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

Su Mu's fingers hovered over the air where the spear was, ready to be summoned at any moment. He had prepared for the worst... If the outer shell was completely breached, he had to rush out before the cable car was destroyed, leap onto the low-lying monsters below, and use the spear to survive on land. Although the chances of survival were slim, he couldn't just sit and wait to die.

There are only three layers of planks left.

The giant's hand fell again.

The three layers of wooden planks shattered simultaneously the moment the palm touched them... The building's shield expanded three times, but each layer collapsed completely in less than half a second. The fingertips of the palm pierced through the last broken plank, less than three feet from the surface of the cable car.

Su Mu gripped the virtual handle of the spear tightly.

Just then...

The sky cracked open.

It wasn't the black rift that tore space apart like when the Chimera appeared before, but a huge, semi-transparent hand reached down from the depths of the sky.

Its outline was so blurry it looked like a reflection seen through a thick curtain of water, but its size and sense of oppression were pure and unreasonable... the absolute suppression of a lower-dimensional being by a higher-dimensional being.

The size of that hand was comparable to that of the giant object.

It precisely pressed down on the giant's head, its five fingers clenching like an adult grabbing a disobedient child. The giant struggled in its palm... its massive body twisted violently, its limbs flailing wildly, and thick fog exploded and closed around it. But the hand remained motionless.

Then it squeezed it shut.

Su Mu couldn't hear the sound, but he could feel the vibration coming from afar... a dull, rolling vibration, like thunder on the horizon, that lasted for nearly three seconds before slowly dissipating.

The colossal object's body disintegrated, shattered, and turned into dark gray fragments in the palm of the hand. Before those fragments could fall, they were scattered by the night wind.

The hand loosened. It didn't linger for a moment, didn't turn to other targets, and made no unnecessary movements. After crushing the giant object, it slowly withdrew, like someone withdrawing their gaze after watching a performance that wasn't worth spending any more time on.

The sky closed.

The strange creatures around us seemed to have been paused by something.

The strange creatures that were surging towards the cable car, hovering in the air, and crawling on the ground all froze in place at the same moment. The slightest movement stopped, as if even the dark purple blood flowing through their bodies had been frozen in time.

That kind of suppression is absolute and unreasonable.

Su Mu did not hesitate.

He pushed the fuel valve all the way down again, and the cable car accelerated sharply along the steel cable, speeding away in the opposite direction from where the giant object had disappeared. He could feel the gazes of those strange creatures... Although they didn't move, the feeling of being watched was denser and heavier than before, as if countless eyes were simultaneously fixed on his back.

The steel cable sped backward below, gradually leaving the ghostly mist behind it far behind. The night wind had already scattered most of the remains of the colossal creature, leaving only some grayish-white fragments slowly drifting down from the sky.

Su Mu put down his spear, leaned against the wall, and let out a long breath. His fingers were still trembling slightly, and his heart was pounding so hard it felt like it would burst out of his chest. He didn't know whose hand it was, why it had appeared at that moment, or whether it had just happened to be passing by or had come specifically to help him.

But he knew that if that hand had been a moment slower, he would be dead by now.

He turned on his communicator. In that instant, countless messages flooded in: some asking what had happened, some screaming for help, some saying they'd seen a giant hand. The channel was in complete chaos.

He didn't read the messages. He opened Lin Yuwei's chat window; she had only sent three words: "Still alive?"

Su Mu replied with an "Mm".

Then he put down the communicator, leaned against the wall, stared at the direction where the giant creature had disappeared, and remained silent for a long time.

Ash City.

When that translucent palm appeared on the other side of the sky, the old man was standing behind the defensive line.

He saw the hand.

His pupils contracted sharply in that instant, a contraction even more intense than when he saw the giant purple flower. He stared in that direction for a long time, so long that the soldiers beside him thought something had happened to him.

Then he laughed.

That smile seemed especially rare on his tired, wrinkled face, as if something that hadn't appeared for a long time was slowly resurfacing.

"That person has made a move..."

His voice was very soft, so soft that only he could hear it. But there was something in his tone... like a long sigh of relief after finally confirming something.

"The Tenth Pharaoh."

He raised his head and looked in the direction where the palm in the sky had disappeared, his cloudy old eyes shining with a light even brighter than before.

He knew that the hand only needed one strike to crush the ghost chasing the cable car, and he also knew that the hand would precisely avoid the area where the cable car was located.

"That attack must have eliminated quite a few ghosts."

He turned around and looked again at the defensive line ahead, which was being battered by the black tide. The attacks of those monsters had indeed weakened slightly... Although it was not obvious, a person who had spent his whole life fighting on the battlefield could sense that extremely subtle change.

"We might still have a chance."

He gripped his staff tightly again and took a step forward. This step was more stable and heavier than before, like a bamboo stalk that had been compressed to its limit finally finding a crack to lean on.

The soldiers behind him didn't know what was happening, but they saw the old man's expression change; the weariness that had previously overwhelmed him with despair was fading. Their hands, gripping their swords, steadied once more.

......