Time quickly approached around two o'clock in the afternoon, and the sunlight outside the high-speed train window remained bright.

Wang Zhifan sat in a window seat, shifting his gaze from the screen of his phone to the rapidly passing mountainous scenery outside.

At this moment, the high-speed train he was on had already left Dongjiang City, speeding through a relatively sparsely populated area, and thus the surrounding landscape had become increasingly spectacular.

Suddenly, Wang Zhifan felt a bit hungry, so he discreetly reached under his seat to retrieve a pack of instant noodles from his personal space and began to eat.

This pack of instant noodles was part of the supplies he gathered during the Great Catastrophe instance. Despite having used some of the supplies several times, he hadn't run out yet and still had quite a few noodles, a few cans, a few bottles of water, and some alcohol left.

Originally, for safety reasons, Wang Zhifan didn't plan to eat this stuff in the real world because he was concerned whether the items from the Great Catastrophe instance carried any mutated viruses. But earlier he had searched the player forums and found that many players had done this without any issues arising in the real world, so he no longer worried about it.

As he ate the instant noodles from the instance and browsed the bustling player forums on his phone, Wang Zhifan was preparing to ride comfortably on the high-speed train to Jinlin City.

But accidents always come unexpectedly. Just when he was feeling calm, the high-speed train he was on suddenly began to brake and slow down, quickly coming to a halt on the tracks.

"Hmm?"

Wang Zhifan immediately felt a bit puzzled. He moved his gaze from the phone's screen and found that the other passengers in the carriage also had surprised expressions, not understanding why the high-speed train had stopped at this location. This place was a standard nowhere, without a village or shop, with no reason to stop.

"Attendant! What's going on?! Why did the train suddenly stop?"

Some hot-tempered passengers immediately began to shout.

"Why did it stop?"

"So strange!"

"Did something happen ahead?"

...

The other passengers also expressed their doubts.

Just when the passengers' emotions were getting a bit unstable, the broadcast in the high-speed train finally sounded:

"Dear passengers, due to a small temporary fault ahead, maintenance workers are rushing to fix it. It's expected to be resolved within half an hour, please wait patiently on the train."

The female voice in the broadcast was calm and steady, full of reassuring confidence. Quickly, the complaining passengers in the carriage calmed down, but some couldn't stop grumbling.

"Ah! So damn unlucky, I specifically took this high-speed train to save time, and now there's a malfunction?"

"It's okay, just half an hour."

"Heh, they say half an hour, but do you believe we might not even be moving after an hour?"

...

The discussions among the passengers in the car, Wang Zhifan did not join. He continued eating the instant noodles and browsing his phone; there wasn't much he could do about the situation.

But just as he was preparing to wait patiently, he suddenly lifted his head to look out the window. In the distance, following the current direction of the train, he seemed to sense something, and not just one thing.

"Monsters? How could there be a group of monsters appearing nearby?"

Wang Zhifan immediately became alert. Except for being attacked by a long-haired monster on the way back to his rental place some time ago, he had never encountered monsters in reality outside the Gray Realm.

"Could it be that there's a Gray Realm nearby? Or a Solidified Gray Realm?"

He immediately deduced the possible reason for this situation; according to his understanding, the appearance of monsters in the real world must be related to the Gray Realm, and monsters capable of entering reality could only come from a Solidified Gray Realm, as those from an unsolidified Gray Realm definitely couldn't come out.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Boom boom boom boom boom~

As Wang Zhifan pondered, he heard a series of gunshots from outside the window. These gunshots, though a bit distant, weren't loud, but anyone with normal hearing couldn't ignore them.

"Listen! There's a lot of gunfire outside!"

A passenger in the carriage quickly exclaimed at the sound.

"What's going on? Is there still a place at war in our Xia Country?"

Another slightly older passenger immediately had a puzzled look on his face, with a hint of fear mixed in with his uncertainty.

"Oh no! This train we're on must've been targeted by bandits! The train police are probably in a shootout with them!"

A male passenger suddenly slapped his thigh, speaking with a look of realization.

"Really? In this day and age, there are still people daring to rob trains?!"

Some passengers clearly found the man's speculation hard to believe, anxiously shaking their heads.

The discussions in the car were showing signs of getting out of control, but before group panic truly erupted, a male attendant entered the car to inform the passengers of the situation.

"Please, don't panic! The gunfire outside is the hunters in the nearby mountains herding their livestock. Our train is currently very safe, and won't take long to fix the fault and set off again."

The attendant's explanation, at first listen, sounded somewhat believable but left some doubts. However, seeing his composed manner, the passengers soon calmed down, then began to eagerly ask for more detailed information.

Meanwhile, several hundred meters in front of the stopped high-speed train, near the rail, three armed young people were continuously shooting at dozens of tall red-skinned monsters with dual horns on their heads.

These monsters had run over from the nearby wilderness. Some of them had jumped over the high-speed rail's fence and were wandering on the tracks, with the three young people prioritizing these main culprits for the train's stop.

"Damn things! Stop running! Come on, battle with us!"

A yellow-haired young man wielding a shotgun was chasing several red-skinned dual-horned monsters on the track, shouting to attract their attention.

Not far from him, a male and a female teammate were dealing with monsters in other directions. They were quickly aiming and shooting, continually dodging the monsters' charges, each trigger pull precisely hitting their targets.

But these monsters had thick hides and a large number. To clean them all up would still require some effort from them.

But it was as if the yellow-haired young man's shout suddenly worked, and all of a sudden, the monsters that had been fleeing or fighting seemed to freeze in place, ceasing their dispersal and standing still like ice sculptures in various poses.

The three young people were quite curious about what was happening, but before they could observe further, the bodies of the monsters suddenly turned into tiny fragments, scattering into the air.

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