Impossible images showed on the big screen at the command central. The locusts inside the mutated areas bounced against the border, the life circle gradually wilted.
“There’s a new update…” This was the first time the people managed to see with their naked eyes how the mutated area expanded, how it corrupted the space, turned the ground black. Plants inside the life circle wilted at a speed observable to the naked eye. Their verdant color instantly turned to ash. The animals inside the pens like cows, ducks, chickens, horses cried in despair. They knew darkness had arrived. The cattle shivered in fear, while horses bumped against the wooden beams in a desperate effort to save themselves. However, second several later, they were all eaten alive by the locusts.
The agents brandishing the flamethrowers had to retreat while holding their line. The scorched ground was everywhere. Soon human cries joined in the cacophony. Death had descended on humanity. The locusts ate through the agents’ gear, and then they feasted on human skin, tendons, bones, flesh, blood… There was a fleeting moment where the dying human could see their own organs in full display.
The mutated area was rapidly growing. This time it was not followed by an explosion, it directly tore through the reality. It was spreading like an ugly wound. Power poured over from the Wasteland World and it was unstoppable. Over at the desert wasteland, the same thing was happening. More flying polypus hydroids burrowed out from the ground. Their wails caused all the machineries to malfunction. It also shattered the eardrums of nearby agents. Blood oozed out from their ears. The frontline agents continued to fire inside their armored vehicles, tanks and helicopters.
“Ah!” Lou Xiaoning controlled the artillery cannon fixed to the car and unloaded on the abnormal creatures that flew in the sky. None of the bullets hit. Then again, that was not her goal to begin with. Her aim was to buy time for the other members to return to their posts at the cleansing stones. They wished to draw mental power from the Yith through their mental connection to weave another Ancient Seal web!
Suddenly, near one of the cleansing stones, a flying polypus hydroid flickered by. The tentacles on the creature that was 2 storey tall lashed rapidly on the ground. Helen Claire was hit multiple times on her body. The female agent from FBM had her body sliced into different parts before she could even emit a scream. Like sliced meat, the agent’s body collapsed to the ground in pieces. Light faded from her widened eyes.
‘It’s pointless…’ The Yith’s words echoed in their minds like a curse. ‘You will not survive this. Humanity is meant to fall.’ The countdown was over. Death appeared everywhere, at both Phecda World and Mysterium World.
It was shown all over the scrolls.
“Chang Hong!” Yu Chi suddenly screamed in rage and pain. That was Yu Chi’s buddy, his friend from the Icebreakers. At that moment, Chang Hong experienced the same fate Helen Claire did. As the team leader of Icebreakers, there was nothing Yu Chi could do but yell aimlessly inside this abnormal space. Gu Jun’s heart also wrenched with anger and pain. Even though he did not know Helen Claire and Chang Hong well, their deaths were rendered so meaningless… And similar death would also soon descend on those he cared most about… As the world came to an end…
“Dirty-minded Yu, how do you feel?” Gu Jun asked urgently. He hoped she had an idea to destroy this altar.
“The power in the cat’s body is almost gone…” Wu Siyu said weakly, “Unless I choose to accept its offering but…”
The chanting in the altar was clear enough that they could hear it clearly now. It was the prophecy made by the Flying Locust, “The storm is imminent, insects and worms shall ride the wind; The flood is imminent, mayflies shall ride the waves!” It was repeated again and again. Blurry figures appeared around them. They were all kneeling in different space and time, waiting for their God to arrive.
Gu Jun’s head pounded with such pain that it felt like his skull was about to shatter. Next to him, Yu Chi gripped his head tightly as well…
The Oracle Bone Script that they encountered along the way came alive and danced around before their eyes. They could see the character for Worm floating in the brightness around them. Gu Jun gathered his remnants of mental and physical power until the veins popped on his forehead but he found moving even a single muscle as hard as moving a mountain. On the scrolls, at the two frontlines, more people died…
The Yith, as they said, merely kept on watching while they prepared to detach themselves to escape to another time. “Doctor Wang, emotionally speaking, the fact that you refuse to go with us is quite saddening. Yes. Saddening indeed.” Once Teacher Fan said that, he suddenly slumped back onto the bed. The spirit in his eyes seeped away. The man became nothing more than a shell. The Yith inside his body was gone.
At the same time, the Worm characters at the altar overlapped together and they glowed even brighter. It floated before the gathered group and eventually a shadowy figure emerged from it. It looked like a human-insect amalgamation. Its body transmuted constantly in the light. The cultists were overjoyed. Their chanting grew in volume. They were in the presence of their God, their Locust God.
The shadow gradually coalesced from a skeletal frame to a human with flesh. Finally, the clothes appeared. This was a faceless person with indeterminate sex.
“He is faceless because he has a thousand faces…” Keziah Mason mumbled, “He can have a thousand faces because he is faceless…”
As if answering her, some faces flashed across the head. The one that eventually froze there caused the Flying Locust to halt in their excitement. These cultists were confused, why would their Locust God take on a human form… and that particular face?
Gu Jun and Wu Siyu noticed something from the Locust God’s clothes. It was the tattered outfit of the skeleton inside the cage at the wasteland. This figure… was the dead person which was left to die inside the iron cage. The person who had given the resistance scientific knowledge and thus was given the death punishment by the Flying Locust. The foreigner who had given the resistance a large atomic bomb to vaporize Angel City, the haven for the servants of Locust God. The person who forcibly summoned Wu Siyu here to stop the ritual to summon the Locust God.
This tall and imposing figure materialized before them.
“You… are the Locust God?” The question was not asked by Gu Jun’s group but one of the cultists who had snapped out from his reverie. The cultists believed they were about to ascend to Godhood. The great sacrifice was successful… humanity from both worlds was doomed… The Locust God had descended but what now?
Furthermore, why did the Locust God help the resistance destroy the Angel City? Why…
Wu Siyu scratched her head. Yu Chi looked on numbly. Gu Jun also wanted to know why. The reason they were there in the first place was due to the Locust God’s intervention. Why? Indeed, that was how limited a human being’s mind was. Everything has to have a cause and effect, right?
A horrid cackle echoed through the space. It came from the Locust God. The deity looked at everything, at everyone gathered around him and answered. “Because I want, because I can, because I am Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos.”