The whole nation is trying to survive on the cable car; I'm choosing one of three options at ea

"I joined a guild that supposedly provided shelter and supplies, but after joining, I was forced to hand over half of my daily earnings, or I'd be kicked out."

"Yours is considered good; my guild enforces contracts, and once you sign, you can't back out."

"Now it's much better. With all one hundred cables merged, the personnel have been reorganized. Anyone who wants to join a guild can choose one they approve of; they're no longer tied down."

"I see those guild leaders are all trying to recruit new members in the channels now, afraid they'll lose all their members."

Su Mu glanced at the channel and saw that quite a few guild leaders were spamming the chat... Some were promoting their guild's benefits, some were showing off their battle achievements, and some were showing off their guild members' levels.

However, some people openly broke off relations in the guild channel.

An internal conflict erupted in the chat channel within a guild called "Iron Blood Alliance".

A vice president publicly accused the president of hoarding resources, exploiting ordinary members, and threatening anyone who wanted to leave.

Dozens of replies followed, some supporting the vice president, some criticizing the president, and some using the opportunity to recruit members to switch guilds. Another guild called "Wings of Freedom" was even more direct... The guild leader publicly announced the disbandment of the guild, allowing all members to choose their own destinations, and that he himself would no longer manage any organization.

Su Mu looked at the arguments and divisions, and he knew very well what it meant.

Before the merger, each cable line had only a thousand people, which easily led to the formation of closed cliques, where the strong could use force to coerce the weak into submission.

But things are different now... With a hundred cables merged and over 20,000 people mixed together, information flows more than ten times faster. Those association leaders who used to maintain their rule through information asymmetry and coercion will no longer be able to retain their people once their true colors are exposed.

"This is a good thing," Su Mu thought to himself.

At least for ordinary people, they now have a choice.

For truly capable guild leaders, they can attract those genuinely willing to follow them. Survival of the fittest applies to this world as well.

The discussion in the channel grew increasingly heated, and time unknowingly approached midnight.

Su Mu glanced at the system time... 11:58. Two more minutes until the details of the new feature were announced. He leaned against the wall, waiting for that moment to arrive.

Just then, a horn sounded in the distance.

The sound was very distant, as if it came from the direction of the city wall.

But its penetrating power was extremely strong. Even through the cable car glass, through the night wind, and across a distance of several kilometers, Su Mu could still clearly hear the sound... distorted, sharp, like the shriek of something being torn apart. The sound was not the timbre of a normal horn; it was more like a drawn-out hiss from the throat of some creature.

Su Mu suddenly stood up straight and quickly walked to the window.

The scene outside the city walls has changed.

The strange creatures that had been lurking tentatively along the city wall were now, as if activated by some invisible command, surging out of the darkness outside the city... densely packed, covering the sky and the earth, like a black tide spreading from the horizon.

Su Mu's dynamic vision captured those shapes... There were the stenching, rotting corpses he had seen before, their bone fans on their backs opening in the moonlight like tattered flags; there were alien evil spirits, their translucent bodies floating in the air, dark purple light dancing within them; there were countless unfamiliar, distorted shapes, like fragments cut from different creatures and pieced together to form an indescribable outline that instinctively made one want to look away.

They began to assault the city walls.

When the first batch of monsters climbed the city wall, a layer of golden energy appeared on the surface of the wall... Su Mu had seen that thing before. When he entered the city before, that energy curtain blocked the attacks of the monsters outside the city.

But now, the moment those strange creatures touched the golden curtain, the curtain suddenly lit up, like a flame being ignited. The creatures that touched the curtain instantly turned to ashes, leaving not even a trace.

But even more strange creatures surged up.

They went berserk, recklessly crashing into the golden curtain.

One layer is burned to ashes, and the next layer is climbed up by stepping on the ashes. Each flash of the golden curtain clears an area, but the next second that area is filled with new monsters.

Those things were like machines without fear, pain, or self-awareness, mechanically repeating the same actions... climbing up, crashing into, being burned to death, and then the next one.

Su Mu saw the golden curtain slowly darken. Fine black spots began to appear on the areas that had been repeatedly struck, like paper that had been blackened before being burned through by flames.

"Can they be broken?" Su Mu tapped his finger lightly on the windowsill.

The channel exploded.

"Holy crap!! Those things outside the city walls have moved!!"

"They've started their attack?! Weren't there supposed to be barriers inside the city?"

"The barrier is darkening! Look at those black spots!! The barrier won't last much longer!!"

"What do we do now? The cable car is still going around in circles in the city; it hasn't even left yet!"

"Go out?! It's full of those things outside, going out is just suicide!"

"Then what if we stay? If the walls break down and those things rush in, we'll all die!"

Panic spread like a plague through the channel, with messages refreshing so fast they were almost invisible.

Some said to flee quickly, some said to find a place to hide, some said to unite and resist, but no one knew what to do... because they didn't even know what those things were, where they came from, why they were attacking the city, or what would happen after the city was breached.

Su Mu did not participate in the discussion.

His gaze was fixed on the city wall, watching the black spots slowly expand.

The golden curtain's counterattack frequency was decreasing, each flash dimmer and weaker than the last. At this rate, barring unforeseen circumstances, the city wall barrier could only hold out for another one to two hours at most.

However, at that moment, a series of beast roars came from the direction of the city.

It wasn't just one or two, but a whole swarm... a dense chorus of roars that echoed simultaneously from every corner of the city, as if activated by something.

Su Mu looked in the direction of the sound and saw the monsters that had been wandering in the city ruins...