Night of Despair-Chapter 189 - : Night 187

Chapter 189: Night 187

Crack.

Yu Hong could hear the sound of his bones trembling like steel cables under the pressure of his taut muscles.

The figure before him resembled other shadows in many ways. However, a substantial difference emanated continuously from the figure’s body.

It was an intangible pricking sensation.

It was also like facing a pile of scorching, dangerous flames.

He held his breath lightly and quickly pulled out a Radiation Hand Grenade, giving it a squeeze.

Bang!

The radiation with a negative value exceeding seven thousand exploded in his hand. The intense radiation’s invisible light instantly enveloped an area of several meters around him.

Instantly, the figure opposite fluctuated slightly as if ripples on water disturbed, creating layers of fine ripples.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, Yu Hong fiercely retreated, his boots leaving a series of small pits in the ground.

This time, under the atomic lamp’s light, the black figure finally sped away and disappeared.

Thump.

Yu Hong hit something behind him, seemingly a tree trunk.

Blocked by it, he stopped and caught his breath lightly.

With the atomic lamp in hand, darkness enveloped him, so intense he could not see his own hand in front of him.

Yu Hong did not know his exact location, but he guessed with high probability that he was still on the southern side of the camp. With that retreat, he had moved back at least several dozen meters.

Whoosh!

He exhaled, and the black lizards quickly surrounded him, but even their vision could not penetrate the darkness.

Such darkness seemed to have gone beyond the category of simple night.

Yu Hong stood alone in the darkness, as if immersed in ink, seeing nothing, hearing nothing.

Apart from the atomic lamp steadily illuminating less than a meter around him, no other light source could be seen.

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‘That wooden bridge is absolutely problematic; can’t haphazardly test it again. First, try some more with the black lizards. Safety comes first.’

Thinking this, Yu Hong directed the black lizards to spread out and search for the camp’s location.

The black lizards circled out from him as the center, forming rings.

Soon, the direction of the camp was determined.

But.

‘No… How did the location of the camp end up behind me??!’ He remembered clearly exploring along the southern edge of the camp.

Yet…

And through the black lizards, he noticed that the camp was already over a kilometer away.

‘Is this something interfering with my perception of direction and distance?’

He was unsure if it was the work of the figure on the bridge, but that individual seemed different from those he had encountered before. The figure had not pursued him.

Holding the atomic lamp, he quickly left in the direction pointed out by the black lizards.

Along the way, as if wrapped in darkness, all around him was dense, impenetrable blackness.

No stars, no moon; it was as if the whole world contained only this small lamp in his hand.

Spurt.

Suddenly, Yu Hong’s steps faltered.

A black lizard was missing.

He did not know how it disappeared, but without waiting for him to react, a second black lizard suddenly broke off contact.

Then a third!

He couldn’t even see where the enemy was!

Yu Hong immediately accelerated, activating the Thunderbolt Leg Technique, and dashed towards the camp.

Before long.

Faintly, a gray mass appeared in the darkness.

It was as if a bed had been curtained with a mosquito net, or a bedroom separated by thick curtains.

Behind the gray, a blurry white light flickered.

That was the camp!

Spurt!

Yu Hong made a small jump, lightly crossing the fence to enter the outer enclosure of the camp.

He landed, crouched, then stood up.

Looking back.

Outside was still engulfed in darkness, and all of the black lizards he had taken out had lost contact.

‘There’s a problem! This night… is not just like before!’ Yu Hong’s face looked extremely grim beneath his helmet.

His black lizards had been silently wiped out, and he couldn’t even see the opponent.

‘Could this be what the broadcast warned about… the Black Disaster??’ Yu Hong speculated.

The Black Disaster was extremely dangerous, and the Gray Time was the relatively safe period of the day.

Other times were chaotic; they could be dangerous or safe, it was uncertain.

‘I must clarify this situation, otherwise, I won’t even know what I am facing, nor will I know which direction to strengthen the Black Mark!’

Yu Hong again crouched down to see that the Array on the ground outside had been activated without him knowing when.

Intangible streams of radiation carried tiny black sparks continuously emerging from the ground, reaching a height of several centimeters before quickly disappearing.

It was as if the Array was constantly resisting something invisible coming in from the outside.

‘Right, where are Xue Ningning and Ou Li?’ he suddenly thought and turned his head towards where their tents were. The distance was a bit far, and the heavy mist hid them from view.

He walked a few more steps in that direction.

Soon, he reached where the two women’s tents were located. Peering out through the fence.

He discovered that their tents were tattered and torn. The two women, however, were still alive, crouching by the fence, their faces pale as if hiding from something.

It seemed they were relying on the slightly overflown range of the Array near the fence to resist some unknown entity from outside.

Close by, as the two women saw Yu Hong approaching, they were first taken aback and then quickly gestured anxiously with their hands waving downward.

Making a motion as if pressing down with their palms continuously.

Their mouths opened and closed rapidly as if afraid to make any sound.

“What’s the matter?” Yu Hong frowned, “Does it mean…I should…”

“Crouch down?”

He was puzzled.

Suddenly.

To the right, outside the camp.

In the darkness, a gray, fridge-sized human hand suddenly tore through the mist, reaching straight for Yu Hong.

The man’s hands were decaying, his fingertips were full of embedded black mud. No sooner had he appeared than he moved with extreme speed, reaching Yu Hong in the blink of an eye.

Puff!

The ground array erupted with a loud bang, shooting up a massive invisible current, which condensed into energy crows, and forcefully collided with the gray hands.

The energy crows, spewing black sparks all over their bodies, dissipated and exploded the moment they hit the gray hands.

They also directly reduced the speed of the gray hands by a great deal.

Soon, the black wind and black fire damage erupted simultaneously, and the gray hands, like a paper model set aflame, quickly turned to charring, disintegrating, and vanished into a multitude of black ash.

Yu Hong had by now moved from his original spot, drawing a bit closer to the camp’s inner yard.

Although the gray hands couldn’t catch him, no one knew how much Red Value that thing could have before the array neutralized it.

“It doesn’t seem too strong, you guys…” Yu Hong let out a sigh of relief and continued to speak.

Boom!!

Just then.

From outside, in the mist, a dense mass of gray hands burst through, advancing deep into the camp.

At a glance, there were at least a hundred hands, like a hundred gray pillars, rushing toward Yu Hong who was standing.

From afar, it looked like a white wall bearing down.

The camp’s defensive formations were operating intensely, desperately shooting up streams of negative-energy crows. But it was too late, the array’s power was already at its limit, and there was only so much negative energy it could output per unit of time. The damage, spread thin, could not control so many hands.

Arrays rely on absorbing Red Value radiation in advance, storing it as negative value for later use.

But at this moment, with hundreds of gray hands, each one carrying at least ten thousand Red Values…

A single hand could easily be slowed down and destroyed by an array, but with numbers this high…

Puff, puff, puff!

After more than a dozen hands were annihilated into black ash, the array… failed.

Apart from the continuously converted and absorbed negative radiation, which was still forming and slowing down the hands.

The other wind and fire offensive capabilities had completely vanished in an instant.

“Damn!” Yu Hong’s heart raced with fear, recalling Xue Ningning and their actions and warnings. He suddenly rolled to the left, kneeling on the ground, not daring to stand up.

And just as he crouched and rolled, kneeling motionless.

Something eerie happened.

The large swath of huge gray hands that had just filled the sky now vanished in an instant.

They all disappeared!

As if they had never existed, merely phantoms.

Huff… huff…

Yu Hong breathed heavily, looking at his detector’s screen.

‘1882371.441’

“Is everyone still alive?” he suddenly shouted loudly.

No one responded.

Kneeling on the ground, he looked around.

Inside the camp, the lights were still bright. However, the originally safe white lights now gave him an inexplicable sense of pallor.

‘A Black Disaster that decides whether or not to attack based on height?’

Yu Hong had a vague guess about the attack threshold of those hands just now.

He waited a moment, then swiftly moved towards the outer yard’s fence.

Soon, Xue Ningning and Ou Li appeared at the fence.

Seeing that he was unharmed, they both looked relieved.

Seeing that they were okay, Yu Hong felt reassured.

Suddenly, he raised his hand, up, moving it bit by bit.

With every few centimeters his palm rose, he paused to wait for an external reaction.

Before long, as his arm reached about a meter three or four.

A gray hand suddenly broke through the mist from outside, reaching for him in an instant.

Boom!

The hand’s speed, reduced by the somewhat recovered array, plummeted, only equivalent to an ordinary person sprinting.

Yu Hong was prepared; he raised his hand, launching a Radiation Hand Grenade.

Bang!!

The invisible negative-value radiation exploded, corroding the gray hand and speeding up its charring. Assisted by the array, it quickly turned to black smoke and scattered into nothingness.

‘Attack threshold is over one meter four, including about one meter four.’ Yu Hong noted in his mind and withdrew his hand.

He thought back to the scale of those hands, such a level of ambush—if one was unprepared, it would likely be a devastating blow to many strongholds…

It was only because he had the array’s slowing effect here; otherwise, the speed of those hands would have been comparable to seventy to eighty miles per hour in a car, impossible for ordinary people to react to.

‘I checked around before, and there were no such gray hands; why did they suddenly appear!?’ Yu Hong puzzled in his mind.

Thinking it over, he moved closer to Xue Ningning and Ou Li, planning to ask for more details.

As daylight neared its end, new entities were gradually emerging from the darkness, descending.

He had to grasp more intelligence to ensure his and the camp’s safety.

*

*

*

Gray City, Isolation Zone.

The continuous coughing sounded nonstop, darkness enveloped the entire isolation zone, setting it subtly apart from the central Gray City area.

Ding Shao was as usual, carrying a basin of water, hiding in her tent, using the dim light of a candle to dampen her washing cloth in the water before wringing it out to gently wipe the corners of her eyes.

Gray City also had groundwater, and there was plenty of it. With the frequent heavy rains, accessing water wasn’t hard; the difficulty lay in filtering and boiling it.

Fortunately, she still had the filter from before; the water wasn’t drinkable, but suited for washing up.

Bowing her head, she let go of the face cloth, and simply scooped the water with her hands, repeatedly splashing it onto her face, occasionally massaging her skin with her palms to wash off the disguising muck.

The swashing sounds weren’t unusual in the Isolation Zone, many were engaged in their evening ablutions.

After a few washes, Ding Shao lifted her head, eyes closed, about to pat her face dry with the cloth.

Suddenly, she shivered.

A feeling of unease, with goosebumps crawling over her skin, rapidly spread throughout her body.

“Who’s there!?”

She sharply called out, freezing in place.

Life on constant high alert had attuned her to instantly discern.

Someone was behind her!