"Suspected Biochemical Agent Leak, Emergency Lockdown and Barricade in Yiguan District"

"Experts Speak Out on Combating the Black Disaster Blood Tick"

"The First Hope City Officially Completed, Ten Thousand Residents Move In"

With the sound of pages rustling, Henry Clark's expression grew more and more grave as he read.

Aside from the strange and abnormal headlines, the most crucial point was—

He suddenly realized... none of these newspapers were written in any language he had ever studied before—not Chinese, not English, not French, not Spanish, not Russian, and so on.

Instead, it was a completely unfamiliar, different language.

"Damn it!"

Henry Clark put down the newspaper and checked the date.

'January 3, 2020.'

He could recognize a language he had never seen before...

This bizarre feeling made a faint discomfort rise in his heart.

Putting the newspaper back in its place, Henry Clark glanced at the door in front of him.

The door was gray-black, with one large and one small square pattern, one above the other. The handle was white, with some paint chipped off, revealing the black metal underneath.

He reached out and gripped the handle. The cold, hard touch made him shiver, then he gently twisted it.

Click.

The door opened.

Outside the door were gray stone steps, three in total.

Beyond that was a broken, rubble-strewn road.

Across the road stood a small, dark bungalow with its door open.

Gray-white walls, black, broken tiles.

The bungalow was just over three meters high, with red slogan characters painted on the outer wall, now so faded and blurry that their meaning was lost.

Pebbles and withered yellow leaves remained on the slanted tiles, rolling and making faint sounds as the wind blew.

Henry Clark stepped outside and only then realized he wasn't wearing shoes—he had come out in just tattered gray socks.

Standing on the stony ground felt uncomfortable, the stones pressing into his feet.

So he simply stood still.

He looked around.

On both sides of this gravel road outside the door, there were rows of stone-walled, tiled-roof houses.

All these houses were very old and dilapidated, the walls covered in mold and stains. Some still had red slogans painted on them, things like "A lifetime of happiness, perfect peace and blessing," "One person insured, the whole family safe," "Fire, pest, and moisture prevention"...

The gravel road was rather dim, the sunlight blocked by the houses, with only a little slanting in through the doors and windows.

This was because the houses were all relatively low.

He looked left and right.

The rows of tiled houses stood like people in line, similar in height, all in disrepair, with drafty doors and windows. Most of the dark wooden doors were wide open, but inside there was no one—only the howling wind.

He turned and looked up at the house he was in.

Sure enough, although his place was also a tiled house, it was different from the others.

Thick black-and-yellow wooden planks were nailed across the doors and windows, the gaps stuffed with heavy cloth, and the threshold was higher than those of the other houses.

"This place..." A vague sense of foreboding rose in Henry Clark's heart.

Click.

Suddenly, from far to the right, came a faint sound.

It seemed like a shoe stepping on gravel.

He quickly looked in that direction.

He saw, inside the open door of a house on the right side of the road, a blurry figure in white standing in the shadows, looking at him.

From a distance, he seemed to see the person smiling at him.

"What the hell are you smiling at!" Henry Clark frowned, ignoring the person.

Although he really wanted to find someone to ask about the situation, the other person looked a bit crazy, not normal. It made him uneasy.

So he decided to look for someone else.

Turning his head, he stopped looking that way and instead scanned the other houses one by one, trying to find someone else inside.

Unfortunately, after scanning around, he didn't see anyone else.

So he had no choice but to turn back and look toward the person in white.

But this glance made his heart sink.

The person in white was no longer in the previous house.

Instead, he had appeared in another house much closer to him.

Standing in the shadow of the doorway, smiling at him.

In just a dozen seconds, the distance had closed by at least several dozen meters.

The strangest thing was, even though the person was much closer, he still couldn't make out the man's features—he could only barely see that he was smiling, with very pale skin, and that he was a man.

He hadn't heard any sound of running—how had this person crossed such a distance so quickly?

A chill crept up in Henry Clark's heart.

He took a breath, quickly turned his head to look elsewhere, then suddenly looked back at the person in white.

It was only a second.

But in that second—

The person in white was no longer in the previous house, but had disappeared again, now appearing in a house diagonally across from him, less than ten meters away.

Still standing motionless in the shadow of the doorway, still smiling at him.

"Shit!!" Henry Clark felt a jolt of terror and slowly began to back away.

What made it even stranger was that, even at such close range—and he wasn't nearsighted—he still couldn't see the man's face clearly!

Recalling what had just happened, he didn't dare blink, only slowly backing up.

Then, retreating into the doorway, he kept his eyes on the man while slowly closing the door.

Slowly.

Only a sliver of space remained.