Chapter Forty-Eight: The Howling Wind of Ghosts

“Silence.”

Councilor Yao’s expression was cold as ice, unbothered by the terrified looks surrounding him. At the rank of councilor, venting his anger—even if it meant killing a commoner—hardly counted as a serious matter.

He pulled out his wrist computer, tapped a few times, and projected a beam of light into the air.

On the screen appeared a man in formal attire, wearing a professional smile. “Good evening, Councilor Lun Yao. This is the Intelligence Repository. How may we assist you?”

“I wish to request access to an analytical artificial intelligence entity.”

“Your request has been received. Please hold for a moment.”

After several minutes, the man in formalwear returned with the same polished smile. “Chairman Zhang has not yet entered the signal range of Southport New City and cannot be reached for the time being. Your request has been denied by the processing system.”

“I am a councilor!” Fury simmered in Lun Yao’s eyes. “Override with my authority and escalate directly to Mr. Jian.”

“Connecting you now. Please wait.” The suited figure vanished. The screen flickered, replaced by a person whose features were blurred and gender indiscernible.

“Mr. Jian, I am requesting access to an analytical AI entity,” said Lun Yao.

“I cannot grant your request.” Mr. Jian’s features remained indistinct, his voice equally neutral.

“You refuse? Why?” Lun Yao forced the words through clenched teeth.

“Because the rules do not permit it. You must wait for Chairman Zhang and the others to return to the city and then submit your request to him in person.”

“You—!” Lun Yao nearly lost his temper, but in the end, his tone softened. “Fine. Understood.”

Mr. Jian was the advanced AI responsible for the entire operation and management of Southport New City, wielding authority second only to Sheng Zhang himself. Even as a councilor, Lun Yao could not afford to provoke him.

———

Evening fell over the Red Mist Wastes.

As the group pressed deeper, the sand beneath their feet thickened, the red mist grew denser, and visibility dwindled further.

And the temperature soared.

“It must be over seventy degrees by now,” someone muttered.

The bio-mask could block toxins but not the heat. Millie drew the searing air into her lungs bit by bit, feeling as though she were sipping boiling water through her nose rather than breathing. She wondered if inhaling such scorching air could give her lung cancer.

Ji Cheng noticed Millie’s discomfort. He cleared his throat and offered a reminder. “Everyone, take shallow breaths, then exhale immediately. Repeat this pattern. It helps reduce lung strain in extreme heat.”

Even with genetic prototype injections, prolonged exposure to such heat could overwhelm anyone, even risking pulmonary burns.

Qiao Tongtong chimed in, “Exactly. Don’t take it lightly. It’s like grabbing a bottle of boiling water—short-term is fine, but the longer you hold on, the hotter it gets.”

“From now on, keep a steady pace and conserve oxygen. It’ll get better once night falls.”

They pressed forward. The further they went, the thicker the red mist became. Ji Cheng felt as if every inch of his body, from shoulders to feet, was enveloped by the red haze. Even with his eyes closed, it seemed he could taste the color with his skin.

“The environment on Mount White Star is truly cursed,” Ji Cheng muttered irritably.

The red mist seemed desperate to invade his eyes, nose, and ears, writhing like a living thing. Without the bio-mask, he would never have agreed to come to such a place in search of minerals.

Ji Cheng led the way, holding his breath, inching forward while the others followed behind.

After some indeterminate time, dusk finally fell. The moment sunlight left their bodies, the temperature plunged abruptly. Ji Cheng checked his wrist computer: minus nineteen degrees.

As the cold set in, the red mist precipitated, settling to the ground. With the mist gone, night actually offered better visibility than day.

“Boss, when are we stopping? It’s already dark,” Hou Shang finally asked after much hesitation.

His prototype assimilation was low; his physical endurance lagged behind the others. After a day’s trek, the scorching sand had left blisters on his feet, making every step a torment.

“Hang on a bit longer. We’ll rest when we reach the salt riverbed.”

The so-called Salt River was a seasonal stream, now in its dry period. Crossing it would bring them to the pre-disaster city of Feng’an, a once densely populated area now buried beneath sand, transformed into a hazardous mining zone.

“A dry riverbed is a good place to camp, but this is a shifting desert. Winds from the Peacock Plateau constantly reshape the dunes. The landscape changes daily, with no landmarks. How are you sure you can find the Salt River?” Su Yi’s porcelain skin glowed, her lips a brilliant red, her eyes full of curiosity.

Some survey teams had stumbled upon the Salt River and Feng’an ruins before, but only by sheer luck.

Ji Cheng smiled mysteriously, offering no direct answer.

In truth, there were landmarks in the Red Mist Wastes. Decades had not erased the old manmade structures. Buildings half-buried in sand, water towers, and billboards—these were all perceptible to Ji Cheng’s heightened resonance, easily matched to the pre-disaster map stored in his wrist computer. These cues naturally formed a mental thread in his mind.

“We’ll reach the salt riverbed in another half-hour. There’s plenty of time.”

Twenty minutes later, after skirting a towering dune, they finally saw the riverbed as promised.

It was a meandering gully, carved by wind and sand, easily mistaken for a simple ravine from afar. Without an introduction, most would not realize it was a riverbed.

The entire channel was blanketed in coarse sand, studded sparsely with some unknown desert shrub. Only the patches of desiccated mud on the riverbank offered clues to its true identity.

Ji Cheng dusted himself off. “All right, let’s camp here. We’ll move on after the Ghost Howl Wind passes.”

“What, we’re not staying the night?” Hou Shang was clearly surprised.

As Millie dug out the camping gear, she snapped, “We’re on a survey mission, not a holiday. Supplies are limited. There’s no time to waste. So what if we don’t sleep for days? We’re all enhanced; consider it a blessing.”

Mu Zhi quietly helped Millie stake down the tent, then whispered, “Millie, what exactly is this Ghost Howl Wind the boss mentioned? It sounds scary.”

“That’s what you get for slacking in school,” Millie puffed her cheeks like a hamster. “The Ghost Howl Wind is the scream of a plant called ghostvine in the Red Mist Wastes.”

“Scream?” Mu Zhi was puzzled. “Isn’t it called a wind?”

“I wasn’t finished! The sound this plant makes carries a bizarre power. It can infect many things—wind, sand, even people.”

“At night, the plants start to wail. The sound invades the surrounding wind, gathering it into a sandstorm. That’s the Ghost Howl Wind.”

Ji Cheng, who had been listening, turned to add, “And if a person is caught by the Ghost Howl Wind, the ghostvine’s wail will infect their mind, driving them mad. So—”

“So what?” Mu Zhi asked, curious.

“So hurry up and pitch the tent!” Millie kicked him hard.

Su Yi approached, carrying a piece of tent fabric. “I still wonder how such a strange plant could have mutated.”

Mutation? Ji Cheng was taken aback and quickly pressed her, “Did ghostvine only appear after the disaster?”

Su Yi, caught off guard by the sudden question, thought for a while before nodding. “If I remember correctly, there weren’t any of these plants on Mount White Star before. They only started appearing after we lost contact with the empire.”

How odd. What was truly happening on this planet? Ji Cheng wondered.

The encyclopedia Ji Cheng had memorized only described the dangers of ghostvine and the Ghost Howl Wind; he’d never realized these plants hadn’t existed on Mount White Star before the disaster.

How strange. Ghostvine was a plant already known elsewhere in the universe.

It made sense for the planet to produce strange mutant creatures. But how could a species known throughout the universe suddenly appear here, with no gene exchange, as if conjured from thin air?

As Ji Cheng puzzled over this, a distant hissing reached his ears—a whisper of sand.

He turned back to see a stream of fine sand twisting into the air along the slope of the dune they’d crossed.

Hiss, hiss, hiss… hiss, hiss, hiss…

Ji Cheng’s heart skipped. He looked toward the horizon.

The sky, dim just a moment ago, was now plunged in utter darkness.

“The Ghost Howl Wind is coming!”

Cries of alarm broke out around him.

The wind roared in with terrifying speed, lifting ever more sand into the air, soon engulfing everything ahead in a blinding storm.

Ji Cheng glanced left and right in dismay. The Ghost Howl Wind had arrived too quickly—the tents were still unfinished.

He shouted at once, “Forget the tents! Take cover in the crevices on either side of the riverbed—whatever you do, don’t let the Ghost Howl Wind touch you!”

With that, he kicked aside a clump of dried mud, grabbed the stunned Su Yi, and squeezed into a narrow gap along the riverbed.

The next moment, the black tempest descended, shaking heaven and earth.