Chapter 18: Eyes Everywhere

After they passed the road sign outside White Stone Town, the reasonably level highway soon came to an end.

The group had to leave their vehicles and continue on foot.

Lin Ye remained at the front, with Shen Qingyue close beside him. Though she’d become a supernatural only a day ago, she was a full student in Skyvault Academy’s Department of Combat Theory and had never neglected physical training.

A trek of several dozen kilometers might have been difficult, but this stretch was nowhere near enough to make her fall behind.

Zhou Chengan, on the other hand, gritted his teeth as he followed, determined to prove he wasn’t a burden.

Even when a fine sweat appeared on his forehead, he didn’t ask to rest. From time to time he glanced up at Lin Ye and Shen Qingyue walking close together, then looked away again.

After almost half an hour along the damaged road, scattered buildings finally appeared in the distance.

They were the residential outskirts of White Stone Town.

Low houses stood on both sides of the road, their walls old and gray-white, some roofs already collapsed. Farther on, the buildings grew more numerous until shops, homes, and small workshops formed a continuous stretch.

But once the group actually entered the town, they all slowed.

Zhao Yue, at the front, raised a hand for everyone to stop.

He didn’t speak immediately. Frowning, he examined both sides of the street, his expression growing grave.

It was far too chaotic.

Hardly a vehicle parked by the road remained intact.

Some had doors hanging open, their contents scattered across the ground. Others had crashed into walls, their fronts completely crushed. Two had collided head-on in the middle of the road, as if neither driver had slowed even at the last moment.

Every shop window along the street was shattered. Shelves lay overturned, food, clothing, and household goods strewn across the floor.

A restaurant’s metal shutter had been forced outward into a huge bulge from inside, and the wall beside it was riddled with bullet holes.

Broken blades, spent casings, and damaged firearms lay everywhere. Parts of the ground bore marks of intense heat.

From every angle, it looked as though an extremely chaotic battle had taken place.

Yet there was no blood.

Not only were there no bodies; there wasn’t even a drop of blood to be seen.

Gu Wantang crouched beside a wrecked car, drawing a black-gloved finger lightly over a tear in its door. After examining it, she looked up. “There are marks from repeated impacts along the edge. Whoever was in the car was probably attacked.”

Fang Chi nudged aside a casing with the toe of his boot. “These guns were fired, and the magazines are empty. The people in the street didn’t just resist—they fought hard.”

Song Wenshan went to a wall and narrowed his eyes at bullet holes of varying depths. “The directions of fire are all over the place. Some shot outward from inside shops; others stood in the street firing in every direction. They don’t seem to have been attacking targets in the same place.”

“But where are the people?” Zhao Yue asked gravely. “The injured, whatever attacked them, and the blood that should’ve been left after all that shooting—where did it all go?”

No one could answer.

They continued deeper into town.

The farther they went, the more obvious the signs of chaos became.

Some houses had been locked from the inside, yet their windows were smashed. In a grocery store, an unfinished breakfast still sat out, the water in its cup long since dried. Tables and chairs had been piled against the entrance, as though someone had desperately tried to barricade the door.

However they searched, they found no survivors.

Not even any other living creatures.

“Something’s wrong with this place.”

Zheng Tong stopped beside a rubbish heap, looking down at several rotting bags. “The town lost contact days ago. With food this rotten, there should be flies.”

Only then did everyone realize the source of the strange feeling that had followed them since entering.

It was too quiet.

No birdsong, no barking, no rustle of rats moving through debris. There were no bodies of cats or dogs in the streets, and no insects moved near the walls or drains.

There were no living creatures—not even the flies that should have gathered around rotting food.

Song Wenshan slowly closed his eyes.

When he opened them a moment later, his expression hadn’t relaxed. “I can hear sounds five kilometers away and see most exposed targets within several kilometers. Apart from our own footsteps and breathing, there’s no unusual sound nearby.”

Lin Ye didn’t join the discussion.

As he walked, he quietly drew on the power in the Black Knight tattoo on his arm.

The black flames didn’t actually appear. No creature harboring negative emotions should have been able to escape their perception completely.

If anyone was nearby—afraid, angry, anxious, or even a little dissatisfied from hunger—he could detect them.

But there was nothing.

The entire area within his perception was blank.

He frowned, glancing casually along both sides of the street.

The next moment, he paused.

“The plants are gone too.”

Several people followed his gaze.

Where roadside trees should have stood, only deep holes of similar size remained.

The soil inside was damp and the edges neat, but there were no broken roots beneath it, nor the tearing one would expect if trees had been uprooted.

The trees seemed to have vanished into thin air.

And not just the roadside trees.

Many flowerpots sat on apartment balconies, but the soil in every pot had sunk inward. There were no withered leaves or branches, no roots left behind. Large stretches of bare earth lay inside a park fence, without a single weed.

Cracks in the road, corners of walls, drainage ditches—the places where weeds most readily grew were just as clean.

Fang Chi crouched beside a tree hole and felt through the soil for a while, his expression growing uglier. “It wasn’t dug up. There’s no sign the soil was disturbed, and no trace of roots rotting underneath.”

Zhao Yue looked at him. “Then where did the tree go?”

“I don’t know.” Fang Chi stood and brushed dirt from his gloves. “It’s more as if it vanished from trunk to roots, without even leaving behind the microorganisms attached to them.”

A Bureau member murmured, “People, animals, insects, and now plants too. What could take every living thing in an entire town?”

No one responded.

The group unconsciously drew closer together.

Liang Hong’s complexion had improved considerably, but after his earlier lesson he’d become noticeably quieter. Now he only stared at the empty tree holes along the road, offering no casual judgment.

They went on for several hundred meters.

Shen Qingyue held Lin Ye’s arm, but kept looking toward the surrounding buildings.

She’d seemed uneasy ever since entering White Stone Town.

At first he’d assumed it was her first time in an anomalous zone and she was understandably nervous in the lifeless surroundings.

But as they went deeper, she looked around more and more frequently, occasionally turning abruptly as though checking whether something was behind them.

Her fingers tightened on his arm without her noticing.

As they approached an intersection, she could no longer hold back.

“Team Leader Song, you really haven’t found anything?”

Walking on the left, Song Wenshan glanced at her and then at Lin Ye beside her.

He didn’t brush off the question because she was a young student. “Nothing so far. I can see rubble on a roof several kilometers away and hear a sheet of metal moving in the wind farther still, but I haven’t found any living creatures.”

She pressed her lips together. “Nothing at all?”

“Nothing,” he answered firmly. “Why? Have you seen something?”

People around them gradually turned toward her.

Lin Ye watched her for a moment.

Only now did he realize her reaction might not be simple fear.

“Qingyue, what’s wrong?” he asked. “You’ve been looking around since we entered. Did you notice something?”

After hesitating, she nodded slightly and looked around once more.

“Someone’s watching me.”

She didn’t speak loudly, but the atmosphere changed at once.

Zhao Yue immediately gripped his weapon. Several Bureau members turned quickly, directing their attention toward the buildings.

Song Wenshan frowned. “Which direction?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Are they moving?”

“No.” She grew more uneasy as she spoke. “They’re everywhere.”

Everyone focused on her.

Even Lin Ye grew more serious.

Nearly ten people present had used various detection methods without finding anything. His black flames likewise hadn’t sensed negative emotions, yet she insisted someone was watching her.

“How can you be sure?” he asked.

She took a deep breath and tried to put it into words. “Since advancing to Sequence 9, I’ve become very sensitive to people’s gazes. Whenever someone looks at me, I can feel it, even if they’re outside my field of vision.”

Her cheeks reddened slightly, but she continued. “The feeling is specific, too. I can tell whether it’s an ordinary look or whether they have… other thoughts about me.”

Zhao Yue blinked. “Other thoughts?”

She didn’t answer, only moved instinctively closer to Lin Ye.

Everyone understood.

Lin Ye wasn’t surprised. Sequence 9 of Calamity greatly enhanced charm; sensing attention and desire was part of the ability.

“When we first entered White Stone Town, I felt someone watching,” she continued. “But it was faint, only a few gazes, and when I turned around I saw nothing.”

“I thought I was imagining it because I’d just advanced and wasn’t used to the ability. But the farther toward the center we go, the more gazes fall on me.”

Her fingers gripped his arm tightly, her voice growing strained. “At first it was occasional. Then a few, then dozens. Now they’re everywhere.”

She looked up at the buildings on both sides, undisguised fear in her eyes. “Behind the walls, underground, on the roofs, even beneath our feet. I feel like something is watching from everywhere. I can’t tell the exact directions.”

Fang Chi’s expression became extremely grave. “Are those gazes hostile?”

“No.”

She shook her head, frowning more deeply. “That’s the strangest part. They’re only looking at me. They don’t have those kinds of thoughts. There aren’t any emotions at all.”

Fang Chi didn’t question her further.

He immediately opened the metal case at his waist and took out a circular object the size of his palm.

It resembled a compass made of transparent crystal, with a drop of dark red liquid floating inside and several numbers gradually dimming around its edge.

Zhao Yue recognized it. “A Life Mapper?”

“A C-rank contained artifact,” Fang Chi said gravely. “It detects living responses within a certain range and displays their density inside. Each use consumes some of the core liquid. It has three uses left at most.”

He pressed the center of the compass with his thumb.

The dark red liquid spread quickly along fine lines within the crystal.

At first, more than twenty red points representing the group appeared in the center.

Then vast patches of light appeared around them.

One, ten, hundreds, thousands.

Red light filled the crystal at an unimaginable speed. The points overlapped and joined, until the whole thing became an unbroken sheet of crimson.

The color drained from Fang Chi’s face.

He stared at the Life Mapper, seemingly unable to understand what he saw. Then he slapped the instrument hard and checked the remaining uses and detection result again.

The crimson light didn’t change.

Within detection range, there was no blank area at all.

The roads, houses, underground, even every inch of the air around them showed a strong living response.

Countless life signals overlapped, connected completely to one another.

It felt as though the road beneath their feet, the buildings on either side, and White Stone Town itself were a living creature too enormous to measure.

Fang Chi slowly raised his head, his expression twisted with dismay.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”