Blore breathed rapidly, as if the memory alone had exhausted his strength, and a fine layer of cold sweat oozed from his forehead, instantly turning cold in the cold wind.

He looked at the frozen figures in the distance, then at the mirror-smooth ice beneath his feet, his eyes filled with extreme uneasiness.

"Bai Di... do you think... what we're standing on... could it be... that kind of thing? Those people... are they... failures... that fell out of those blocks... that didn't hatch properly?"

Bai Di was speechless at the scene described by Blore and the terrible association that his highly developed imagination had conjured up.

He looked at the densely packed frozen figures again, and felt a chill running from the soles of his feet straight to his head.

The "Matrix" that Blore saw and the black-robed, chained figures he saw both pointed to some cold, ancient horror beyond comprehension.

This deadly ice field, this vertically falling snow, these countless "specimens"...what kind of nightmare have they been dragged into?

Song Wudeng, and the mysterious man in black robe... What roles do they play in this horrific drama?

The wind and snow were still silent, vertical snowflakes fell on their shoulders, on those frozen bodies, and in the endless paleness. The silence was suffocating, as if the whole world was holding its breath waiting for the awakening of something indescribable.

Some seemed to be still walking, some were looking up at the sky, and some were crawling on the ground, making a gesture of worship towards the igloo.

Their faces were blurred and distorted by the ice, but their limbs revealed an indescribable sense of complete death.

But in fact, the most terrifying thing is not their existence, but the dead silence.

So many "people" should have been the center of the hustle and bustle, but the only thought that arose in Blore's mind was the absolute, maddening silence that penetrated deep into his bones.

An unnatural, vacuum-like silence fell over them.

Those frozen human figures did not emit any breath of life, made no sound, and even had no sense of "existence".

They were like dust forgotten by the universe, tiny remnants of some unimaginable horror.

Blore felt his sanity slowly peeling away and disintegrating under this silent, cold gaze.

He didn't dare to think about whether these "people" lost their voices at the moment they were frozen, or whether they themselves... had never made any "human" sounds?

He could feel that something was not right with him, as if something had been wrong with him since he came back from his last mission.

It feels like there is a fire burning in my heart.

I have always been anxious and afraid of everything around me.

But why is this happening?

He felt like he was not himself anymore.

Who is he now, or who controls his body?

Why was he so frightened? Nothing had happened.

What is he afraid of?

Afraid of the unknown?

This isn't him at all.

The more you think, the more confused your mind becomes.

Something seemed to be stopping him...

Bai Di's lips moved silently, as if he was saying something.

Blore concentrated hard, trying to decipher it, but the sudden expansion of the darkness in the other man's eyes, a darkness condensed from pure fear, made him understand something in an instant.

The fear did not come from the scene in front of him, but from... behind him.

Blore felt as if all the blood in his body had frozen.

He slowly turned his stiff neck with an instinct that resisted every inch of his muscles.

He didn't dare to turn around completely, and could only use the corner of his eye to catch a glimpse of the thing coming from behind that made Bai Di speechless for a moment.

At the edge of that sticky fog, at the blurred focus of countless frozen humanoid figures... something... is forming.

Not a physical entity, more like a distortion of space itself, a malevolent warping of light and shadow.

It has no specific form, but exudes a cold, vast will that is full of ancient malice and complete indifference.

His brain refused to process the information, and his optic nerves sent a burning pain, but he "sense" it - that was not eyes, but the collective consciousness of countless cloudy eyeballs under the ice; that was not limbs, but the projection of countless twisted mermaid tail fins in a higher dimension; that was not a sound, but a blasphemous whisper that directly acted on the depths of the soul, coming from the cold void between the stars.

Silence. Dead silence.

But in the absolute, maddening silence, Blore heard the crisp crackle of his own sanity, with uncanny clarity.

Suddenly, the darkness in his eyes, which was condensed purely by fear, suddenly expanded, like an ice-cold needle, piercing Bai Di's nerve endings.

It was not the fear of a specific threat, but the instinctive and complete collapse of the soul when it faces the incomprehensible and indescribable.

Bai Di didn't even have time to fully understand what Blore saw - the spatial distortion?

What about collective consciousness?

The whispers from the stars?

——But he caught the string called "reason" deep in Blore's pupils, which was emitting a heart-pounding, breaking hum.

It's so weird and so illogical.

Where exactly is this place?

But he saw more!

This thought exploded like thunder in Bai Di's mind. In this desecrated frozen hell, "seeing more" was tantamount to drinking the venom of the abyss.

Blore was being contaminated, eroded by the invisible, sticky terror. In the next second, his scream or laughter could become the fuse that would explode himself or even drag down the two of them.

My dear, there is more to this chapter. Please click on the next page to continue reading. It will be even more exciting later!