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Hot Thread: 【The roadside sparrows have become spirits! They can understand human speech!】
Poster: Anonymous User 66789
【On my way to work this morning, I was buying steamed buns downstairs when a flock of sparrows perched on the railing stared at me.
I casually said, “I didn't bring any food,” and they all tilted their heads at me in unison, then flew away!】
【Refusing to believe it, I said, “I have bread, do you want to eat?” and they actually flew back and started circling me!】
【They're too smart, it's like they've gained intelligence.】
【I'm not exaggerating at all. In my twenty-odd years of life, this is truly the first time I've seen such smart sparrows.】
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【Normal. With the spiritual energy recovery, all things are gaining spirituality. Animals will only get smarter from now on. You'll get used to it once you see it more often.】
【The stray cat downstairs from my place is even more ridiculous. It can open the building's main door by itself, and it even steals ham sausages from the supermarket. The owner already knows it by heart.】
【My dog can read my facial expressions now, and it even turns off my alarm. My alarm didn't go off for the past two days. Later, a friend came to stay over and saw my dog wait until the alarm was about to ring, take the phone in its mouth, turn off the alarm, and then bring it back.】
【Maybe the puppy just wants you to spend more time with it, but that's still so scary. It has already gone beyond the realm of being "smart," hasn't it??】
【Will all animals become spirits in the future? Why am I suddenly looking forward to it?】
【Don't look forward to it. If the animals that become spirits turn out to be bad, it'll be even more troublesome. Humans went through so much effort to evolve to this point.】
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Hot Thread: 【Help! A bunch of round Mud Calabashes have grown in my house. What are they? Pics included】
【Post Time: Seven days ago, 09:46
Popularity: 100k likes, 23k comments
Poster: Anonymous Player 22367
(picture) (picture) (picture) Over the past week, a lot of these round creatures have grown in the cracks of my windowsills and in the corners of my bathroom.】
【Have you guys seen 《The Secret of the Magic Gourd》? It's like that, but a bit cuter. They have small heads and round bodies, no legs, and when you squish them, they just turn into a pile of mud.】
【Every day I clean them up, they grow back the next day, more and more of them. I've been running a fever and having nightmares lately. Is it related to these things?】
—The attached pictures were very clear. They showed small, round, mud-colored spheres of various sizes. Plump and swollen, they indeed didn't look like insects, nor did they look like plants.
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Reply: 【My house has them too! They're slightly more useful than cockroaches because they eat dust. Do you know how awesome that is for a lazy girl who hates cleaning her rented apartment?】
【Wait, I think this is in the Special Investigation Bureau's abnormal creature index. It's called a “Clay Sculpture Ghost,” and it's supposed to be harmless.】
【What does that mean? Did something from an Instance escape?】
【I don't think the officials have classified its danger level yet, but I feel like it doesn't harm the human body. Similar things have appeared in my house (picture). I feed them trash every day, and it's actually pretty fun.】
【Isn't keeping supernatural creatures prohibited? (This comment violated community guidelines and has been deleted.)】
【(Official Certification · Special Investigation Bureau Field Team): We have received the lead and have dispatched personnel to the corresponding area for extermination. Poster, please keep your phone active.
We remind all citizens not to casually destroy such foreign objects if they appear in your home. Please pay attention to cleaning your house and keeping it tidy.】
【The officials are so fast! I feel completely safe.】
【What does this mean?】
【It means this thing only grows in places with a lot of trash and heavy grime. Usually, only one or two grow. For someone like the poster whose house is almost completely overrun... the Special Investigation Bureau is coming to help do a deep clean.】
【Oh right, my place had them before too. Once I cleaned them up, it was fine.】
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【Two-tailed wild cat spotted on the street! Do cat spirits really exist?】
Poster: Anonymous Player 90145
【Shot this on my way home from work. A pure black stray cat, but it has two complete tails. It looks incredibly intelligent. It sat on top of the wall and stared at me for a long time, not afraid of humans at all.】
【The older generation says two-tailed cats have become spirits. Will I have bad luck?】
The attached photo showed a black cat perched on top of a wall, its two black tails hanging down, its gaze cold and arrogant, exuding a powerful aura.
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Reply: 【It feels just like an aberration that happened after the Instances appeared. There are humans with six fingers, right? It's not becoming a spirit, nor does it bring bad luck. Don't overthink it.】
【So handsome! I want to pet it!】
【Don't just touch it. What if this kind of wild cat carries some virus? If it scratches you, you won't even know what vaccine to get.】
【Dark humor: If you get scratched, you have to brew herbal tea with glutinous rice—my family has actually been eating glutinous rice for the past six months.】
【Last time in the park woods, I saw a mushroom grow legs and run away (blurry photo). This thing ran incredibly fast, disappearing in the blink of an eye.】
【I feel like the spiritual energy really is recovering. What do you guys think these Instances actually are?】
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Song Mo scrolled through the posts, enjoying the gossip while silently noting down the locations where supernatural events had broken out.
Sure enough, just as she had initially thought, the way spiritual energy recovered in the country was from points to areas—centering around multiple Instances, supernatural events and paranormal phenomena were growing exponentially.
Or rather... the closer they were to her, the faster the spiritual energy recovered.
On the streets of Jiangcheng, someone had already captured footage of a crow chatting with people.
It seemed that some kind of change was quietly taking place not just in humans, but in animals and plants as well.
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As she continued scrolling, Song Mo suddenly saw a gossip thread:
【Come quick for some gossip! The biological son of a certain real estate tycoon has died in an Instance! This news is absolutely genuine!!】
【Breaking! Lu Group's young master Lu Jianming died in the Route 404 Instance. What does this show? Even money can't buy your life in an Instance!】
This new thread, posted just this morning, had been pushed to the hot section in just a few short hours.
【Poster: Anonymous Gossip Observer
Everyone knows about the gate-crashing incident at Taiping Cemetery yesterday, right? The mega-rich tycoon Lu Bingkun, who is on his deathbed, spent a fortune trying to enter the Instance to extend his life, but he was blocked by the Special Investigation Bureau.
Later, the Route 404 Ghost Bus suddenly appeared. He didn't manage to get on, but his son Lu Jianming did. Many livestreamers captured it at the time.】
【I just got word that Lu Jianming is gone. He died in the Instance.】
【Hilarious. Before this, people said “money makes the devil turn the millstone,” but it turns out ghosts don't take cash at all—they just take your life.】
The comment section below exploded, with thousands of replies arguing heatedly:
【Holy crap, really? Weren't those who crashed the gate yesterday arrested by the Special Investigation Bureau? The Lu Group's lawyers are probably swearing in the detention center right now.】
【Wasn't Lu Bingkun arrested too?】
【He's an old man in his eighties and seriously ill. Why arrest him? Are the officials not afraid he'll die in the detention center? He's probably in the hospital right now.】
【The official death list was just updated. My friend in the Special Investigation Bureau said Lu Jianming's death has already been confirmed.】
【So everyone is equal before the Instances. No matter how much money you have, it's useless. The rules don't recognize money.】
【It's just a pity for his dad. He spent so much money wanting to extend his life, but his son ended up dying first. A white-haired man burying his black-haired child.】
【What's there to pity? You're actually feeling bad for them? That whole family isn't good. Back then, the boss of the Lu Group abandoned his first wife, swallowed her family's fortune, and even built a building over her corpse to suppress it... Look it up yourself... The Lu Group's properties cut corners and scammed so many ordinary people. This can only be called karma.】
【Don't bring karma into this, person above. Dying in an Instance is just dying. It has nothing to do with one's character. Stop talking nonsense.】
【I remember now. Back then, wasn't there some inside scoop saying that the place where the Lu Group's boss buried his first wife was quite special, supposedly to borrow longevity or something?】
Seeing this, Song Mo was intrigued. She called A'yan over and asked her to look into the past affairs of the Lu Group.
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【This is a bit scary.】
【Hiring bodyguards for two million is useless if you can't even get in. Money is just waste paper in an Instance.】
【Unless you can spend money to hire professional players. But those people are as rare as giant pandas, and they aren't stupid enough to risk their lives for your two million.】
【Suddenly, it feels quite fair. No matter if you have money or not, power or not, once you enter an Instance, it's all the same. If you're meant to die, you die.】
【Not necessarily. Rich people can buy items and hire experts to carry them to a win. It's just that this time he died right after entering, so he didn't make it.】
【What are you thinking? Instance items are incredibly rare; you can't buy them even if you have money. Do you really think it's like a game where you can pay to win? The supernatural doesn't recognize money, only fate.】
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Song Mo scrolled through the comments, noncommittal.
She admitted that after the Instances opened, it wasn't just possible, but certain—there would definitely be a significant portion of people who would try to take shortcuts, attempting to settle everything with their real-world status and wealth.
Perhaps some wicked people would overcome all obstacles and survive to the very end.
But perhaps some good people would suffer defeat right at the start.
Everything that happened inside the Instances was something even Song Mo herself could not predict.
No one was absolutely immortal, and no one would find their path to survival completely cut off.
But there was one thing that Song Mo had firmly written into the core of every Instance:
Before the rules, all living beings are equal.
After reading for a while, she lost interest in browsing. Just as she was about to exit, a gold-certified thread pinned sitewide suddenly refreshed.
【Gold-Tier Guide | Sitewide First! Complete Clearance Record + Core Rules Sharing of the A-Tier Instance 《Great Britain's London Death Subway》.】
—This post carried the official special-grade certification mark, and its popularity surged at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Just a few minutes after being posted, it instantly surpassed the massive Lu Group gossip thread from earlier, climbing to the top spot on the forum.
Who from the Jiangcheng team was it?
Song Mo opened the thread with great interest.
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Rate on N.U.
