Gacha games can't save this bizarre world.

While ordinary people celebrate the New Year, the extraordinary are not idle either; such special days are always a busy time for them.

Whether you're learning new spells, brewing potions, crafting extraordinary items, or performing rituals to deities, these activities will all take place on these days.

However, players of Fantasy Westward Journey have a different experience.

Three days ago, they received information that the game would be "updated" after the New Year.

Every player was incredibly nervous; they were already deeply connected to the game.

Their strength, their growth, and most of their current achievements are thanks to this game.

If the game were suddenly gone, they would probably be extremely disappointed.

Now, they are anxiously awaiting the so-called brand-new version, their hearts filled with trepidation.

If someone is distracted, absent-minded, or inattentive while watching TV or chatting with family on the evening of January 1st, you should suspect that they might be in a relationship or perhaps a gamer.

After all, with the number of extraordinary players leveling off and hitting a bottleneck, Zhao Hao is now focusing on encouraging ordinary people to become game players.

Many office workers, white-collar workers, laborers, and students have secretly become gamers.

The number of ordinary players worldwide is approaching 30,000, and it feels like it will surpass the number of extraordinary players in just a few months.

Indeed, the people, and only the people, are the driving force behind the creation of world history!

Zhao Hao's field of leeks is visibly growing bigger and bigger~

Of course, he is also willing to fertilize and protect the leeks from being harmed by other people's sickles and pests.

But even with all precautions, there are times when things go wrong. Even two of Zhao Hao's Seven Warlords of the Sea have fallen: the tough guy Alas and the ruthless Teddy both died in the process of fighting against others in the outer world.

They were too young. The other team had established connections. They beat up the younger ones, and the older ones came along. They were tricked and killed.

So his soul had no choice but to work in Zhao Hao's dream.

Both of them participated in the last attack on Jules Rieu.

As the New Year's bells rang, striking for quite some time, many people, citing reasons such as being too drunk, feeling sleepy, or not feeling well, retreated to their bedrooms to activate their game seals and enter the Fantasy Game to check for updates.

There's still a lot of content, with changes to everything from the interface to the gameplay. The auction house and shops are especially large, and many special products from the Underworld have appeared.

The Underworld branch has also appeared in quests and dungeons!

This is a huge change! Some players who are particularly good at dealing with undead may be about to take off!

Indeed, each new version brings a new meta!

However, the biggest change was not the appearance of the Underworld instance, but the goddess Ika!

This sci-fi character, who has been making headlines in the real world and is hailed as the most popular sci-fi character of the past decade, has actually become part of the game!

She stands clearly in front of you, radiating light, and can enable many of your game functions.

For example, equipment enhancement, opening jars, drawing cards... soon players were crying and kneeling in front of Ika.

"I'm not playing anymore! Give me back my damn coins!"

Nima Coin is the in-game currency of the game Fantasy Westward Journey. Printing your own money is the fastest way to fleece newbies!

Thanks to the existence of Goddess Ika, Zhao Hao was able to avoid server pressure; otherwise, 6 players would have been a real challenge.

……

The two months 83 years ago passed quickly; overall, it was a hectic time, and everyone was busy and things just flew by.

The psionic resurgence has intensified this year, with an increasing number of wild superhumans and aberrants.

Researchers from the Bureau of Mysteries stated that if the current rate of increase continues, the ratio of superhumans to ordinary people could reach 1:3000 in just a few years!

What does that mean? Given the character of the Amis people, it'll probably be a nationwide free purchase/cemetery shopping spree!

Zhao Hao drove his monster jeep to the Liberty City branch and clocked in for work.

Previously, the higher-ups of the Mysterious Bureau organized another plan to "retrieve the God Armor," but the result was not good.

Four people went, but they all returned severely injured without finding the item. Apparently, the intelligence was wrong, and they weren't looking for that thing at all.

The candidates were furious and almost went on strike. The higher-ups felt they had acted too hastily, and coupled with the previous leak of information about the Ark of the Covenant, they had been conducting internal reorganizations for some time.

The other candidates have all gone back to their own homes, but Zhao Hao is a local and has nowhere to go. Plus, he needs to maintain appearances, so he does some daily tasks and gathers more dungeon materials for the players.

He is needed to handle some serious and extraordinary incidents.

I just got back from Louisiana yesterday. Something happened there, and it was a series of extraordinary incidents.

It all started in that remote wilderness, where a giant monster with a loudspeaker hanging from a telephone pole appeared. Many people encountered it in the wild and got stuck on the wall.

Local agents in black also dealt with it; it was a Black Iron 5-star monster. It was initially named "Siren Head"!

Because it's just a telephone pole with arms and legs topped with a big horn head.

If a living person is spotted, a piercing siren will sound, and the police will relentlessly pursue and kill them.

Those strides were so large, each step covering several meters, that few ordinary people could escape with their lives.

Moreover, their elusive nature caused a lot of trouble for the black-clad agents.

The result came at a considerable cost, requiring over a dozen truckloads of equipment and instruments. Five or six superhumans, along with four or five teams of black-clad agents, finally managed to kill them. Unexpectedly, they reappeared less than a week later!

This thing was originally a strange phenomenon, a product of the fear of piercing police sirens.

Simply resorting to violence is not enough; we need to address the root cause.

The federal government is currently holding a meeting to change the siren sound to a different tune.

However, the Siren Head incident attracted the attention of the Bureau of Mysteries of Louisiana and several surrounding states, causing even more terrifying supernatural entities to be overlooked.

It was a strange creature that only children could see; sometimes it was ten feet tall, and sometimes it was as tall as two or three stories.

It will quietly take away some withdrawn children and disappear from their lives.

As a result, because all attention was drawn to the creature and it was secretive, many children went missing without anyone noticing.

The eerie creature known in folklore as the "Slender Man" thus grew and actually became a bronze-level existence!

The most outrageous instance was when it climbed over the wall of a twelve-story hotel. Keep in mind, at this point it was completely materialized, making it visible without needing any special vision.

On that day, more than two hundred people suffered mental breakdowns after witnessing unacceptable scenes and were taken away by the Bureau of Mysteries for treatment.

Zhao Hao went to deal with that thing.

However, like Siren Head, this Slender Man is also a strange and unsettling phenomenon, a manifestation of the loneliness and fear within a withdrawn child, and can only be suppressed temporarily... meaning you can keep playing it!

Zhao Hao checked in and was about to leave, planning to go to the mall to buy some summer clothes.

However, his attempt to sneak away failed, and he was stopped by Colt, who had a gloomy expression.

"Zhao Hao, do you know about Yellowstone Volcano?" he asked as soon as he came up.

"Hmm? You mean Yellowstone National Park?"

"That's right, come with me, something terrible has happened!"

Chapter 386 Huangshi Explosive Barrel!

Yellowstone is a supervolcano located in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, and is the world's largest and still active supervolcano.

Because the volcanoes in the region are still active, the area is also rich in geothermal resources.

Two-thirds of the world's geysers are located in Yellowstone National Park, which also boasts some of the world's most active geysers.

Unlike ordinary volcanoes, the Yellowstone supervolcano does not have a distinct mountain body, meaning it lacks a volcanic cone and is instead a flat plateau.

It should have a volcanic cone like a normal volcano. The reason it is so unique is because the eruption is so powerful that the mountain is flattened by the huge impact force, leaving only a crater-like depression on the surface, which is called a caldera or volcanic crater.

Yellowstone Volcano: You can tell how awesome I am just from my unique appearance!

According to recent research by scientists from the University of Utah and the U.S. Geological Survey, the Earth's crust beneath the Yellowstone crater has risen 17 centimeters in the last three years, and this upward force is attributed to the accumulation of magma underground.

The Earth's crust beneath Yellowstone National Park is thinner than the surrounding areas, only about 10 kilometers thick, and beneath this crust lies lava, from which the magma during volcanic eruptions originated.

1816, more than 160 years ago, was one of the darkest years in human history.

This was because severe disasters occurred all over the world that year, with the most severe disasters occurring in the Eurasian and North American continents of the Northern Hemisphere.

The unusually low temperatures during the summer have destroyed crops in many affected areas, leaving farmers with no harvest.

Therefore, this year is also known as the "Year Without Summer," a year without summer.

The cause of the abnormal global weather in 1816 was the eruption of Mount Tambora on the island of Sambawa in Indonesia on April 15, 1815, the largest eruption in history and the largest in the world.

The volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii in the last century was only a level 5 (the Tonga volcano in the last two days has been preliminarily identified as a level 5), while the eruption index of the Tambora volcano reached an astonishing level 7, which is the second highest level.

The volcanic ash ejected that time had a total volume of 160 cubic kilometers and reached a height of 44 kilometers in the stratosphere, making the sky look like it was covered with a thick blanket.

In Europe and America, in the Eastern Hemisphere, sunsets and colorful clouds caused by volcanic ash can be seen, and what was originally a scorching summer day even saw snowfall. Moreover, the snow contained a large amount of volcanic ash, resulting in a variety of colors, including red, yellow, gray, and even flesh-colored.

Large amounts of volcanic ash entering the atmosphere can block sunlight, alter the Earth's climate, and cause crop yields to drop or even fail in many places, ultimately leading to a huge disaster.

The basic principle is that sulfur dioxide in volcanic ash forms aerosols in the air, which are very stable and can persist for a long time. These aerosols in the atmosphere weaken the solar radiation reaching the ground, causing the Earth's temperature to drop.

It's like putting a sun umbrella over the Earth.

The Year Without a Summer in 1815 was a magnitude 7 volcanic eruption, while Samaras in 1257 was the largest eruption in human history, though magnitude 7 is considered a bit high.

"...If the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts this time, the conservative estimate is a magnitude 8!"

Colt put down the documents in his hand, his face as black as a pot, and while gently stroking his smooth forehead, he looked at Zhao Hao, Prada, old Saipan, Sam, Lincoln, and the Iron Man Thomas, several local savior candidates.

The Secret Service obtained concrete intelligence and, through calculations performed by the supercomputer Mr. Feynman, concluded that there was a high probability that the Yellowstone supervolcano would erupt!

However, the people in the audience were completely bewildered.

After all, apart from Zhao Hao, who is a university graduate, and Thomas, who is a PhD in science and engineering, Sam, a young man who hasn't even graduated from high school, has the highest level of education.

The others, Prada dropped out of junior high school and took over her mother's position as priestess for the family's god Pena at a young age.

Old Saipan is now over sixty years old. Although he had the opportunity to attend a church school for a few years when he was young, he probably only graduated from primary school, and it was more theological.

Lincoln wasn't highly educated; he joined the army after graduating from junior high school. Frankly, if he had a higher education, he could easily have risen to the rank of major. Of course, that's just the surface story; the real reason he didn't get promoted was because he was "blacklisted."

So Colt's heavy-handed explanation, with its details about eruption yield, volcanic ash volume, stratosphere, ocean currents, and global climate, completely baffled the three of them.

"Oh, that sounds a bit bad!" Lincoln said, staring at the others with wide eyes, as if he were listening intently.

Prada also failed to grasp the seriousness of the situation. "So, are we supposed to plug the volcano? I think that might be a bit too much trouble!"