The scarlet world looked like a blood-soaked nightmare. Lin Xian stared at the hellish scene before him, frozen where he stood. Without realizing it, endless terror and grief were rampaging through his heart.

In the Hell before his eyes, it was as if he couldn’t raise even a shred of strength to resist or struggle. His spine tingled with numbness; all the images he saw were of himself being torn into ragged chunks of flesh and dying in agony, of his teammates around him struggling, roaring in despair as they sacrificed themselves...

"Don’t look!"

A voice boomed like a reverberating bell, slamming into Lin Xian’s rapidly collapsing rational mind. He only felt a cold arm yank him away from the blazing scarlet Hell in his line of sight, and he almost suffocated.

Hiss!

When he finally caught his breath, Lin Xian sucked in a deep lungful of air. His face was deathly pale as he stared in shock at Chu Yan in front of him. "Dark invasion?!"

"Worse than that." Chu Yan turned to face the window, raised her hand, and used nano-spray particles to seal every gap along the window frame. Immediately, the chill in the room lessened a good deal.

"After the Star Abyss Movement began, the Dark Tide started coming with the scarlet, forcing the areas it swept through to enter the Extreme Night Zone faster than before. In other words, the spread efficiency of the Star Abyss has increased."

Chu Yan said to Lin Xian, "Moreover, this kind of scarlet coverage turns an area into an absolute death zone. Completely undetected, bizarre entities appear—neither S-Class nor Uncanny Human. Anyone exposed in this environment will see their SAN value plummet rapidly, along with cancerous mutation of the flesh. In as little as twenty minutes, your immune system will be completely destroyed. Even with a Dark Energy Synchronization Device, it can’t be blocked."

Hearing this, Lin Xian frowned immediately. "When did this scarlet first appear?"

"Three days ago—on the very night you lost contact with us. The Star Abyss started a large-scale disturbance, the scarlet descended. Now the transfer forces of the Heavenly Calming Ship and Dawn Center are all trapped in the Qionggu Strait, which is Alaska Bay. There have been massive casualties. The Commander has already given the order: Dawn City will evacuate, and after daybreak, Dawn Center will march at maximum mobility. Our North American Front, together with the interstellar army and the Nightwalker units, has launched a radiation search-and-rescue plan, moving as fast as possible to help local rescue teams complete their rendezvous."

Chu Yan looked at Lin Xian and said solemnly, "The deterrence balance has failed. All humanity is fleeing to the Polar regions to forge defenses!"

Lin Xian fell silent, his gaze flickering. He didn’t understand. The Dark Civilization had withdrawn from the Star Abyss, assassinated the Sword Holder, made contact with Hua Xiaoling—everything had led them to believe that deterrence existed, or at least existed on some level. Yet the Star Abyss suddenly began accelerating its incursion. What on earth had happened in between? 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"So how much time do we have left?" Lin Xian asked in a low voice.

"We don’t know. The frequency of the scarlet’s spread follows the Dark Tide, but its extension area and frequency are different. If we go by the expansion speed of the Extreme Night range, we still have more than a year. But the Dark Tide covers every region outside the Polar daylight zone, every single day. So in theory..."

"Just one night?"

"Yes."

Lin Xian’s eyes narrowed slightly, and he lifted his gaze toward the window. "Will you be in danger?"

Chu Yan also turned toward the window and said, "The interesting part is that buildings have a physical blocking effect against this scarlet. So if you stay inside buildings or vehicles, the impact is less than five percent of what it is outside. That counts as good news—on the condition that you don’t get targeted by the Monsters inside the scarlet. Those things don’t seem to be affected by the Dark Mark."

Hearing that, Lin Xian frowned and said at once, "But if this area gets Devoured by the scarlet, we can only try to get out as fast as possible. That basically means humanity’s activity range is completely stripped away?"

"Exactly."

"That’s lethal." Lin Xian cursed under his breath. "This is fucking like a nuclear winter of radioactive fallout."

"Pretty much. Our research teams are thinking along those lines as well."

"When can you get back to the Phoenix Society?" Lin Xian asked Chu Yan then. "I want to talk to Professor Ye."

Chu Yan looked at Lin Xian, her gaze flickering, then said, "Soonest, around two days—assuming I don’t die here tonight."

"What about your team members?"

"Two blocks away. No contact. Don’t know if they’re alive or dead."

"Signal jamming?"

"None at all. We can only wait until after the night, then gather at the prearranged rendezvous point and leave this area. With both darkness and scarlet present, there is currently no chance of surviving." Chu Yan said, "What about you? What exactly happened on your side?"

Lin Xian drew in a breath and, under the dim cold light, told Chu Yan everything that had happened on Sea Rock Island and all the way across Hawaii Island, including his discussions with Hua Xiaoling and the theories Ding Junyi had proposed.

Maybe Chu Yan’s Spirit was being affected by the scarlet zone, because even Lin Xian could clearly feel a suffocating chill. By the time he finished speaking, he realized Chu Yan wasn’t all that surprised by Ding Junyi’s enemy–self same-origin hypothesis. He immediately understood that Ye Lan and the others at the Phoenix Society had definitely already explored this line of thought. After all, the Phoenix Society’s research into the Crystal Grid was already very deep. Combined with the data from the old Angel Plan, it was no surprise at all that their researchers would have more profound discoveries.

Instead, when Lin Xian brought up Hua Xiaoling, Chu Yan suddenly asked, "Did she invite you to join the Foundation?"

"No. Why would you ask that?" Lin Xian said.