Ten minutes after Chen Chen threw the Rubik's Cube in, he watched as the black vortex in front of him began to shrink rapidly. In the blink of an eye, it had collapsed into a ball.

With a puff, just like an extinguished flame, the portal immediately vanished from Chen Chen's sight without a trace.

Chen Chen knew that this was Little X who had already responded to him.

Chen Chen did not allow these Black Knights or Yoru Kamidera to return to reality because he was not even sure whether these brainless clones would be infected with any mysterious phenomena. If they were infected, once they returned to reality, they would only unleash a special “infectious disease” that had no cure.

Once this kind of “infectious disease” broke out, it would only send the world down a path of annihilation, just like the world in Gantz.

Therefore, the only thing Chen Chen could do was to completely isolate himself and others from reality.

Of course, Chen Chen would not sit around waiting to die. Otherwise, he would not have asked Little X to prepare a Faraday cage.

He only hoped that Little X would hurry up.

Thinking of this, Chen Chen raised his head. Currently, the sun had already begun to set in the west, dyeing red the boundless dusk over the horizon. At first glance, it looked like an endless cloud of fire, burning and bruising the entire sky.

At this moment, the deserted city, the fallen civilization, and the flaming clouds on the horizon seemed to mirror each other for an instant, producing a special kind of loneliness in Chen Chen's heart.

It felt like being abandoned by the world.

As the visibility of his surroundings decreased, Chen Chen's sense of unease began to weigh him down more heavily.

He could not describe what it felt like. It was like a death row prisoner facing their trial. Any sound of footsteps would trigger an intense burst of terror because they had realized that these footsteps belonged to Death itself.

At this moment, Chen Chen was feeling the same way.

“Yoru Kamidera.”

At this point, Chen Chen suddenly spoke and posed a question to the youth beside him, “Have you heard about thudding noises that come from the next door?”

“Is that… A sort of mysterious phenomenon?”

Beside Chen Chen, Yoru Kamidera, who was feeling a little restless, looked up at once. He seemed to understand something. “Please go on.”

“I went into a strange room yesterday during the daytime. There was a woman in the room, but she was dead, having hanged herself.”

Chen Chen said quietly, “But the strange thing was that there were signs of impact from a baseball bat on the wall of her bedroom. It seemed that she had used the baseball bat to hit the wall back when she was alive.”

“What's on the other side of the wall?”

When Chen Chen paused, Yoru Kamidera asked quickly.

A glint of approval shone in Chen Chen's eyes. As expected of a young man who could survive the doomsday until now. Chen Chen had only mentioned the beginning, yet Yoru Kamidera could already acutely pinpoint the crux of the matter?

With this in mind, Chen Chen immediately replied, “Across the bedroom wall is another residence. I went there as well, but it was filled with dust. It'd appear that it has been uninhabited ever since the doomsday, but…”

Chen Chen's voice softened. “But I saw a dent made by an impact on the wall of this residence. This dent had deepened into a part of the wall. In other words, something was incessantly hitting the wall as if it would only stop once it broke through.”

“What if you change rooms?” Yoru Kamidera asked again.

“The woman did change bedrooms at that time, but the same still happened in the new bedroom. There was still the same never-ending thuds on the opposite side of the wall.”

Chen Chen answered, “Not only that, but I also found some oil stains on the wall of that bedroom. It seems that the woman had frequently a.s.sumed the same position against the wall when she was alive, placing an ear on the wall to listen to the other side.”

When Yoru Kamidera heard this, his expression flickered. “Got it. I think this was what happened.

“When she was alive, the woman had lived alone in that room, but one day, she suddenly heard faint thuds on the other side of the wall. At first, she thought there was someone in the opposite room, but because this was doomsday without any law or morality, she couldn't determine whether the other person was a friend or a foe. Therefore, she could only press her ears to the wall over and over, trying to hear the conversation on the other side.

“However, gradually, she realized something was wrong.”

Yoru Kamidera paced slowly and said as he walked, “It may be that the thuds had something unique about them such as a particularly long duration or a particularly uniform rhythm. Gradually, the woman began to suspect the thuds on the other side of the wall — are they human? Or something else…

“As time pa.s.sed, the thuds continued to the point where they kept ringing day and night, until finally, the woman snapped.”

Yoru Kamidera continued. “The noise seriously affected her sleep and at the same time, horrified her. At this time, she had vaguely understood that the sound was not made by a human being but by the thing that was her deepest fear…

“So she finally snapped and she began to use a baseball bat to hit the wall there, continuously venting her inner terror. It was as if as long as she displayed an aggressive side, the other party would retreat. This is a common psychological response in times of fear.

“Later on, she tried countless possibilities but in the end, she couldn't find a solution or she already guessed what would happen after the wall was broken down.”

At this point, Yoru Kamidera looked toward Chen Chen again. “I'm guessing that this is the logic behind the woman's actions as well as her mental journey. In the end, she thought, 'Instead of dying at the hands of a mysterious phenomenon or dying out of fear and torture, why don't I stop it myself?' Am I correct?”

After listening to Yoru Kamidera's a.n.a.lysis, Chen Chen immediately applauded. “Very good. It's exactly what I've guessed, but I can't guarantee whether it's right or not.”

“I get it. You're infected with this kind of mysterious phenomenon.”

Yoru Kamidera nodded. “I just don't know how you got infected with this mysterious phenomenon. If there were more clues, maybe we can find a countermeasure.”

“I don't know myself, but I have some theories.”

Chen Chen thought for a while and pointed to the three Black Knights. “Perhaps the whole room is cursed. As long as you enter, you'll be infected with this strange phenomenon of 'Thuds'. The reason I'm the only one infected is that those three aren't complete human beings.”

“Not complete human beings?”

Upon hearing Chen Chen's words, Yoru Kamidera was instantly taken aback, then said, “I've long thought that these three people are a bit too rigid, but I don't understand what it means when you say they're not complete humans. Are they clones?”

“They aren't just clones, but because they have been specially processed since the embryonic stage, these people also don't have brains.”

Chen Chen explained, “The reason they can behave so ordinarily is only because they are controlled by the X-112 artificial intelligence I've been talking to.”

“But this still doesn't quite make sense. After all, the mysterious phenomena can't distinguish whether a person has a brain…”

When he was told of the Black Knights' ident.i.ty, Yoru Kamidera displayed a surprised look. Still, after some thought, he shook his head again. “Thus, I think it's more likely that there is some other infection condition and only you triggered this condition, thus becoming infected with this mysterious phenomenon called 'Thuds'.”