Chapter 502 Warning, Uninvited Guests At Night!
Regardless of whether it was during the peaceful era or the doomsday era, accumulating wealth brought one an incomparable pleasure.
Although Su Mo was aware that the accumulation of wealth could easily lead to the rise of class differences and wealth disparity in the basin area, creating a “capitalist” culture, when he thought about how the great founding emperors also had to start from scratch, Su Mo could not opt not to take this step! As he learned more and more, he became more confident that his ability to control the hearts of the people had reached new heights.
However, the problem was that, even since ancient times, not one person had been able to influence and hold sway over the hearts of every single person.
This was an achievement that not even Papa Su had reached, and was also a field rife with hidden dangers and unpredictable elements.
On the way back to the Underground Shelter, after thinking about it, Su Mo took a different turn.
He looked like he was taking a walk but, in reality, he was actually pricking up his ears to listen to what was going on inside the farm tool center.
As he predicted, ten minutes later, the cheers and noise from the farm tool center started getting louder and louder. Strange lights also burst forth from the structure’s interior, which were followed by the crowd’s exclamations.
Looking at the criss-crossing beams of light, Su Mo’s smile deepened.
Even if he did not witness their heightened morale in person, through the slight fog that covered the night sky, he had also seen…
Wait…
Fog?
The basin area’s weather was excellent, so where did this fog come from?
Whoosh!
Within a short moment, he sensed that the fog seemed to have appeared from nowhere in the distance.
As it spread across the basin area, the back of Su Mo’s head suddenly turned cold, and every hair on his body stood on end. The little meteorological knowledge he learned a few days ago flashed through his mind, and he rapidly started recalling the details he knew about fogs. “Fogs are divided into radiation fogs and advection fogs.” “Radiation fog typically appears in the early morning. The sun irradiates the ground, which then humidifies to form fog. This was a very common occurrence in modern times.”
“Advection fog requires wind as well as… vapor.”
“If high temperature and humidity from rainy weather, or right before rainy weather, are not present, there’s no way for such a weather phenomenon to form!”
If this fog had appeared when the rainstorm had poured down yesterday, Su Mo would not have been surprised or worried. However, the basin had already been roasted by the sun for an entire day; no fog should have appeared naturally at this point.
Unless…
His gaze sharpened and turned solemn. Su Mo did not rush to tell everyone to be on guard.
He hastened his stride. With his strong physical constitution, Su Mo hurriedly dashed to the Underground Shelter, shortening an initial ten-minute walk to a two-minute dash.
Pulling open the stone door, he hurriedly descended the Z-shaped passageway. Before Su Mo even reached the third floor, Oreo—who had been lying on the groundjumped up like she had been electrocuted.
“You noticed?”
“Woof!”
It had been a long time since the basin area was invaded by enemies. In fact, it had not happened since he had started producing firearms and eradicating the lion people as well as kobolds.. This also directly led to Su Mo subconsciously forgetting about the issue of territorial defense in some respects. Even after settling in the New World for over two days, he did not increase his vigilance, but continued to maintain the territory’s previous defensive arrangements. Now their enemies had already soundlessly made their way into the territory, and only Su Mo had realized it!
“Can you find their location?” Oreo sniffed, barked twice, and then shook her head.
“There’s no scent of the enemies in the fog, nor any threat, but there is a strong sense of malice. They’re looking for something or planning to bring something back.”
“Big Sis suspects they’re collecting each of our scents and then using other methods to determine our location!”
Standing to the side, Moore—who was acting as the translator-also turned solemn, which was rare. His face no longer had a trace of a smile.
“It’s not an attack?”
Hearing that this fog was not the “poison gas” that he imagined, Su Mo released a sigh of relief.
Calming his nerves, he ordered Moore to call Chen Shen and the others over.
Taking advantage of the time, Su Mo once again went down to the third floor.
Staying inside in the Underground Shelter did not mean that he would remain unaware of what was going on in the outside world.
On the contrary, he turned on the old television. With the help of its 360-degree, one-kilometer radius observation ability, Su Mo locked onto the source of the fog immediately.
From a top-down perspective, the entire fog could be seen at a glance. Like a winding river, the fog stretched from the inside of the territory all the way to one side of its borders.
Every five minutes, the fog shivered once.
It was almost like a living, breathing animal; simply looking at it would creep most people out.
However, fortunately, after observing everyone’s condition for a while, Su Mo was temporarily relieved. “The current basin area is poor. There haven’t been any conflicts with the foreign races since we first arrived here either.” “No matter how fast Zhu Chuan and the others move, it’s impossible for them to figure things out in such a short period of time, and subsequently launch a second investigation like this.” “This could not have been done by the dwarves either. They had no plans to counterattack, and only arranged for additional defensive measures to protect the black stone base camp.” “If that’s the case, it can only be one of the other two…”
After he figured out the situation around the basin area, through a process of elimination, Su Mo came up with the answer in his heart. Even if the winding river-like fog was pointing straight to the Light Empire, this underhanded tactic made people immediately think of the mysterious…
Demon clan!
This foreign race that sounded similar to ghosts was a race that they had never encountered before. Unlike normal humanoid races, even the powerful Light Empire were locked in a standstill against these tough cookies. With the basin area’s current strength, there was no way they could fight them. “How tricky. When I chose this place, the survival probability simulated by the virtual reality system was less than 2%.” “Now that I think about it, if not for my methods and planning, according to the basin area’s existing development trend, it might even be 0.0002%.”
The territory had four neighbors.
Aside from the Light Empire that he had never encountered face-to-face, the other three did have some level of ill intentions.
Using virtual reality to simulate the environment, they had managed to “persuade” the Ents to leave. Su Mo thought that the basin area would welcome a period of rapid development until the end of winter, which would be marked by the end of the three disasters.
Now, however, the situation had turned tense again. The Demon clan were not foolish like the Ents. One could see that simply by looking at their means of probing the territory. Just what were they thinking? “We can’t let this fog bring back information on the basin area. Not now at the very least!”
While pondering, when he heard the noisy sounds from above, Su Mo temporarily stopped thinking about it and rushed back to the garage like a hurricane. Among the leadership team who had just been dismissed, Su Mo only summoned three people.
Chen Shen, Li Hu, and Shen Ke.
In addition to Su Deben—who had also rushed back—although the four of them did not know what happened, when they saw Su Mo’s stern expression, they were instantly alarmed.
“The enemies have come!”
“My preliminary guess is that it is the Demon clan. They bear ill intentions. We must hurry up and set up defensive measures!”
His opening words struck them like lightning.
Su Mo did not hide important matters from them. “I give you all three minutes. You can observe if there’s anything unusual happening in the basin area.”
“There’s no need to go out. Just stand here and look!”
Seeing everyone reveal a shocked expression, Su Mo’s face did not waver as he pointed to the outside.
Like a conditioned reflex, everyone turned around at once and began to investigate their surroundings. In the first minute, nobody noticed anything. They only scanned the pitch-black ground in confusion, trying to find traces of the enemy. By the second minute, when they realized the sky was dark and that it was indeed hard to find any traces on the ground, everyone switched their target to randomly looking around their surroundings, looking for suspicious objects.
At 2 minutes and 46 seconds, Shen Ke was the first person to raise her hand. At 2 minutes and 54 seconds, Su Deben also noticed something abnormal and turned his head back, eyes sharp. The remaining two people were not slow either. At three minutes, on the dot, they both noticed the abnormalities.
“Leader, if the enemy uses this kind of method, then it’s absolutely impossible to guard against. This is already far beyond our current level of understanding.”
“Can it really be the ghosts that Paulie speculated about?” Making a guess, Chen Shen’s face displayed an expression of fear that was difficult to conceal. Thanks to the popularity of Earth’s various horror films, most people would be more or less afraid of these creatures that could not be explained by “Science”. Especially when one witnessed this kind of supernatural phenomenon personally, it would arouse these thoughts and fears hidden in their memories. “Chen Shen, don’t scare yourself. How can they be ghosts?” “This kind of thing, I’m leaning toward the enemy releasing some sort of small… biological weapon?” “Something like using a system to control a drone formation to draw images in the sky perhaps? In the past, there were devices similar to this thing, but slightly larger in size. I was fortunate enough to see a few of them during my time.” “How about we capture and store some of the fog?” Li Hu interrupted Chen Shen’s pessimistic fear-mongering by making some speculations based on the fog’s shape and function. One had to say that Li Hu had quite a lot of guts. At the same time, before Su Mo could speak out, another voice could be heard. “Su Mo, since the other party has already noticed us, why don’t we make the first move?”
“We can capture and store some of the fog and see if we can use the instruments we have on hand at the moment to analyze it.”
After a few moments, upon realizing the importance of the matter, Su Deben had relinquished control of the robot. In his place was Lu Kuan.
Unlike Chen Shen and the others, who were warriors that saw things from a purely realistic perspective, after traveling several hundreds of thousands of meters into space and seeing many mysterious planets, toward this kind of unusual anomaly, Lu Kuan had no fear at all.
If one listened carefully, one could even hear the excitement in his words.
“Very good. I am also thinking the same.” “Since the enemy has already reached the gates of our territory, it’s better for us to make the first move rather than sit around and wait!”
Seeing that their thoughts were aligned to his, he walked down to the fourth floor and found several sealed bags. Other than Lu Kuan, who stood at the center to operate the instrument, the four of them rushed out to start collecting fog.
Some of the fog was very low to the ground, and was very easy to collect.
Some could only be collected by heading up to the peak of Iron Rock Mountain. In all four directions, the three others observed and went toward the fog.
Recalling the source of the fog he observed on the old television, Su Mo also moved his feet and flew toward the source.
If he wanted to vanquish this fog, it was very simple for him to do so.
He only had to spend 500 survival points and use an authority special ability, after which a small rainstorm would descend and dissipate the fog. However, while this method could hide them for a while, it would not work forever. If their first attempt failed due to weather, the Demon clan would not easily give up and would return to try again. They would not find it strange if their actions were obstructed by rain the first few times.
However, if this happened over and over again, they would definitely sense the abnormality of the situation, which would give rise to…
Even stronger methods!
As he thought of ways to break through the predicament, he ran forward. The fog still pointed straight ahead after he had traveled about a kilometer. Taking out his handgun, Su Mo unlocked the safety and let it hang around his waist as he forged ahead stubbornly. Three kilometers…
Five kilometers…
Under the starry night, Su Mo ran at an extremely fast speed, dashing several meters each second and leaving heavy footprints on the ground. The further he headed into the fog, the thicker the fog became. Under the moonlight, it swirled around mysteriously. “Such an arrogant method. It seems my thoughts were too simple. This definitely isn’t the first time the Demon Soul has come over to have a look.”
“I’m afraid they’ve been conducting an investigation on the basin area ever since the first day we moved here.” “It was only that the rainstorm at that time became heavier, causing their investigation to fail and buying the basin area some extra time.”
Once he had left the basin’s inner area, it was easy to spot the source of the fog. It was almost as if it had given up disguising itself past a certain point. Making a decision, Su Mo stopped his tracks and started turning back. “I’ll drive over to the source to have a look. You guys stay here and wait for me. If something goes wrong, staying alive is the priority.
“If we lose the territory, we can always find another one, but we must keep the villagers safe!”
Going back into the shelter, he hurriedly issued a few orders and watched as Lu Kuan nodded heavily.
Pulling out an automatic rifle and reloading it, he brought along a few packs of explosives, as well as Oreo. After buckling in, Su Mo violently stomped on the “gas pedal” that he had not used in such a long time.
Boom!
When he floored it, the diesel engine roared and revved to life almost instantly.
The tachometer on the dashboard also jumped into the red zone in just a few seconds. After reaching maximum torque, as soon as it was put into gear, the whole car was like an arrow released from a bowstring, hurtling in the direction of the fog. Compared to running, on this familiar terrain, Su Mo managed to increase Earth Tiger’s speed to a hundred yards per second after just a few hundred meters!
Underneath the starry sky, Earth Tiger had its headlights on, and was like a wild beast rampaging toward the source of the fog.
This situation also seemed to cause a reaction from the fog.
However, unfortunately, by the time some fog descended to investigate, Earth Tiger had already scurried more than a hundred meters away.
What was left behind was just exhaust fumes! “Oreo, try and sense if we will be in any danger tonight.” He was once again driving Earth Tiger with Oreo by his side. As he instructed her, Su Mo’s “hot” blood started pumping quickly too.
It was just like back then, when he had driven Earth Tiger to look for the kobolds and lion people.
As for the road ahead, not only did Su Mo not feel a hint of fear, he instead felt his fighting spirit rising “Woof, woof!”
“We’re about evenly matched? That’s enough!”
For “weaklings”, even if they were lucky enough to reach new heights, they would often fall back into a state of helplessness; they even tended to deny their own odds of success.
They attributed everything to chance and luck, and then accepted their mediocrity with peace of mind.
However, those who were truly strong, and could really determine their own “fate”, were very different.
Previously, Su Mo was unaware of this principle, but he ignorantly grew stronger in this way anyway. Now, when he felt these long-forgotten tremors—the endless stimulation of having more blood pumped from his heart-he suddenly realized it…
“From start to finish, I’ve never been someone who does things by half-measures.”
“I’m either coldly calm to the extreme or crazy enough to make everyone feel fear!” “The me from the past was alone. If this kind of monster attacked me, I would definitely think of a way to evacuate and protect myself as best as I can.”
“However, now, anyone who dares to disrupt my plans and threaten my life will suffer my violent revenge, no matter the price!” The moment he thought of how the basin area —which just had the land flattened and cleared out in the day, and was about to start construction tomorrow—would suffer an attack from the enemy, the killing intent in Su Mo’s eyes overflowed.
At this moment, he was no longer the usual kind leader who would smile and mingle with everyone.
He was also not the Almighty Su who, in the eyes of other humans, had the power to reach the sky and could make any enemy turn to ash with a snap of his fingers. He was definitely not a timid “old soul” who did not dare to attack and only hid inside his own territory. As he observed the source of the fog from the seat of the car, Su Mo’s thoughts suddenly reminisced about the very first rainy night back then. At that time, a few arrogant and domineering gangsters outside his shelter had also looked for trouble like this, wanting to capture him as he hid in the shelter.
It was also at that time that he, under everyone’s watchful gazes, buried these five people at the bottom of the basin area permanently. “Heh, trying to investigate me, the most powerful of the humans…”
“In that case, I’ll personally send you all to hell!”
