Pushing open the convenience store door, strangely, the white mist did not surge in from the gap Tang Sui opened, as if blocked by an invisible membrane. Outside the convenience store, inside and out, were two worlds.
The white mist invaded her breath, like a wind wrapping around her, accepting Tang Sui.
Inside the convenience store, people held their breath, watching Tang Sui, who stood in the white mist without suffering from poisoning or suffocation. Their gazes were fixed on her.
Tang Sui, walking two meters away, turned her head as if sensing something.
In the thin white mist, the clear features of the people looked like standing mannequins, their faces pale as paper. Black and red lines meandered, outlining their eyebrows, noses, and lips, carving them into different expressions.
There were smiling faces, crying faces, somber faces, and blank faces...
The only similarity was that these "people" had a pair of dark, pupil-less eyes. When they looked at her, their gazes were entirely different from when she first walked out of the store.
Those were not the eyes of humans, but cold, indifferent, scrutinizing, with a strange non-human aura that sent a chill down one's spine.
'These guys indeed...'
The voice of Fox Mask came to an abrupt halt, because in the next second, both Tang Sui's and the masked figures' vision cleared. The people inside the convenience store regained their blood-colored, clear features. The distinct eye colors and whites of their eyes were so clear that even the blood vessels were visible.
The scene just now seemed like a hallucination, a錯觉 born of mental disorientation.
Tang Sui's expression remained unchanged. As if she hadn't seen their abnormality, she withdrew her gaze. Her delicate face maintained a serene smile. Even though no one stepped forward in the end, she showed no resentment.
The girl's slender back was swallowed by the dense white mist, like a disposable item consumed and discarded as she left, leaving no trace of her presence.
In the excessively dense white mist, even Tang Sui, with her spiritual power inexplicably cut off, could only see clearly within a radius of two meters.
The mist felt like the martial soul fusion skill, "Bewitching Charm," used by Hu Liena and Xie Yue during the Soul Master Elite Tournament, a red mist.
All her attributes decreased, her five senses became blurred, and her sixth sense gradually grew chaotic, as if she were banished into a dense fog, becoming a moving target for other beings who relied on the white mist to survive.
In the white dense fog, the passage of time seemed to blur.
Tang Sui walked for a long time in the direction where the town's residential areas were most concentrated. However, no matter how far she walked, all that appeared in the dense fog within close proximity was the area outside the convenience store with vehicles parked haphazardly.
Before the white fog completely covered the outside scenery, Tang Sui estimated the parking lot's area to be about 100 meters long and 70 meters wide. But she had been walking for a while now. By all rights, she should have exited the parking lot. Yet, as far as the eye could see, there were still red and blue vehicles.
This proved she was going in circles, not having left the vicinity of the convenience store.
Did she take a wrong turn?
Da Fei Chu, who was keeping watch, was the first to deny it: 'Impossible. We've been watching. Apart from the limitations on our perception, I can guarantee you've been walking in a straight line.'
Fox Mask pondered for a moment and said, 'It's also possible that this white mist is interfering. Or perhaps...'
"This place... it's not letting me leave."
Tang Sui stopped in her tracks and voiced the unstated suspicion.
The mist enveloped her, and the direction she came from had been perfectly obscured by the blurred passage of time.
Tang Sui frowned slightly, contemplating whether to summon Ape Mask and the others to conduct separate physical explorations. At that moment, another unfamiliar voice pierced through the unknown white fog and reached her ears.
"Please—! Don't do this to me... I truly, I truly know nothing..."
It was a man's voice.
Tang Sui mused for two seconds before stepping towards the source of the sound.
"Please, please save me... Ah... Woo... Ah..."
The man's voice gradually devolved into meaningless monosyllables, interspersed with deep despair and indignation, causing Tang Sui to glance sideways.
The mist ahead thinned. A short-haired man in a dark green gendarme uniform was repeatedly slapping a glass partition with his blood-soaked hands. The partition was already covered in spiderweb-like cracks.
Inside the convenience store, the semi-transparent glass partition was blocked by stacks of rice bags, reaching a height of 1.5 meters. The store was even more chaotic than when Tang Sui had left, appearing to have been attacked and fought within.
People, standing about half a meter away from the glass partition and the stacked rice bags, looked somewhat deranged. Many had bloodstains on their faces and bodies. They watched indifferently as the young gendarme, who had a bloody hole in his abdomen and was losing strength, desperately slapped the glass partition. Their gazes were filled with hatred and malice, as if he had committed some heinous crime.
His hands and feet grew cold in the white mist due to excessive blood loss. The man, with bruises and bloodstains on his face, stopped patting the glass partition. His tear-filled eyes swept across the faces filled with loathing, as if they wished him dead immediately, and then to the few people in the innermost layer whose eyes held complex resignation, devoid of hatred but filled with sighs. He choked, his tears finally breaking through.
"I.. really... don't know..."
Seeing this scene, Tang Sui's gaze shifted, landing on the glass partition less than half a meter from the gendarme, which had a clearly large hole, crudely patched with tape and burlap sacks.
'This guy was probably stabbed by his own kind.'
Ape Mask, who was born from negative emotions, sneered.
Da Fei Chu: 'If it were me, I'd smash that broken glass with all my might and take everyone down with me!'
Lao Mian showed no surprise at the outcome: 'In the face of existential threat, all order and rationality will collapse.'
Fu Shen, uncharacteristically putting down his tea, agreed: 'If my little master were still inside, perhaps it would be a different story.'
Fox Mask chuckled and asked Tang Sui about her choice: 'So, do you want to go back? With your current strength, you could easily crush these humans and become their leader.'
'Leader? I don't pick up just any trash.'
Tang Sui's eyes narrowed, and she strode towards the young gendarme.
"Bang, bang—"
The ground suddenly vibrated slightly.
Tang Sui's steps faltered. A hint of alertness appeared in her dark blue eyes as she tried to discern the direction of the sound, looking towards a corner of the dense fog.
The heavy sound, with a peculiar rhythm, drifted into Tang Sui's ears, like something enormous dragging its heavy body across the asphalt road in the fog.
Each thud, each movement of landing, struck a chord in one's heart.
The gendarme, who had clearly heard the sound, also stiffened. He slowly turned his head, gazing into the unknown within the vast fog.
Tang Sui, finally locating the source of the sound, had her pupils contract. In her vision, a shadowy figure appeared, about four to five meters tall, resembling some kind of arthropod creature.