Reality was like a trashy movie scraping the bottom of the barrel—at times, developments unfolded completely beyond expectation.
All along, the trouble with a spiritus plague like Dreamloss Syndrome was that it spread through the circulation of spiritus. And the nature of spiritus was notoriously fluid and unpredictable.
No matter how strict the defenses were, if a deceased person’s lingering thought, desire, or obsession clung to some object that subsequently fell into someone else’s hands, it would spread just like that.
Whether via banknotes, plastic bags, or old clothes...
Yet the protection of the Law of Heavenly Overseer was equivalent to a citywide repulsion field. Imperceptible to ordinary people, it was nonetheless everywhere, automatically adapting to counter anomalies. Even without a formal activation, minute spiritus traces of a plague would be thoroughly purged, unable to linger for long.
It simply lacked the conditions to spread.
From this perspective, the city hall’s calm confidence was not without reason.
This was the confidence that Tianyuan inspired!
Unfortunately, confidence rarely lasted, and Tianyuan was by no means omnipotent. Beneath rules that appeared airtight, there were always countless loopholes to exploit.
The first to suffer was Beishan District, where immigrants and an immense crowd of undocumented residents huddled together.
When the first and second cases of Dreamloss Syndrome were detected, they could still be written off as isolated incidents. But when the hospital saw dozens, then hundreds of Dreamloss patients queuing up to buy sleeping pills, the situation escalated into a full-blown crisis!
"Yes, this is the place, Sister Wen!"
Their ever-reliable scout, Tong Hua, had pinpointed the source of the infection with ease.
A van screeched to a halt in front of a dilapidated office building, whose entrance was plastered with a hodgepodge of signs like "Six-Dimensional Supermagnetic Mind Healing Center."
Tucked away in the remote outskirts with sparse traffic, quiet and rundown, it was the exact sort of haven favored by pyramid schemes, fraud syndicates, and cult groups.
A loudspeaker outside played cheerful oldies, but the lobby inside was dim and empty, save for a few staggering, shuffling figures wandering back and forth.
A faint stench of decay drifted out.
"Give me a fucking break..."
Wen Wen took one look at the scene inside and could no longer hold back a weary sigh.
First came some White Nation terrorists, followed by a roaming Heart Pivot fraud ring, and then a cult organization suspected of being the Evil Transmutation Cult spreading among immigrants—a whole mess of crises had erupted over the past few days. It was like a game of whack-a-mole; knock one down, and two more popped up.
The Beishan Section, which had been slacking off for a while, had already been run ragged. Before they could even capture those fleeing suicide bombers from the White Nation, Dreamloss Syndrome had begun to spread.
After rushing over in sheer exhaustion, she found that everything was already past the point of saving.
One glance was all it took.
There were no living people left inside...
"Notify the police station. Cordon off the perimeter. The inside needs a complete purge," Wen Wen said with a wave of her hand, stepping out of the vehicle with a sigh.
"Uh..." Tong Hua hesitated.
"What is it?" Wen Wen asked, puzzled.
"The security department for this area has already been dissolved."
Tong Hua shrugged. "After Xu Chaoxian outsourced the police department, this district couldn't afford the security fees, so it's always remained outside governed jurisdiction. I mean, it's Beishan District after all."
*Boom.*
With a loud crack, the ground beneath Wen Wen's feet fractured into fissures.
Her face turned ashen.
"Son of a bitch..."
Gritting her teeth, Wen Wen had nothing left to say. She silently rolled up her sleeves and marched straight toward the office building. With a single kick, she shattered the precarious glass doors. Amid the screeching sound, the wandering figures stiffly turned their heads.
Their hollow faces were devoid of any luster.
Their flesh-and-blood bodies were already empty husks; all that remained after mutation was the pure, base desire of a biological organism.
Hunger.
"Hungry... So hungry..."
Bloodstained mouths parted instinctively. Behind the counter, two walking corpses lying on the floor slowly crawled to their feet. Even partially devoured, broken frames wriggled forward, pulling themselves along on their hands.
Yet even reduced to such a state, every face still bore a faint, lingering trace of a smile.
Eerie and horrifying.
Too bad they had picked the wrong target...
Irritated, Wen Wen shut her eyes, took a deep breath, and brought her foot down.
*Boom!*
An invisible wave surged through matter, sweeping outward in a magnificent tide. Wherever it passed, walking corpses and broken husks collapsed to the ground, heavy thuds resounding continuously from bottom to top.
Amid the roar, floor after floor shuddered violently. The rushing force transmitted through the medium destroyed one physical body after another, plunging the entire office building, shrouded in anomalous spiritus, into absolute silence.
Dust to dust, earth to earth.
Not a sound remained.
Only a hallucination-like chuckle echoed from behind her.
Wen Wen spun around, but behind her, the space was empty. Not a soul was there.
In silence, she clenched her fist.
In the dead silence, a sound like bursting bubbles arose—wisps of phantom light drifted upward from the corpses.
Spiritus dispersion.
Inside the mouths, noses, and eye sockets of those remains, something squirmed, slowly wriggling its way out. Like tiny, wet worms, they writhed their bodies, shedding their final shells upon completing their metamorphosis.
Delicate, thin wings unfurled and fluttered.
Swirling with iridescent light, they were both grotesque and dazzling.
One after another rose into the air, spreading their wings toward the free sky amid illusory laughter.
Unfortunately, before that could happen, Wen Wen had already extended her hand.
She silently clenched her fingers.
Desolate Ruins · Stasis Zone!
The building froze in an instant. Not only matter, but even spiritus was stripped of the ability to escape this eternal stagnation.
Immediately after, all creation shuddered.
*Crack!*
Outside the building, Tong Hua had just quietly opened a bag of potato chips when she heard approaching footsteps.
Behind Wen Wen, the massive office building slowly collapsed into the wind, disintegrating into billions of sand grains that drifted down in silence.
"Holy crap!"
Tong Hua stared wide-eyed. "Sister Wen, did you finally master your supreme art? When are we uniting the world with our boundless virtue and martial might?"
"Quit fooling around."
Wen Wen gave her an annoyed rap on the forehead, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and instinctively placed one between her lips. But her hand froze mid-air. After a long pause, she took the cigarette out, crushed it to powder, and tossed it away.
"We're in serious trouble now..."
In the sky, a faint iridescent shimmer flickered. Far away in the chaotic slums, amid the mud left behind by the torrential rain, several fully grown spiritus insects rose into the air.
As their wings opened and closed, specks of phosphorescence drifted down.
***
The outbreak arrived with unforeseen violence and speed.
The wasteland, which had only flourished for a few months after the rainy season, fell silent once more and withdrew into isolation. Every settlement shut its gates or blocked its roads.
Panic spread like a physical substance, even escalating to the point of expelling all outsiders and besieging stowaways.
Even Courier Logistics' operations ground to a brief halt.
There were no orders to take.
Compared to the stability brought to the city by the Security Bureau's full mobilization, the wasteland had plunged into utter chaos. Countless winged insects rose and fell in ceaseless waves, gathering into a calamity that was dazzlingly vibrant yet hair-raisingly terrifying.
Not even animals could escape.
There were even signs of the swarm actively mobbing and parasitizing smaller creatures.
In the vast flood of footage transmitted by drones, stiffly moving animals would sometimes keel over dead by the roadside as they walked. From their rapidly rotting corpses, swarms of insects hatched in no time, spreading with wild abandon.
This wave of disaster caught everyone off guard.
Fortunately, thanks to Haian's aggressive vaccination drive earlier, few people suffered harm during the initial onslaught. But according to refugees fleeing from other states, several unlucky settlements had been completely wiped out—empty of living souls, with insects fluttering everywhere inside.
As panic spread, crowds began converging on Xinquan once again.
Yet they were held back at checkpoint after checkpoint, lingering outside in despair.
Xinquan was under martial law.
Now, the settlements and smart alecks who had mocked, ridiculed, or even violently driven away medical staff during the vaccine campaign were beginning to regret their choices.
Unfortunately, it was too late.
Dense crowds pressed together; even knowing the risk of infection, they could no longer afford to care.
"Please, brother, let me in! My goods are about to spoil!"
"The child is innocent!"
"You wouldn't just leave us to die, would you?!"
"I knew it! How could you be so kind? You must have released this plague!"
"Tell that bastard Ji to get out here and give everyone an explanation!"
"Don't be afraid, everyone—let's charge through together!"
A clamor of overlapping voices rose to a deafening roar as the agitated crowd grew increasingly frenzied.
From start to finish, the armed guards at the outpost remained expressionless.
"Fucking idiots."
Up on the watchtower, Lu Feng finished his cigarette and waved a hand with complete indifference.
Immediately after, high-pressure water cannons mounted on armored vehicles before the barricades roared to life. Amid blaring siren horns, jets of water forcefully dispersed the crowd.
When given free vaccines earlier, you refused them; now that disaster strikes, you turn around and bite the hand that tried to feed you.
It was like dealing with raving lunatics.
Besides, the vaccine had long run out of stock.
It hadn't even fully covered Xinquan's own populace.
"I can't reach them."
Yu Shu set down the phone and shook his head wearily. "At first, they'd make a few half-hearted excuses, but yesterday, they refunded the advance payment and liquidated damages in full."
No manufacturing capacity, no logistics, unable to ship, need to wait in line...
There were as many excuses as one could ask for.
They had stalled and stalled, dragging things out until now...
Yet in truth, how complicated could vaccine production really be?
It was simply that those pharmaceutical enterprises wanted to seize the opportunity to loot a burning house, selling off mountains of warehouse junk for the price of gold.
Some even fanned the flames.
Television networks were currently running at full throttle to broadcast the horrors of "novel encephalitis," with media mouthpieces hyping up the gruesome consequences of its onset, sending black-market vaccine prices skyrocketing.
Over in Old Town, Chen Xingzhou had managed to divert a batch of generic drugs from the Thousand Islands as a personal favor, but it was a mere drop in the bucket.
Among the people Ji Jue knew, Xie Lan had the capability, but without professional equipment, how much could a single man craft by hand, even working twenty-four hours a day without sleep?
For days on end, Ji Jue's expression grew steadily darker.
What could have been prevented had deteriorated to this point while he was forced to watch helplessly.
Whenever he couldn't bear to look at the reports, he would turn his gaze to the names of those pharmaceutical companies and financial insurance conglomerates, reading them over and over from top to bottom, etching each into memory.
He drew Pan Ying from its sheath and slotted it back in, sharpening it repeatedly, yet his fury remained impossible to suppress.
Amid the ticking of the clock, on the other side of the office behind the desk, Yu Shu suddenly froze as he handled paperwork. He looked down at his phone.
He hesitated, wanting to speak.
Ji Jue looked up, catching his hesitation. "What happened?"
"There's a situation."
Yu Shu's words came with difficulty, halting and reluctant.
Just moments ago, inside Xinquan Town, the first infected victim had "died" of the spiritus plague...
Ji Jue remained silent for a long time before slowly rising to his feet.
He walked toward the door.
***
The market was dead quiet, cordoned off behind police tape.
Not far away, people were still gazing over in dread, lingering terror on their faces. Thanks to prior preparations and measures, the death of the infected victim hadn't triggered widespread panic or chaos.
The crowd had been evacuated and the scene handled the moment the case was discovered.
A pot was still bubbling with broth at the food stall, but behind the table, an emaciated man lay curled in a chair, as if trapped in an endless slumber, entirely devoid of breath.
From a brief afternoon nap, he had slipped into eternal rest.
As though still immersed in a sweet dream, the corner of his mouth curved upward in a faint arc.
It looked like a smile.
In the silence, only the nearly dry cauldron made bubbling sounds, steam rising in wisps. The uncut rice noodles on the bamboo tray had already stuck together.
Ji Jue studied the face on the armchair, finally recognizing the traces of who he had been. In that instant of realization, he remembered: the man had once treated him to a bowl of noodles.
Back then, however, his smile had been far too worldly and weathered, making it impossible to tell whether it was servile flattery, reverent deference, or tearful gratitude.
Now, his smile looked much more relaxed.
"...Didn't they say he received the vaccine?" Ji Jue turned and asked.
"Vaccines aren't a hundred percent guarantee," Yu Shu said with a conflicted expression. "If the physical and spiritual condition is too frail, one will lack resistance all the same. Besides..."
He paused, letting out a silent sigh.
This body was already on the verge of burning out its last drop of oil.
Vitality depleted, breathing strained.
Like a candle flickering in the wind, he could have died at any moment even without this crisis. The so-called spiritus plague was merely the final gust of wind that happened to blow by.
Ji Jue turned toward the market manager who had just hurried over. "What was his situation?"
"Oh, him..."
Once the manager realized who had died, he froze. His expression turned complex, carrying an air of resignation, as though he had long anticipated this. He sighed softly. "At least he suffered less. It's a relief in its own way."
Ji Jue was quiet for a moment, his voice growing cold. "Was he being extorted?"
"No, no, absolutely not. We don't have that sort of thing in our market. Even if someone tried, the security team would've broken their legs," the manager hastily explained, wiping away sweat with an emotional sigh. "It's just that this guy pushed himself too hard. Sold noodles morning and evening, hauled garbage in the dead of night. Every time he went back and forth to Yacheng, he'd bring back a bunch of knick-knacks to sell. Every single day. I told him so many times his body couldn't take it, but he wouldn't listen.
"I heard Haian paid a base salary plus piece rate, so he went to apply multiple times. The recruiters got to know him personally, and every time they just urged him to go home—he was too old, his body couldn't endure it.
"A few days ago, he even asked me whether courier delivery paid well. Good thing I stopped him from going."
"Was he in debt?" Yu Shu asked.
"Yeah. More or less, everyone owes something these days, but his deficit was huge."
The manager called over several sweepers under his command, who chimed in at once:
"Aside from paying off debts, he had to pay for his wife's medical treatment—that moss thing..."
"Moss Sickness?"
"Yeah, the one that broke out a few years back. Outside the city, there wasn't a single family that didn't lose someone."
"He spent everything he had. Couldn't get the medicine. Heard aside from his wife, his whole family died."
"Pitiable man."
A cigarette-smoking older woman leaned on her broom, shaking her head. "A few days ago, his wife died too."
"Didn't they say she was recovering?" The manager was taken aback. "Last month, he was happy for days on end, even handed out candy to me..."
"She was almost recovered," the woman said, glancing at him and lowering her voice. "Turns out... when something like this happens, it's inevitable. If you ask me, he'd suffered enough. He just couldn't hold on anymore, could he?"
Yu Shu froze.
His eyes lowered.
Long before heading to the Thousand Islands, he had browsed the records of the Church of Chongguang.
Over several centuries, records of various spiritus plagues filled mountains of archives. Dreamloss Syndrome alone took up several shelves, with dozens of large-scale epidemics—all occurring during periods of chaos or in the interludes between wars.
Compared to historical accounts where entire islands fell dead silent in catastrophic ruin, the current situation was merely a skirmish.
According to the Church of Chongguang's statistics, the incubation period of Dreamloss Syndrome was actually quite protracted, with no shortage of asymptomatic carriers. The triggers for onset were varied, but among them, the most common trigger was singular:
The desire to die.
Once a person lost all attachment to living, the craving for death would sprout. As consciousness gradually evaporated, the self departed alongside the dreams, never to return, leaving behind only an empty husk in the mortal realm.
They would never feel pain again.
In the silence, Ji Jue gazed quietly at the quiet, wrinkle-laden face. As though still immersed in a sweet dream, all the hardship and creases had smoothed into a faint, upward curve.
He had exhausted the smile accumulated across an entire lifetime.
"Mr. Ji..." Yu Shu summoned the courage to call out softly.
"Don't worry, I'm not that fragile,"
Ji Jue slowly shook his head. "I was just wondering... in his final moments, what did he see?"
Yu Shu's lips twitched. For some reason, he suddenly recalled himself back on the sea, when a gun had been pressed against his face.
Corpses drifting in the ocean, singing echoing through the mist—it was as though an unprecedented serenity had been calling out to him...
When the end arrived, what he felt was neither fear nor indignation.
It was a sense of profound relief and release.
"...Probably happiness," he murmured softly, almost instinctively.
Looking at that face.
Suffering had ended. From then on, there was nothing left to worry about.
That was why he smiled.
"Happiness?"
Ji Jue seemed to smile.
He finally turned his head to look at Yu Shu, yet his face was completely devoid of amusement, his eyes pitch-black. "In a world where one can only feel happiness in death, doesn't anyone find that something is deeply wrong?"
Yu Shu was stunned, falling silent.
His fingers trembled slightly before instinctively clenching.
Under that piercing gaze, he wanted to answer, but words failed him, and no answer could be found.
Meanwhile, Ji Jue had already turned and walked away.
A resolute departure.
He had reached his limit.
"Isis."
"I am here, Sir."
"Prepare the quicksilver. Boot up the workshop, adjust the sequence, mobilize spiritus reserves, and unlock Material Vaults Four and Seven..."
"Understood. Large-scale alchemy engineering preparations underway. Pre-heating initiated."
Isis asked one final question: "What is the project name?"
"'Worm.'"
Chapter 478