A Night of Desperation-Chapter 75: Unexpected Developments (1)

“I really have a stomachache!” Li Runshan wrote quickly, his expression a mix of shame and annoyance.

“I really twisted my leg!” Yu Hong was unwilling to back down, hastily writing his response while patting his own thigh.

The two men stood in a standoff, neither willing to concede.

After more than half a minute, Li Runshan, ultimately concerned about his daughter, decided not to waste any more time. His expression hardened, and he took the initiative.

However, instead of entering the vehicle directly, he moved to the side of the bus and smashed the window with a heavy blow.

Bang!

The glass shattered instantly, but the inside was blocked by nailed wooden boards, preventing any view of the interior.

Without hesitation, Li Runshan pulled out a magnesium rod, ignited a rag he had found from somewhere, and stuffed it into the crack of the broken window.

The moment it was in, he turned and ran, signaling to Yu Hong as he did.

Yu Hong immediately followed suit, both men sprinting forty to fifty meters away before turning back to observe the bus.

Inside, flames had already started to spread, faint red light flickering through the cracks.

“What kind of fabric burns that well?” Yu Hong wrote curiously.

“Special oil cloth. As long as it works, that’s all that matters,” Li Runshan responded casually, his eyes fixed on the burning vehicle.

Time passed as they watched the fire grow stronger, flames squeezing out through doors and windows. Li Runshan gave a small nod of satisfaction.

“Let’s move to the second vehicle and do the same,” he wrote.

Yu Hong was speechless. If we were going to do this, why bother pretending to check the buses first?

Shaking his head, he followed Li Runshan, torching one bus after another. Clearly, Li had been prepared—each time, he stuffed a strip of that special oil cloth into the smashed windows, igniting the wooden panels inside. The fire quickly engulfed the interiors.

One by one, five buses turned into blazing torches, illuminating the surrounding forest in an eerie glow.

“Let’s go,” Li Runshan wrote. “As long as the bodies carrying the language entities are completely burned, we’ll be safe. The biggest danger with language entities is how easily they infect people through speech, especially when you don’t know what they are.”

Yu Hong nodded in complete agreement.

That was how it had happened to him—without knowledge of the shadow entities, avoiding infection was nearly impossible.

No wonder the people who escaped from Yuhe City had all died on the way out.

The two men stood near the fire, waiting until the flames fully consumed the vehicles and all the corpses within.

There was no choice—the language entities were too dangerous, too covert. Before their influence was obvious, their victims often thought they were simply losing their minds. Worse yet, red-value detectors couldn’t pick up their voices, making them nearly impossible to detect. 𝔯à𝐍О𝐛ЕS̈

Maybe I should upgrade the red-value detector. If it could recognize problematic speech patterns, these entities wouldn’t be as much of a threat. The thought flashed through Yu Hong’s mind.

As he stared at the burning buses, he suddenly felt a pang of worry for Little Stutterer.

If she encounters a Whisperer… Given her intelligence, she would likely fall victim to it immediately, just as he had.

The detector upgrade is essential. At the same time, his silver array was struggling against the increasing power of the Ghostly shadow. Are they getting stronger, or were Whisperers always more dangerous than the Withered Woman?

He turned to Li Runshan with the question.

Li Runshan shook his head.

“Evil Shadows naturally grow stronger by killing. They evolve continuously, increasing their danger level until they reach war-grade, nightmare-grade, or even despair-grade. We even suspect that what we call Evil Shadows may very well have evolved from Ghostly Shadows.” ”

He wrote a rather long passage, but the paper wasn’t enough and ran out.

So, he could only shrug helplessly at Yu Hong and stop.

The two of them waited for over an hour, ensuring that all five buses were completely burned down before turning around and heading back the way they came.

“Oh, right. I have a suspicion about the Whisperers.” Li Runshan suddenly recalled the scene when he first saw Yu Hong—Yu Hong stood in front of the stone house, completely unresponsive to the paper ball he threw, as if he couldn’t see it at all.

He thought he should bring this up.

“That is, about earlier—” Li Runshan had just started writing when—

Boom!

A massive explosion suddenly erupted behind them.

The two instinctively dove forward, turning their faces to look back.

In the direction of the five buses, an even brighter fireball was blazing fiercely—it was clear that one of the buses had exploded.

“This time, they’re definitely done for.” Yu Hong picked up a rock and casually wrote on the ground.

“.Mm.” Li Runshan nodded. Looking at the bright flames, he suddenly wondered if bringing his daughter from the safety of Hope City to this place was really the right decision.

“Oh right, what were you trying to say just now?” Yu Hong wrote on the ground.

“Mm, about earlier.” Li Runshan responded, also writing with a stone.

He told Yu Hong in detail what he had seen before.

“From the moment the Zhou sisters arrived, I should have already been affected visually.” Yu Hong replied.

Old Li’s reminder made him snap back to full awareness, realizing just how dangerous things had been for him before.

Thinking back now, when he was in the cave, swinging the wolf-tooth club with no reaction—it was very likely that he wasn’t even holding it at all.

The Whisperer’s ability was growing increasingly terrifying the more he thought about it.

The two got up shortly after and headed back the way they came.

They first arrived at Yu Hong’s stone house.

“After destroying the vessel, how long until I can speak normally again?” Yu Hong asked.

“About three days. Bear with it.” Li Runshan replied. “When you’re alone in the safehouse, you can talk freely, just don’t respond to anything from outside.”

“Got it.” Yu Hong nodded.

“Alright then, see you later.” Old Li waved and hurried back toward the post office—he was clearly anxious to check on his daughter.

Yu Hong stood in the courtyard, watching his figure disappear into the forest before turning around and heading up the steps into the house.

In the next couple of days, he needed to quickly repair the rune arrays in the safehouse and complete the sealed chamber of luminous stone. Only then could he finally sleep well.

Standing at the entrance, he glanced at the withered, blackened luminous stone grass outside and sighed.

Bang.

The door shut completely.

The next morning, bright and early, Li Runshan came looking for Yu Hong. The two of them went back to the convoy site to check once again, confirming that the vehicles were completely burned to ashes. However, something strange stood out—there were no bodies inside.

If there were no bodies, then how had these vehicles driven here in the first place?

Neither of them could make sense of it.

Still, knowing there were no bodies inside gave them a sense of relief.

They searched the surrounding area again, making sure nothing was amiss and that no bodies had been overlooked. Only then did they feel reassured enough to return, just as dusk approached.

On the third day, they repeated the process.

Yu Hong was gradually beginning to feel at ease. Of course, this wasn’t just because the Whisperer had been completely wiped out—it was also thanks to the repairs he had made to the rune arrays on every wall of his safe house.

He had successfully restored the integrity of the luminous stone chamber, once again activating its protective effects.

At the same time, with the aid of internal energy stimulation, fresh luminous stone grass sprouted rapidly in the courtyard outside, covering the ground in a new layer of greenery.

Although the young grass emitted only a weak radiation, it gave Yu Hong a deeper sense of security.

After all, luminous stone grass could repel black insects and prevent ordinary eerie entities from disturbing his rest.

On the fourth day, both men remained silent, still shaken by their encounter with the Whisperer. Neither stepped outside.

They endured three more days like this.

Then, on the day before the supply team’s arrival—

Early in the morning, Li Runshan appeared outside Yu Hong’s courtyard, carrying a large backpack.

“Xiao Yu?” He knocked on the door in a prearranged rhythm and called out softly.

“Are you there?” he asked in a hushed voice.

Click.

Yu Hong opened the door, fully dressed in his complete gear, standing in the doorway to block the view of the inside.

“We can finally speak again?” he exhaled, writing his words on a board.

“We still have to be careful. I just got word—this time, Yuhe City was hit hard. A sudden outbreak of Whisperer manifestations killed at least 200,000 people. The entire prefecture-level Hope City fell into ruin within days!” Old Li sighed.

“Two hundred thousand people…”

Hearing that number, Yu Hong couldn’t even fathom what it truly meant. But he knew—when casualties were counted in the hundreds of thousands, it was an overwhelming disaster.

If you lined up just over ten thousand people on a plain, it would already stretch beyond the horizon.

And two hundred thousand…

“If unprepared, the killing power of a Whisperer is indeed unstoppable,” he sighed, responding.

“Now, the entire Yuhe City is gone. Even the three nearby Hope Cities have been affected, with an unknown number of casualties. The United Army headquarters is still in the midst of emergency relief operations,” Li Runshan said grimly. “The People’s Army has also been deployed. Even they suffered heavy losses just to establish a large quarantine zone to contain the spread of the Whisperer.”

“…”

Yu Hong had no words.

And this was just an “Evil Shadow” level threat—one of the stronger ones in its category. There were three higher tiers beyond this. Who knew how terrifying they could be?

In times like these… how much longer could people even survive?

“You came looking for me—do you need my help with something?” Yu Hong asked. He knew that Li Runshan never showed up without a reason. Usually, it was Yu Hong seeking him out. If Li Runshan was coming to him this time, there had to be something. He wouldn’t have come just to relay the news.

“Here’s the situation. Given the massive casualties and the need to curb the rapid spread of the Evil Shadows, the higher-ups have increased production at the Silver Tower, setting up more manufacturing lines to mass-produce luminous stones and high-level rune arrays. So from now on, I won’t be buying the luminous stones and rune arrays you make,” Li Runshan said seriously.

“Huh?” Yu Hong was taken aback. That was possible?

“Of course, I still need them for personal use, but the purchase price will have to drop. Too many customers for rune arrays and luminous stones have died in this disaster. Plus, now that the farther Hope Cities are receiving direct supplies from the higher-ups, there’s no way I can keep paying the old prices.

Before, the supply team bought luminous stones and rune arrays from me to resell them at a higher price. But now, with demand plummeting, even the profit margin isn’t enough to cover travel costs. So… you get it,” Li Runshan raised an eyebrow at Yu Hong.

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“…In that case, I can still repair high-level equipment, weapons, and some small machines,” Yu Hong thought for a moment and replied.

“That works too,” Li Runshan chuckled. “I’m setting up a large underground temperature-controlled farm. I need a sterilizing air circulation unit for it. I’ve preordered a broken one from the supply team—when it arrives, can you check it out and see if you can fix it?”

“…”

Yu Hong was speechless.

Was this guy deliberately buying broken ones just so he could have him fix them?