cavity, and his skin was swollen and shiny, leaving a deep dent that wouldn't bounce back for a long time when pressed.

"You're clearly poisoned!!"

Hayes pushed away the pale-faced man: "Heh, I've been a doctor for fifty years. I can tell whether this kind of poison can be cured at a glance. Don't waste your time on me."

The old man spoke with a carefree attitude, but to Ethan, it was incredibly heavy.

But before he could say anything, Mia, who was huddled at Clara's feet, suddenly looked up and frowned: "Uncle, Grandpa, listen, isn't there something making a sound?"

Upon hearing this, everyone fell silent and listened intently. At first, there was only a faint scraping sound against the glass.

Within two seconds, a faint crawling sound came from the ventilation ducts overhead.

Unlike rats, it made a crisp sound like thousands of tiny claws scraping against metal at the same time, growing louder and louder, causing dust to fall from the ceiling and even shaking the blood pressure monitor hanging on the wall.

Ethan had just pulled out the pistol tucked into his waistband when a heart-wrenching scream came from downstairs. Clearly, a hiding survivor had been captured.

With a loud clang nearby, the metal ventilation pipe near the stairwell was torn apart by the swarm of dark creatures.

They surged into the stairwell through the crack. The palm-sized stinging beetles, with their fluorescent gray shells and shiny, pointed stingers, continued to climb upstairs through the gaps in the heating pipes.

No one dared to listen or look anymore, because the screams of the chicken skins indicated that they were about to have nowhere to escape!

Ethan gripped the gun butt against the door, and could feel the wall outside vibrating slightly in sync with the crawling of the insects.

He glanced back at the three others, whose faces were also pale, and said in a voice as deep as iron, "At this rate, the entire hospital will be occupied in less than a night. We can't stay here any longer; we have to leave!"

With no other choice, the group, though frightened, nodded and left as he instructed, since their place also had ventilation ducts, and waiting there would only lead to their deaths.

Ethan took Mia's hand, and the four of them pushed open the door and carefully left the hospital, guided by the old director.

They also encountered some other survivors who had also escaped from the hospital.

Whether they were lucky or unlucky, they actually walked out of the dangerous hospital safely.

Ethan glanced at the hospital behind him and suddenly felt a little unreal.

"Cough cough cough, you guys go, I feel... cough cough cough, I don't have long to live."

Just then, Hayes struggled to suppress his cough and weakness, "This hospital is, after all, my life's work, I... cough cough, I'd better stay and stay with it until the end..."

The three fell silent, watching the hunched figure walk into the hospital, before finally turning away, suppressing their grief.

Visibility in the fog was less than three meters, so they hurried on to find a safe place, but they had to be on tenterhooks several times.

After walking less than a mile, Tommy, who was at the back, suddenly stopped.

Tommy, a 19-year-old deliveryman, was trapped in the hospital after delivering his first takeout order of the night.

"My ankle is numb; I think I just got pricked by something!"

Ethan lifted his trouser leg, revealing that his ankle was charcoal black, with venomous veins creeping up his calf to his thigh at an astonishing speed.

A rustling sound came from the fog behind them, as if some unknown creature had caught up with them by the smell of blood.

Seeing this, Tommy cried as he handed Ethan the water and energy bars he was carrying.

"Waaaaah, I don't want to die!"

Don't worry about me! Just go now, sob sob sob..."

Ethan gritted his teeth, gave the unfortunate young man a deep look, and then turned and left. He dared not look back, nor could he.

The rustling sound in the fog behind them chased them for about a hundred meters before slowly stopping, but the chilling malice lingered on the backs of the three people, impossible to shake off.

Visibility in the fog remained fixed at three meters, and there was movement all around.

From the residential area on the left, the constant scratching and clawing sounds of something clawing at the door panels could be heard, and every now and then a scream could be heard.

In the distance, from the direction of the interstate highway, came the intermittent bangs of pistol fire, and occasionally the muffled thuds of rifles.

But the sound would often fade into silence after only a few seconds, leaving only the hissing of the fog against the tree trunks, like thousands of monsters panting at your heels.

Ethan is a retired firefighter who has seen charred corpses in fires and endured raging flames, but walking in this fog for half an hour was incredibly difficult in terms of both mental and physical stress.

Ethan stopped leaning against the pole, wiping the condensation from his face. "We can't keep going like this."

We need to find a nearby place to hide and conserve our energy before we talk again.

"Where are we going?" Clara asked anxiously, clutching her stomach.

The three of them had originally planned to go to the police station, but at this rate, it was clear that it wouldn't be possible to get there smoothly.

Ethan began to recall his surroundings by looking at the landmarks on the poles.

If I remember correctly, the main street is about half a mile ahead.

There's a 0-hour convenience store near the street corner. The owner used to be a Marine, and to prevent free purchases, he installed a two-inch thick steel plate gate and reinforced the walls. It shouldn't be easy for the monster to break through.

The convenience store also had water and food, which should be enough for them to last a long time, and perhaps they could wait until the army arrived.

With their direction decided, the three of them began to move slowly, using the cover and ruins along the way, dodging and weaving their way through.

Then their luck seemed to run out, just as the three of them were about to reach the main street.

A giant spider, over two meters long, dragged its semi-transparent hunting web across the street.

Eight thick feet pounded on the cement floor with a cracking sound, and only a large, dark shadow flickered in the fog.

Ethan didn't care what was on the other side and quickly pulled Mia and Clara under the SUV parked on the side of the road.

The three of them held their breath, their hearts pounding like drums, not daring to breathe too loudly, because in that brief moment, the eight-legged monster had already crawled up to them.

It even brought with it a nauseatingly fishy stench.

It didn't spot the three people hiding, but slowly crawled into the nearby department store. Immediately afterward, the sound of shattering glass was heard, along with short screams from the people hiding inside.

The three of them, pale-faced, waited for half an hour before daring to quietly climb out and continue walking towards the convenience store, managing to escape unharmed.

As the outline of the convenience store's iron gate became vaguely visible, Clara's legs went weak, and she stepped on a trash can leaning to one side of the road. She slumped over, causing the metal trash can to crash onto the concrete ground with a loud thud, the dull sound rolling far away in the silent fog.

Ethan's heart sank instantly. Just as he reached out to help Clara up, the floor tiles beneath his feet began to tremble slightly.

A soft rustling sound drifted in from the fog, getting closer and closer, in the blink of an eye.

A group of soccer ball-sized insects with spiky tails crawled up the wall, their sharp stingers raised high, rushing towards them as they smelled human presence.

Not only that, a dark shadow larger than a bus also burst out of the fog.

That was the giant spider they had seen before. Its fangs, larger than an adult's head, dripped transparent venom. Wherever it crawled, it corroded the concrete, leaving fine pits. It had clearly followed the sound.

With things having come to this, Ethan, while leading the two away, picked up his pistol and fired repeatedly at the spider's head.

The first bullet grazed the spider's compound eye, only chipping off a few fragments of its hard shell; it couldn't penetrate it at all. The second bullet hit the fangs and bounced off without even breaking the skin.

Instead, the spider was enraged by the gunshot and lunged forward, its eight long legs instantly crossing over, the stench enveloping the three people completely.

Just as the three were feeling desperate, and the spider's fangs were about to fall, at the critical moment...

Three beams of cold light suddenly shot out from one part of the mist, piercing straight into the monster's softest point, its neck joint.

The giant spider roared in pain, trying to struggle, but its head was crushed by a foot that fell from the sky.

Lu Qianwei pulled back his blood-stained military boots, and the Alaya-vijnana Tang Hengdao he had taken from Bai Yuekui was already drawn from its sheath.

Facing the creatures surging from behind, he dodged into the fog with several incredibly fast movements.

Where the blade swept across, the crisp sound of insect shells shattering filled the air, and severed insect bodies and poisonous stingers flew everywhere.

Within a minute, the creature that rushed out following the sound was reduced to a pile of skin fragments, its blackish-green blood staining the road black.

The remaining insects that were still crawling this way clearly sensed the danger.

After circling twice and emitting faint hissing sounds, their instinctive fear prevented them from charging forward. They slowly retreated into the depths of the mist, the rustling crawling sounds fading into the distance until they were completely silent.

Lu Qianwei flicked his sword with a flourish, wiping away all the blood before sheathing it.

Then he turned to the three survivors who were still stunned, and asked, "Are you alright?"

"No, it's nothing!" Ethan was the first to come to his senses and quickly thanked him.

"Brother, you're so amazing! Are you Superman?" The little girl excitedly leaned closer, clearly steer the conversation off-topic.

Lu Qianwei smiled and patted his head. "If you put it that way, then you could say that."

After exchanging a few polite words, Lu Qianwei's smile faded as he pointed to the convenience store not far away. He had no obligation to protect these people.

"It's not safe outside. You guys hide inside that convenience store and wait for rescue. I'm going to check why the fog appeared."