I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

The night fog was as black as ink, so thick it was impossible to see through.

At a desolate intersection of a provincial highway and a section of National Highway 318, an old No. 404 bus, on its last day of service, is traveling at a steady speed on the empty road. Its two yellowed headlights, like two rusty swords, struggle to cleave a tiny crack in the thick fog.

The carriage was filled with an unpleasant odor, a mixture of gasoline and worn leather. There were only five people on board.

Sitting in the last row was a young man wearing a black windbreaker named Chen Yan. He was an officially registered independent cultivator and one of the first lucky ones to experience the spiritual energy baptism on the outskirts of Kunlun. His cultivation level was currently stable at the fifth level of Qi Refining.

In the past two days, the official "Guide to Dealing with Spirits" has brought stability back to the previously anxious society. Chen Yan just helped a family in the suburbs "exorcise" a nascent vengeful spirit that was hiding in a closet and only creating auditory hallucinations, earning a generous reward. He is currently resting with his eyes closed, recovering the spiritual energy he has consumed.

Suddenly, a low female voice came from the front of the carriage.

"The fog is getting thicker and thicker... I can't even see the road signs."

The speaker was a female office worker sitting in the front row. She was looking out the window, her face pale, and she subconsciously rubbed her arms. A middle-aged man next to her seemed to want to say something to bolster her courage. But before he could speak, a piercing static suddenly came from the old car radio at the front of the carriage.

"Sizzle... sizzle..."

The radio wasn't playing the voice of a late-night radio anchor; instead, it was emitting an extremely harsh, dull tone, like fingernails scraping glass.

Chen Yan suddenly opened his eyes, his cultivator's intuition instantly waking him up. He turned to look out the car window, his pupils slightly contracting.

The fog outside the window had changed from grayish-white to a depressing dark black. Moreover, as the vehicle moved, the temperature inside the car was dropping at an abnormally high rate, and a thin layer of frost had even formed on the windows.

"There seems to be a platform ahead... ahead!" The female office worker suddenly pointed into the depths of the thick fog, her voice trembling slightly.

Following the direction she pointed, everyone saw a rusty bus stop sign standing not far ahead on the roadside.

But a middle-aged man in the carriage who frequently traveled this route glanced at it and his face instantly turned pale: "That's not right... I've traveled this route many times. In this desolate wilderness, where would there be a bus stop?"

Even more strangely, three people were standing indistinctly under the bus stop sign.

They stood motionless in the thick fog, heads bowed, their postures as stiff as cheap plastic mannequins in a shop window.

"Don't stop! Just drive straight through!" Chen Yan suddenly stood up, and a roar filled with rage echoed in the carriage, startling several drowsy passengers.

However, it was too late.

Just as the bus was about to pass the station, the entire vehicle seemed to be forcibly controlled by some invisible force. The front of the bus veered slightly, the body made a piercing braking sound, and it came to a steady stop in front of the three "people".

"laugh--"

The old car doors automatically popped open to both sides, and a gust of cold wind, mixed with a strong smell of preservatives and burnt substance, instantly rushed into the car.

The three people slowly raised their heads and got into the car with stiff steps.

Leading the way was a woman in a red dress, her hair wet and plastered to her face, black droplets constantly falling onto the carriage floor. Following her were a mother and son, their faces a deathly ashen purple, the boy clutching a charred ball tightly in his hands.

After boarding the train, they didn't pay any coins or look at anyone; they went straight to the empty seats in the middle of the carriage and sat down.

"It's so cold..." The female office worker shivered and couldn't help but complain. She glanced instinctively at the woman in the red dress sitting next to her across the aisle. "Where are you going in the middle of the night?"

The woman in the red dress didn't speak; she simply turned her head slowly.

When the female office worker saw her face clearly, she let out an extremely shrill scream!

That wasn't a human face at all! Half of her head looked like it had been crushed by a heavy truck, with a large dent in it. There was no brain matter inside, only clumps of writhing gray mist.

"A ghost! There's a ghost!!!"

The carriage erupted in chaos, with all the passengers shrinking in terror to the front and back of the carriage.

"What's the panic! Everyone, step back!"

Chen Yan roared and strode forward from the back row. As a Qi Refining stage cultivator, he had already learned from the internal forum that these newly appeared ghosts were nothing more than remnants of resentment, and could be easily annihilated with high-intensity spiritual energy and pure Yang blood as long as one was not terrified by them.

The woman in the red dress seemed to be enraged by Chen Yan's masculine aura. She let out a chilling roar, and her entire body instantly transformed into a semi-transparent gray phantom. She stretched out her hands, covered with black fingernails, and lunged straight at Chen Yan's face.

"You wretched creature, you're asking for death!"

Chen Yan snorted coldly, advancing instead of retreating. He frantically drew pure Yang spiritual energy from his dantian, concentrating it all on his right fist. For a moment, a layer of blazing crimson light even appeared on the surface of his fist.

"Bang!"

A punch was thrown, striking the red-dressed female ghost squarely in the chest.

The high concentration of spiritual energy was like a red-hot iron meeting ice and snow. The female ghost let out an extremely sharp scream, and a large amount of black smoke erupted from her wound. Immediately afterwards, her illusory body collapsed under the impact of the pure yang energy, turning into gray embers that flew everywhere and dissipated into the air of the carriage.

"The Immortal Master is mighty!"

"Great! We're saved!"

The remaining passengers, witnessing this scene, erupted in wild joy, their despair instantly turning to elation. Just as the officials had said, these incorporeal ghosts were no match for the noble cultivators!

However, there was no joy of victory on Chen Yan's face; his back was instantly soaked with cold sweat.

To his horror, he discovered that although he had scattered the female ghost, the gray embers did not return to the world like the wandering ghosts he had previously exorcised.

The fragments swirled inside the bus, as if locked in place by some invisible magnetic field. Even more terrifying, with the "death" of the female ghost, the thick fog outside seemed to come alive, rushing in wildly through the cracks in the doors.

"Sizzle... sizzle..."

The lights on the roof of the carriage turned a suffocating blood red.

The mother and son who had been sitting motionless slowly stood up. The deathly aura on their faces intensified, and the woman in the red dress, who had been scattered earlier, miraculously reformed at the rear of the carriage amidst the thick fog and embers!

Moreover, this time, the red-dressed female ghost that had been re-formed had eyes that were pure black, and the extremely yin energy emanating from her body was more than ten times stronger than before!

"How is this possible... Why did it not work?! Why did it revert to its original state?!"

Chen Yan felt a chill run down his spine. He tried to gather his spiritual energy again, but to his horror, he found that in this bus shrouded in blood-red light, his spiritual energy was like a match falling into an ice cave; as soon as he tried to mobilize it, it was instantly suppressed and extinguished by the pervasive, chilling aura around him.

The yang energy within his body is being frantically drained away by this space.

Outside the bus window, the bus stop sign that read "Huai Shu Ling" was faintly visible in the thick fog. No matter how far the bus drove, the bus stop sign always passed by the window at a steady speed.

The space was folded.

This is neither one ghost nor three ghosts.

"This car...this road...is a living monster!" Chen Yan collapsed to the ground in despair, watching the three evil spirits radiating terrifying pressure approach step by step.

He finally understood the most terrifying truth that wasn't mentioned in the official guide.

When countless fragments of scattered spirits reunite at a specific location filled with resentment, they are no longer fragile wandering souls.

Using the energy brought about by the spiritual revival, they altered the underlying physical laws of this area, forming an "absolute realm" independent of the real world.

In gaming terminology, this is called a "dungeon". In the realm of cultivation, it's called the Yin Realm.

In the Yin Realm, the pure Yang energy of the living is suppressed to its limit, while ghosts, as long as they are not instantly wiped out along with the entire space, can absorb the Yin energy around them to revive infinitely, each time becoming stronger than the last.

"Help... Someone save us..." The passengers' desperate screams echoed through the carriage, but these cries would never reach the real world.

……

over nine days.

Gu Qing quietly looked down at the dazzling red dot that had just lit up on the holographic star map.

[System notification: The first fully formed folded space area—the "Midnight Bus"—has been detected on a section of National Highway 318.]

The current regional laws have shifted from the physical world to the extreme Yin laws.

[Danger Level: Possesses overwhelming annihilation capabilities against cultivators at the mid-stage of Qi Refining or below, and the threat level is continuously increasing.]

Looking at the bus that was endlessly looping through the spatial crevices, Gu Qing felt no pity, only a slight admiration for the system's evolutionary capabilities.

As the architect of this world, he knew all too well what was going on.

He had been worried about how to manually fabricate those horrifying "hellish scenes" to collect people's fears. But he realized he had worried too much.

Human fears and resentments, catalyzed by spiritual energy, are themselves the most perfect "automatic compiler" in the universe.

Those who die violently in car accidents, the despair, pain, and jealousy they experience in their final moments become unclaimed fragments of memory. When the living cultivators use their spiritual power to scatter these fragments, they do not disappear; instead, they replicate and merge wildly in the loopholes of the real world like a virus.

Ultimately, based on their strongest obsessions in life, they automatically generated "paranormal copies" that were logical and even had their own independent operating rules.

The 404 midnight bus was just the first one.

As cultivators continue to "disperse" ghosts around the world, such Yin Realms will spring up like mushrooms after rain in places like the morgue of the Third Hospital in Jiangnan City, abandoned unfinished buildings, and dark sewers.

"Let the storm rage on!"

Gu Qing lightly tapped the air with her finger, and the footage from Chen Yan's personal recorder, which he had activated in despair, was forcibly pushed to the homepage of the world's largest online forum for cultivators with the highest level of access.

The title is just a single line:

"Exorcism is ineffective: When the supernatural becomes the rule, the living are all food."

This video was like a bombshell, instantly shattering the false sense of security that humanity had just built up.

In the video, the elite cultivator at the fifth level of Qi Refining was unable to cast a single fireball spell under the oppressive aura of the resurrected female ghost in the red dress. He could only watch in despair as the carriage was swallowed by endless blood, eventually turning into a mournful scream.

That fear of the unknown rules, that dread of being trapped in the endless cycle of reincarnation after death, instantly pierced the souls of four billion people worldwide.

It turns out that ghosts cannot be killed.

It turns out that just when you think you've conquered your fear, the real abyss has only just begun to open its eyes.

[System notification: A high-level soul panic has been detected globally!]

[The collective subconscious cognition of mortals has been completely overturned; the cognitive anchors for the "afterlife" and the "laws of hell" have been firmly welded together!]

[The efficiency of converting faith power into "extreme yin attribute" increases a thousandfold!]

[The rendering speed of the "Netherworld" scene has reached its peak... The main body of Fengdu Ghost City is expected to be completely completed within three days!]

Gu Qing watched the countdown frantically jumping on her retina, then slowly turned around, her back to the blue planet engulfed in an endless supernatural frenzy.

Faith is omnipotent, but it is also the most realistic. Only when humanity realizes that it is powerless against death will it kneel down and use its purest faith to pray for a hell that can accommodate all evil spirits.

"Three days."

"Three days later, I will personally add a piece called reincarnation to this script filled with gods and Buddhas."